Someone wrote to me privately and asked me if this war means the country might go "further right" than Bibi. I thought I might explain why it's not quite that simple. 🧵 Israeli politics, with its multi-party coalitions and oppositions, simply does not map all that neatly or sometimes even at all in the way Americans or even Europeans think of "right" and "left."

Not that anybody cares, but I thought I might ride the dumb body count debate to explain why @BradWilcoxIFS' lonely crusade to make marriage popular and widespread again is so important for society and for conservatives generally. @BradWilcoxIFS Modern, democratic conservatives (i.e., most of us) believe in a concept called "ordered liberty" wherein citizens are free to do as they wish but where laws and social institutions are strong enough to provide purpose, direction, stability, virtue, and faith.

Since I often criticize overly rosy views of the fifties, let me address a very popular conception of race relations in the 1950s, per which it was an absolute hellhole only redeemed by the 1960s.

This is worse than a lie: It's a half-truth that obscures a lot. The proper point of comparison between the post-WWII era and the Civil Rights era is *the preceding era*. The nadir of Jim Crow was not the 1950s but about between the 1890s and the 1920s.

So, I've tried to avoid talking about the fight over Israeli judicial reform (no, it's not a "coup") because it's the sort of thing that's led to emotions as extreme as when Trump was just elected in 2016. But I was asked to explain what's going on by a friendly follow, so... I am doing it under two conditions, which are non-negotiable:

1) Please take the time to read the entire thread to the end. It will be long, but it should be worth it.

2) If you have snarky, combative, trollish, &c things to say - keep it to yourself. Otherwise, it's a block.

So I finally got around to reading this, and I have some thoughts.

https://twitter.com/DrSamuelGregg/status/1556719321287729153

Yes, it's true, the best thinkers in the conservative traditions spoke of the different morals, ethics, institutions, and structures needed for human flourishing in a world of markets. Their words are still worth reading today.

One of the most profound things you see in medieval Jewish commentaries is how they often started by downplaying, with genuine and even painful humility, their entry into the fray of opinion on the most important matters. Keep in mind that we speak of some of the most brilliant minds the Jewish People ever produced, whose works are studied seriously by laypeople and academics alike. They nevertheless saw fit to state in advance that they came as humble servants, not conquering "owners."

Apropos Ike, one of the biggest mistakes in analyzing the right is thinking that the right ever became 100% liberal, centrist, conservative, populist under Ike, Nixon, Reagan, &c. This is especially so under Ike, who people think tag-teamed with Rocky to basically crush anyone who wasn't part of the old NE establishment. It's a nice story, but it's not really true.

Minimum wage is a tax. Sometimes it's born by the business. Sometimes by the consumers. Sometimes they can bear it, sometimes they can't. A smaller national increase is wiser than a large one, if one is already to be done, IMHO (& in my view this is the wrong time). That is all. "Avi, when would an increase be wise?"

Best time relatively speaking is during times of economic expansion, say 2019 pre-COVID. Not when many businesses are already struggling to stay alive.

The problem is that you can't sell framework without content to win elections. Reagan did not just sell limited government, he sold limited government AS A SOLUTION for the concrete problems ailing America and Americans at the time. A party that runs exclusively on the abstract principles of liberty and limited government will get only a small percentage of votes not because those are bad things, but because most voters want principle + direct benefit. That's the equation.

I remember the days, weeks, and years after Rabin was assassinated. The shock, the horror, the seething anger, the escalating hatred. 1/x It never materialized into anything like the civil war people spoke of, and was eventually knocked off kilter with the Second Intifada, but it was not a pleasant time to live in. I think the coming years are going to feel a lot more like that and less like 9/11. 2/x

So some thoughts on an entirely different issue. I have recently joined the thousands of Jews who study a page of Talmud a day for the seven years it takes. Called Daf Yomi (lit. Daily Page), it was established by Rabbi Meir Shapira of the city of Lublin in the early 1920s. 1/ This was a time of great tumult and change in the Jewish world as a whole. New countries were formed, communities were displaced and crowded into disorganized cities. Much of what was left of the pre-WWI social system was withering. 2/