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[Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
“Put my musket in my hand and belt my sword around me,” a returning French soldier pleads with his comrade in ‘Two Grenadiers’. He envisions his body being buried to wait for the return of Napoleon from captivity. “Then will my Emperor ride over my grave, swords will be clashing and flashing; and armed, I’ll rise up from the grave, to guard my Emperor.”
In Schumann and Wagner’s musical renditions of Heinrich Heine’s poem, the dark tones give way to the ringing triumphant peals of the Marseillaise, the French national anthem, as the faith of the resurrected soldier is rewarded with a messianic return of Napoleon and his armies.
Napoleon’s promise to carry on the work of the French Revolution and “liberate” the world had inspired a cult of personality. Beethoven had initially dedicated his Eroica symphony to Napoleon. And the famous composer was far from alone in being caught up in his cause.
The German liberal admirers of Napoleon eventually split into nationalists and radicals. Their cultural descendants became Communists or Nazis. Millions were carried away by cults of personality that made mass murder seem exciting and glamorous. Ernst Hanfstaengl, a member of America’s elites, made “Sieg Heil” resonate to Harvard football chants of “Fight, fight, fight!”
Until too many bodies began to pile up, American elites were enthused by the energy of Communism and National Socialism. Writers, musicians, pundits and politicians admired Mussolini, Lenin, Hitler and Stalin as latter day Napoleon who could get things done. Revolutions to topple the order and remake the world would always be more romantic.
And that has never changed.
Israelis, like Americans, have fallen into the folly of arguing the morality of their cause, but the romance of a cause always trumps its morality. America’s cause and Israel’s cause were far more popular when they were romantic rather than when they insisted on their morality.
Morality inspires few people. When you have to argue the morality of your cause, you’ve lost.
Why do so many side with Islamic terrorists over America or Hamas terrorists over Israel? Much like the Nazis or the Communists, Jihadists have made for a more romantic cause. Some of the same Americans who might have gone Nazi in the 1930s instead convert to Islam and try to carry out terrorist attacks in America. Some head to Turkey to travel and meet up with ISIS.
What attracts them? Some of the same things that drew their forebears to the French Revolution, to Napoleon, to succeeding radical 19th century movements, to Nazism and Communism, to Marxist guerrillas and then Islamic terrorists who offer a romantic cause.
What draws so many men and women is not morality, but excitement. Passion, glory, and a willingness to die for a cause can just as easily be turned to evil as to good. Many people however simply do not care. The revolutionary energy of bringing things down will always appeal more, especially to young and resentful people, than defending home and hearth.
Pitting moral and rational arguments against the romance of the cause is futile.
Why complain that the shooting of one drug dealer by a police officer can lead mobs to burn cities, but when drug dealers shoot each other over the weekend, nothing happens? Only one of these allows its followers to march, shout slogans, clash with police and smash things. Only one offers a narrative of injustice and courageous people pitted against an oppressive system.
The heroic narrative is more compelling than the facts. People rally to causes that feel good, not necessarily to those that are right. And when the cause feels good, they rationalize it.
The great genius of the Left has been to position its cause as the perpetual revolution, an endless battle against oppression, and a messianic redemptive battle for the soul of the world. The Left distracts from the fact that it is in power by finding new enemies to fight: police officers, oil companies, misgenderers, or the Jews. A new cause is born and the revolution rolls on.
America and Israel were once revolutionary causes, but as we have found ourselves on the defensive, we have also lost touch with the romance of our causes. Romantic causes are offensive. Defenses, unless they’re last stands for a lost cause, are not romantic. Following Patton’s advice, leftists never defend, they always attack. And conservatives, all too often, defend rather than attack, react rather than act and force the enemy to react to them.
The Left buries its opponents with invective, accusations and smears. It puts them on the defensive. And then rather than articulating a cause, they try to justify their existence.
The first rule of debate is that defending something partially concedes it. A good debater forces the other side to debate its existence. A deeply misguided debater keeps trying to justify his existence and in doing so introduces ever more doubt into whether he deserves to exist.
When Jews argue that Israel has a right to exist, they are really opening up the question to debate. Meanwhile no one is debating whether the ‘Palestinian’ terror statelets have a right to exist. Theirs is a glorious and romantic cause because, in part, they never put it up for debate.
During the Holocaust, Jews tried to argue that they had a right to exist. That argument was mostly lost and few except a handful of humanitarians even felt the need to take it up. A few years later, Jews launched an independent country and defeated the invading Arab armies.
Israel was hated by many, but it was also admired and celebrated as a romantic cause. The country carved out of the desert, built by rugged pioneers, and watched over by shepherds with rifles over their shoulders, was glorious and inspiring in a way that no one could ignore.
American Jews however chose to emphasize the Holocaust: portraying Jews as helpless and in need of saving. Stories of Jews, especially Zionists, resisting and fighting back were deemphasized. After generations of using the Holocaust to teach tolerance, they are surprised that it hasn’t worked and that the existence of Jews is once again up for debate.
Israel once used to play up the risky and revolutionary nature of a country, alone and at odds with much of the region, but its narratives have become defensive. And the more Israel explains that it isn’t an “apartheid state” or genocidal, the more it promotes these same slurs. Defending its own morality is, like most defensive positions, ultimately futile and a losing proposition. The more you defend yourself against an accusation, the more it becomes associated with you.
And the more people decide that there must be some truth to it.
America has made some of these same mistakes. Like Israel, the very things we have been taught to be ashamed of, building a country out of nothing and defending it against all comers, is a large part of the romance of our cause. Leftist smear campaigns have made our strengths seem like weaknesses and have taught us to think of our weaknesses, extending our rules to the enemies that want to destroy us, as our strength. The more we explain how fair we are, the more we open up our fairness for debate and indict ourselves as an oppressive country.
The romance of our causes is there in our histories, all we have to do is reach for it. They are there in the stories and legends that we have dismissed as outmoded and reactionary, discredited by “historians” and derided as parts of our past that we ought to turn away from.
Those are the sources of our strength and point the way to a revival of our nations.
How many American youth really want to stand with evil, and how many are drawn to it because they see no cause of their own country that stirs their blood and makes their hearts beat faster? When their own nation no longer inspires, they will find inspiration among its enemies.
There are American and Israeli soldiers and civilians fighting and dying against Islamic terrorists, police officers slain by BLM domestic terrorists, and yet we hardly know their names or tell their stories. When BLM shouts, “say their names”, they are building legends. We have legends among us. We have causes that changed the world. Yet we fail to express them.
The romance of a cause lies in its passion to change the way things are. When we fail to tap into that passion to change the oppressive way things are at any cost, we lose.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” Yeats wrote. It doesn’t have to be this way. It is not enough to argue that our cause is moral. We must find the passion to lay it out as not only a defense against the worst, but the triumph of the best.
Unless our causes feel glorious, our enemies will make them appear inglorious.
This is an excellent article. As it states in the old testament, without a vision, the people perish. Both America and Israel need a bold Vision full of excitement and honor for the future
Another big question that you have succinctly answered David you’ve been on a brilliant role answering the questions that people are asking themselves on a daily basis. How did we get here? How is this revolution sustaining itself? and why do we feel like we’re losing ? just some of the questions you have answered .. you don’t see the “hammer nailing it “ in many other traditional journalist answering the deep questions as you have . great job .
Is it possible you can compile these anr into a book format? They have to be preserved, not only on the Nexus Lexus..
Brilliant insights, as usual. I’ve been thinking a lot about how Dark Age leaders motivated their troops to fight.
I have to say this. Every Trump rally utilizes these truths. It’s a n emotional presentation of a fight against a dark force, it’s passionate forward moving, heroic even. And certainly enthused. It works. Or it would work if getting out the vote in a fair election was a useful goal.
I was thinking that when spokespeople. for Israel/IDF continually talk about Palestinian civilians and efforts for protecting them , it is a defensive stance. . It doesn’t work. It reinforces anti-Israel claims by putting Israel on the defensive. It ignores these people’s support for Hamas and their behaviors ( on video we can see their horrible behavior) . Among other almost super natural difficulties, this messaging is ineffective..
But the atrocities have made Israel a romantic cause again for many . No matter how hard the left there may try to warp the message.
“Napoleon’s promise to carry on the work of the French Revolution and “liberate” the world“
Isn’t that what the military industrial complex uses to justify their intervention in foreign wars?
The thing that inspires people to rise up is injustice.
We’ve seen a lot of that on October 7th but the liars in the legacy media are portraying it the opposite way.
Reading War and Peace I was impressed by how similar Napoleon’s aims were to the current EU’s., and how similar other countries’ (in this case particularly Russia’s) objections were to those of the Brexit supporters and others opposing the EU (including of course today’s Russia). Of course nobody today speaks of restoring the values of the French Revolution, but how else would the anti-Christian, anti-national culture aims of the EU be described?
America’s and Israel’s shared reason for existence is a righteous cause; and the “romance” of this righteous cause, unlike the romance of our enemies’ pseudo righteous cause, has morality at its very core; so the romance cannot be separated or compartmentalized from this moral root.
Morality is not something acquired through osmosis but something that is consciously developed and based upon basic “self evident“ truths. See: The Declaration of Independence, US Constitution and the Torah.
The moral core of a cause is found within the moral core of a God-fearing individual and not within a threatening loudmouthed mob that vicariously thrills at murder and cruelty. The thrill of participating in a pro-Hamestinian mob probably engages the same part of the brain that reacts to porn. The romancible common denominator fact is that every mob participant is the lowest of the low. This should be said, constantly.
Don’t try to educate. Call them a degenerate life form.
The mental state of a terror supporters is dysfunctional and abusive. Don’t try to educate Hamestinians out of psychosis. Broadcast their mental sickness. Boomerang their hateful language back to them, its source.
The romance of terror, invasion, glorification of violence, has no foundation other than itself. Such physical concrete manifestation is camouflage for a very abstract ideology based on “rights” “democracy” and “justice”. So its survival is doomed from the start.
Morality on the other hand should be thought of as a concrete manifestation of goodness, not a lofty variable of personal truth.
Don’t educate. Label them as a lying mob. As a dying mob, sentencing their cause to inevitable death. Don’t educate. Don’t turn the other cheek. We’ve run out of cheeks.
Strangely, a lie needs truth to exist; but truth will erode every lie over time.
Always, the lie will die.
Bravo. Take the oxygen away from the immoral mob and they will surely dissipate.
We’ve killed normal human emotions with technology so that’s what’s left.
Is part of the problem in the US that purposefully poor education, dishonest media and the redefinition of patriotism as terrorism has suppressed any romance for America? .
The romance of a cause, once lost, can never be restored. What is left for Israelis and Jews to do, now that we are no longer helpless, is to ignore what the world thinks of us. (With rare exceptions it never thought too much of us anyway except as victims.) Finding comfort in the unfamiliar role of international bullies may be the next stage in Ben-Gurion’s plan to throw off the disfigurements of galut (exile).
Great analysis. I have observed that today’s leftist protestors have seen Les Miserables too many times and emulate all that (futile) passion. And now we have protestors in glory riding in the back of pickup trucks flying the Pali and/or ISIS flag, just like we see in Baghdad or Gaza.
We need to reinvigorate our culture, but first conservatives need a vision.
Les Miserables the opera is reasonably good as popular operas go, but like most operas it has a lurid and absurd plot. That’s why I prefer to hear most of them in the original Italian or German, neither of which I understand. Unfortunately, this one is in English and its popularity metastasized into something beyond its utility as a light entertainment.
Les Miserables the book (published 1862) is a turgid communist tract that is also unfortunately thought by some scholars to be one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. Victor Hugo rejected the values expressed in it after he saw how horrible communism was with the Paris Commune of 1871. It is unfortunate that he wrote such a stirring, emotionally charged work to promote such toxic ideas.
We can be thankful that The Ring of the Nibelungen is in German and, given its many plot twists and turns, would be difficult for the average American to understand even if it weren’t. It had an outsized influence on the average German in the 1920’s and ’30’s and worked very well as Nasty propaganda.
The romance of Israel is that Judaism forms the basis of 99.9% of Christianity, and that the State of Israel is the ancestral home and birthplace of both religions.
Reagan helped change the terms of the debate over the old Soviet Union by refusing to concede it any legitimacy or morality. We must do the same with domestic leftists or all stripes. They are unAmerican, irrational, and immoral.
Ayn Rand correctly noted that absent a moral defense, not merely a practical or tradition-based one, our country, its political and economic institutions, and our entire way of life will fail. The left advances itself by claiming it is just and moral. Until that is challenged, and not merely rationalized as idealistic but impractical, good in theory but not in practice etc., defeats will continue to pile up.
Thank you for framing the issues so beautifully and accurately. Putting this frame on the issues causes everything to make much better sense.