Today’s Tom Woods Letter, which all the influential people receive every weekday. Be one of them.
Yesterday I wrote to you about a topic the fashionables avoid like the plague — or when they do mention it, they sound like Hillary Clinton.
Today I’m preparing you for a still more controversial topic, which is coming in the form of a debate on tomorrow’s episode.
The creation of the modern state of Israel.
There aren’t too many countries created from scratch before our eyes, so that historical episode raises important and interesting questions, for libertarians in particular.
Here’s the resolution: “Israel was founded on the basis of legitimate homesteading of land and reclamation of lost Jewish property from previous generations of Jews.”
Arguing in the affirmative: Rafi Farber.
Arguing in the negative: Jeremy R. Hammond.
The episode is already recorded, so I can tell you: this topic is debated in a manner that is at once civil, engaging, and informative.
I decided to host a debate on the topic when I discovered that Walter Block and the late Murray Rothbard, two Jewish libertarians, disagreed on the issue. So I thought we ought to hash it out and see what conclusions we can reach.
Now you’ll never guess: on Twitter, someone demanded to know why I was allowing a debate on the legitimacy of the state of Israel. Why not Germany, England, France, etc.?
I found the question obtuse. How about because major libertarians disagree, and it’s good to try to resolve disagreements? Or how about the significance for current events of the circumstances surrounding the creation of Israel? Only if we understand Israel’s birth correctly can we form correct judgments about ongoing events in our own day.
Moreover, right before our eyes, one people was largely replaced by another. Why wouldn’t we ask whether that process was just or not?
That didn’t satisfy the snowflakes, whose modus operandi is to assume everyone is evil and against them, and to make us all prove our innocence.
I don’t play that game. I just charge ahead as if the snowflakes didn’t exist. I refuse to walk on eggshells.
Tune in to the show tomorrow for episode 739. Entire list of episodes as of today:
http://www.tomwoods.com/episodes
