David Wolpe: evaluation

Transcript context

…OK, but not the extreme; I’m talking about — Right, but I’m just saying. So there is a necessity, I’m saying, to put some intellectual pressure on the question of why it isn’t creating societies of healthier political climates. I would say, if I had to pick one thing that is at the heart of Islam that is antidemocratic, it is the concept that’s very deep — that is, in the very name of the religion — of submission. Because a population that is trained essentially to submit is a population that will create authoritarians. And so I think that the recalcitrants — when you think about Israel, the founders of Israel, none of them came from democracies. They came from Russia, from Eastern Europe; they came from the Levant; they didn’t know democracy, and yet why did they create a democracy? Because they all argued with each other. [laughter] Seriously, they all did! That’s like my friend Joseph Epstein has a great line. He said, “Jews don’t listen. They wait.” [laughter] And that idea, the disputatious culture of the Talmud and so on, it’s good for democracy, and I think the culture of submission can be corrosive to it. Some questions about Israel, if I may?…

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