**1. Introduction**

It is the beginning of February 2020, the first Coronavirus cases in Europe become known. At the Grand Hotel Plaza on Via del Corso in Rome, however, people are less concerned about the virus than about God, honor and fatherland. From 3–4 February, the who's who of "National Conservativism" met here under the title "God, Honor, Country: President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and the Freedom Nations". It was the 3rd international conference. Particularly pushed by the Edmund Burke Foundation and its president Yoram Hazony, the political movement of National Conservativism is largely based on specific concepts of nation, faith and family. Driven by the mission to overcome the violence of liberalism, identified with imperialism, National Conservatives shape growing international and interreligious alliances for a religiously based system of independent national states.

In the following, I will outline the basic framework of National Conservativism at the example of Yoram Hazony's *The Virtue of Nationalism* (Hazony 2018), which can be considered the current political vademecum of the movement. The focus will be on its binary construction of liberating nationalism and violent liberal imperialism as the ideological framework of its own political theory, developed on the pillars of nation, faith and family.

The analytical section will discuss how far Hazony shows a sense for current theopolitical challenges, but also displays severe short-comings in its theological, philosophical, historical and political dimensions. The final part will discuss if Hazony's concept

**Citation:** Quast-Neulinger, Michaela. 2021. Saving Nation, Faith and Family. Yoram Hazony's National Conservativism and Its Theo-Political Mission. *Religions* 12: 1091. https:// doi.org/10.3390/rel12121091

Academic Editors: Ephraim Meir, Ed Noort, Louise du Toit and Wolfgang Palaver

Received: 25 October 2021 Accepted: 4 December 2021 Published: 10 December 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

of National Conservativism is a religiously based traditionalist, patriarchal ethnocentrism that holds strong tendencies towards anti-democratic authoritarianism, as suggested by Linden (2020). I will argue that National Conservativism does not overcome the definitely existing aspects of violence in some versions of liberalism, but religiously legitimates political authoritarianism at the expense of minority rights, individual freedom and particularly women's rights.

## *1.1. The Edmund Burke Foundation and National Conservativism*

Before moving into the details of Hazony's political theory, we must have a short glimpse at the Edmund Burke Foundation and its enterprise of "National Conservativism". Founded in 2019, the Edmund Burke Foundation has one goal in particular, i.e., "strengthening the principles of national conservativism in Western and other democratic countries" (The Edmund Burke Foundation 2021). A conference series in London, Washington, Rome and Florida aims at bringing together academics, lobbyists and political leaders in a transatlantic network and developing further the theoretical and practical foundations of National Conservativism. They postulate nation, faith and family as the salvific means in an increasingly fragmented world, suffering from the nightmare of an "open society" and the danger of liberalism.

German political scientist Markus Linden analyzes National Conservativism in a warning voice. For Linden (2020, p. 87, transl. MQN), it "[ ... ] is no longer just a vanguard, but has long since become part of the radical New Right. It appears staid and distinguished and thus fulfills a hinge function between the democratic and the undemocratic camps". National Conservativism appears as a "redemptive counterforce" to "destructive liberalism," which in particular destroys faith and the family as the nucleus of society. For Linden, these new conservatives show an "ethno-pluralist chauvinism without any positive relation to democracy" (Linden 2020, p. 87). They are ready for "blatant antipluralist and anti-democratic alliances" (Linden 2020, p. 94). What is striking here is the central role that religion—more explicitly, what is identified as "Judeo-Christian religion"—is ascribed by key actors for the formation and shaping of the political community.

The Edmund Burke Foundation serves as the main institutional actor within the more diverse network of National Conservativism as a political movement and intended coherent political theory. National Conservativism as an openly visible theo-political network is relatively new, but its paths have been prepared for years. Currently, it is one of the most active international and interreligious movements that tries to melt together religion and politics. What makes it particularly interesting is its ability to network and to be more and more present in public debates and the academia, especially in the English-speaking world.

Thus, one has to pay special attention to its leading figures. For Linden (2020) these are especially R.R. Reno, Viktor Orbán and Yoram Hazony. This list must not be considered exclusive, but it represents three important dimensions of National Conservativism, namely the Christian–traditionalist axis that has close connections to evangelicalism, the practical political dimension, and the intellectual strand that has intentions to turn National Conservativism into a more academic enterprise1.

Russel R. Reno, a Catholic theologian and Chief Editor of First Things, is the hinge to Christian conservative groups, especially within the Evangelical sphere and Catholic traditionalism. His most recent monograph *"Return of the Strong Gods"* (Reno 2019) followed *"Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society"* (Reno 2016). Viktor Orbán, who has been Hungarian Prime Minister since 2010, is the inventor of "illiberal democracy" as the ideal of Christian democracy. He has been repeatedly celebrated within the Edmund Burke Foundation and its network as a prominent speaker and political leader who has already managed to implement National Conservativism into political reality2. However, in order to understand the intellectual dimension of the intersection of religion and politics within National Conservativism, one has to pay attention to Yoram Hazony, the president of the Edmund Burke Foundation, a lobbyist and scholar, and to his theoretical work, in particular *The Virtue of Nationalism* (Hazony 2018), and in some aspects *The Jewish State* (Hazony 2000) as its forerunner.

#### *1.2. Introducing Yoram Hazony*

Born in 1964 in Rehovot (Israel), Yoram Hazony was raised in the USA, where he completed a BA in East Asian Studies (1986) and a PhD in Political Theory (1993). Already during his university studies in the U.S., Hazony advocated political conservativism with a nationalist impetus. After returning to Israel, Hazony established himself as an intellectual leader of religious nationalism in Israel. From 1991 until 1994, he served Benjamin Netanyahu as an adviser. After leaving politics, he founded the Shalem Center, now Shalem College, and currently serves as the President of the Herzl Institute, both located in Jerusalem, where he is married with nine children. In 2019, he founded the Edmund Burke Foundation, a public affairs institute that has the agenda of spreading National Conservativism in the academia and real politics (see Hazony 2021). Hazony declares himself "a Jewish nationalist, a Zionist, all my life" (Hazony 2018, p. 2). This becomes visible both in his engagement for the Shalem Center (now: Shalem College), and in his list of publications, including *The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul* (Hazony 2000), *The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture* (Hazony 2012) and *God and Politics in Esther* (Hazony 2016).

Although previous publications such as *The Jewish State* (Hazony 2000) mainly focused on Israel as a distinct Jewish nation state and served as a severe critique of academia and political culture as "post-Zionism", *The Virtue of Nationalism* (Hazony 2018) broadens his argument for nationalism on an international and more theoretical level. It goes far beyond Israeli politics and offers the ideological program of a revised, religiously based conservativism, particularly dedicated at reshaping Western politics as a whole.

Hazony is not the exclusive representative of the more diverse political movement of National Conservativism, but as president of the Edmund Burke Foundation, international lobbyist and proclaimed theo-political scholar, he is an important hub in the network. Understanding Hazony helps to better understand the basic ideological framework of National Conservativism and its theo-political challenges, although not every actor within the movement will share the whole ideology as outlined by Hazony (2018). Thus, the following chapter introduces the severe critique brought forward against liberalism in general and Europe in particular, a critique shared by most actors of the movement3. Subsequently, Hazony's programmatic triadic answer based on nation, faith and family is presented and contextualized within his previous focus on Israeli politics.

#### **2. "The Best Political Order": Nationalism Overcoming Liberal Imperialism**

#### *2.1. Nationalism versus (Liberal) Imperialism: The Binary Framework*

At the core of Hazony's concept of nationalism, identified with national conservativism, is the idea of a homogenous nation. It is "a number of tribes with a common language or religion, and a past history of acting as a body for the common defense and other large-scale enterprises" (Hazony 2018, p. 18). The prototype of a nation is realized in biblical Israel as documented in the writings of the Hebrew Bible from Genesis to the Kings, i.e., the Tanakh. This Israel shares one language, one religion, one destiny in its fight against external enemies and the permanent danger of extinction. The biblical Israel is imagined as a unified community of fate, which predates any other nation. When the nation is united "under a single standing government, independent of all other governments", Hazony (2018, p. 100) speaks of a national state.

On a historical level, Hazony sees this model implemented in what he identifies as the Protestant world order of the 17th century after the Peace of Westphalia. This order is characterized by two basic rules that simultaneously frame nationalism until today as the "best political order–that is, to an anti-imperialist theory that seeks to establish a world of free and independent nations" (Hazony 2018, p. 6). The first one is the moral minimum rooted in a natural order that is itself traced back to the Bible and the Ten Commandments. Any ruler is subject to the moral minimum that is required for any legitimate government (Hazony 2018, p. 24). Second, it is the right to national self-determination, particularly visible in an own constitution and an own church (sic) (Hazony 2018, p. 25).

Hazony also offers several concrete examples of historical and contemporary nationalisms, including Gandhi, Ben Gurion and Roosevelt as celebrated nationalists who fought for the freedom of their people (see Hazony 2018, p. 2)4. The Protestant order of independent, homogeneous national states, based on Biblical nationalism, is the great opponent of Catholic imperialism and its ally, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation5. However, even within the Catholic sphere there developed national churches, such as in France, which is appreciated by Hazony. Consequently, the Thirty Years' War was no religious war, but a war of independent national states against German and Spanish imperialists (Hazony 2018, pp. 22–23).

Nationalism has one great opponent, i.e., imperialism, which promises peace and prosperity in a united humanity under one political regime. Here, too, historical antecedents are noted. Biblical empires striving for universal world domination are Babylon and Egypt. As a later world-historical triumvirate, Hazony mentions the Roman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the British Empire, which would still serve today's imperialists as inspirations (see Hazony 2018, pp. 3–4). Especially since the 1990s, i.e., after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the E.U. and the U.S.A. have been developing as "twin-empire building projects" (Hazony 2018, p. 4).

Today's most dangerous imperialism is liberalism—notice already that Hazony does not differentiate between different varieties of liberal thought and practice—and its endeavor to establish a global regime of international institutions and to abolish the independent national regimes. In the following, two main ideological roots of these current empires are identified, namely John Locke and Immanuel Kant, resulting in the "liberal construction of the West" (Hazony 2018, p. 30).

Hazony offers a specific reading of Locke's philosophy, interpreting him as a rationalist who propagates social cohesion on a mere contractual basis, the mere consent of the individual. This, however, would completely lack an anthropological basis without which, however, no political theory can be legitimate. If the nation state, community, family and religious tradition are missing as core elements, then a political theory—such as Locke's—is a complete bloodless illusion. A family, the core of any political community, is not based on rational consent; similarly, a state cannot survive when it is merely the result of a consent (see Hazony 2018, pp. 30–32). National state, community, family and religious tradition make up the political institutions of the Jewish and Christian world (Hazony 2018, p. 33), while liberalists in the Lockean tradition reject these basic categories of human and political life.

Kant, in this context, is read as the anti-nationalist par excellence, especially if one follows his writing *Über den ewigen Frieden* (Kant 1796), which envisages an internationalimperial state as the highest fulfilment of reason. Only in such a state can moral maturity come to its full expression. Now, after the catastrophe of World War II, the Kantian paradigm of supranational liberal rule gains power and replaces the nationalist paradigm.

Let us have a closer look at this paradigm shift of post-World-War II. The old nationalist paradigm as realized in England, the Netherlands or France, was based on the order of 1648 and supported a Europe in freedom and self-determination, against the imperialist claims of the Holy Roman Empire. Zionism and the State of Israel were the late results of this nationalist paradigm (Hazony 2018, pp. 196–97).

However, after 1945, Europe moved to a different paradigm, imperialist liberalism, which identified nationalism and independent national states as the root of violence, especially World War II and the horrors of Auschwitz. Kant's cosmopolitanism and the vision of a unified empire, ideally realized in the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation and a unified church, serve as inspirations for this liberal paradigm, which ought to guarantee peace and prosperity without borders (see Hazony 2018, pp. 197–99). In Hazony's perspective, national-socialists, Marxists and liberals have one and the same goal: the destruction of the national state, today prominently pursued by Habermas, the "leading theoretician of a postnational Europe" (Hazony 2018, p. 201) and the European Union.

#### *2.2. Europe—Kantian Hypocrites*

In Hazony's view, the imperialist–liberal paradigm shift that began in 1945 and intensified in 1989 has left Europe increasingly trapped in the Kantian paradigm, which provides Europe, identified with "the West" and "liberalism", with the normative glasses by which other states are judged—or condemned. Here Hazony imagines a Kantian threestep of barbarism-nation state-cosmopolitanism, with the help of which liberal Europe categorizes the rest of the world.<sup>6</sup>

The primary target of this liberal European process of judgment is Israel, which is measured against the yardstick of Kantian cosmopolitanism. In Hazony's imagination of liberal Europeans, these judge "Israel is Auschwitz", because the survivors of the Nazi horrors follow the seemingly violent nationalism of their persecutors and found a national state themselves, they take "the path of Hitler" (Hazony 2018, p. 206). If you found a national state after 1945, there is something wrong, especially when you are mostly migrants from Europe and should actually know about the horrors of nationalism. In this regard, contemporary European liberals judge Israel as having left the path of enlightenment and moral maturity, while its Muslim neighbors are granted compassion.<sup>7</sup> They are similar to little children caught on a lower civilizational level. They still need to overcome barbarianism and move towards the national state until cosmopolitanism is an option, while Israel would actually be capable for cosmopolitanism, but deliberately chooses nationalism (see Hazony 2018, pp. 209–13).

However, it is not only Israel that is a victim of European liberal hypocrisy, but also South Africa during the Apartheid regime, and Serbia in the 1990s, that suffered from delegitimizing liberal campaigns (see Hazony 2018, pp. 214, 217–18). Today, primarily the U.S.A., the U.K. and Eastern European countries striving for national sovereignty against the European Union are under liberal scrutiny. The U.S. rejects international institutions and organizations, the U.K., Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary are judged as fascists or even Nazis because of their striving for national independence, the core dogma of National Conservatives (see Hazony 2018, pp. 216–17). However, for Hazony this is only the expression of a deep European liberal hypocrisy; some countries need to follow higher standards than others, especially Muslim majority countries. However, what is the actual problem of liberal Europeans? It is the "Kantian renunciation of a national right to independent judgment and action, especially with regard to the use of force" (Hazony 2018, p. 218). This is precisely what liberalism wants to deny national states of—independence, freedom, and the use of force to implement these.
