Charlie Rose

Humanity  12/16/2010 03:34 PM Report

We are poorer without Professor Judt. But his powerful prose will live on. RIP, Dr. Judt. Thank you Mr. Rose for interviewing this remarkable man.

machngunjoe  09/24/2010 01:56 PM Report

Oh @ 1:25 may be the first time I ever herd Charlie almost lose it during his show. RIP Tony.

REMant  09/07/2010 03:18 PM Report

I found this difficult to watch and read the transcript. There is a fairly good Wikipedia article on him (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Judt). As with Amis and Hitchens, I have long had little interest in, if not an aversion to, the kind of print wars on which Judt engaged (see http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/judt-tony/), or the trials and tribulations of postwar Marxism. He was like those two another displaced Englishman and as he, himself, put it in the NYRB, both radical and elite. He thought this was a good thing. I am not so sure. It seems to me he made the mistake of thinking that social democracy (aka welfare capitalism) was the impetus to liberalization, instead of the agent its demise, viewing, I guess, private property as inevitably "feudal." It was Lionel Robbins's observation in the 1930's that Liberalism had never really been given a chance, not that it had failed, and I think that if the various sects of socialists can ever unstick themselves from the mire of their mercantilism, and internecine squabbles, they would see the affinity of Marx with it, as well as his criticism of their viewpoint. However, in the article mentioned he related how reforms have mediocratized(?) education in Britain, and the process has been essentially the same here, tho private schools have never had the same importance. A Jew and even a Zionist in his youth, Judt was also, to his credit, among the first to openly criticize Israeli policy, but it cost him dearly. He was clearly an open and fair-minded individual, but he did not understand the economist's meaning of the word efficiency, and I suspect would have accomplished more if instead of dealing with the history of ideas, he had dealt more with the idea of history. He was an essayist primarily and relates here that he needed visual and controversial context and in order to write, and there may be a connection. Tho I, of course, agree with him on the question of living up to the responsibility of academic freedom, having said so here. History was meant to be taught so that lessons might be drawn. It was Willy Brandt, I believe, who remarked that Europe owed the US for 50 years of peace, tho, of course, it had its downside, and clearly there is a process of correction going on today. But the lesson of that should be clear for whatever we intend to do in the Near East.

Phlegmish Nationalist Party? LOL And it is Arthur Koestler not Kessler.

ShalomFreedman  09/05/2010 04:33 AM Report

This was a moving interview with a truly courageous person. Judt's comments on Religion were generous and wise. I disagree with him completely about his critical attitude towards Israel, but I from this interview better understand where he is coming from. His placing first concern for the well- being of his children and family reveal him too as a very humane figure.

Perhaps there is some small consolation for them in the fact that for the greater part of the time when he had this severe illness he was able to concentrate and work and leave to those who care for him more of his thought.

ShivangiShrivastava  08/31/2010 10:16 PM Report

RIP Tony Judt. You were such a brave soul. I am sorry for the struggle you had to endure, but your legacy of ideas will live on.

Thank you Charlie for another great interview.

JohnGelles  08/27/2010 05:11 AM Report

Tony Judt knew we had the money if the President believed it. He still wants us to remember the right question and answer:

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If Money Buys Output Not Gold, Are We Still Short of Having Enough?

The answer must be NO. But the President must make clear to the NATION that its power to spend money into circulation is inherent in central banking practice away from the Gold Standard. The President's investment priorities will pay for themselves. Let us begin to prove this. We do not expect consumers without the means to restart the whole economy. This is a government responsibility. If any current government fails to live up to this responsiblitiy, it deserves immediate replacement.

JohnGelles  08/25/2010 09:41 PM Report

Like it or not, these comments follow the chronological order of the interviews-- not a PRIORITY order based on our most urgent ISSUES.

This leaves the FUNCTION of the comments as LET'S CHEW THE FAT raised by recent interviews.

Gelles wanted to raise the function to one that would serve as COUNSELOR to the president of the USA and any other leaders who could change the course of history to IMPROVE CIVILIZATION on purpose more than accident.

ROSE has no such vain delusions. Success in the news and media profession he has chosen is more than enough. Then along came unemployment, foreclosure, and the upending of CAPITALISM before something better has been designed.

Left over from printing money or descent to a police state -- that has always helped capitalism move from one generation to another -- are exactly those choices.

Tony Judt did not suggest how to avoid hyperinflation that follows money printing run amuck. Nor did he suggest how to tame the corrupt police force that is bound to replace the benevolent one that falls when the center does not hold.

So Tony was at a loss for words. Aren't we all?

I have previously recommended Ron Morrison's KEYNES WITHOUT DEBT as the best solution in sight. I repeat that opinion:

http://www.t2bor.us/kwod.htm

The beauty of this recommendation is that it would end poverty for the poor and insecurity for the rich. It escapes the financial straight jacket imposed by deficits in demand that follow capitalism like nite follows day. We should remember that we have not had prosperity for all except when WW II production was guaranteed to sell.

charlizecourriers  08/25/2010 04:30 PM Report

Judt seems to continue in his hope that "social democracy" can replace "socialism," which, he admits, has failed(pg.229, Ill Fares The Land). After that admission he immediately dismisses the question of the sustainability of the perks of social democracy for social democrats. But that is the question: what can socialism/social democracy actually pay for? Tenured professors are the last people we should listen to when it comes time to pay the bills. As Camus said, "Hope equals resignation, and to be resigned is not to be alive." It is simply a mistake to be intellectually resigned to social democracy, as Judt was. As for his ultimate goal, "the reduction of inequality," he seems oblivious to the realization that death is what makes us all equal. The possibility of the absolute impossibility of his existence was only ten days away from this interview, but unadmitted. This is a nondiscursive truth; and so the irony of his assertion of page 34 of Ill Fares The Land that "our disability is discursive: we simply do not know how to talk about these things any more."

JohnGelles  08/25/2010 06:35 AM Report

The Wikipedia entry for Tony Judt tells us of his view of Keynesian economics and economic democracy that are at the heart of the matter when we review the 20th Century and its saddest and bloodiest aspects. Tony Judt and I have the same view. The great majority of scholars and ordinary people who know the same facts do not come down on the same side of reason as we do. They find the problems involved that cover totalitarianism, communism, capitalism and humanism add up to confusion not dedication to democracy for one and all.

Now Tony Judt is dead -- and his dream of economic justice for ourselves and our posterity is not embraced by Charlie Rose. And even Tony Judt and his logical solidarity with the Second Bill of Rights in Franklin Roosevelts legacy is ignored when we review the history which was the historian Tony Judt's life work.

The Wikipedia entry also tells of the Jewish State and Jewish nationalism that Tony took a stand against.

The German War Against the Jews which took place at the same time as the history of capitalism in Europe was unfolding (with its WW II, communist aspects, and sacrifice of 60 million lives). The connection between these two histories led Tony Judt to conclude that Jewish nationalism was regrettable. That the unforgivable treatment by Arabs of the Palestinian people's needs and destiny was not as important in the long run as was the need to criticize Jewish nationalism-- something that is better understood by better people than Tony Judt.

Is the matter small enough to be ignored at obituary time? Joseph Kennedy lost his eldest son to the war he thought America might lose. His independence of mind had separated him from his President and from the conclusion of the Gettysburg Address. At obituary time the matter should not have been omitted.

People will differ over the above opinions. Here are fcts from Wikipedia:

===== Begin extact from Wikipedia Entry ======

"Ill Fares The Land" is seen by some as Judt's greatest gift to contemporary political thought: highly significant in its timing and the clarity of its narrative on the decline of progressive ideas in the 20th century. Judt poignantly laments the breakdown of the post-war Keynesian policy consensus, the rise of Austrian Neo-liberal economics in the West and its political manifestations under Thatcher, Reagan et al.

He notes the limited triangulation achieved by the Third Way and the paradoxical resurgence of the Right after the [current and on going] Global Financial Crisis.

He asks: where to now for social democracy? He concludes that nothing less than a radical restatement of the values of equality and community can stem the challenge of the hegemonic Right.

He explored how the social contract that defined post-war Europe and the US and the guarantee of security, stability, and fairness was no longer considered a legitimate social goal and how a social democratic vision could win back the disaffected by creating a "civic language" that could support a renewed social contract between governments and their citizens.

Israel

Jewish background

Like many other Jewish parents living in postwar Europe, Judt's mother and father were secular, but they sent him to Hebrew school and steeped him in the Yiddish culture of his grandparents, which Judt said he still thought of wistfully.

rged on by his parents, Judt enthusiastically waded into the world of Israeli politics at age 15. He helped promote the migration of British Jews to Israel. In 1966, having won an exhibition to King's College, Cambridge, he took a gap year and went to work on kibbutz Machanaim.

When Nasser expelled UN troops from Sinai in 1967, and Israel mobilized for war, like many European Jews, he volunteered to replace kibbutz members who had been called up.

During and in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, he worked as a driver and translator for the Israel Defense Forces.

But during the aftermath of the war, Judt's belief in the Zionist enterprise began to unravel. "I went with this idealistic fantasy of creating a socialist, communitarian country through work," Judt has said.

The problem, he began to believe, was that this view was "remarkably unconscious of the people who had been kicked out of the country and were suffering in refugee camps to make this fantasy possible."

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Published articles

In October 2003, in an article for the New York Review of Books, Judt argued that Israel was on its way to becoming a "belligerently intolerant, faith-driven ethno state."

He called for the conversion of "Israel from a Jewish state to a binational one" which would include all of what is now Israel, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

This proposed new state would have equal rights for all Jews and Arabs living in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The article, which presented a view of Middle Eastern history and politics that had rarely been given exposure in the mainstream media in the United States, generated an explosive response, positive as well as negative.

It drew strong criticism from pro-Israeli writers who saw such a plan as "destroying" Israel and replacing it with a predominantly Palestinian state governed by a Palestinian majority.

The NYRB was inundated with over a thousand letters within a week of the article's publication, peppered with terms like “antisemite” and “self-hating Jew,” and the article led to Judt's removal from the editorial board of The New Republic.

In April 2004 Judt gave a public speech at Columbia University in which he further developed his views.

In March 2006 Judt wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times about the John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt paper entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy". Judt argued that "in spite of the paper's provocative title, the essay draws on a wide variety of standard sources and is mostly uncontentious." He asked "does the Israel Lobby affect our foreign policy choices? Of course — that is one of its goals. But does pressure to support Israel distort American decisions? That's a matter of judgment."

He summed up his assessment of Mearsheimer and Walt's paper by asserting that "this essay, by two 'realist' political scientists with no interest whatsoever in the Palestinians, is a straw in the wind." He predicted that "it will not be self-evident to future generations of Americans why the imperial might and international reputation of the United States are so closely aligned with one small, controversial Mediterranean client state."

In May 2006, Judt continued in a similar vein with a feature-length article entitled "The Country That Wouldn't Grow Up" for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. In a March 2007 interview, Judt commented on the American need to block criticism of Israel as stemming from the rise of identity politics in the US. "I didn't think I knew until then just how deep and how uniquely American this obsession with blocking any criticism of Israel is. It is uniquely American." The article, published on Israeli Independence Day, recaps Israel's short history, describing what Judt sees as a steady decline in Israel's credibility that began with the Six-Day War in 1967.

"Apparently, the line you take on Israel trumps everything else in life," Judt observed sardonically during an interview with the Financial Times in 2007.

===== end excerpt from Wikipedia entry =====

Gelles concludes:

Judt and I are soul mates where economics is the primary concern. Where memory is concerned, I remember Kennedy's fear that Hitler would win and the Arab fear that Israel might survive. We all deserve a nice obituary. But public figures often receive more. I'm no public figure. I'll receive none at all. But my family will remember things I did which they would have preferred I didn't.

BENEZRAA  08/25/2010 02:20 AM Report

CONDOLENCES ON THE PASSING OF TONY JUDT

Dear Mr. Rose,

Condolences to you and to the family of Tony Judt. Please pass these condolences along to the family, as I know of Tony Judt only through your program.

Tony Judt was a vibrant and courageous soul. While his perspective on Israel remains controversial, there is nothing controversial in the loss of a loved one; there is nothing controversial in the loss of a husband; there is nothing controversial in the loss of a father; there is nothing controversial in the loss of a teacher; there is nothing controversial in the loss of a moral conscience; there is nothing controversial in the passing of a soul from this world to the World to Come.

Your eulogy to Tony Judt could not have been more touching nor more respectful. You brought him to our eyes and ears in his most recent pain, and then brought him to us once again in the fullness of his strength, so that he may be remembered as he was, before he could no longer "come out and come in" (reference to the Bible on the passing of Moses). Surely, to his family, and perhaps to others, Tony Judt was a Mosaic figure.

His legacy will go on through his family and through his writings. May God protect the family from smears of his memory at this time of their grief. May the family of Tony Judt be comforted among the mourners of Zion.

robdverity  08/24/2010 11:39 PM Report

Tony Judt deserves better than the likes of me having the temerity to comment on his utterings. He comes off as a brave and good man. His views on the effects of Israel (Zionism) on Jews was jarring with its similarities to my own. I'm admittedly bigoted because the extremis of the Israeli (re)actions seem to make Stockholm-syndrome victims of the holocaust sufferers to a hollow-cost. The kill ratio in the 100s:1, as a prime example. They seem to enjoy it too much. Tony expanded my rationalized bigotry from feelings of, "Screw the Jews," to "Screw the Jews not because they're Jews, but because of Israel (Zionism)."

The creation of Israel was the biggest geopolitical mistake since WWII. It's corrupted a race/religion, fed the Armageddon fundamentalists, incited like fundamentalist members in Islam, created 9/11 with the mindless followup of Afghanistan, Iraq and now AF-Pak.

Picture a world without Israel. Peaceful isn't it?

See if Charlies algorithms expunge this. Too candid no doubt.

JohnGelles  08/24/2010 11:02 PM Report

[NOTE: As with the preceding comment, this comment was first posted hours ago in the George Packer interview space.]

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The following is an entry in Wikipedia on Arab Nazi collaboration. It is followed by an effort by the Stern gang to solicit Nazi cooperation.

The two items prove that Wikipedia and Tony Judt have a lot in common-- a poor sense of proportion and a deficiency in inside their psyches.

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==== begin Wikipedia entry on collaborators with Germany against the Allies =======

Palestine

Arabs in Palestine

A Palestinian Arab nationalist and a Muslim religious leader, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husayni worked for Nazi Germany as a propagandist and a recruiter of Muslim volunteers for the Waffen SS and other units.

On November 28, 1941, Hitler officially received al-Husayni in Berlin. Hitler made a declaration that after "...the last traces of the Jewish-Communist European hegemony had been obliterated... the German army would... gain the southern exit of Caucasus... the Führer would offer the Arab world his personal assurance that the hour of liberation had struck. Thereafter, Germany's only remaining objective in the region would be limited to the Vernichtung des... Judentums ['destruction of the Jewish element', sometimes taken to be a euphemism for 'annihilation of the Jews'] living under British protection in Arab lands.."

The Mufti spent the remainder of the war assisting with the formation of Muslim Waffen SS units in the Balkans and the formation of schools and training centers for imams and mullahs who would accompany the Muslim SS and Wehrmacht units. Beginning in 1943, al-Husayni was involved in the organization and recruitment of Bosnian Muslims into several divisions. The largest of which was the 13th "Handschar" division of 21,065 men.

In 1944, al-Husayni sponsored an unsuccessful chemical warfare assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. Five parachutists were supplied with maps of Tel Aviv, canisters of a German–manufactured "fine white powder," and instructions from the Mufti to dump chemicals into the Tel Aviv water system. District police commander Fayiz Bey Idrissi later recalled, "The laboratory report stated that each container held enough poison to kill 25,000 people, and there were at least ten containers."

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Jews in Palestine

Jewish underground Zionist group Lehi, also known as the "Stern Gang" offered cooperation to the Nazis in sabotage, espionage and intelligence and up to wide military operations in the Middle East and in eastern Europe anywhere where they had Jewish cells in return for full recognition of an independent Jewish state in Palestine, an ability to emigrate to Palestine for all Jews, with no restriction of numbers.

This offer of collaboration was sent in 1941 to the German Naval attache in Ankara and forwarded through German embassy to Berlin but found no response from the Nazis.

============= end Wikipedia ==============

============= begin Gelles comment =======

How disgusting can these things get? -- (the Wikipedia editors and Judt at his densest):

..... ..... "sometimes taken to be a euphemism for 'annihilation of the Jews"

Gelles asks these types-- what else is the murder of Jews sometimes taken to be?

.

The German Arab collaboration was real, large and criminal. The Stern Gang sent a feeler to the Naval Attache. The feeler was nuts to begin with. Yet Wikipedia compares these two items because it too is nuts. There is no sense of proportion in Tony Judt's attitude toward Jewish Nationalism and the experience of the 20th Century.

The anti-Israel position that Palestine deserves better is never presented in proper context-- that the Arabs have sacrificed millions of young Palestinian lives to try to keep Israel from being accepted by Islamists as an independent state.

Judt may have admitted the true nature of these issues-- but what seems to remain on the European mind is that Israel is bad and Palestine deserved better.

Palestine did. It deserved better from its Arab and Islamic neighbors.

JohnGelles  08/24/2010 10:50 PM Report

[NOTE: Duplicate of comment posted in a different interview's space before this interview was opened]

This is a comment on the interview with Tony Judt, an English/American historian and public scholar--born and raised Jewish--who was critical of the Jewish State (Israel) and had a bone to pick with Jewish Nationalism in the modern world-- where, remember, Disraeli was a Christian convert (from a Jewish family) who became one of the greatest Prime Ministers of England and Rham Emanuel is the American President's Chief of Staff.

Tony Judt is dying in front of our eyes in the interview whose transcript is not yet posted (as I write these words). I knew nothing of him--proving I'm not up to speed on all things intellectual and important.

After watching the whole show twice, I had to turn to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Judt for more information on Tony Judt.

It seems to me that Charlie Rose loved the man more or less as a brother or favorite brother-in-law.

Judt and I share the same political views on Keynesian solutions and on our obligations to people with less economic security than our own.

We have opposite views on the Jewish State. The Arab Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was, I've read, Hitler's equal in hate and wished-for harm to Jews in their time of trial (during the German War Against the Jews). I've also observed their Arab neighbors and gang in the UN happy to keep Palestinians miserable rather than accept and assimilate them in the Arab and Islamic world the way Israel accepted the Jews expelled from Egypt, Iraq, Syria and other Muslim majority nations.

Jewish nationalism cannot be bad when we note the cost of its weakness in the Holocaust-- and in years that preceded that descent into Hell in Europe before liberation in 1945.

Nevertheless Judt and some other Jews see these scenes differently. I'm not naive enough to think every human being will agree with me-- just because I'm right. Or wrong.

Judt should have believed in and supported the Second Bill of Rights. It sent the right message in 1944 to the post war world-- the world of the 80th American Congress that decided instead to allow low wage ship builders in Europe and Asia to kill middle class high wage jobs in the American yards that had saved the lives and freedom of capitalists who had a yen for busting unions.

Judt did the next best thing-- he supported economic democracy in theory.

I rate the total interview very high. Death is all around it. As well as historical meat-- if not the exact dishes I prefer.

May Tony rest in peace with all the other scholars and ordinary people for whom we wanted the best during our tenure here.

Tony and I shared much the same thoughts on political action and economy. I met him on this show after he died. I also met his youngest son who asked why "socialism" is no longer a welcome word in debate. I think Tony explained to him how communist rule in the 20th Century had been bad for socialist critiques of capitalism.

That's sad. Capitalism and corporate law at the moment is ruining lives in America for no good reason at all. Tony Judt and I would have liked to make such ruination illegal--something that had never happened.