Iam a dove Zionist who believes strongly that American Jewry and Israeli Jewry must live in a state of “interdependent independence.”

As a Zionist, I know the psychological and theological space Israel occupies in my self-definition. Israel's right to be is a sine qua non of my Jewish self. As I worked for the fulfillment of the Zionist ideal, the right of the Jewish people to have a state of their own, so do I remain unalterably committed to that state's survival, its security, and its flourishing in peace. Thus, I stand in a symbiotic relationship with Israel. We are interdependently related. So far the description is “standard.”

The word “independent” is the one that raises eyebrows and suspicions among some of my “main line” Zionist friends.

In one of James Thurber's tales, “The Birds and the Foxes,” the shrewd foxes (for the highest of ethical motives, of course) finally succeed in having torn down the cages that protected the Baltimore orioles. The fox leader gives a memorable speech about how those poor but juicy birds, though eaten, are now “liberated” from their unjust confinement. Thurber's moral parodies Lincoln: “Government of the orioles, by the foxes, and for the foxes, must perish from the earth,“ His reinterpretations of Lincoln—another being “You can fool too many people too much of the time”—are perhaps too severe. But they come closer to what politics deals with than we usually care to admit.

I begin thus because the general prognosis for the Western world is decidedly not cheery. I should like to think that the spate of unrestrained self-criticism Americans are now undergoing is a sign of strength.

I wish to explore, first of all, the nature of the crisis of liberal democracy and will argue that it is essentially a crisis of meaning. If, as I believe, we are entering a new period of ideological candor and contest, we must examine some inhibiting factors in making the case for liberal democracy. These factors are in large part internal to Western thought, but they are also increasingly vulnerable to our perspective on the future ofthe “third” and “fourth” worlds, that is, to the poor. Finally, I wish to suggest some directions that could sustain and enliven our hope for the democratic prospect.

The first twinges of anxiety have turned into a torrent of rumors building toward a new consensus that democracy is now on the defensive and probably in decline. What some view with fear and others with hope is not all that sudden or all that new.

Ten years ago Gatsha Buthelezi would have been in prison; today he is Chief Executive Counsellor of KwaZulu, a potentially independent ''homeland,” now within the boundaries of South Africa.

Buthelezi has grasped the limited possibilities of self-government extended by the white government of South Africa. He has chosen to challenge the apartheid structure from within because “no amount of shouting can, by itself, cause the walls of the ‘apartheid-Jericho' to crumble.” He argues that black people have been voiceless for too long, that whites have for generations arrogated to themselves the right to determine the destinies of millions of Africans. He has chosen to operate within the “white dream” in order to change all that.

On April 7, 1976, a New York Times editorial expressed an evidently startled reaction to recent rioting in Peking, for “China had seemed to be so orderly, so completely controlled in recent years….” The same day's mail brought to our address the February, 1976, issue of Letters from Asia, published in Hong Kong. The “letter” on China noted widespread strikes and disorders in 1974 and disruptive “factionalism” at all Party levels. The key line was: “…1975 was a highly agitated year in Chinese politics.”

Having been broken in the traces of contemporary sinology, we are now accustomed to such moments of schizophrenia. Indeed, in our preceding two articles we have ourselves begun to render, in seeming schizoid fashion, a darkly shaded image of China in opposition to the prevailing evenly sunlit one.

A small Roman Catholic girl called Mary, from one of the ghetto areas of Belfast, was playing with a friend near the seaside on a sunny day in spring, far away from the troubled streets near her home.

“I know what's wrong with Northern Ireland,” said Mary in that matter-of-fact tone all children use when they believe they have discovered one of the great secrets of life. “My mother told me what was the matter in Ulster. It's all the Protestants' fault.” There was a long silence. Her friend Betty finally spoke up. “ Well.. .I'm a Protestant.” There was another silence. Mary hesitated, and then said slowly. “You are not a ‘Protestant’ at Corrymeela. You're a nice person, and I like you.”

Anyone seriously interested in applying traditional just war theory to current international affairs finds it difficult even to begin. Part of the problem is that the theory itself is badly misunderstood. Some people—proponents and detractors alike—think it is first and foremost a product of Christian theological wisdom and a repository of Christian principles having relevance to relations between states. A Catholic who points to recent popes, to John Courtney Murray, or to the tradition of Thomas Aquinas when evoking just war categories adds weight to this conception of just war theory. So too does a Protestant who goes to Martin Luther or Paul Ramsey for information about just war. It is true that just war doctrine was advanced and preserved by Christian theologians and canon lawyers. But these were not the only contributors to the tradition of just war thought, nor have they been the only important preservers of whatever wisdom it contains for limiting war.