The French political philosopher Raymond Aron (1905–1983) was born into a Jewish family, although I don’t know to what extent Judaism or Jewishness shaped his ideas. Recently published in English, his final lecture, Liberty and Equality, expresses both his belief in liberal democracy and his understanding of its flaws. In their review, Paul Wilford and Ethan Cutler argue that his teachings on the subject have much to offer America today:

When liberal democracies are at their best, Aron observes, personal, political, and social liberties counterbalance rather than subsume one another. Liberal regimes flourish, he maintains, when personal, social, and political liberties check and balance one another; they decay when just one form of liberty is considered the true end of political life, rendering the others mere means. . . .

To flourish, liberal democracies require a dynamic interrelation between city and soul, wherein the rationality that justifies the constitutional order and the rational action of the individual both find expression in the free subordination of particular desires and interests to the law.

Aron aspired to bolster our commitment to liberal democracy by clarifying the meaning of our liberties and the value of the legal order that enables them.

While I can’t say if Aron thought about things this way, I’m fairly certain that, as a general rule, Jews have faired best under the kind of political order he favored.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.