Emerson and the Moral Imperative to Oppose Antisemitism

If people of goodwill continue to stand down in the face of growing threats to Western civilization, Emerson and Hayek know with certainty what the outcome will be.

On Saturday, we will complete our study of Hayek’s essay “Individualism: True and False” with a session on why antisemitism is civilizational suicide.

You’re right. Hayek says nothing directly about antisemitism in that essay. But his essay will illuminate for you what’s at stake with the rampant return of this ancient hatred. You won’t want to miss this upcoming session.

Because of the importance of the content of this essay and Saturday’s, I am removing the paywall for both. I hope you will consider supporting this Substack by becoming a paid subscriber.

During the first program of 2026, we will work with Russ Harris’s The Happiness Trap. Dr. Harris’s theoretical framework is consistent with our other studies. His many practical applications will help you bring to life the ideas of Emerson and others you have found valuable. More about this series and a detailed schedule will be provided early in 2026.

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Mindset Shifts U—All Sessions

Armin Navabi, an Iranian Ex-Muslim and now classical liberal, wrote about the recent slaughter of Jews in Australia:

To understand the horrific events at Bondi Beach, one must first discard the sentimental distinction between moderate and radical. Instead, view the ideology in question as a contagion.

The facts of the case provide a control group for this hypothesis. Families gathered for a children’s Hanukkah festival on the iconic Australian sands. They were targeted by two gunmen intent on slaughtering Jews. This was a precise execution of theological hatred. Yet in the midst of the chaos, it was a Muslim shopkeeper named Ahmed Al Ahmed who charged into the line of fire. He is a father of two with no combat experience. He wrestled a shotgun from a terrorist and took two bullets to his own body to save strangers.

Western politicians and media outlets are currently struggling to reconcile these two data points. They see a Muslim terrorist and a Muslim hero, and they retreat into confusion. They refuse to name the ideology responsible for the massacre because the existence of a Muslim hero complicates their narrative.

This is a misdiagnosis.

Growing up in Iran, I was forced to memorize the source code that these terrorists executed. I know exactly what the manual says. I spent my youth being programmed with the same software that drove these gunmen to murder. This is why I can say with clinical certainty that the gunman was a host who succumbed completely to the viral load. The hero, Mr. Ahmed, was a host with a robust immune system. His humanity successfully rejected the Islamic infection.

There is no contradiction here. The terrorists represent Islam functioning exactly as designed. They followed the script. Mr. Ahmed represents the triumph of the human spirit over that script. He is a hero not because of his faith, but in spite of it. When faced with the ultimate choice between Islam and humanity, he allowed his conscience to override his programming.

We must stop pretending that the virus does not exist simply because some hosts are strong enough to resist its symptoms. We should celebrate Ahmed Al Ahmed as a man of supreme character precisely because he failed to follow Islam. He is proof that human empathy remains the only effective antibody against a mind virus that demands death.

Navabi’s analysis is deeply rooted in his classical liberalism. Emerson would say what Navabi calls “the triumph of the human spirit” only occurs when we allow our Source to imbue our thinking and actions. Al Ahmed had no time to think and reason; he acted from the deepest place in himself—the place where all of humanity is connected.

Notice I wrote acted not reacted.

The late author, teacher, and Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello wrote in his book Awareness, “It’s very important that when you swing into action, you be able to see things with detachment. But negative emotions prevent that. What, then, would we call the kind of passion that motivates or activates energy into doing something about objective evils? Whatever it is, it is not a reaction; it is action.”

About those who “spring into action” to combat evil, de Mello observed,

Many wrongly assume that not having negative feelings like anger and resentment and hate means that you do nothing about a situation. Oh no, oh no! You are not affected emotionally but you spring into action. You become very sensitive to things and people around you. What kills the sensitivity is what many people would call the conditioned self: when you so identify with “me” that there’s too much of “me” in it for you to see things objectively, with detachment.

When you watch a video of Al Ahmed springing into action to save many lives, you see the wisdom of de Mello’s observation. There was no time to calculate, and Al Ahmed allowed himself to surrender his conditioned self for a noble purpose. As de Mello writes, when “‘me’ steps into the picture, …everything gets fouled up. Where we had one problem on our hands before, now we have two problems.” That’s why there are many documented cases of police standing down during school shootings. Their desire to preserve themselves is understandable, which is why men like Al Ahmed are so rare.

Navabi focuses our attention on the script the Bondi Beach terrorists were programmed to follow. In America, antisemitism has gone mainstream. Both the woke right and woke left are poisoning their followers with their hatred. Whether people like Candace Owens personally believe the hatred they spew is justified doesn’t matter; their followers believe it is. Vanishing are the guardrails of social sanctions that restrain hatred of others. On Saturday, we will consider what this means for the future of Western civilization.

Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but I believe the majority of Americans and Australians are not antisemitic. Yet the majority are staying silent. In his essay “Spiritual Laws” Emerson wrote, “Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the mere air of doing a thing, the intimated purpose, expresses character. If you act you show character; if you sit still, if you sleep, you show it.” Emerson continued that in tough times, standing down is not an option for those who value humanity:

You think because you have spoken nothing when others spoke, and have given no opinion on the times, on the church, on slavery, on marriage, on socialism, on secret societies, on the college, on parties and persons, that your verdict is still expected with curiosity as a reserved wisdom. Far otherwise; your silence answers very loud. You have no oracle to utter, and your fellow-men have learned that you cannot help them; for oracles speak. Doth not Wisdom cry and Understanding put forth her voice?

More succinctly, in his essay “The American Scholar,” Emerson wrote, “The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.” If we are not yet scholars, recall that Leonard Read asked us to be students of liberty.

None of this is a call to collective action. Hayek and Emerson share a fundamental commitment to decentralized decision-making and to rejecting coercive central authority. Hayek’s true individualism asserts that knowledge is dispersed, tacit, and impossible to aggregate in a central planning board. The market and spontaneous order are the only mechanisms capable of effectively utilizing this dispersed knowledge.

Similarly, Emerson rejected centralized morality. The promise by the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, to combat antisemitism is hollow. Emerson asserts that ultimate moral authority and conviction reside only within the individual. Any attempt by the government to impose a centralized moral or intellectual standard is a form of spiritual tyranny.

Both Emerson and Hayek championed the individual because the alternative is a coercive and inferior collective decision-maker.

Hayek’s system of liberty, based on true individualism, depends on individuals cultivating an Emersonian personality. Emerson is the moral philosopher of liberty, leading us to develop the courage and conviction necessary to function effectively within Hayek’s economic and social system of liberty. Hayek describes the efficient structure of liberty; Emerson instructs us in the necessary character of a free people.

In his essay “The Over-Soul” Emerson wrote, “From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.” With these words he returns to his central theme of humility before transpersonal processes—and Hayek identifies humility as central to true individualism.

Hayek saw that social “institutions on which human achievements rest” arise spontaneously and function “without a designing and directing mind.”​​ Emerson’s Over-Soul—the universal spirit flowing through individuals—parallels Hayek’s concept of spontaneous order. Emerson saw that all reform arises as we let our true Nature breathe through us:

A man is the facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide. What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear through his action, would make our knees bend. When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love. And the blindness of the intellect begins, when it would be something of itself. The weakness of the will begins, when the individual would be something of himself. All reform aims, in some one particular, to let the soul have its way through us; in other words, to engage us to obey.

Today, we need fewer eating, drinking, counting people, and more people who know they are beings of “the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear through his action.” Action so engaged demonstrates genius, virtue, and love that “would make our knees bend.”

In his journal, Emerson wrote, “I have confidence in the laws of morals as of botany. I have planted maize in my field every June for seventeen years and I never knew it come up strychnine. My parsley, beet, turnip, carrot, buck-thorn, chestnut, acorn, are as sure. I believe that justice produces justice, and injustice injustice.”

If people of goodwill continue to stand down in the face of growing threats to Western civilization, Emerson and Hayek know with certainty what the outcome will be. We will learn more on Saturday.