The Commentary 70th anniversary issue asked 70 modern thinkers to project 70 years into the future.
The benefit of this exercise is to get a group of minds, many of them truly brilliant, to focus on the patterns and practices of our day that will have long term effects.
I once told my good friend Leonard K. that I could take a walk in San Francisco and identify half of the major business trends that would emerge in the next ten years. They were already in place, just not recognized. I was right, I did it.
The same is true for major future patterns. The elements of many of them are in place today. Good minds can see them.
What I got from this issue was powerful.
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In the U.S. the entire Leftist-progressive movement has reached its end. There are no new leaders. The whole shambles has collapsed into a discredited old idea called socialism. From this point on the residue of that movement will be called Obamaism or the followers Obama-ites. A leftist, pacifist, anti-commerce, anti-American, anti-Jew cluster of anger and revenge.
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While the non-Orthodox American Jewry will disappear along with the similar groups in Europe a new trans American-Israeli secular Jewish awakening can be expected. It will be an intellectual community already evident in the literary press including Commentary, the Jewish Review of Books, Tablet, Moment, Mosaic and others. This new intellectual community will be the source of an important new Jewish movement.
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Israel will become an important centerpiece of Indian and Asian trade. Europe is already dead.
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Israel will have many Arab alliances, much like it had with Turkey for 30 years.
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Israel is at no risk of survival. Intelligence and technological superiority will always be important. The West Bank is likely to become part of Jordan.
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The American Evangelicals will be a long term key to the American-Israeli alliance.
I got all of that from one issue of one magazine.