https://pjmedia.com/spengler/the-prince-the-president-and-the-providence-of-the-temple/
Prince William, the second-in-line to the British throne and its future heir, visited the Western Wall of the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem today. His visit was the first official visit by a member of Britain’s royal family to Israel, and his appearance at the Kotel has enormous significance. So did the earlier visit of Donald Trump, the first sitting US president to visit the Kotel. The two heads of state of the English-speaking world thus acknowledged the undying connection of the living Jewish people to the ancient Jewish Temple, as well as the State of Israel’s sovereignty over Judaism’s most holy site. This is of such high moment that no American head of state ventured to do so before.
The Prince and the President did more than validate Israel’s claim to its holy sites in Jerusalem, though. They came not only as rulers but as pilgrims, offering prayers at the retaining wall of the Mount on which the Temple once stood. By doing so they did homage to the most importance pillar of Western governance, namely that government itself depends on a sense of the sacred.
What makes governments legitimate? What makes it possible for a nation-state to rise above the mere affinity of tribe and clan and assert its permanence as home and refuge of its people? What entitles it to inflict violence on those at home or abroad who would harm it, and require of its youth that they shed blood in its defense? In one form or another the nation-state must embody a sense of the sacred, by which I mean the aspiration to eternity that makes possible our individual hope of transcending earthly existence, and in extreme conditions takes precedence even over the bonds of family.