William Galston, who writes a weekly "Politics & Ideas" column in The Wall Street Journal, and who holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program, claims that "Antisemitism Betrays America's Heritage." Is there any doubt about that? The brouhaha that has surrounded Tucker Carlson's decision to host Nick Fuentes in a sympathetic online interview - Fuentes being an outspoken and apparently unrepentant anti-semite - is what prompted Galston's column.
While I totally agree that we must be be resolutely opposed to anti-semitism, wherever and however it may develop and display itself, what I found most impactful in Galston's column was not his opposition to anti-semitism, per se, but rather his clarity about what constitutes that "American Heritage" that Galston wants to protect, and that is challenged by any acceptance of anti-semitism.
Galston says that there is an American "creed," and then goes on to say that "if we hold fast to it even when expediency counsels compromising it, we cannot go wrong. If we abandon it, we sign the death certificate of republican government and ordered liberty.”
What is that "creed" that Galston finds so precious - and so essential? It is "the civic principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States ... the conviction that each and every member of the human family, irrespective of race, ethnicity, religion, or anything else, is a creature fashioned in the very image of God, is ‘created equal’ and ‘endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.’"
"It isn’t blood and soil that makes us Americans," says Galston. "It isn’t our European heritage; nor is it Christianity." [Galston, here, is taking a shot at J.D. Vance, our current Vice President, without calling him out by name, since Vance has claimed that these are, in fact, an essential feature of our "heritage"]. "No," says Galston, "America is what Lincoln declared it to be at Gettysburg, which is why the latest outbreak of antisemitism is a test, not only for conservatives, but for all Americans."
Galston is urging that we all "highly resolve," as Lincoln put it, that a "government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
This American "creed" is being challenged today. It is being challenged daily, and from the very summit of our government - by our current Vice President, and by our current President, as well.
The proposition that the United States shall be governed by "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people" has been placed at risk, and Galston is right that we stand close to a point at which America's heritage may be betrayed. This was part of my Thanksgiving Day comment yesterday, too. Bears repeating!
We are each being called and tested. Let us be sure we don't fail our test!
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/antisemitism-betrays-americas-heritage-3fd6d3d1
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