Rabbi's Mid East Report
Saturday, November 7, 2020
There is Undeniable Mathematical Evidence the Election is Being Stolen
Friday, November 6, 2020
Biden's (ignored) hostility to Israel By Shmuel Klatzkin, The American Spectator November 5, 2020 https://spectator.org/bidens-hostility-to-israel/ Should one issue properly determine a vote for the most powerful office in the world? It depends upon the issue, does it not? The year I began my rabbinic studies in Jerusalem, a full-fledged war broke out on Yom Kippur. My fellow students and I set aside our books and made ourselves useful wherever help was needed. Whether helping work in the city’s largest bakery so everyone could have bread, working in a home for severely disabled children, or one of the city’s major hospitals, along with my fellows, I did what I could. Joe Biden was the number-two person in an administration that in every way sought to lower its commitment to Israel, and to undercut its ability to succeed as a nation or even to defend itself. What has never left me is an acute appreciation of how slender is the thread upon which Israel’s survival hangs. We did not know that Syrian tanks had penetrated the Israeli lines and, had they been better led, could have unhinged all of Israel’s defenses. We did not know how useless the Bar Lev fortifications had proven against Egypt. That all came later. But that this was a moment of existential crisis was known by all instinctively. It was in the air. What a difference it made when the news came that America had created an air lifeline for Israel. In the terrible fighting, the IDF had nearly exhausted its ammunition and necessary military hardware. Taking great diplomatic risk, President Nixon decided to set up a continuous air ferry of supplies that enabled Israel to continue to fight, to turn the tables, and to remove the threat of extinction that a Syrian-Egyptian conquest would have meant. One issue above all others Ever since that time, when I was in my early twenties, I have made a candidate’s position on Israel a top priority in elections. By the time the next presidential came up in 1976, Nixon was gone and Ford’s policy was being unduly demanding of Israel. I was by no means a conservative then, and there was little else about Ford that inspired me, so I voted for the mysterious man from Georgia. But by the time 1980 rolled around, Carter had shown that he blamed Israel exclusively for the failure of Camp David to lead to full Middle East peace, and his fatuous policy towards Iran had allowed that country to turn into a seething cauldron of hatred against Israel and America. I voted for Reagan, though I also was voting for Teddy Kennedy for the Senate because of his friendliness to Israel’s cause. I have heard several times from thoughtful Jewish friends who are liberal that they won’t deny that Trump’s firm alliance with Israel is an undeniable good. But, they insist, one can’t vote for President on one issue alone. On the surface of it, it is a reasonable objection. But it is an objection that does not bear much scrutiny. Should one issue properly determine a vote for the most powerful office in the world? It depends upon the issue, does it not? Let’s sharpen the point by restating the question the way I think applies best to the current choice — should a candidate’s stand on one issue disqualify him or her from consideration, no matter what the candidate’s stands on other issues? Imagine a candidate endorses a constitutional amendment to establish the principle of “separate but equal” again in law, invalidating almost every civil rights law and decision since the Brown decision at the beginning of the Eisenhower presidency. Most Americans wouldn’t care how sensible the candidate’s position would be on taxes or on response to the CCP virus — such a position opening the doors to government-enforced segregation would immediately end any possibility of most Americans ever voting for such a person. Joe Biden was the number-two person in an administration that in every way sought to lower its commitment to Israel, and to undercut its ability to succeed as a nation or even to defend itself. Biden could not have devised or executed the strategy for achieving this, as Israel was very strongly supported by Democrats as well as Republicans and its cause was widely popular across America. Iran on the other hand was widely and properly reviled as a despotic regime intent on our harm and dedicated to underwriting and spreading terror as part of its policy to establish Shi’ite hegemony over the entire Middle East, and to end the existence of the only Jewish state in the world and the only nation in the Middle East in which all religions are protected by law and can thrive. The strategy was masterminded and executed by Obama, a master at bait and switch, so adept at it that twice he fooled even as astute a lawyer and intense an advocate of Israel as Alan Dershowitz into giving him his endorsement — something which Dershowitz intensely regrets. New low under Obama By the end of the Obama-Biden Administration, Israel’s prime minister had been forced to enter the White House by the service entrance; the president had intervened in Israeli elections to undermine the prime minister; a successful international embargo of Iran that had been slowing down its ability to underwrite terror was ended and replaced with an agreement that would guarantee Iran the right to manufacture nuclear weapons by 2025; and in a gratuitous kick to the teeth, under Obama’s instructions, the U.S. withheld its veto and let the UN Security Council declare Israel’s presence in its own capital and in its most sacred holy places a criminal act. And just before the Obama-Biden team left office, they deposited hundreds of millions of dollars into Iran’s coffers, re-enabling them to once again underwrite the murder and mayhem of Hezbollah, Hamas, and their other clients. Biden has promised to return to the “highlights” of this policy, and has welcomed into his coalition the unapologetically bigoted voices of people like Linda Sarsour, and accepted without demurral the blatantly anti-Semitic voices of Representatives Tlaib, Omar, and Ocasio-Cortez, the last of whom could not refrain from intentionally and publicly snubbing the memory of Yitzhak Rabin, Nobel Peace laureate and signer of a peace agreement with Yassir Arafat, showing that her issue is not with one side or the other in Israel but with its very existence. Biden and his party ignore the successes that were conspicuously absent from the approach he worked for and still endorses. Who would have believed four years ago that two Arab states would have signed peace treaties with Israel and that there is momentum for many more? But in the face of such great results, Biden wants us to again put Israel in its place, which means making it subject to the threat of a nuclear Iran and empowering its enemies just when they have been losing the battle for the minds and hearts of the Arab world. I say that a candidate with such a record on Israel and the Middle East needs no further consideration. To vote for such a person is to endorse the destruction of the peace that is already taking shape, and instead empowering the darkest forces on the planet, helping them to get closer to their stated goal of wiping out the world’s largest Jewish community. None of this is to say that there aren’t other important issues, any number of which should be important enough to end consideration of a vote for Biden. Biden is the beneficiary of the greatest attack on the freedom of political discourse in the history of our country — and he says nothing about it. If one cherishes free speech, this issue alone should be enough. The growing credible evidence of Biden’s influence peddling to foreign concerns in Ukraine, China, and Romania makes a vote for him about as palatable as voting for Harding after Teapot Dome. And the apparent willingness to make any kind of political deal with the ever more truculent violent left of his party makes it reasonable to assume that Obama’s use of phone intercepts against political opponents, of tasking national intelligence as an adjunct of Clinton’s campaign, and of using the IRS to stifle political opposition seem be child’s play with what those to whom he owes his nomination would like to see executed. But for me, Biden’s indifference to the very existence of Israel is enough. In that indifference, he displays indifference to those great principles that have made America great — recognizing that our liberties are given to each of us by G-d, and that government is not to be worshipped, but to serve us — we, the people. America’s embrace of the people of Israel from the very beginning showed it as a place of freedom and hope. I choose the candidate on this issue because it shows what he understands about America. ****** Biden’s Hostility to Israel | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics Shmuel Klatzkin The year I began my rabbinic studies in Jerusalem, a full-fledged war broke out on Yom Kippur. My fellow students and I set aside our books and made ourselves useful wherever help was needed. Whether helping work in the city’s largest bakery so everyone could have bread, working in a home for severely disabled children, or volunteering at one of the city’s major hospitals, along with my fellows, I did what I could. Joe Biden was the No. 2 person in an administration that in every way sought to lower its commitment to Israel and to undercut its ability to succeed as a nation or even to defend itself. What has never left me is an acute appreciation of how slender is the thread upon which Israel’s survival hangs. We did not know that Syrian tanks had penetrated the Israeli lines and, had they been better led, could have unhinged all of Israel’s defenses. We did not know how useless the Bar Lev fortifications had proven against Egypt. That all came later. But that this was a moment of existential crisis was known by all instinctively. It was in the air. What a difference it made when the news came that America had created an air lifeline for Israel. In the terrible fighting, the IDF had nearly exhausted its ammunition and necessary military hardware. Taking great diplomatic risk, President Nixon decided to set up a continuous air ferry of supplies that enabled Israel to continue to fight, to turn the tables, and to remove the threat of extinction that a Syrian–Egyptian conquest would have meant. Ever since that time, when I was in my early 20s, I have made a candidate’s position on Israel a top priority in elections. By the time the next presidential election came up in 1976, Nixon was gone and Ford’s policy was being unduly demanding of Israel. I was by no means a conservative then, and there was little else about Ford that inspired me, so I voted for the mysterious man from Georgia. But by the time 1980 rolled around, Carter had shown that he blamed Israel exclusively for the failure of Camp David to lead to full Middle East peace, and his fatuous policy towards Iran had allowed that country to turn into a seething cauldron of hatred against Israel and America. I voted for Reagan, though I also voted for Teddy Kennedy for the Senate because of his friendliness to Israel’s cause. I have heard several times from thoughtful Jewish friends who are liberal that they won’t deny that Trump’s firm alliance with Israel is an undeniable good. But, they insist, one can’t vote for president on one issue alone. On the surface of it, it is a reasonable objection. But it is an objection that does not bear much scrutiny. Should one issue properly determine a vote for the most powerful office in the world? It depends upon the issue, does it not? Let’s sharpen the point by restating the question the way I think applies best to the current choice — should a candidate’s stand on one issue disqualify him or her from consideration, no matter where the candidate stands on other issues? Imagine a candidate endorses a constitutional amendment to establish the principle of “separate but equal” again in law, invalidating almost every civil rights law and decision since the Brown decision at the beginning of the Eisenhower presidency. Most Americans wouldn’t care how sensible the candidate’s position would be on taxes or on response to the CCP virus — such a position opening the doors to government-enforced segregation would immediately end any possibility of most Americans ever voting for such a person. Joe Biden was the No. 2 person in an administration that in every way sought to lower its commitment to Israel and to undercut its ability to succeed as a nation or even to defend itself. Biden could not have devised or executed the strategy for achieving this, as Israel was very strongly supported by Democrats as well as Republicans and its cause was widely popular across America. Iran on the other hand was widely and properly reviled as a despotic regime intent on our harm and dedicated to underwriting and spreading terror as part of its policy to establish Shi’ite hegemony over the entire Middle East, and to end the existence of the only Jewish state in the world and the only nation in the Middle East in which all religions are protected by law and can thrive. The strategy was masterminded and executed by Obama, a master at bait and switch, so adept at it that twice he fooled even as astute a lawyer and intense an advocate of Israel as Alan Dershowitz into giving him his endorsement — something which Dershowitz intensely regrets. By the end of the Obama–Biden administration, Israel’s prime minister had been forced to enter the White House by the service entrance; the president had intervened in Israeli elections to undermine the prime minister; a successful international embargo of Iran that had been slowing down its ability to underwrite terror was ended and replaced with an agreement that would guarantee Iran the right to manufacture nuclear weapons by 2025; and in a gratuitous kick to the teeth, under Obama’s instructions, the U.S. withheld its veto and let the UN Security Council declare Israel’s presence in its own capital and in its most sacred holy places a criminal act. And just before the Obama–Biden team left office, they deposited hundreds of millions of dollars into Iran’s coffers, re-enabling them to once again underwrite the murder and mayhem of Hezbollah, Hamas, and their other clients. Biden has promised to return to the “highlights” of this policy, and has welcomed into his coalition the unapologetically bigoted voices of people like Linda Sarsour, and accepted without demurral the blatantly anti-Semitic voices of Reps. Tlaib, Omar, and Ocasio-Cortez, the last of whom could not refrain from intentionally and publicly snubbing the memory of Yitzhak Rabin, Nobel Peace laureate and signer of a peace agreement with Yasser Arafat, showing that her issue is not with one side or the other in Israel but with its very existence. Biden and his party ignore the successes that were conspicuously absent from the approach he worked for and still endorses. Who would have believed four years ago that two Arab states would have signed peace treaties with Israel and that there is momentum for many more? But in the face of such great results, Biden wants us to again put Israel in its place, which means making it subject to the threat of a nuclear Iran and empowering its enemies just when they have been losing the battle for the minds and hearts of the Arab world. I say that a candidate with such a record on Israel and the Middle East needs no further consideration. To vote for such a person is to endorse the destruction of the peace that is already taking shape, and instead empowering the darkest forces on the planet, helping them to get closer to their stated goal of wiping out the world’s largest Jewish community. None of this is to say that there aren’t other important issues, any number of which should be important enough to end consideration of a vote for Biden. Biden is the beneficiary of the greatest attack on the freedom of political discourse in the history of our country — and he says nothing about it. If one cherishes free speech, this issue alone should be enough. The growing credible evidence of Biden’s influence-peddling to foreign concerns in Ukraine, China, and Romania makes a vote for him about as palatable as voting for Harding after Teapot Dome. And the apparent willingness to make any kind of political deal with the ever more truculent violent left of his party makes it reasonable to assume that Obama’s use of phone intercepts against political opponents, of tasking national intelligence as an adjunct of Clinton’s campaign, and of using the IRS to stifle political opposition seem be child’s play with what those to whom he owes his nomination would like to see executed. But for me, Biden’s indifference to the very existence of Israel is enough. In that indifference, he displays indifference to those great principles that have made America great — recognizing that our liberties are given to each of us by G-d, and that government is not to be worshipped, but to serve us — we, the people. America’s embrace of the people of Israel from the very beginning showed it as a place of freedom and hope. I choose the candidate on this issue because it shows what he understands about America.
Tuesday, November 3, 2020
Monday, November 2, 2020
The Top 20 Lies About Trump's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic Matt Margolis
The Top 20 Lies About Trump's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Regardless of how the election turns out, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the result will be discussed for many years. Media disinformation has made the pandemic a liability for Trump politically, and Joe Biden has not considered himself above politicizing the pandemic for political gain. With the media’s help, Joe Biden has managed to poll better than Trump when it comes to handling the pandemic, even though Joe Biden hasn’t suggested doing anything different than has been done already by Trump.
The weaponizing of the COVID-19 pandemic against Donald Trump has been shameful. The media, the Democrats, and Joe Biden’s campaign don’t care about lying to the American people, they just want Trump defeated. There have been many, many falsehoods perpetuated by the media during this pandemic, and I’ve compiled the top twenty below to demonstrate just how low Trump’s enemies have gone to try to oust him.
20. Trump turned down testing kits from WHO
A Politico hit piece from early March claimed that the World Health Organization offered the United States coronavirus testing kits, but Trump refused to accept them. This claim spread quickly, and Joe Biden even claimed “The World Health Organization offered the testing kits that they have available and to give it to us now. We refused them. We did not want to buy them,” during a Democratic primary debate back in March.
It wasn’t true. “No discussions occurred between WHO and CDC about WHO providing COVID-19 tests to the United States,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris explained at the time. “This is consistent with experience since the United States does not ordinarily rely on WHO for reagents or diagnostic tests because of sufficient domestic capacity.” According to WHO, its priority was to send testing kits to “countries with the weakest health systems.”
So, why did testing get off to a slow start in the United States? Ellie Bufkin at our sister site Townhall noted that “Testing in the United States was fraught with difficulty in large part due to the slow approval by the Food and Drug Administration to allow testing kits developed by private companies outside of the government-controlled CDC to be used at a local or national level. Those FDA policies are consistent with the Obama Administration’s response to H1N1 and Ebola in 2009 and 2014 respectively.”
19. Trump downplayed the mortality rate of the coronavirus
In early March, the World Health Organization said that 3.4 percent of coronavirus patients had died from the disease. “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 (the disease spread by the virus) cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing. “By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.”
Trump said this number was false, as the mortality rate was actually much lower because their number didn’t take into account unreported cases. In an interview with Sean Hannity on March 4, Trump challenged WHO’s number. “Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number,” Trump said, asserting that the actual mortality rate is “way under 1 percent.”
And Trump was right. The mortality rate of COVID-19 has been consistently going down. By May, the CDC estimated the overall mortality rate for COVID-19 to be .26 percent. Trump got criticized for “downplaying” the coronavirus. Where is the criticism for the so-called experts who greatly overestimated the mortality rate in order to spark fear and panic? For example, MSNBC contributor Dr. Joseph Fair told a panel on the network that up to 20 percent of the U.S. population might die from the coronavirus.
18. Obama did a better job with H1N1
The common refrain from the left when comparisons are made between the government’s responses to H1N1 and COVID-19 is that only 12,469 died from H1N1, according to the CDC. But this leaves out important context. The CDC estimates that in the United States alone between April 12, 2009, and April 10, 2010, there were nearly 61 million cases of H1N1.
Based on these numbers, H1N1 had a mortality rate of .02 percent. According to the CDC’s May estimate, the coronavirus has an overall mortality rate of .4 percent for symptomatic cases (or .26 percent if you include asymptomatic cases) meaning that the coronavirus is 13-20 times more deadly than H1N1.
The coronavirus is not only magnitudes more deadly than H1N1, but also more infectious. According to a study from Emerging Infectious Diseases, COVID-19 has a median R0 value (a mathematical term for how contagious a disease is) of 5.7, while H1N1 had an R0 value between 1.4 and 1.6. So COVID-19 is nearly four times more infectious and 13-20 times more deadly than H1N1. This is a point that President Trump has brought up during the presidential debates.
Ron Klain, who was Biden’s chief of staff at the time and is currently advising his campaign, says it was mere luck that H1N1 wasn’t more deadly. “It is purely a fortuity that this isn’t one of the great mass casualty events in American history,” Klain said of H1N1 in 2019. “It had nothing to do with us doing anything right. It just had to do with luck. If anyone thinks that this can’t happen again, they don’t have to go back to 1918, they just have to go back to 2009, 2010, and imagine a virus with a different lethality, and you can just do the math on that.”
Had H1N1 had been as infectious and as deadly as COVID-19 it absolutely would have been a mass casualty event.
17. Trump told governors they were “on their own”
In a tweet sent last week, New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay claimed that during a conference call with governors about the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump told them they were “on their own” in getting the equipment they needed: “‘Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,’ Mr. Trump told the governors during the conference call, a recording of which was shared with The New York Times.”
She lied. Ms. Gay deliberately misrepresented Trump’s words. Trump actually told governors on the call: “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves. We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.”
The false narrative that Trump had told governors they were on their own, essentially to expect no help from the federal government, spread like wildfire.
16. Trump “dissolved” the WH pandemic response office
Two days after Trump declared the coronavirus a national emergency, the Washington Post published an opinion piece by Elizabeth Cameron, who ran the White House pandemic office under Obama, alleging that Trump had dissolved the office in 2018. She claimed that because of this, “the federal government’s slow response to the coronavirus isn’t a surprise.”
This claim spread like wildfire, even though it was completely false. Days after WaPo ran the piece, they published another article by Tim Morrison, former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the National Security Council, who debunked the allegation made by Cameron and other former Obama administration officials.
What good is there in spreading false information, as Elizabeth Cameron did? “This is Washington. It’s an election year,” Morrison laments. “Officials out of power want back into power after November. But the middle of a worldwide health emergency is not the time to be making tendentious accusations.”
15. Trump ignored early intel briefings on a possible pandemic
The Washington Post was the source of another bogus claim when they reported that intelligence agencies warned about a possible pandemic back in January and February and that Trump “failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen.”
It was fake news. The Trump administration had begun aggressively addressing the coronavirus threat immediately after China reported the discovery of the coronavirus to the World Health Organization. In addition to implementing various precautionary travel restrictions, the administration fast-tracked the use of testing kits, set up a Coronavirus Task Force, and implemented a travel ban with China, several weeks before WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic.
In actuality, it was Trump’s critics who weren’t taking the coronavirus situation seriously. Joe Biden even accused Trump of “fearmongering” and “xenophobia” for his travel ban, only to flip-flop on the issue months later.
14. Trump cut funding to the CDC & NIH
This is a lie that goes back all the way to February. In fact, both Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg (who hadn’t dropped out of the Democratic primary yet) accused President Trump of cutting funding to critical health agencies during a primary debate. “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he’s defunded — he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC, so we don’t have the organization we need. This is a very serious thing,” Bloomberg claimed.
The Obama-Biden administration “increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. … He’s wiped all that out. … He cut the funding for the entire effort,” Biden claimed back in February.
They were both wrong.
According to an Associated Press fact check, proposed budget cuts never happened, and funding increased. They acknowledged that some public health experts believe that a bigger concern than White House budgets “is the steady erosion of a CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness,” but, they note, “that decline was set in motion by a congressional budget measure that predates Trump.”
The AP also noted that “The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation — regardless of who’s president or whether specific instructions are coming from the White House. Those plans were put into place in anticipation of another flu pandemic, but are designed to work for any respiratory-borne disease.”
13. Trump fired a government vaccine expert for questioning the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine
Back in April, the New York Times published a story claiming President Trump fired Dr. Rick Bright, a leading government vaccine expert, because Bright questioned hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness in treating COVID-19. The narrative was quickly spread throughout the mainstream media, but, as PJM’s Tyler O’Neil noted at the time, “Bright championed the use of hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus,” and was actually transferred to the NIH, not fired, and was a champion of the controversial drug. “Dr. Bright, who served as director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), specifically asked the FDA to issue an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the emergency use of ‘oral formulations of chloroquine phosphate and hydroxychloroquine sulfate for the treatment of 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19).’” Bright also celebrated the FDA’s approval of hydroxychloroquine in internal emails published by Politico.
Bright may not have been happy about the transfer, but the bogus claim that he was fired for his opposition to hydroxychloroquine appears to have been made up by his lawyers, who just happened to be Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyers during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.
12. Trump wanted to reopen schools in spite of science against it
Over the summer, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany reiterated Trump’s call to reopen schools in the fall, pointing out that it’s “very damaging to our children” to be stuck at home. McEnany noted that other countries had successfully reopened schools and that the United States was “the outlier” by not doing so. She also reiterated that “The science is very clear on this,” that “the risk of critical illness from COVID is far less for children than that of seasonal flu.”
“The science is on our side here, and we encourage for localities and states to just simply follow the science, open our schools,” McEnany continued. “It’s very damaging to our children: There is a lack of reporting of abuse; there’s mental depressions that are not addressed; suicidal ideations that are not addressed when students are not in school. Our schools are extremely important, they’re essential, and they must reopen.”
Yet the media focused on a single sentence, taken out of context, to imply that Trump wanted to reopen schools in spite of the science. “The science should not stand in the way of this,” McEnany said, right before adding, “and as Dr. Scott Atlas said — I thought this was a good quote — ‘Of course, we can [do it]. Everyone else in the…Western world, our peer nations are doing it. We are the outlier here.’”
It was obvious that McEnany never meant to say or to imply that schools should reopen despite science saying it isn’t safe. She was arguing the exact opposite, but NBC News, the New York Times, The Guardian, PBS, the Daily Beast, the Washington Post, and many others deliberately took her out of context in their headlines. Even the CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield said it is “in the public health interest” to reopen schools for K-12 students.
11. Trump ignored experts by not shutting down the country earlier
Joe Biden has repeatedly attempted to blame President Trump for America’s coronavirus deaths because he didn’t shut down the country earlier than he did.
“We didn’t have to have over 6 million people contract COVID, over 186,000 people dead and climbing,” Biden said back in September. “It’s been pointed out by the University of Columbia Law School that if he had acted just one week earlier, 37,000 more people would have been alive. If he had acted two weeks earlier, 51,000. Maybe 31 and 57 or 51, but the point is over 80,000 people would still be alive.”
The World Health Organization didn’t even declare COVID-19 a pandemic until March 11. The next day, President Trump declared a national emergency. By then, there were only about 1,300 confirmed cases in the United States.
When President Trump released social-distancing guidelines on March 16, there were fewer than 3,800 confirmed cases in the United States.
Joe Biden has even claimed the country should have been closed down a month earlier than it was. But if that were true, why was Biden still holding rallies? In fact, Biden held campaign rallies on March 2, 3, 7, 9, 10 — all during the period he claimed the country should have already been shut down. Biden also delivered a speech in Pennsylvania four days after the state had declared a state of emergency. Despite the fact that Biden was holding campaign rallies into March, Biden claimed, “[Trump] didn’t listen to guys like me back in January saying we’d have a problem, an epidemic was on the way.” Biden was lying, and his actions prove this.
On February 16, a month prior to Trump’s social-distancing guidelines being issued, there were only 15 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States. No one was advocating for the country to be shut down, not Joe Biden, not the experts, not even Congress. During this same period of time that Biden said the country should have already been shut down, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi toured San Francisco’s Chinatown section and told Americans that “everything is fine” and “all is well,” and encouraged Americans to shop and eat there. “Come to Chinatown,” she said. “We just want everybody not to be afraid to come to Chinatown.” Pelosi also expressed confidence in the government’s response to the coronavirus. “I have confidence in Dr. Fauci at the National Institutes of Health, who has even further confidence in what we’re doing,” Pelosi told reporters.
In addition to this, one of the most significant actions taken by Trump, the travel ban with China, was actually opposed by Joe Biden and Trump’s critics on the left. Unfortunately for them, WHO experts admitted Trump’s actions saved lives in the United States.
Fox News contributor Liz Peek noted back in February, “Even before a single case of the virus erupted organically in our country […] and even as the administration had acted preemptively and effectively to keep virus carriers out of our country, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and others were eager to stoke fear and blame Donald Trump.”
In short, no one was pushing for shutting down the country before COVID-19 was declared a worldwide pandemic by the World Health Organization. Not Congress, not Biden, not even the experts.
10. Trump is to blame for the economic impact of the coronavirus
As expected, Democrats and the media want the public to blame Trump for the current state of the economy, which has been decimated by the coronavirus shutdowns. Joe Biden in particular has been making this a theme of his campaign. The reason they’re blaming the situation on Trump, of course, is that the economy was doing incredibly well prior to the shutdowns, and that fact was the most prominent narrative of Trump’s reelection campaign. After years of economic malaise under Barack Obama, President Trump actually delivered on an economic recovery that could actually be felt by most Americans.
But then the pandemic happened, and things changed. The economic situation we are experiencing is entirely because of the shutdowns, and, as Andy Puzder, a senior fellow at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy, noted, “the economic shutdown in the U.S. was bipartisan, just as shutdowns around the world had the support of multiple political parties.”
“Governors in the U.S. from both parties shut down their states’ economies in response to guidance from nonpartisan public health experts,” Puzder continued. “The point was to combat the spread of the coronavirus, reduce its impact on our health care system, and protect the health and lives of the American people.”
Both Democrats and Republicans knew the shutdowns would have economic consequences, but most deemed the tradeoffs worth the costs. As expected, we are now experiencing those economic consequences in terms of high unemployment and diminished growth.
That makes it particularly disturbing that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is attempting to blame President Trump for the bipartisan shutdown’s long-anticipated economic consequences. Reacting to the decline in second-quarter GDP, the former vice president said, “The depth of economic devastation our nation is experiencing is not an act of God, it’s a failure of presidential leadership.”
Further undermining the argument is that Biden claimed the country should have been shut down earlier than it was. Biden can’t simultaneously blame Trump for the economic impact of the shutdown while also supporting those shutdowns and claiming they should have been implemented earlier.
9. Trump was going to deny aid to sanctuary states
Back in April, the media went into a frenzy following remarks from President Trump allegedly threatening to withhold coronavirus aid to states with sanctuary cities. Spoiler alert: he didn’t.
Here’s what happened.
Trump was asked by a reporter about giving aid to states as part of an effort to stimulate the economy during the pandemic. Trump replied, “I think there’s a big difference with a state that lost money because of COVID and a state that’s been run very badly for 25 years. There’s a big difference, in my opinion. And, you know, we’d have to talk about things like payroll tax cuts. We’d have to talk about things like sanctuary cities, as an example.”
Trump added, “But we’re certainly open to talking, but it would really have to be COVID-related, not related for mismanagement over a long time — over a long period of time.”
“And you’re willing to make that distinction — that much of a distinction?” the reporter asked. “I can only imagine what some governors would say.”
“Well, it’s a very simple distinction to make,” Trump replied. “We’re not looking to do a bailout for a state that’s been — it’s unfair to — it’s unfair to many of the states, most of the states that have done such a good job. Okay?”
Trump was quite clearly indicating that he wanted to give aid for COVID-19 relief rather than hand out “blank checks” to poorly managed states and cities exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to get bailed out. While some states have been hit hard economically because of the coronavirus, others have been mismanaged for years. For example, a couple of years ago, Illinois was said to be on the path to bankruptcy. Should the government bail out Illinois for being so poorly managed? Other states with financial issues that predate the coronavirus could be looking at the pandemic as a quick fix to their financial problems, and it’s quite obvious that Trump doesn’t want to enable these poorly-run states.
8. There was a ventilator shortage
Desperate for narratives, the mainstream media tried all sorts of angles to make President Trump’s response to the coronavirus seem inefficient. One angle they tried was to claim there was a shortage of ventilators and personal protective equipment (PPE). Governor Cuomo claimed New York needed 40,000 ventilators and accused Trump of letting New Yorkers die when he did not provide them. Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont claimed that his state was on its own because the Strategic National Stockpile was depleted of medical supplies and PPE.
The Strategic National Stockpile was lacking in PPE, but the reason for that can be traced back to Barack Obama, who depleted the stockpile of N95 respirator masks during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and never restocked it.
When asked about the stockpile, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany explained, “We refilled that stockpile. We got the N-95 masks out — ventilators are another good example, not a single American died for lack of a ventilator — a hundred thousand ventilators in a hundred days, three-times what is produced in the average year. Three-times the amount of N95 respirators our health care industry uses.”
“We have delivered,” she continued. “We have cleaned up the mess that was very clearly left by President Obama and we got that out.”
The Trump administration should be commended for cleaning up Obama’s mess at the same time it delivered unprecedented amounts of equipment for states in need during the pandemic. Cuomo, who wanted 40,000 ventilators, ended up with about 6,000, and that was more than he actually needed; he eventually started giving them to other states who needed them more. In fact, the ventilator shortage was another politicized hoax, as Mayor de Blasio was blaming Trump for not getting him the ventilators he needed at the same time Governor Cuomo was giving ventilators away to other states.
7. Trump “muzzled” Dr. Fauci
In late February, the New York Times claimed that the Trump administration had “muzzled” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), by preventing him from speaking publicly about the coronavirus without approval from the administration.
It wasn’t true. But the claim was echoed throughout the mainstream media, and ultimately was brought up in a press briefing. Trump was asked directly about it and he let Dr. Fauci clear it up.
“I’ve never been muzzled, ever, and I’ve been doing this since Reagan,” he said. “I’m not being muzzled by this administration.”
Despite the fact this claim was debunked, Joe Biden kept repeating it as if it were true. “And, look, right now you have this president, hasn’t allowed his scientists to speak, number one,” Biden said on ABC’s This Week a couple of days after Fauci said unequivocally he wasn’t being muzzled. “He has the vice president speaking, not the scientists who know what they’re talking about, like Fauci.”
6. Trump said people should inject bleach to cure themselves
One of the most ridiculous false claims by the media was the allegation that Trump had suggested that people should inject bleach or Lysol into their bodies to cure themselves of the coronavirus.
The false claim originated from the following exchange during the White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing on April 23, where possible treatments were discussed, including UV light treatments. Trump said, “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.”
Later in the same briefing, a reporter asked, “The president mentioned the idea of cleaners, like bleach and isopropyl alcohol you mentioned. There’s no scenario that could be injected into a person, is there?”
It was Trump who replied, “It wouldn’t be through injection. We’re talking about through almost a cleaning, sterilization of an area. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work. But it certainly has a big effect if it’s on a stationary object.”
It was a reporter who actually connected bleach to injections, not Trump, who made a point to correct the reporter.
5. Joe Biden warned Trump about COVID-19
Joe Biden’s primary campaign strategy has been to attack Trump’s response to the coronavirus and claim that “it didn’t have to be this way.” Biden has also dabbled with claims that he was warning the country about the virus long before Trump was. His go-to “evidence” for this is his January 27 op-ed in USA Today.
“Back in January, I wrote an article for USA Today saying we’ve got a real problem,” Biden claimed at the CNN town hall.
But, no, not really. Even Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler noted back in April that Biden’s op-ed “was more of an attack on President Trump and a recollection of Obama administration steps taken against the 2014 Ebola outbreak than a detailed plan for action against a possible pandemic.”
Not only did the op-ed not contain any specific policies for combating the coronavirus, but it also panned “reactionary travel bans.” Trump would announce the travel ban with China three days after the op-ed ran, and Biden decried it as “hysterical xenophobia.”
Biden has repeatedly claimed he “sounded the alarm” and has been ahead of the curve when it comes to the coronavirus, but in reality, he’s lagged behind.
4. Trump ‘misled’ the public about COVID-19
The release of Bob Woodward’s book Rage had the usual suspects accusing President Trump of irresponsibly downplaying the COVID-19 virus, and accusing Trump of knowing the disease was “airborne” but keeping that information from the public.
This is an allegation that Biden has repeated on the campaign trail despite the fact it has been disputed by none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
During an interview on Fox News in September, Dr. Fauci said that Trump’s public statements about the virus were no different than sentiments expressed during White House Coronavirus Task Force meetings.
“In my discussions and the discussions of other task force members with the president, we were talking about the reality of what was going on, and then we would get up in front of the press conferences … he really didn’t say anything different than we discussed when we were with him,” said Fauci. “I didn’t really see any discrepancies between what he told us and what we told him in what he ultimately came out publicly and said.”
“Did you get a sense that [President Trump] was or wasn’t playing this down?” Fox News’ John Roberts asked.
“No, no, I didn’t. I didn’t get any sense that he was distorting anything,” Fauci replied. “In my discussions with him, they were always straightforward about the concerns that we had. We related that to him. When he would go out, I’d hear him discussing the same sort of things.”
3. Trump ‘Doesn’t listen to the experts’
Another theme of the Biden campaign narrative on COVID-19 is that Joe will “listen to the experts” while Trump has not. “I think it’s important to follow the science. Listen to the experts. Do what they tell you,” Biden said.
Once again, the narrative that Trump doesn’t listen to the experts has been disputed by Dr. Fauci.
“The first and only time that Dr. [Deborah] Birx and I went in and formally made a recommendation to the president to actually have a shutdown in the sense of strong mitigation, we discussed it,” Fauci said back in April. “Obviously there would be concerns by some, and in fact, that might have some negative consequences. Nonetheless, the president listened to the recommendation.”
Trump has made no secret that he wasn’t thrilled about shutting down the strong economy he had created, but he did it. If President Trump doesn’t listen to the experts, why would he have done exactly what they told him to do?
2. The United States ‘leads the world’ in COVID-19 deaths
Every COVID-19 milestone reported by the media seems to want to paint the United States as having the worst record against the virus. “US Leads the World in Death Toll from Coronavirus with 150,000,” the Associated Press reported on July 29. Many other outlets have published similar stories over the past few months. This is obviously by design, as the media selectively uses raw numbers over per capita statistics, or ignores proper context. For example, confirmed cases have skyrocketed in the United States, but the United States is also leading the world in tests given, both in raw numbers and per capita. Naturally, case numbers for the United States are going to go up relative to other countries. Of course, I’ve always maintained that comparing countries by confirmed cases, even per capita, is not a great metric because those numbers rely so much on testing capability, which varies from country to country.
COVID-19 deaths per capita is a far more reliable metric to base a comparison on, so let’s look at the numbers as compiled by Statista.
- Peru (1055.51 per million)
- Belgium (984.67)
- Spain (757.04)
- Bolivia (756.1)
- Brazil 753.23)
- Chile (744.93)
- Ecuador (726.5)
- Mexico (711.52
- United States (693.86)
- United Kingdom (686.25)
The United States doesn’t have the highest number of deaths per capita in the world. Oh, but wait, there’s more. In the past, I’ve pointed out how Governor Cuomo botched New York’s response to the pandemic, turning New York (and more specifically, New York City) into the epicenter of the pandemic for the entire world—skewing the United States’ numbers. I’ve previously shown how the rankings change when you separate New York from the rest of the country. Let’s see how the rankings look now:
- New York State (1,711.93 per million)
- Peru (1,055.51 per million)
- Belgium (984.67)
- Spain (757.04)
- Bolivia (756.1)
- Brazil 753.23)
- Chile (744.93)
- Ecuador (726.5)
- Mexico (711.52)
- United Kingdom (686.25)
New York State comes in on top, while the rest of the United States drops out of the top ten entirely, sinking to #15 with 629.99 deaths per million. So much for “leading the world” in COVID-19 deaths.
1. Trump called the coronavirus “a hoax”
To this day Joe Biden, the left, and the media all claim Trump called the coronavirus a hoax. He said no such thing. While the country was distracted by impeachment, the Trump administration was busy addressing the coronavirus outbreak, taking various measures to limit the spread of the virus in the United States. Impeachment quickly faded, so they decided to aggressively politicize his response to the coronavirus outbreak. Joe Biden even called Trump’s travel ban with China an overreaction and accused him of trying to scare the public. “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia ± hysterical xenophobia — and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science.”
President Trump responded to these allegations during a rally in South Carolina, calling the Democrats’ politicization of the coronavirus “the new hoax.” The media jumped on this line, claiming that Trump called the virus, not the Democrats’ reactions to it, a hoax. The lie spread like wildfire and Joe Biden even used the lie as a talking point on the stump. There was quite a stir when Politico’s story repeating the false claim that Trump called the virus a hoax was flagged by Facebook fact-checkers as fake news, but other fact-checkers couldn’t deny that the claim was false either.
_____
Matt Margolis is the author of Airborne: How The Liberal Media Weaponized The Coronavirus Against Donald Trump and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
jewishjournal.com Beware the 1619-ing of American Jewry By Gil Troy 20-26 minutes Look closely. Parts of the American Jewish community are silently committing ideological suicide. Most American Jews have long embraced a liberal American dreamism that allowed many to live well while doing good. They celebrated prosperity and liberty while voting liberal and donating generously. It works surprisingly well for them — so why abandon this effective survival strategy so quickly? That’s what happened this summer. In a matter of weeks, leading parts of the mainstream Jewish community joined the media, major corporations, and their neighbors in swallowing the 1619 Project’s perspective of America — that racism is systemic, ineradicable, and programmed into the nation’s DNA. This indictment is not only contestable — it also denies the expansive American identity and American Jewish identity that built the United States and American Jewry. The 1619 Project was a series of New York Times essays pivoting American history around the first major consignment of slaves to arrive in the British North American colonies rather than the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. By repudiating America’s defining historical narrative, the project questions America’s core values. Jews are not targeted here, but American Jewry’s narratives and values have become collateral damage. Many schools are already teaching 1619’s dogma. But if Jewish day schools and other Jewish institutions surrender to this worldview uncritically, they will eviscerate whatever Jewishness remains within them while erasing the proud Americanism that has made American Jewry rich, proud, free, and happy. Noble intentions spurred this act of ideological self-destruction. Following George Floyd’s brutal murder in May, many Jews tried understanding African-American anguish. Mainstream organizations, including the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, offered educational materials to fight racism. But the anti-racist links they shared peddled this one re-interpretation of American history based, broadly, on a rigid reading of American racism. Clicking on the sources establishment Jewish organizations provided in email after email, I did not find one article offering a liberal perspective — or any alternative viewpoint. Instead, the 1619 orthodoxy has apparently become the New Blue American Gospel — and the New American Jewish Gospel, too. Joshua Griffith looks out towards the street as he awaits the start of a candlelight vigil in celebration of George Floyd’s 47th birthday on October 14, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) American Jews must not sweep racism under the rug. It’s time to shine a light on racism in ways that are thought-provoking, not propagandizing, empowering for all Americans, not identity-shattering for most. We need healthy debates about racism that are complex and multi-dimensional, not judgmental or suffocating. We need healthy debates about racism that are complex and multi-dimensional, not judgmental or suffocating. By analyzing the anti-racist dogma objectively, American Jews will realize their core identity messaging is under a well-meaning, yet debilitating, attack. Rejecting the false choice between the “God damn America” version of history and the “God bless America” version, they should seek the constructive middle ground. No serious educator today peddles the cartoonish feel-good U.S. history our grandparents imbibed — so there’s no need to overcompensate. As a history professor, I strive to transcend partisanship, encourage analysis, and free students from the presumption that every moment from yesterday must be exploited to demand change today. Studying history involves assessing, contextualizing, weighing, and wondering: how central are race, slavery, and other sins in understanding America, how do we assess our progress, and what deeper understandings of America’s ideals emerge? In caricaturing America too harshly, 1619 neutralizes the most effective tools Americans used to make America better. These include faith in American ideals, trust in their fellow Americans, and hope that America can continue to become that “more perfect union.” A new balance — acknowledging racism and racial progress, David Duke and Martin Luther King Jr. — will allow us to preserve our story too: emphasizing that Jewish immigrant success was rarely on the backs of others, usually by the sweat of our brows. The American Jewish story is about being accepted (more than less) and about exploring, often expanding, America’s pathways to progress, individually and collectively. We don’t deny anti-Semitism. And we shouldn’t ignore racism among Jews. But we should view everything in perspective. And we celebrate Jewish distinctiveness, not because we’re better than others, but because we become better people when we also study our values, continue our traditions, and build our community. A Racial Reprogramming In August 2019, the New York Times launched the 1619 Project, which claims that “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.” The Pulitzer Center spread educational kits nationwide. This PR campaign created an instant spin for a growing anti-racist movement characterizing America as white supremacist. “1619” now so symbolizes the new backlash against American history that Donald Trump enjoys bashing it. But even leading never-Trumpers critiqued 1619: Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, who drafted (with Brenda Wineapple) a petition of 750 historians endorsing Trump’s impeachment, joined other historians in cataloging the project’s inaccuracies. Northwestern’s Leslie M. Harris reported in Politico that she fact-checked 1619 and debunked the claim that the patriots fought the American Revolution to preserve slavery; the 1619 Project still published the claim. (The New York Times has since published a note on the fact and belatedly changed the original text “to make clear that this was a primary motivation for some of the colonists,” not all.) A headline from the 1619 Project Nevertheless, many Jewish community resource lists promoted the 1619 articles, curricula, and podcast uncritically as “Resources for Discussions about Racism, Inclusion and Justice.” Leading organizations invited Jews to “Engage in Racial Justice,” making sure that you’re “doing the work,” that you begin “listening better.” While the pain of the testimonials about racial discrimination is searing and demanding our attention, and while some of the essays were more hopeful about healing, many of these materials were not invitations to thoughtful discussion, but to a reprogramming. In one source, for example, one interviewee deemed America irredeemably racist, finding many Jews guilty of “white privilege.” One recommended curriculum admitted, “there’s no neutral” here. Some of today’s dominant anti-racist activists decree that racism has “been purposely built into the system.” The Yale historian Matthew Frye Jacobson claims that immigrants’ “whiteness, not any kind of New World magnanimity … opened the Golden Door.” Jewish communal bulletins echo Michelle Alexander’s charge that “Criminal Justice is the New Jim Crow,” equating today’s lamentable abuses with the sweeping, systemic infrastructure of Southern segregation that oppressed millions for decades. And, in the Atlantic, Ibram X. Kendi, author of the 2019 best-seller “How to be an Anti-Racist,” reinterprets American individualism as seeking a “constitutional freedom to harm” — epitomized by slaveholding. Kendi concludes that today’s murderous individualists refusing to wear masks prove, as the title states, “we’re still living and dying in the slaveholders’ republic.” These ideologues — all promoted on Jewish communal websites — keep reframing American history to attack “Whiteness” as a defining identity that bestows “privilege,” meaning “unquestioned and unearned … advantages, entitlements, benefits,” that greedily seeks to perpetuate that power through “White supremacy culture.” This analysis popularizes the three-decade-old critical race theory questioning “the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and principles of constitutional law” and the half-century conversation about identity politics — “focusing upon our own oppression.” These tendentious articles, books, and worksheets often come packaged in heavy-handed curricula. One popular syllabus that three activist-educators drafted, “Scaffolded Anti-Racist Resources,” starts with “Contact” — when “folks” are “confronted with active racism or real-world experiences that highlight their whiteness.” It builds to “Autonomy,” where learners have “done the work to recognize their own identity, so that they can effectively be anti-racist.” This stage offers 22 tests of your “solidarity,” including becoming “a disruptive presence in white spaces,” “challeng[ing] your country’s values…. denounc[ing] our current president,” endorsing “costly reparations,” accepting “black rage,” and being “suspicious of predominantly white institutions.” The Privilege Checklist, the Harvard Racial Bias Test, the Anti-Racist Educator Self-Examination Questionnaire, and other recommended gut-checks monitor individual compliance because you “either reinforce the dominant education structure or fight against it.” Meanwhile, the Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecard tallies up assigned authors’ racial, gender, and sexual diversity. The scorecard’s scale ranges from Culturally Destructive — which “likely centers White or Eurocentric ideas and culture” — to Culturally Responsive, which is “is likely humanizing, liberatory, and equity oriented.” In fairness, important insights spawned each politicized slogan. “White privilege” and “White fragility,” for instance, highlight whites’ invisible advantages in a society still struggling to eliminate racism. But, when weaponized, the concepts become toxic and illiberal, silencing some individuals and ideas, privileging others. This gloomy Europeanized reading of America is Hobbesian at heart, assuming most lives are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” It sees zero-sum power games everywhere. But America, at its best, was always Lockean and Jeffersonian. John Locke transcended Hobbesian despair, trusting a democratic “social contract,” legitimized by “the consent of the governed” to guarantee individuals’ “life, liberty, and property.” Americans cheered Thomas Jefferson’s leap forward — despite his ownership of slaves— transforming “property” into “the pursuit of happiness,” affirming that “all men are created equal.” That’s why Americans traditionally focus on ideas more than power, on opportunities not limitations. This optimism, this culture and politics of possibility, was one of the great gifts America bestowed on Jews and millions of others. Sadly, the Africans who arrived on slave ships received the opposite. But as Robert F. Kennedy taught, Americans do not “see things as they are, and ask why,” but “dream of things that never were, and ask why not.” American optimism, this culture and politics of possibility, was one of the great gifts America bestowed on Jews and millions of others. Teaching American Jewish Self-Loathing not Self-Esteem As my inbox swelled with Jewish communal “resources” on race, I started wondering how Jewish day schools would now teach American history. The Forward confirmed that some Jewish schools were teaching the perspectives raised by 1619. “Can Jewish schools meet the challenge of Black Lives Matter?” one headline asked — “the” again assuming unanimity. The article raised other questions: “How do you teach students to understand themselves to be both a part of a historically oppressed minority and, in America, beneficiaries of a social and political system built on racism?” In that piece, Professor Ronit Stahl asked, “Where is the antiracist education that focuses on a reckoning with the Jewish role in American racism?” Asking around, I discovered that many day school administrators felt pressured to “woke” up. Reinterpreting American history as one long white attempt to suppress Blacks robs American Jews of pride in their own achievements and delight in America’s welcome. Imagine attending Jewish day school today. Your older siblings studied America’s paradoxes in history class. They learned about immigrants who succeeded and who failed. They studied the anguish of being Black in America — and the improvements by 2020, compared to 1920 and 1820. They graduated appreciating individuals’ power, motivated by America’s expansive ideas, to improve themselves, their country, and their world. They nodded approvingly at Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s statement during her 1993 Senate Supreme Court confirmation hearings that her grandparents “had the foresight to leave the old country, when Jewish ancestry and faith meant exposure to pogroms and denigration of one’s human worth. What has become of me could happen only in America. Like so many others, I owe so much to the entry this Nation afforded to people yearning to breathe free.” Your history class, however, takes 1619’s cue. Stewing in the legitimate grievances of Blacks and others, you may be made to feel guilty because you live in a nice house, and your parents can afford to send you to day school. How will that affect you politically, culturally, Jewishly? Now, you may risk being programmed to scoff at Justice Ginsburg’s delightful riddle: “What is the difference between a bookkeeper in Brooklyn and a Supreme Court Justice… one generation.” As a historian, I find the inaccuracies and the simplistic, censorious interpretation dismaying. As a Jew, I find them terrifying. American individualism has facilitated Jewish material success along with Jewish dignity and safety. Jews fall into our own forms of groupthink, frequently talking about ourselves “as Jews.” But at our best, this solidarity becomes a communal launching pad for the good life, not a collective life sentence to be forever oppressed. Assuming that how you look determines who you are, how you act, and what you believe is untrue and insulting. Additionally, encasing Jews in whiteness imposes automatic guilt on Jews by caricaturing them as white, rich, and exploitative. Naturally, because they prize whiteness, true white supremacists don’t count Jews as white. Hen Mazzig identifies as an Israeli Zionist, and a Queer Jew of Color, a Black Lives Matter supporter with grandparents from Iraq and Tunisia. He observes that “conversations that center on white supremacy… put Jews on the defensive” while minimizing the modern surge of anti-Semitism because, in America, racism is always harsher than Jew-hatred. It’s easier to raise proud Americans and proud Jews steeped in three inspiring, empowering “I”s — individualism, ideas, and improvement — rather than three toxic, paralyzing “G”s — groupthink, guilt, and grievance. The Hobbesian pessimism clashes with the Jewish belief in sanctity, in seeking God, goodness and tikkun olam. 1619’s determinism, which characterizes America as riddled with ineradicable racist structures, contradicts the American Jewish charge to do your best, try getting ahead, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and feel good if you succeed. Branding whiteness an original sin then claiming immigrants only prospered by exploiting Blacks creates a history of blame and despair, not responsibility and redemption. Jews do not view life as one endless power-play. Morality, spirituality, faith, goodness, hope (Hatikvah!) are not just values in Jewish life — Jews in America and Israel often activated them as constructive historical forces. Americans All? Americans Still? Growing up as the grandson of Eastern European immigrants who reached New York before America started restricting immigrants in the 1920s, I felt we were the Chosen People’s chosen few. Nazis chose Jews as targets. Israeli Jews chose to fight for Jewish independence in the Middle East cauldron. My grandparents chose to make it to the goldene medina – and we benefited from their toughness, wisdom, and good fortune. As a kid, I loved an already-old book from 1941 called “Americans All: A Pageant of Great Americans.” The list included women like Clara Barton and immigrants like Alexander Graham Bell, but neither Blacks nor Jews. Still, the title welcomed me, a Jewish kid from Queens, into the American experience. My friends and I knew we had won the Jewish history jackpot. Finally, Jewish kids were born in a country where we weren’t threatened; we were free, we fit in, we could even follow baseball like everyone else. Most important, we could “make it.” Being born into the innocence of “Americans All” is like being raised believing in God or praying wholeheartedly. You’re anchored for life, rooted profoundly, even if you stray or later learn hard truths muddying the picture. Clearly, racism deprived most African-Americans of that lofty welcome. Today’s long-overdue racial reckoning challenges Jews, as parents, educators, and citizens, to find a nuanced yet patriotic message. But the 1619ers’ declaration that “our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true” is self-defeating. Ideals not yet fulfilled are not untrue. The red-white-and-blue calls for equality, for liberty, for individual dignity as beacons that many Americans in every generation pursued — and that, decade by decade, we keep coming closer to realizing. Even if it’s not yet Americans All, it’s not Americans You’ll Never Be either. As Jews, as Americans, a nuanced, constructive, vision could be Americans Still, even Americans Despite… Toward a New Historical Balance? Jewish educators should consult with historians and establish blue-ribbon advisory boards to develop philosophies of history, teaching strategies, and curricula. Meanwhile, these texts could help reframe the revisionism: Consult Marc Bloch’s “The Historian’s Craft” to reflect on the art of history, warning that “the mania for making judgments” is a “satanic enemy of true history.” The book asks: why teach history — to develop critical skills of writing, research, synthesis, and analysis, or to right historical wrongs? Read The New York Times 1619 essays — along with the historians’ critiques, the warnings that 1619 repudiates American and Jewish understandings of history, and the civil rights activist Robert Woodson’s 1776 Unites, which seeks to “reject victimhood culture.” Examine Zionist texts repelling Jews’ oppressive past without forgetting it. Early Zionists like Joseph Hayyim Brenner detailed the Jewish despair from Jew-hatred while seeking redemption. David Hartmann denounced the “moral narcissism” of perpetual or competitive victimhood. “We will mourn forever because of the memory of Auschwitz,” he wrote. “We will build a healthy new society because of the memory of Sinai.” Consider yesterday’s pain and tomorrow’s opportunities while inoculating against orthodoxies by exploring African-Americans’ internal debate. Pair Ta-Nehisi Coates’ despairing letter to his 15-year-old son, “Between the World and Me,” with Barack Obama’s 2008 speech about race, insisting: “America can change…. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.” Finally, ask, what is the end goal? Contrast Martin Luther King’s “dream” of a country where his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” with Amanda E. Lewis’s article, “There is no ‘Race’ in the Schoolyard: Color-Blind Ideology in an (Almost) All-White School.” From Finger-Pointing to Dreaming Discussing “Black-Jewish relations” usually romanticizes past cooperation while highlighting current tensions. Let’s evolve from one-way finger-pointing exercises between victimized Blacks and guilty Jews to mutual exchanges, wondering how Blacks and Jews fit in — and don’t fit in — as fellow Americans. Piling on accusations alienates; sharing experiences heals and bonds. 1619’s framework inflicts sterile conversations; it indicts but doesn’t explain. Freezing America in the 1619 past while condemning it in the present risks robbing Americans of a shared future. Jews understand how yesterday’s unhealed scars intensify the anguish of bigotry today. As Americans, Jews, educators, our mission is to free our children from history’s traumas, never forgetting what we endured while remembering the progress we all have made. The new world we seek — and have been building since 1776 — requires consensus, not conflict, nuance, not negation, hope, not hatred. Freezing America in the 1619 past while condemning it in the present risks robbing Americans of a shared future. It’s a leap — and a choice. Martin Luther King knew he could “react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force.” The choice he made proved constructively infectious — and epoch-making. I was lucky. I grew up relatively pain-free, envisioning the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court cases that keep refining our freedoms as forming a magical circle, ever-expanding to bless more Americans with more liberty. Tragically, millions of others, especially African-Americans, experienced a noose. The message of American history — and Jewish history — is that we all benefit when all Americans can imagine this magic circle, working to widen and strengthen it, rather than surrendering to the haters’ hatred or their victims’ understandable, yet often-paralyzing, despair. Gil Troy is a distinguished scholar in North American History at McGill University. The author of 10 books on presidential history, his latest works include “The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s,” and editing the updated version of Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. and Fred L. Israel’s “History of American Presidential Elections.” You'll love our roundtable.
Beware the 1619-ing of American Jewry
Look closely. Parts of the American Jewish community are silently committing ideological suicide. Most American Jews have long embraced a liberal American dreamism that allowed many to live well while doing good. They celebrated prosperity and liberty while voting liberal and donating generously. It works surprisingly well for them — so why abandon this effective survival strategy so quickly?
That’s what happened this summer. In a matter of weeks, leading parts of the mainstream Jewish community joined the media, major corporations, and their neighbors in swallowing the 1619 Project’s perspective of America — that racism is systemic, ineradicable, and programmed into the nation’s DNA. This indictment is not only contestable — it also denies the expansive American identity and American Jewish identity that built the United States and American Jewry.
The 1619 Project was a series of New York Times essays pivoting American history around the first major consignment of slaves to arrive in the British North American colonies rather than the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. By repudiating America’s defining historical narrative, the project questions America’s core values. Jews are not targeted here, but American Jewry’s narratives and values have become collateral damage.
Many schools are already teaching 1619’s dogma. But if Jewish day schools and other Jewish institutions surrender to this worldview uncritically, they will eviscerate whatever Jewishness remains within them while erasing the proud Americanism that has made American Jewry rich, proud, free, and happy.
Noble intentions spurred this act of ideological self-destruction. Following George Floyd’s brutal murder in May, many Jews tried understanding African-American anguish. Mainstream organizations, including the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, offered educational materials to fight racism. But the anti-racist links they shared peddled this one re-interpretation of American history based, broadly, on a rigid reading of American racism. Clicking on the sources establishment Jewish organizations provided in email after email, I did not find one article offering a liberal perspective — or any alternative viewpoint. Instead, the 1619 orthodoxy has apparently become the New Blue American Gospel — and the New American Jewish Gospel, too.
American Jews must not sweep racism under the rug. It’s time to shine a light on racism in ways that are thought-provoking, not propagandizing, empowering for all Americans, not identity-shattering for most. We need healthy debates about racism that are complex and multi-dimensional, not judgmental or suffocating.
We need healthy debates about racism that are complex and multi-dimensional, not judgmental or suffocating.
By analyzing the anti-racist dogma objectively, American Jews will realize their core identity messaging is under a well-meaning, yet debilitating, attack. Rejecting the false choice between the “God damn America” version of history and the “God bless America” version, they should seek the constructive middle ground. No serious educator today peddles the cartoonish feel-good U.S. history our grandparents imbibed — so there’s no need to overcompensate.
As a history professor, I strive to transcend partisanship, encourage analysis, and free students from the presumption that every moment from yesterday must be exploited to demand change today. Studying history involves assessing, contextualizing, weighing, and wondering: how central are race, slavery, and other sins in understanding America, how do we assess our progress, and what deeper understandings of America’s ideals emerge? In caricaturing America too harshly, 1619 neutralizes the most effective tools Americans used to make America better. These include faith in American ideals, trust in their fellow Americans, and hope that America can continue to become that “more perfect union.”
A new balance — acknowledging racism and racial progress, David Duke and Martin Luther King Jr. — will allow us to preserve our story too: emphasizing that Jewish immigrant success was rarely on the backs of others, usually by the sweat of our brows. The American Jewish story is about being accepted (more than less) and about exploring, often expanding, America’s pathways to progress, individually and collectively. We don’t deny anti-Semitism. And we shouldn’t ignore racism among Jews. But we should view everything in perspective. And we celebrate Jewish distinctiveness, not because we’re better than others, but because we become better people when we also study our values, continue our traditions, and build our community.
A Racial Reprogramming
In August 2019, the New York Times launched the 1619 Project, which claims that “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.” The Pulitzer Center spread educational kits nationwide. This PR campaign created an instant spin for a growing anti-racist movement characterizing America as white supremacist.
“1619” now so symbolizes the new backlash against American history that Donald Trump enjoys bashing it. But even leading never-Trumpers critiqued 1619: Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, who drafted (with Brenda Wineapple) a petition of 750 historians endorsing Trump’s impeachment, joined other historians in cataloging the project’s inaccuracies. Northwestern’s Leslie M. Harris reported in Politico that she fact-checked 1619 and debunked the claim that the patriots fought the American Revolution to preserve slavery; the 1619 Project still published the claim. (The New York Times has since published a note on the fact and belatedly changed the original text “to make clear that this was a primary motivation for some of the colonists,” not all.)
Nevertheless, many Jewish community resource lists promoted the 1619 articles, curricula, and podcast uncritically as “Resources for Discussions about Racism, Inclusion and Justice.” Leading organizations invited Jews to “Engage in Racial Justice,” making sure that you’re “doing the work,” that you begin “listening better.”
While the pain of the testimonials about racial discrimination is searing and demanding our attention, and while some of the essays were more hopeful about healing, many of these materials were not invitations to thoughtful discussion, but to a reprogramming. In one source, for example, one interviewee deemed America irredeemably racist, finding many Jews guilty of “white privilege.” One recommended curriculum admitted, “there’s no neutral” here.
Some of today’s dominant anti-racist activists decree that racism has “been purposely built into the system.” The Yale historian Matthew Frye Jacobson claims that immigrants’ “whiteness, not any kind of New World magnanimity … opened the Golden Door.” Jewish communal bulletins echo Michelle Alexander’s charge that “Criminal Justice is the New Jim Crow,” equating today’s lamentable abuses with the sweeping, systemic infrastructure of Southern segregation that oppressed millions for decades. And, in the Atlantic, Ibram X. Kendi, author of the 2019 best-seller “How to be an Anti-Racist,” reinterprets American individualism as seeking a “constitutional freedom to harm” — epitomized by slaveholding. Kendi concludes that today’s murderous individualists refusing to wear masks prove, as the title states, “we’re still living and dying in the slaveholders’ republic.”
These ideologues — all promoted on Jewish communal websites — keep reframing American history to attack “Whiteness” as a defining identity that bestows “privilege,” meaning “unquestioned and unearned … advantages, entitlements, benefits,” that greedily seeks to perpetuate that power through “White supremacy culture.” This analysis popularizes the three-decade-old critical race theory questioning “the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and principles of constitutional law” and the half-century conversation about identity politics — “focusing upon our own oppression.”
These tendentious articles, books, and worksheets often come packaged in heavy-handed curricula. One popular syllabus that three activist-educators drafted, “Scaffolded Anti-Racist Resources,” starts with “Contact” — when “folks” are “confronted with active racism or real-world experiences that highlight their whiteness.” It builds to “Autonomy,” where learners have “done the work to recognize their own identity, so that they can effectively be anti-racist.” This stage offers 22 tests of your “solidarity,” including becoming “a disruptive presence in white spaces,” “challeng[ing] your country’s values…. denounc[ing] our current president,” endorsing “costly reparations,” accepting “black rage,” and being “suspicious of predominantly white institutions.”
The Privilege Checklist, the Harvard Racial Bias Test, the Anti-Racist Educator Self-Examination Questionnaire, and other recommended gut-checks monitor individual compliance because you “either reinforce the dominant education structure or fight against it.” Meanwhile, the Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecard tallies up assigned authors’ racial, gender, and sexual diversity. The scorecard’s scale ranges from Culturally Destructive — which “likely centers White or Eurocentric ideas and culture” — to Culturally Responsive, which is “is likely humanizing, liberatory, and equity oriented.”
In fairness, important insights spawned each politicized slogan. “White privilege” and “White fragility,” for instance, highlight whites’ invisible advantages in a society still struggling to eliminate racism. But, when weaponized, the concepts become toxic and illiberal, silencing some individuals and ideas, privileging others.
This gloomy Europeanized reading of America is Hobbesian at heart, assuming most lives are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” It sees zero-sum power games everywhere. But America, at its best, was always Lockean and Jeffersonian. John Locke transcended Hobbesian despair, trusting a democratic “social contract,” legitimized by “the consent of the governed” to guarantee individuals’ “life, liberty, and property.” Americans cheered Thomas Jefferson’s leap forward — despite his ownership of slaves— transforming “property” into “the pursuit of happiness,” affirming that “all men are created equal.” That’s why Americans traditionally focus on ideas more than power, on opportunities not limitations.
This optimism, this culture and politics of possibility, was one of the great gifts America bestowed on Jews and millions of others. Sadly, the Africans who arrived on slave ships received the opposite. But as Robert F. Kennedy taught, Americans do not “see things as they are, and ask why,” but “dream of things that never were, and ask why not.”
American optimism, this culture and politics of possibility, was one of the great gifts America bestowed on Jews and millions of others.
Teaching American Jewish Self-Loathing not Self-Esteem
As my inbox swelled with Jewish communal “resources” on race, I started wondering how Jewish day schools would now teach American history. The Forward confirmed that some Jewish schools were teaching the perspectives raised by 1619. “Can Jewish schools meet the challenge of Black Lives Matter?” one headline asked — “the” again assuming unanimity. The article raised other questions: “How do you teach students to understand themselves to be both a part of a historically oppressed minority and, in America, beneficiaries of a social and political system built on racism?” In that piece, Professor Ronit Stahl asked, “Where is the antiracist education that focuses on a reckoning with the Jewish role in American racism?” Asking around, I discovered that many day school administrators felt pressured to “woke” up.
Reinterpreting American history as one long white attempt to suppress Blacks robs American Jews of pride in their own achievements and delight in America’s welcome. Imagine attending Jewish day school today. Your older siblings studied America’s paradoxes in history class. They learned about immigrants who succeeded and who failed. They studied the anguish of being Black in America — and the improvements by 2020, compared to 1920 and 1820. They graduated appreciating individuals’ power, motivated by America’s expansive ideas, to improve themselves, their country, and their world.
They nodded approvingly at Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s statement during her 1993 Senate Supreme Court confirmation hearings that her grandparents “had the foresight to leave the old country, when Jewish ancestry and faith meant exposure to pogroms and denigration of one’s human worth. What has become of me could happen only in America. Like so many others, I owe so much to the entry this Nation afforded to people yearning to breathe free.”
Your history class, however, takes 1619’s cue. Stewing in the legitimate grievances of Blacks and others, you may be made to feel guilty because you live in a nice house, and your parents can afford to send you to day school. How will that affect you politically, culturally, Jewishly? Now, you may risk being programmed to scoff at Justice Ginsburg’s delightful riddle: “What is the difference between a bookkeeper in Brooklyn and a Supreme Court Justice… one generation.”
As a historian, I find the inaccuracies and the simplistic, censorious interpretation dismaying. As a Jew, I find them terrifying.
American individualism has facilitated Jewish material success along with Jewish dignity and safety. Jews fall into our own forms of groupthink, frequently talking about ourselves “as Jews.” But at our best, this solidarity becomes a communal launching pad for the good life, not a collective life sentence to be forever oppressed. Assuming that how you look determines who you are, how you act, and what you believe is untrue and insulting.
Additionally, encasing Jews in whiteness imposes automatic guilt on Jews by caricaturing them as white, rich, and exploitative. Naturally, because they prize whiteness, true white supremacists don’t count Jews as white.
Hen Mazzig identifies as an Israeli Zionist, and a Queer Jew of Color, a Black Lives Matter supporter with grandparents from Iraq and Tunisia. He observes that “conversations that center on white supremacy… put Jews on the defensive” while minimizing the modern surge of anti-Semitism because, in America, racism is always harsher than Jew-hatred.
It’s easier to raise proud Americans and proud Jews steeped in three inspiring, empowering “I”s — individualism, ideas, and improvement — rather than three toxic, paralyzing “G”s — groupthink, guilt, and grievance. The Hobbesian pessimism clashes with the Jewish belief in sanctity, in seeking God, goodness and tikkun olam. 1619’s determinism, which characterizes America as riddled with ineradicable racist structures, contradicts the American Jewish charge to do your best, try getting ahead, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and feel good if you succeed.
Branding whiteness an original sin then claiming immigrants only prospered by exploiting Blacks creates a history of blame and despair, not responsibility and redemption. Jews do not view life as one endless power-play. Morality, spirituality, faith, goodness, hope (Hatikvah!) are not just values in Jewish life — Jews in America and Israel often activated them as constructive historical forces.
Americans All? Americans Still?
Growing up as the grandson of Eastern European immigrants who reached New York before America started restricting immigrants in the 1920s, I felt we were the Chosen People’s chosen few. Nazis chose Jews as targets. Israeli Jews chose to fight for Jewish independence in the Middle East cauldron. My grandparents chose to make it to the goldene medina – and we benefited from their toughness, wisdom, and good fortune.
As a kid, I loved an already-old book from 1941 called “Americans All: A Pageant of Great Americans.” The list included women like Clara Barton and immigrants like Alexander Graham Bell, but neither Blacks nor Jews. Still, the title welcomed me, a Jewish kid from Queens, into the American experience. My friends and I knew we had won the Jewish history jackpot. Finally, Jewish kids were born in a country where we weren’t threatened; we were free, we fit in, we could even follow baseball like everyone else. Most important, we could “make it.”
Being born into the innocence of “Americans All” is like being raised believing in God or praying wholeheartedly. You’re anchored for life, rooted profoundly, even if you stray or later learn hard truths muddying the picture.
Clearly, racism deprived most African-Americans of that lofty welcome. Today’s long-overdue racial reckoning challenges Jews, as parents, educators, and citizens, to find a nuanced yet patriotic message. But the 1619ers’ declaration that “our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true” is self-defeating. Ideals not yet fulfilled are not untrue. The red-white-and-blue calls for equality, for liberty, for individual dignity as beacons that many Americans in every generation pursued — and that, decade by decade, we keep coming closer to realizing. Even if it’s not yet Americans All, it’s not Americans You’ll Never Be either. As Jews, as Americans, a nuanced, constructive, vision could be Americans Still, even Americans Despite…
Toward a New Historical Balance?
Jewish educators should consult with historians and establish blue-ribbon advisory boards to develop philosophies of history, teaching strategies, and curricula. Meanwhile, these texts could help reframe the revisionism:
- Consult Marc Bloch’s “The Historian’s Craft” to reflect on the art of history, warning that “the mania for making judgments” is a “satanic enemy of true history.” The book asks: why teach history — to develop critical skills of writing, research, synthesis, and analysis, or to right historical wrongs?
- Read The New York Times 1619 essays — along with the historians’ critiques, the warnings that 1619 repudiates American and Jewish understandings of history, and the civil rights activist Robert Woodson’s 1776 Unites, which seeks to “reject victimhood culture.”
- Examine Zionist texts repelling Jews’ oppressive past without forgetting it. Early Zionists like Joseph Hayyim Brenner detailed the Jewish despair from Jew-hatred while seeking redemption. David Hartmann denounced the “moral narcissism” of perpetual or competitive victimhood. “We will mourn forever because of the memory of Auschwitz,” he wrote. “We will build a healthy new society because of the memory of Sinai.”
- Consider yesterday’s pain and tomorrow’s opportunities while inoculating against orthodoxies by exploring African-Americans’ internal debate. Pair Ta-Nehisi Coates’ despairing letter to his 15-year-old son, “Between the World and Me,” with Barack Obama’s 2008 speech about race, insisting: “America can change…. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.”
- Finally, ask, what is the end goal? Contrast Martin Luther King’s “dream” of a country where his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” with Amanda E. Lewis’s article, “There is no ‘Race’ in the Schoolyard: Color-Blind Ideology in an (Almost) All-White School.”
From Finger-Pointing to Dreaming
Discussing “Black-Jewish relations” usually romanticizes past cooperation while highlighting current tensions. Let’s evolve from one-way finger-pointing exercises between victimized Blacks and guilty Jews to mutual exchanges, wondering how Blacks and Jews fit in — and don’t fit in — as fellow Americans. Piling on accusations alienates; sharing experiences heals and bonds.
1619’s framework inflicts sterile conversations; it indicts but doesn’t explain. Freezing America in the 1619 past while condemning it in the present risks robbing Americans of a shared future. Jews understand how yesterday’s unhealed scars intensify the anguish of bigotry today. As Americans, Jews, educators, our mission is to free our children from history’s traumas, never forgetting what we endured while remembering the progress we all have made. The new world we seek — and have been building since 1776 — requires consensus, not conflict, nuance, not negation, hope, not hatred.
Freezing America in the 1619 past while condemning it in the present risks robbing Americans of a shared future.
It’s a leap — and a choice. Martin Luther King knew he could “react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force.” The choice he made proved constructively infectious — and epoch-making.
I was lucky. I grew up relatively pain-free, envisioning the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court cases that keep refining our freedoms as forming a magical circle, ever-expanding to bless more Americans with more liberty. Tragically, millions of others, especially African-Americans, experienced a noose.
The message of American history — and Jewish history — is that we all benefit when all Americans can imagine this magic circle, working to widen and strengthen it, rather than surrendering to the haters’ hatred or their victims’ understandable, yet often-paralyzing, despair.
Gil Troy is a distinguished scholar in North American History at McGill University. The author of 10 books on presidential history, his latest works include “The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s,” and editing the updated version of Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. and Fred L. Israel’s “History of American Presidential Elections.”
You'll love our roundtable.