A few more thoughts on the subject of abortion

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night I was looking up something about Charles Krauthammer, and I chanced to come across something he’d written in 1985 that I’d never seen before. It expresses some of his thoughts on abortion, and it struck me that it raises a good point that’s seldom discussed in just this way.

So here it is:

There is not the slightest recognition on either side that abortion might be at the limits of our empirical and moral knowledge. The problem starts with an awesome mystery: the transformation of two soulless cells into a living human being. That leads to an insoluble empirical question: How and exactly when does that occur? On that, in turn, hangs the moral issue: What are the claims of the entity undergoing that transformation?

How can we expect such a question to yield answers that are not tentative and indeterminate? So difficult a moral question should command humility, or at least a little old-fashioned tolerance.

That to me is the essence of the dilemma.

I also came across a rebuttal to a later statement of Krauthammer’s that expressed something similar:

…[T]here are literally no pro-lifers—and to my knowledge there have been none in the four decades since Roe v. Wade was decided—who argue that the unborn deserve protection because some magical “ensoulment” has taken place. The Catholic Church, to take one prominent institution devoted to the defense of human life from conception until natural death, makes no “theological” argument about the nature of the life in the womb. The Church relies instead entirely on the scientific fact that every unborn human being is, from the moment of its conception, a member of our species.

That may indeed be true. But I contend that the abortion argument nevertheless rests on a disagreement about when the union of an egg and sperm is a human life, a person—and in some ways of thinking, a souled person—with a right to life that supercedes any right a pregnant woman might have to terminate that life growing within her.

There are people who think a pregnant woman’s right to end the life of the fetus lasts as long as she is pregnant, no matter how advanced in age or viable the fetus might be. I believe that continues to be a minority opinion even among the pro-abortion faction, although I don’t have a poll to offer on that. But when does her right to end that life occur? Do she have no such right at all? Does she even lack the right to use birth control and thus prevent conception, which is not an unheard-of point of view either? Does she have a right but does her right last only until implantation? Or for the first trimester?

Abortion is one of those topics that just plain makes me sad. I’ve written about my personal point of view before, here. I will add that the advent of more and more detailed and accurate photos and knowledge of the developing fetus in the womb has contributed to a growing sense among many people that this is a human life very early, and to a growing revulsion towards abortion at any point in a pregnancy.

What about Wiki?

The New Neo Posted on by

I often see online references to how unreliable Wiki is as a source.

I used to ascribe to that point of view, particularly when Wiki was first becoming popular. I would add a kind of disclaimer whenever I linked to it.

But I’ve found over the years that, although it’s hardly an impeccable or unbiased source (especially for things related to politics), it’s one of the better places to go for general information on a topic. After all, Wiki ordinarily uses information from other sources, available in its “References” list at the end of each article. The list is often extremely lengthy and includes many of the very sources that people who deride Wiki would consider rather reliable. And then after that, Wiki often has a group of “External Links” to tell you more.

So, what’s with all the contempt directed towards Wiki? One should always take online information—or that matter, any information—with a grain of salt, and read primary sources whenever possible. Wiki is no exception to that rule. But Wiki is a fairly good way to quickly get a host of information from many sources, and I often find it useful.

Don’t you?

[ADDENDUM: I had absolutely no idea about this:

wikilove:
The state of being completely infatuated with open source media, source codes, wikis, freeware, ect. Wikilove can lead to all sorts of problems, including misinformation and spyware infestation.

“Billy’s in wikilove! He’s downloaded Google Earth, does all his word processing on Writely, and visits Wikipedia ever day. His computer also has more spyware than a sailor has STD’s.”

I notice that that entry is from 2006. The Stone Age of Wiki, which began in 2001.

And here is Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Wikipedia—according to Wikipedia.]

David Koch has died

The New Neo Posted on by

David Koch of the infamous (for a while, anyway) “Koch Brothers” has died at the age of 79.

As might be expected, the Times managed to publish a complete fabrication as part of his obituary there. As Steven Hayward writes at Powerline:

True to form, the obituary notice for David Koch in the New York Times today offers up yet another classic case study in media bias and ignorance:

“Three decades after David Koch’s public steps into politics, analysts say, the Koch brothers’ money-fueled brand of libertarianism helped give rise to the Tea Party movement, strengthened the far-right wing of a resurgent Republican Party and played a significant role in the election of Donald J. Trump as president in 2016.”

Typical. The Kochs hated Trump in 2016, opposed him vigorously throughout the entire nomination process (Vanity Fair ran a story in February 2016 entitled “Can the Koch Brothers Stop Trump?“), and have said more recently they are open to supporting Democrats in part because of their continuing dislike of Trump.

Hayward then points out that the Times has gotten rid of that erroneous sentence about Koch playing a significant role in Trump’s election. Someone at the Times must have been told it wasn’t just incorrect, it was egregiously and stupidly incorrect and needed to be dropped down the memory hole.

(Of course, they can be forgiven, because the story wasn’t about race—and after all, race is The Only Important Thing in America.)

David Koch was a philanthropist but his efforts were not just political. As the NY Post points out:

Koch, who fought prostate cancer after being diagnosed 27 years ago, donated a record $150 million to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2015 through the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation. The hospital named a cancer center in his name after getting its largest donation ever.

The Upper East Side facility is described as one that offers innovative outpatient and ambulatory care to cancer patients.

In 2013, he also gave $100 million — another record — to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, which has a building in his name…

He was a generous donor to Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, which named its ballet and dance theater in his honor after receiving $100 million in 2008.

Koch’s network also donated millions of dollars to promote charter schools through two groups, the Libre Initiative and Americans for Prosperity, to provide more opportunities to disadvantaged youths.

He was also a libertarian who gave a lot of money to causes on the right, and that’s why he was so excoriated by the left.

RIP, David Koch.

Let’s talk about China

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ll start with an autobiographical note. When I was young, China was terra incognita. Travel was prohibited there and little news got in or out compared to most of the other countries of the world, including the USSR. It was a big, scary place, even worse than the Soviet Union, and that was saying something.

And yet it had this fascinating, lengthy history of civilization, and a huge population. It was obviously a Force, but the details were blank—at least to those of us in the general US population.

Then came those ping-pong (excuse me: table tennis) players and Nixon’s visit to China in the early 70s. For those of you who weren’t around back then, I can’t over-emphasize how strange it was to penetrate that particular curtain in that particular way, featuring that particular person (Nixon).

Then we were treated to all sorts of visual images: huge crowds of people all weating the same blue Mao jackets, bicycles clogging the crowded streets, exotic food, and the usual glowing descriptions from leftists venturing into this marvelous Utopia.

Over the years, China has become just another country in many people’s eyes. But China has always been different. And China has its own ways and its own big plans.

Which brings us to two recent articles on China. The first is about China’s economic woes, in particular its debt:

China’s debt levels rapidly shot up a few years ago as its banks extended record amounts of credit to drive growth, which led to the Asian giant undertaking deleveraging efforts, or the process of reducing debt.

But the trade war has put a dent in its efforts to pare its massive debt as Beijing sought ways to boost its slowing economy, which was at its lowest growth in 27 years. Earlier this year, banks started to increase its lending again, with new loans surging to a record high…

[Fraser Howie, an independent analyst] told CNBC that the issue was really whether there would be demand for more credit.

“The Chinese economy is clearly slowing, there are a lot of headwinds, there’re companies leaving China. China’s becoming a much harder investment case for a number of reasons. So is the underlying demand there or not?” he asked.

In the second article I want to highlight, Michael Barone looks at the big picture:

…Chinese economic growth has been flagging, and its workforce has essentially stopped growing. Post-Tiananmen annual growth, unparalleled in history, ranged from 8 to 14 percent from 1991 to 2013 but has tailed off, probably below the official 6 percent level.

And, thanks to China’s longtime one-child policy, its working-age population has been declining, down 3 percent since 2011. For years, one big question about China was whether it would get old before it got rich. The answer seems to be that it has gotten old about halfway up the path. Poverty is way down, but incomes significantly lag those in North America, Western Europe and East Asia, including Taiwan and Hong Kong. Meanwhile, just as the United States once lost low-skill manufacturing jobs, so China is now.

And then there’s the political:

Deng Xiaoping’s decision to kill thousands — maybe tens of thousands — in Tiananmen Square showed the permanence of the communist regime, which had already started to spark — or permit — economic growth…

The hope through these years was that a more prosperous China would also become more democratic and tolerant at home, and less aggressive abroad. But as foreign affairs journalist James Mann pointed out in his 2007 book, “The China Fantasy,” and as longtime Kissingerian Michael Pillsbury wrote in his 2015 book, “The Hundred-Year Marathon,” China’s leaders weren’t interested in following this script.

On the contrary, Pillsbury argued that they had their own scenario, in which China would embark quietly but steadily on a long-term race to world supremacy by 2049, the 100th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s victory over Chiang Kai-shek.

China would use strategy and tactics laid out by Sun Tzu 2,500 years ago and restore the state to the primacy it enjoyed before the civil wars and invasions that started with the Taiping rebellion in 1849 and ended with Mao’s death in 1976…

Barone goes on to say that the Chinese leadership could easily crush the Hong Kong rebellion, but it may have costs. How this will play out is anyone’s guess, but it appears to be a signal—one of many—that the status quo is being shaken up, and perhaps the long era of treating China largely as though it wants what we want is over.

[NOTE: China’s retaliatory tariffs are the big news at CNN.]

And then there’s Elizabeth Warren…

The New Neo Posted on by

…who’s every bit as deficient in the “likability” department as Kamala Harris, but who seems to be doing pretty well and even gaining some support. Why is that?

As commenter “FOAF” writes:

…Warren is scary for reasons beyond herself. She is no more likable than Harris and should have been buried by the fiasco about her heritage. But she is a leftist true believer which is exactly where the Democrat party is now. And even lying about her background doesn’t hurt her with Dems because it also reflects what they are – completely unscrupulous about using identity politics to gain power.

I had originally thought—when Warren declined to run in previous presidential election years—that she would be considered too old to run in 2020. But in this field she’s practically a spring chicken. And, despite her schoolmarmy vibe, she looks very good for a woman her age: trim, not especially wrinkled, and energetic.

But her real appeal is the same as Bernie Sanders’ was in 2016: she and he are the True Believers. At least, I think they are, despite contradictions and the hypocrisies you can point out between their political philosophies and the way they live their lives. They seem sincere—and although the “seem” is all that really matters in an election, I think they are sincere as long as their politics don’t require them to take vows of poverty.

Since the Democrats are now officially leftists, Warren is quite acceptable and even desirable to the party in that sense. She has a certain gravitas that the young ones lack, and unlike the even-older Biden, she doesn’t appear to be poised on the mentally-losing-it border.

Warren also has whatever it was that made some people like Hillary Clinton (yes, some people liked Hillary): a feisty quality that reads as “strong woman.”

FOAF is quite correct that to most Democrats, Warren’s history of using identity politics based on a lie about herself won’t matter. It’s easy to explain away as “But she was merely mistaken; she believed herself to be part-Cherokee.” In the scheme of things, what choice do Democrats have? Warren is one of the most viable candidates—Hillary 2.0 without all the baggage (although Warren has some of her own, it can’t compare in heaviness); Bernie 2.0 without the advanced age and the New York leftist shtick; and creds as a real leftist who can be trusted to do the lefty thing once in office.

What’s not to like?

Why is Kamala Harris fading?

The New Neo Posted on by

In National Review John McCormack tackles the question of why Harris’s poll numbers have been falling after an early rise. His answer involves her back-and-forth waffling on busing and Medicare for All, as well as her record as a prosecutor. He concludes:

So Harris’s problems go deeper than the fact that she had one good debate followed by one bad debate on matters of style. Both debates revealed she has serious weaknesses on matters of substance. And the hits keep coming on Medicare for All: On Monday, she was savaged by Bernie Sanders after it was reported that Harris told wealthy donors in the Hamptons that she was not “comfortable” with Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All bill, which she co-sponsored and supported until a few weeks ago. There are still five months left until the Iowa caucuses, but the past two months have demonstrated that Harris has deep problems that she can’t paper over with some well-rehearsed, well-delivered lines in subsequent debates.

All of that is true, and it probably matters. But I have a different take on it. Have you ever noticed how voters can forgive a candidate almost anything if they like that person? One of Hillary’s big problems, for example—one Obama correctly sensed in the 2008 race, when she was his main rival—is that she’s “unlikable.”

So is Kamala Harris, IMHO.

Likability isn’t what I tend to look for in candidates, although it’s a plus because any president is someone we’re going to hear a lot and see a lot for quite a few years, and it helps if we like that person. And of course different people have different criteria for who’s “likable.” For example, I never really felt Obama’s likability; for me his policies got in the way. But I could see that he had a kind of smooth, polished charm that would appeal to a lot of people.

I don’t know what it is about Harris—I’d describe it as a certain harsh quality—but she just isn’t especially likeable. A lot of things about a candidate can be changed, but not that.

In contrast, one of the reasons Biden’s numbers are still up despite everything, is that he’s widely perceived as likable, affable, convivial. I seem to be tone deaf to Biden’s personal appeal as well, but I recognize that he’s apparently got some.

Harris? Not so much.

Jews and politics: not a unitary bunch

The New Neo Posted on by

The politics of American Jews have come up recently, due to Trump’s “disloyal” remarks.

The majority of Jews certainly do vote for Democrats, as Trump noted. But it’s not that simple.

For some secular Jews, leftism has replaced Judaism as their religion. Not all secular Jews are leftists, however, although a great many leftist Jews are secular. However, not all religious Jews are conservative, either.

I couldn’t find any extremely recent polls on Jews, religious identity, and political affiliation. But in a poll taken in 2013, the breakdown in that regard was quite interesting, I think.

Among Orthodox Jews in the US, 36% were Democrats or lean Democrat and 57% were Republicans or lean Republican. In the political sense, 12% called themselves liberal, 27% called themselves moderate, and 54% called themselves conservative. The poll did not, unfortunately, differentiate between “liberal” and “leftist”—which I believe is an important distinction. My guess is that few of those 12% of Orthodox Jews who identify as liberals are actually leftists.

Conservative Jews (that is not a political designation; it’s a sort of moderate in-between version of Judaism) have a different breakdown entirely. They are 64% Democrat or lean Democrat, 27% Republican or lean Republican. Politically they describe themselves this way: 35% are liberals, 38% are moderates, and 27% are conservatives.

Reform Jews, a group that is by far the least conventionally religious of the lot—and the most numerous—are almost identical in their politics with Jews who are secular and don’t identify with any part of the religion at all. Reform Jews are 77% Democrat or lean Democrat whereas secular Jews are 75% Democrat or lean Democrat. Reform Jews are 17% Republican or lean Republican and secular Jews are 15% Republican or lean Republican. 58% of both groups describe themselves as politically liberal. For politically moderate the figures are 27% for Reform and 26% for secular. The figures are also identical between the two groups for political conservatism: 13%.

Interesting, no?

If you want some percentages, see this:

A 2003 Harris Poll found that 16% of American Jews go to the synagogue at least once a month, 42% go less frequently but at least once a year, and 42% go less frequently than once a year.

The survey found that of the 4.3 million strongly connected Jews, 46% belong to a synagogue. Among those households who belong to a synagogue, 38% are members of Reform synagogues, 33% Conservative, 22% Orthodox, 2% Reconstructionist, and 5% other types.

Because Orthodox Jews have a lot more children than other Jews, and because they don’t intermarry whereas the incidence of intermarriage is high among the other groups of Jews, Orthodox Jewish percentages in the US are on the rise.

People often make remarks and observations about Jews as though they’re a unitary bunch. They most definitely are not. There’s an old Jewish saying: Two Jews, three opinions.

A small detail the Times left out of the 1619 Project…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is the fact that the Democrats were the party of slavery as well as the party of Jim Crow and segregation, and the Republicans were the anti-slavery party.

If slavery is so very central to the entire story of America, you’d think they might at least mention that it was the Democrats who were major drivers of slavery and of post-slavery discrimination.

But I guess that’s an inconvenient truth.

[NOTE: This post originally contained a video of a segment from yesterday’s Laura Ingraham show on which Dinesh D’Souza spoke about the Times‘ omissions and/or errors in its 1619 Project, including the paper’s failure to mention the historic role of the Democrats. However, between last night (when I wrote notes for the post) and today, I cannot seem to find the video. At any rate, I have some obligations today and won’t get back to it for a few hours. So for now, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Well, you don’t have to. But I hope you do.]

Trump administration announces new rule on housing families of illegal immigrants

The New Neo Posted on by

Here it is:

To address the unprecedented flow of families across the Southwest border, the Trump administration on Wednesday announced regulations that will allow families to be detained together, pending disposition of their immigration hearings.

The goal is to end “catch and release.” Asylum-seeking families will no longer be released into the United States with a promise to appear in immigration court — promises that are mostly not kept, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan noted.

McAleenan told a news conference that in the first ten months of the current fiscal year, almost 475,000 families came to this country, most of them crossing illegally between ports of entry in quest of asylum.

Under the current interpretation of the Flores settlement, families with minor children must be released within 20 days, on a promise to appear for their hearings, which may take years to happen.

“The Flores settlement is operationally outdated and does not respond to the current immigration crisis,” McAleenan told the news conference.

He highlighted key elements of the new rule, including the new standards of care in custody for children and families. In fact, McAleenan spent a fair amount of time describing where illegal immigrants seeking asylum will be housed:

The facilities that we will be using to temporarily house families under this rule are appropriately fundamentally different than the facilities where migrants are processed following apprehension or encounter at the border. They are campus like settings with appropriate medical, education, recreational, dining and private housing facilities.

Cue the activists with court challenges.

And cue the cries of “concentration camps.”

The NY Times plans a revision of American history: all slavery, all the time

The New Neo Posted on by

By now you may have read something about the NY Times’ 1619 Project to rewrite American history as the story of racism. Not just racism as a part of American history—racism as the story, the root of the story, the reductionist Theory of Everything Wrong With America, Past, Present, and Future.

I’m not making this up. If you read the link at my previous post about a talk Times executive editor Dean Baquet had with his staff, you may have noticed that a portion of Baquet’s remarks had to do with the 1619 project [emphasis mine]:

Baquet:[Keith Woods] wrote a piece about why he wouldn’t have used the word racist, and his argument, which is pretty provocative, boils down to this: Pretty much everything is racist. His view is that a huge percentage of American conversation is racist, so why isolate this one comment from Donald Trump? His argument is that he could cite things that people say in their everyday lives that we don’t characterize that way, which is always interesting. You know, I don’t know how to answer that, other than I do think that that race has always played a huge part in the American story.

And I do think that race and understanding of race should be a part of how we cover the American story. Sometimes news organizations sort of forget that in the moment. But of course it should be. I mean, one reason we all signed off on the 1619 Project and made it so ambitious and expansive was to teach our readers to think a little bit more like that. Race in the next year—and I think this is, to be frank, what I would hope you come away from this discussion with—race in the next year is going to be a huge part of the American story. And I mean, race in terms of not only African Americans and their relationship with Donald Trump, but Latinos and immigration. And I think that one of the things I would love to come out of this with is for people to feel very comfortable coming to me and saying, here’s how I would like you to consider telling that story. Because the reason you have a diverse newsroom, to be frank, is so that you can have people pull together to try to tell that story. I think that’s the closest answer I can come.

In addition, that meeting featured remarks from staffers, one of whom had this to say:

I’m wondering to what extent you think that the fact of racism and white supremacy being sort of the foundation of this country should play into our reporting. Just because it feels to me like it should be a starting point, you know? Like these conversations about what is racist, what isn’t racist. I just feel like racism is in everything. It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our national reporting. And so, to me, it’s less about the individual instances of racism, and sort of how we’re thinking about racism and white supremacy as the foundation of all of the systems in the country.

And that is the basis of the 1619 project—that America began with the importation of slaves in 1619 into this country.

Well, I guess if you want to frame a narrative equating the American dream of liberty with slavery, that’s what you have to do:

Byron York describes it, and it’s not primarily about Trump [emphasis mine]:

In the Times’ view (which it hopes to make the view of millions of Americans), the country was actually founded in 1619, when the first Africans were brought to North America, to Virginia, to be sold as slaves.

This year marks the 400th anniversary of that event, and the Times has created something called the 1619 Project. This is what the paper hopes the project will accomplish: “It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”

The basic thrust of the 1619 Project is that everything in American history is explained by slavery and race. The message is woven throughout the first publication of the project, an entire edition of the Times magazine. It begins with an overview of race in America — “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.”…

The essays go on to cover the economy (“If you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.”), the food we eat (“The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the ‘white gold’ that fueled slavery.”), the nation’s physical health (“Why doesn’t the United States have universal healthcare? The answer begins with policies enacted after the Civil War.”), politics (“America holds onto an undemocratic assumption from its founding: that some people deserve more power than others.”), daily life (“What does a traffic jam in Atlanta have to do with segregation? Quite a lot.”), and much more.

The Times promises more 1619 Project stories in the future, not just in the paper’s news sections, but in the business, sports, travel, and other sections. The Times’ popular podcast, The Daily, will also devote time to it.

…A major goal of the 1619 Project is to take the reframing message to schools. The Times has joined an organization called the Pulitzer Center…to create a 1619 Project curriculum. “Here you will find reading guides, activities, and other resources to bring The 1619 Project into your classroom,” the center says in a message to teachers.

The paper also wants to reach into schools itself. “We will be sending some of our writers on multi-city tours to talk to students,” Hannah-Jones said recently, “and we will be sending copies of the magazine to high schools and colleges. Because to us, this project really takes wing when young people are able to read this and understand the way that slavery has shaped their country’s history.”

Make no mistake about what the Times intends to do. No more masquerading as a news organization. They are unashamed to be in the propaganda business now. And I suspect that school systems will leap to institute this curriculum and that most people will not even know it happened.

The left has been “deconstructing” American history for many many decades, and over time their vision has been inserted earlier and earlier in a child’s education.

This post is probably already enough to digest for today. But I plan to say a great deal more about the 1619 project and about American history some time in the next couple of days.

“Disloyal” Jews voting for Democrats

The New Neo Posted on by

The latest brouhaha over a word Trump used (“disloyalty”) stems from this Trump quote:

Trump made the comments after he was asked about Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s suggestion that the U.S. might want to reconsider how much it pays Israel in aid after she and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., were barred from entering the country last week.

He again attacked the two Democrats — saying Tlaib had said “horrible things” about Israel and that Omar is “a disaster for Jewish people.” He also baselessly accused Tlaib, an American of Palestinian descent, of violence.

“I can’t even believe that we’re having this conversation. Five years ago, the concept of even talking about this — even three years ago — of cutting off aid to Israel because of two people that hate Israel and hate Jewish people. I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation,” Trump fumed.

“Where has the Democratic Party gone? Where have they gone where they’re defending these two people over the state of Israel? And I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat — I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty, alright?”

The hue and cry and charges of anti-Semitism on Trump’s part are practically Orwellian in nature. So now, saying that Jews who vote for people who want to destroy Israel shows disloyalty to Israel is somehow anti-Semitic and similar to the old charge of dual loyalty among Jews?

That’s twisted “logic,” but it’s par for the course. One can criticize Trump’s remarks—I criticize them, for example, on the grounds that they conjure up the possibility of misinterpretation and give the left ammunition—without calling them anti-Semitic. They are not anti-Semitic.

Logic is not the only thing that’s twisted. For example, see this by NBC News:

[Trump’s] insistence that Jews must be loyal to Israel is widely considered to be an anti-Semitic stereotype, one that says American Jews have a higher allegiance to a country other than the U.S.

Trump’s insistence that Jews be loyal to Israel? A higher allegiance? Where, pray tell, is he insisting that? His remarks were a descriptive statement of fact: Jews who vote for people who want to destroy Israel (the party of Omar and Tlaib) are not loyal to Israel.

Whether they should be loyal to Israel or not is another question entirely. But the old “dual loyalty” accusation is based at least to some extent on a religious truth, which is that Judaism itself dictates a certain loyalty to Israel.

In modern days, that loyalty is not always present, and in Jews who do not live in Israel that loyalty is not placed above loyalty to country. But—although Trump is not insisting on anything, he is simply correct in saying that Jews who vote for a party that includes and fails to specifically condemn and reject Omar and Tlaib and their anti-Israel anti-Semitic politics are being disloyal to Israel and its continued existence.

Trump added this today:

“In my opinion, the Democrats have gone very far away from Israel. I cannot understand how they can do that,” Trump told reporters from the White House South Lawn on Wednesday. “They don’t want to fund Israel. They want to take away foreign aid to Israel. They want to do a lot of bad things to Israel. In my opinion, you vote for a Democrat, you’re being very disloyal to Jewish people and very disloyal to Israel.”

And also this, which I think is very telling:

When asked by a reporter on the White House lawn Wednesday afternoon if his comments were anti-Semitic, Trump dismissed the criticism.

“No, no, no. It’s only in your head. It’s only anti-Semitic in your head,” said Trump, pointing to the reporter.

And he clarified what was already crystal clear from his initial remarks:

In response to a question Wednesday, he clarified that the “disloyalty” he meant was to Israel and fellow Jews.

“If you vote for a Democrat, you’re very, very disloyal to Israel and to the Jewish people,” he said.

As I wrote earlier, I think bringing up the subject of Jewish loyalty at all is problematic. On the other hand, it’s simply true that with Judaism goes a special relationship to Israel—not a higher loyalty necessarily, but one that non-Jewish people don’t share. That loyalty has never before conflicted with American policy, because—and this is also the case—the US has always had a special relationship with Israel (and Jews) as well, beginning with the Founding Fathers (read about it here).

Now one of the two major parties is breaking that special relationship. Actually, it’s not just now—Obama was a trailblazer in that regard, too, although it’s gotten much worse lately. Trump is trying to call attention to that fact, and he’s certainly succeeded in that regard. However, he did it in a way that conjured up in a semantic sense if in no other sense—and the left will make as much of that as they can, in an attempt to hurt Trump—the old charge of dual loyalty.

Perhaps that was purposeful, as well. Perhaps Trump believes that the public knows he is a friend of Israel, and that therefore the charges of anti-Semitism will fall for the most part on deaf ears. Perhaps.

[NOTE: On the Founding Father’s attitude towards the Jews:

The mutual admiration between Israel and the United States is hardly a recent phenomenon.

The profound influence of Jewish tradition on America’s Founding Fathers can be seen in the Constitution of the United States. Such influence should come as no surprise given John Adams’ view expressed in a letter to Thomas Jefferson:

“I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation.”

According to Woodrow Wilson, the ancient Jewish nation provided a model for the American colonists:

Recalling the previous experiences of the colonists in applying the Mosaic Code to the order of their internal life, it is not to be wondered at that the various passages in the Bible that serve to undermine royal authority, stripping the Crown of its cloak of divinity, held up before the pioneer Americans the Hebrew Commonwealth as a model government. In the spirit and essence of our Constitution, the influence of the Hebrew Commonwealth was paramount in that it was not only the highest authority for the principle, “that rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God,” but also because it was in itself a divine precedent for a pure democracy, as distinguished from monarchy, aristocracy or any other form of government.

Jews also contributed directly to the American Revolution. President Calvin Coolidge paid tribute to their role in the War of Independence:

The Jews themselves, of whom a considerable number were already scattered throughout the colonies, were true to the teachings of their prophets. The Jewish faith is predominantly the faith of liberty.]