Wake-up Call for Liberal US Jews

join the club dear liberal friends

Bari Weiss has recently become the voice of the canceled US Jew. She was a journalist at The New York Times until the George Floyd summer in 2020. Other NYT journalists didn’t like any critique of riots by their progressive allies; James Bennet, editorial page editor, resigned after a protest letter signed by NYT staffers criticized the publication of a riot-critical op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR). Then they went after Bari Weiss, and she resigned. Now she runs The Free Press on Substack.

Recently Bari Weiss gave a speech at the Federalist Society in which she critiqued the age of woke in the light of the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 on Israel and strong support on the left for Hamas.

Hey, she says, it’s not just antisemitism, but something more: postmodernism.

It seeks to upend the very ideas of right and wrong.

It replaces basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad).

Thus, authority was earned not by “hard work, accomplishments, or contributions to society” but by historical disadvantage, as defined by lefties.

So tell me, Bari, how is this different from the war on Robber Barons in the 19th century? Or the mild and beneficial Affirmative Action of the 1970s?

The fact is that, ever since the educated class acquired political power in the Enlightenment years, politics has always been a supposed lower class fighting for it rights against the supposed upper class. Only, of courses, the fighters were typically not the lower class but educated-class political activists. Or even, with FDR, upper-class patriarchs.

The cult of the powerless, the victim, is nothing new. In our modern era the victims du jour has been the workers, the women, the blacks, the gays, and now the transgenders.

But let us give Bari Weiss the benefit of the doubt. She could have no idea that one day, the progressives would be coming for her, a Jew and a lesbian.

If you are a conservative like me you realize that “they” have been eager to “upend the very ideas of right and wrong” since forever, and have been coming for me for decades. Because capitalism, because whiteness, because the patriarchy, because whatever The Thing was in lefty circles last week.

Now, since 10/7, they are coming for liberal US Jews, because in progressive circles the victims du jour are the Palestinians in Gaza. And I get it: the Gazans are not in a good place. They are victims of war; they are helpless, living in UN financed refugee camps for decades.

That’s who progressives are. They are always concerned about the latest victims. and blaming some oppressor. They are like Dickens’ Mrs. Jellyby that neglected her home, her children, her husband to help the natives in Africa.

Is that kind of concern for others a good thing? Good question: in relation to what?

And I get it. Our progressive friends get their meaning in life from political activism to fight for the oppressed. And that’s what they teach the kiddies.

What will it take to make it go away? Good question. The last progressive outbreak occurred int he 1960s. It didn’t go away until the Reagan 1980s when the Democrats suffered badly at the polls. But then, after a hiatus, it came back again.

Maybe what our progressive and activist friends need is another cooling-off period in the political wilderness.

I hope that is all it takes, because all the alternatives are worse.