A liberal Jew’s Christmas wish for America

What is the end of multiculturalism, what is the origin of multiculturalism, and how can we stop and reverse its progress over us? These thoughts were set off when VFR reader Ben sent this article about the Seattle airport Christmas tree controversy and told me I had to read the following comment by Elizabeth LaZella of Gold Bar, Washington:

As a Jew I am totally dismayed to find that in this world of great diversity we have to fight to be recognized.

Being raised in America early on in the 50’s etc. we were forced in school to have Christmas songs, displays, etc. with no mention of other religions. Then as the years went by it changed a bit, but even today—the holidays come around trees, etc. come out and it is a total Christian display with NO diversity.

I believe and still will believe and have pride to hope the Rabbis continue to fight for each and every town, city, little bitty or big in Washington State to have—not only Christmas displays but add the Menorah also this would encourage other religions to do the same and together—and I mean together as a nation of diversity, a nation of many, many faiths to finally agree we are all one.

God does not chose which person, Jew, Christian, Muslim or other to go to his throne. God chooses those who have held the faith, and be all brothers on this earth.

What we have here is the undiluted liberal Jewish credo, coming right from the heart, which has been openly expressed by more and more Jews in the last decade or so as the majority culture has faded and Jews have felt at complete liberty to reveal their true feelings and desires. Just as various Jews have been saying that as Jews they are morally obligated to seek open borders, Elizabeth LaZella declares that as a Jew she seeks the imposition of a systematic and uniform diversity on every city and hamlet in the land, on “each and every town, city, little bitty or big,” a pattern that implicitly goes beyond holiday symbols to become an all-embracing multicultural paradigm. But her pro-minority imperialism doesn’t stop there. In an unconscious confirmation of the anti-Semitic narrative, she declares that she wants the Jews to be the vanguard of this program of cultural dismemberment—first the Menorah shall be installed alongside the Christmas symbols, then, once the doors to diversity have been opened by the Jews, the symbols of all the other religions as well. The idea is that all religions shall be equal, all cultures shall be equal, and there shall not be a single nook or cranny in American society where Christianity will not be swamped by other religions and where the American majority culture will not be swamped by other cultures. So assured is LaZella that there is no intact majority culture that will resent her declaration of intent to wipe out every jot and tittle of American particularity, especially Christian particularity, that she feels completely at ease speaking these outrageous things.

Now I wouldn’t especially blame LaZella if she were just seeking the inclusion of Jewish symbols, like the rabbi at the Seattle-Tacoma airport. Given how America’s former majority culture has retreated from the scene on one front after another, such behavior by an ethnic/religious minority looking out for itself would seem rational, if regrettable. But LaZella’s all-encompassing multicultural program, including Islam and everything else under the sun, goes beyond any rational self-interest. It is a form of hyper-diversity, an embrace of cultural chaos that would destroy what’s left of our culture and thus ultimately harm the Jews as well. Yet, as irrational as this hyper-diversity program is, it too results from the fact that the majority culture has decamped, leaving no common allegiances in place and no common rule to put bounds around minority self-assertion, bounds that were once accepted as a matter of course in this country, enforced by the majority culture and by the minorities themselves. Thus minority cultural aggression—whether the relatively rational though still destructive type in which various groups seek the public validation of their culture alongside and as the presumed equal of the majority culture, or the extreme LaZella type that aims to impose an insane multicultural paradigm on every atom of American society—has been engendered by, and is moving into the cultural void left by, the ongoing suicide of the majority culture.

All is not lost, however. The path we have taken toward this calamity also shows us the way out of it. The majority culture gave up its identity and authority as a result of its leaders and ordinary members ceasing to love it and to believe in it and to assert its standards as authoritative. It follows that the majority culture can be regained if its members and spokesmen believe in it and stand for it once again. This restoration of a damaged or lost cultural order is the work of traditionalism.

Impossible, you say? That’s because you’re thinking in terms of some complete cultural restoration; and from where we sit now, that indeed seems impossible. But what is possible is that we, even at this moment, can start pushing back against the dominant anti-culture, by rejecting its anti-standards and assserting the good standards that were still operative in this country not that long ago. But unlike the majority culture of the past, which could rely on shared habits and attitudes transmitted from previous generations, and which was shoved aside by liberalism because it had no articulated principles to pose against liberalism’s articulated principles, we restorationists must act on the basis of conscious and articulated principles. We must know what we are doing.

The anti-culture won because the American culture stopped believing in itself and asserting itself. If it started asserting itself again, if traditionalism became active in relation to the prevailing liberalism instead of passive and reactive, everything would be different. The key to saving our culture is this change of direction.

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Tom S. writes:

The ultimate irony of LaZella’s position is that, if Christianity is ever demoralized and demoted as she wishes it to be, that will mean that conservative Christians in the U.S. have lost—which will mean that Israel, and the Jewish people, are doomed. Never has liberalism as death wish been so clearly put forth. Every Jew should want a strong, believing, traditional Christian America, because only this kind of America will provide a haven of freedom for the Jews, and a strong ally for Israel. It was that terrible, repressive “Christian” 1940s and 1950s America that helped establish Israel, welcomed many Holocaust survivors, produced the freest and safest environment that Jews had ever known. It’s in modern, “liberal” multi-culti America where anti-Semitism is on the rise, where Muslims attack Jews on campus, where ex-Presidents compare Israel’s situation with the Palestinians to South African apartheit. La Zella’s love of liberalism is obviously stronger that her love of her people. Whatever happened to “Is it good for the Jews?”

LA replies:

VFR’s analysis of liberalism provides the answer to your question: Jews (including Israelis) dropped their unprincipled exception to liberalism, under which they had cared about their own ethnic peoplehood, which is not a liberal idea, and became consistent in their liberalism, and thus suicidal.

Jason writes from New Jersey:

Merry Christmas Mr. Auster.

I say that to everyone, even though I work for a major company and I am Jewish. If someone wishes me a Merry Christmas, the last thing I would ever do is correct them. I simply say thank you and wish them one back.

I send a Christmas card to the ACLU each year that says the following:

“Merry Christmas ACLU from a Conservative Republican Jew who is not the least bit offended by Christmas, in fact the only thing that does offend me of late is the ACLU.”

If this wonderful Kapo of my faith and people really wants to defend us. he should speak out about an entire faith of billions of people whose holy book mentions very specifically how they want to kill us. I thank G-D each and every day I live in a predominantly Christian country.

Anyway, have a great Christmas.

James N. writes, under the subject line “A contrary thought about Elizabeth LaZella”:

An incident in fifth grade (1961) made a huge impression on me. Our class was doing the Nativity Story as the school Christmas play. A boy named Michael W. was cast as one of the kings.

His mother, being Jewish, asked the teacher if he could have a part that did not involve kneeling at the creche. The teacher said. “He kneels at the creche, or he’s out of the show”.

This was, I think, unreasonable in a public school.

There is a distinction to be made, an important one, between permitting, or even facilitating, the Christian majority’s free exercise right (now almost totally obliterated by Everson and Lemon’s bastard children)—and the oppressive exercise of political and government power in a way that makes a religious minority (and I really mean Jews, here) feel compelled to celebrate Christian festivals.

Merry Christmas!

LA replies:

That’s not contrary to anything I’ve said. I agree with James.

Mark P. writes:

What Jews like LaZella don’t understand is that liberalism reduces all religion to a purely private matter, an act of personal consolation, a bunch of colorful nonsense designed to make stupid people feel good. This, of course, contradicts the daily experience of billions of people and history, but liberals are foolish this way. Thus, they honestly think that religion is not important in the conduct of daily life.

Unfortunately for the Jews, the liberal view of religion is inherently anti-Semitic because if true, the Jews have been lying to the world for 3,000 years and have worked, and continue to work, a monstrous fraud upon the world by insisting on a distinct identity. The Jewish claim to possess, for example, nationhood despite being scattered to the four corners of the earth, which is the basis of the legitimacy of Zionism, only makes sense if one accepts religion as a valid part of what constitutes national identity (thank you, Robert Locke, for this insight.) Since liberalism cannot accept religion as a valid part of national identity because they treat adherence to it as silly, they cannot logically accept a nation like Israel. To them, it would be like accepting the “search for national identity” among lovers of vanilla ice cream. Furthermore, this non-acceptance of Israel will also translate to a complete non-acceptance of any Jewish “vanguard” attempting to deconstruct the United States.

What’s truly amazing is how Jews don’t seem to understand this, yet it is understandable why. The Jews are essentially a weak people and, like all weak people, they seek general rules and principles that are capable of keeping them out of the gas chamber. Nuance and the drawing of distinctions, even fair ones, are for the strong, and the Jews have never really been strong. Unfortunately, no one can predict how general principles will morph. A principle may operate perfectly for a while until someone derives a new conclusion from it, creating altogether different results. This is how the Jews have ceased to be politically-correct in barely ten short years.

Of course, there are Jews like Allan Dershowitz that are deeply alarmed by what is going on. Unfortunately, they think they are battling the “old” anti-Semitism like the blood libel, the Crucifixion, or their grandfathers not getting into country clubs or Yale. The new anti-semitism is squarely grounded in the secular religion of liberalism to which Jews like Dershowitz are deeply commited. Unless Jews initiate a radical realignment away from liberalism, they will not survive the 21st century.

LA replies:

My understanding is that the Zionist movement was not based on religion or the Bible at all, but purely on the fact that the Jews were a historically existing people who had historically lived on that land. True, the Jews came into existence as a people because of religion, but I don’t think that that was emphasized in Zionism.

However, I have found this point to be hopelessly confused when talking to Jews about it. Every self-identified Jews I have spoken to about Jewishness insists that a common ethnicity/race has nothing to do with Jewishness, but that Jewishness is purely a matter of religion. (Once, after a long, long discussion, I finally got a Jewish friend to admit that a common ethnicity had something to do with Jewishness.) But if Jewishness is purely a matter of religion, what happens to the non-religious nature of Zionism? I don’t know the answer. It may be that American Jews have a very different take on this from Israeli Jews.

Ben writes:

Your whole analysis of her words and why this is happening is why I love VFR, it’s not just sitting around hand wringing throwing your hands up in the air and saying “I just can’t understand this!” It’s explaining why it happened and gives ways how to reverse it. Good work and Merry Christmas.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 22, 2006 11:58 PM | Send