the west is not overrated, it has give us science, and art, and classical music, literature and the serious novel, the enlightenment, the magna carta and the constitution and the bill of rights. it has given us the only meritocracy on the planet, America. we are waiting too long to speak out with passion in its defense, and condemn those who would destroy us. anti-semitism and its old canards are historically root and branch of terrorism and the rotten fruit of its diseased tree. I was 8 years old when joe mccarthy raised the spectre of a different, frightening america. Mccarthyism, fulminated with accusations, and criminal allegations of treason against anyone vulnerable, especially jews. the bodies of his victims were strewn everywhere, actors and teachers and writers and filmmakers and the guy across the street. his sins were venial. the media made him iconic. then a handful of people stood up, and like some apparition from the netherworld his power vanished. and when finally he dropped dead, we wished him into hell. we waited too long, he almost did it. we could have bombed hitler’s railroad tracks, we could have freed the warsaw ghetto and opened the death camps. we could have stopped him before he ever got to austria. we waited, and hitler almost did it. we might have, instead of the best of intentions in railing against the klan, hit them and their supporters in the face with garbage can covers, made criminals of the murderers, ripped out the white only water fountains with our hands. again, we waited. perhaps, if we had stopped the olympics when 11 isreali athletes were murdered by the plo, the course of middle east politics might have been different. denmark went home. norway went home. we almost went home. there are muslim jihadists in our universities, writing for our newspapers, our children are being inculcated with fake history, we are being called whitey and racist by a presidential candidate and his zombie followers, sll of whom despise everything that is america. and there are muslim fundamentalists in our midst shlepping their crazy medieval notions of women along with them, wearing their loony garb in our streets. what are we waiting for now. another, almost.
