We need to be clear on this, always.
I had a very disturbing conversation on Capitol Hill earlier this week. I was with some friends, Jewish women who live in the Northeast and who, let’s just say, have seen a few things in their time. They don’t tend to be shocked or outraged very easily. They understand what Christians — and conservatives, more broadly, as Yuval Levin talks about — would describe as the fallen nature of man. And still, over the last few weeks and months, they’ve found conservative culture jarring. And yes, this has a lot to do with Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes and the Heritage Foundation.
Most people in their day-to-day lives are too busy to care about much of this — unless they have been targets of antisemitism.
And to be Jewish is to be a target of antisemitism.
On the other hand, if we are going to remain committed to the principles of this nation, if we are going to be who we say we are as Christians — I speak for my tribe here — we must be able to say: Having someone on your podcast who says Hitler is cool — among other things — is not okay.
At times like this, when antisemitism flares up — which happens too often — I remember that it was in Dachau that Cardinal O’Connor, the Archbishop of New York, got the inspiration for the religious community of women he founded known as the Sisters of Life. He basically said: If “never again” means anything, we need to protect all human life. Abortion is an enormous evil. Once we decide that some human beings don’t have the same value as others, we’ve lost what Bill Buckley would call the patrimony.
I do want to say to young Catholic men in a particular way, perhaps: It matters. It matters whom you give a platform to. I’ve given, in my time, platforms to people I disagree with (I’m thinking of one prominent trailblazer, if you will, of assisted suicide in Australia). But I also did it in the context of making clear not only where I stand, but where civilization has to stand. And that’s at the core of the problem in this latest controversy.
And so please, at the workplace or in a class or at a dinner — maybe a Shabbat dinner with Jewish friends — please, my fellow Catholics, please, my fellow Christians, make clear that there can be no tolerance ever for antisemitism.
Antisemitism is — as I talked about when I was emceeing an event in Washington recently on Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council’s document on antisemitism and other forms of religious hatred — evil. It is a sin. And also, by the way, antisemitism is not pro-life, and so please, please, please, conservatives, be clear on this. Please, my tribe, be clear on this.
I’m grateful that at National Review, we have a legacy of being clear on this. We must continue to be vigilant. We cannot rest in rejecting the evil of antisemitism.