Recalculating art, activism, and risk from inside the American theater.

In the early ’90s, I landed my first professional job as an actor. After the turn of the century, I became a teaching artist, which led to directing plays, and later independently producing my own work. Across three decades, my understanding of theater’s meaning and purpose was formed by the artists who came before me, and the ones working around me. My conception of what theater is and what it can do is now solid in my artistic soul, but, over the last decade, the scene around me has changed. 

This past year, the toll this change exacts on artistic freedom increased in ways I never anticipated—and it is far steeper than I ever could have imagined.

On Shifting Stages

Unlike film and television, theater has no rating system. Free of this restriction, American theater provided opportunities for playwrights eager to challenge the prevailing norms of the twentieth century. Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour (1934) exposed the devastating impact of moral panic; Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band (1968) put gay men onstage speaking plainly when that kind of visibility was dangerous; Terrence McNally’s Love! Valor! Compassion! (1995) presented gay lives as complex and lovingly humane in the face of the AIDS crisis.

When the price for pushing back was too high, playwrights turned to metaphor and suggestion. Arthur Miller used the Salem witch trials in The Crucible (1953) as an allegory for McCarthy-era persecution, while Tennessee Williams relied on implication and subtext to explore forbidden desire in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955).

In the early twenty-first century, American theater artists pushed boundaries even further. Musicals like Avenue Q (2003) and The Book of Mormon (2011) skewered societal standards through irreverence, profanity, and even blasphemy. Spring Awakening (2006), a pop-rock adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s once-banned nineteenth-century play, put adolescent sexuality, repression, and hypocrisy center stage.

For the majority of my career, I had only known a theater powered by an “outside the box” attitude, producing provocative plays designed to shine a spotlight on the shortcomings of the status quo. Sometime after 2014, I noticed a change. Artists around me who once prided themselves on confronting conformity began repeating the same expressions, supporting similar causes, and adopting a worldview concerned with identity, power, and harm toward select identity groups. This worldview is often described as Critical Social Justice (CSJ). As liberal humanist Helen Pluckrose defines it, CSJ holds that knowledge is culturally constructed to maintain oppressive power systems and must be analyzed through the lens of identity and systemic oppression. While I understand and support the impulse to widen the scope of viewpoints presented on the American stage, as I document in the remainder of this essay, the excesses of CSJ activism in the arts have eroded freedom of artistic expression through overreaching policies, practices and hostility to dissent.

Historically, threats to artistic freedom came from outside the theater. In 1923, the entire cast of Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance endured an obscenity trial over an onstage kiss between two women; four years later, Mae West was jailed for her play Sex. Today, I see the most powerful pressure to conform coming from within the theater itself.

Administrators committed to CSJ now hold positions of authority within arts institutions, many elevated through hiring initiatives implemented in the years leading up to the 2020 peak of the so-called “Great Awokening.” Despite frequent claims that we have passed “peak woke,” arts leaders who shape hiring practices, programming decisions, and institutional norms show little interest in reconsidering the frameworks they have implemented—and more such people aligned with this outlook are soon to assume these positions.

In October of 2025, New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) announced a search for an Associate Arts Program Specialist to oversee aspects of the Cultural Development Fund (CDF), which provides roughly $85 million annually in support for non-profit cultural organizations. The first responsibility listed states the new-hire will participate in “equity-based reforms” to the CDF. The job description does not articulate what “equity-based reforms” entails, but it is reasonable to ask whether these reforms will allocate funding based on identity over artistic merit. Additionally, if by “equity” the reforms endeavor to implement a version of affirmative action in the arts, are these reforms time-limited or permanent? More importantly, will anyone measure how these reforms impact the kind of art that is made after funding decisions from leadership are disbursed to working artists?

The pressure to conform does not solely flow down from administrators; it also radiates sideways, peer to peer, influencing what kinds of stories are told and which questions are stage-worthy. As a result, more and more contemporary theater—especially in the independent sphere—draws from a dwindling pool of ideas focused on grievance, dismantling hierarchy, and eradicating “harmful” topics and words.

A paradoxical proclivity of this milieu was on display in a recent New York Times think piece about the ethics of using a slur sometimes slung at gay men, which appears in the titles of at least six contemporary productions. The essay mainly questions whether use of the slur causes harm or aspires to reclaim the word.

But this focus on potential harm or reclamation obscures more interesting questions: When different artists, creating work independently, all use the same slur in the title of their work, what does that say about the state of the arts? Does it point to fearless originality, or a culture that rewards a limited range of approved transgressions? The answer may be explained by the cultural marketplace in which these works are produced: what once risked social scorn now earns easy applause.

Further, the slur is no longer the progressive provocation it was when Larry Kramer used it in 1978 as the title of his scathing novel. Today, its overuse is a signpost that reads “I’m in with the in crowd.”

To my knowledge, there has not been a study examining the causes behind changing ideological trends in the U.S. arts sector. However, in May of 2025, Freedom in the Arts published a report titled “Afraid to Speak Freely,” presenting survey findings that indicate a significant number of U.K. artists feel pressure to self-censor—avoiding disfavored subjects, themes, or views. Given the study’s implications, it is curious that no comparable research efforts have been announced to ascertain if, or to what degree, internal and external pressures might be informing the work American artists create.

While no studies have emerged from the professional arts sector itself, a January 2026 study of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE), “College Free Speech Rankings,” found students in theater ranked among the least politically tolerant majors—even below gender studies. The report surprisingly revealed “men in theater have the lowest right-wing tolerance of men in any major… by a large margin (~5 percentage points).” Absent further study, I am left to wonder if the cause of changing trends in the professional realm originates on campus.

Broadly, there appears to be a lack of consensus as to whether or not the “vibe” has shifted. This past year I heard many commentators declare the era of CSJ cultural dominance was fading. Evidence supporting that view appeared compelling: many large corporations rolled back DEI initiatives, the Supreme Court struck down the “extra burden” that was previously imposed on majority group members who filed employment discrimination lawsuits, and an op-ed by Andrew Sullivan criticizing the excesses of the Gay Rights Movement found its way into The New York Times. 

But, from my vantage point as an independent theater artist, the threats to freedom of expression feel no less acute, and the cost of standing apart from the crowd appears to be rising.

The Cost of Saying “No”

I am trained as a teaching artist and a theater director. Before voicing my objection to embedding CSJ concepts into K–12 instruction, I had steady employment as a teaching artist. After refusing to comply, my workload was cut to a fraction of what it once was. Teaching theater and directing plays is not just my profession; it is what gives my life meaning. I am not alone in observing that the price of exclusion from the arts is equal parts financial, psychological, and spiritual.

In conversations with people who insist we are past “peak woke,” I often explain the difference between our experiences. “You may feel that way because you’re still able to work in your field,” I say. “I’m not as certain, because I’m evidently barred from full-time employment in mine for refusing to affirm activist beliefs.”

Arts and education employers have become adept at ensuring dissenters never make it past the gate. Last summer, I applied for a leadership position at a small performing arts venue in Brooklyn. With two master’s degrees and a long career in the arts, I met or exceeded many of the listed requirements.

Then I reached a bullet point under “qualifications” that read:

Demonstrated commitment to fostering creative community and supporting diverse artistic voices, including a commitment to the organization’s values: anti-racist and anti-capitalist principles; BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disability justice; inclusivity; access; sustainability; and freedom of expression.

What kind of cultural moment are we living in when a job description explicitly requires commitment to “anti-capitalist principles”? This organization is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that cannot survive without capitalism. It relies on income from various sources—ticket sales, grant funding, individual donations—in order to produce work. In addition to receiving funds, presumably this organization participates in other capitalist practices such as paying artists and their electric bill.

It is reasonable to wonder whether anyone on this organization’s board questioned how “freedom of expression” could coexist with mandatory ideological commitments. But I suspect no one raised such questions because, by now, many of us have learned that even asking them can result in professional exile.

Last September, I heard academics who had been hounded out of education for their disfavored views speak at the Columbia Academic Freedom Council’s Academic Freedom Prize event, which honored heterodox educators. One scholar who had miraculously retained his position warned faculty without tenure that they would be foolish to assume they could keep their jobs if they expressed certain opinions.

Some argue these concerns are overblown because the current federal administration has taken action against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs in higher education. While it is true that executive orders purport to curb illegal discrimination, academic job postings tell a different story.

A listing for a full-time theater-directing faculty position, posted after those orders were issued, included this statement:

[The department] strives to create a more equitable, diverse, inclusive, anti-racist, and socially just environment through intentional pedagogy, recruitment, and community culture. We welcome applicants who will sustain and expand our commitments to diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism.

I do not have the legal expertise to determine whether this language itself flies in the face of executive orders. A closer look would be needed to see how the department interprets concepts like “equity” and “anti-racism,” and whether it implements policies that favor certain faculty or students over others based on immutable characteristics. But the language used here illustrates some institutions remain ideologically defiant.

More troubling, the listing signals a search for a politically aligned scholar. I do not believe a professor teaching theater directing should be required to affirm activist aims. Students hold a wide range of views and aspirations. A professor committed to ideological neutrality is better positioned to support students with varied artistic impulses, whether those include directing explicitly political work or work wholly divorced from activism.

Although I was interviewed for this position, I was not hired. I cannot know whether that outcome was a result of my unwillingness to signal a commitment to specific beliefs, my public dissent from orthodoxy, or some other factor. What I do know is that ideological screening has become so normalized that these questions are now unavoidable.

I have been candid in my conviction that CSJ has had a corrosive effect on higher education. I object, in particular, to the way Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) is often presented not as one interpretive framework among many, but as objective truth. That is how it was taught to me. During my graduate school experience, no texts were assigned that presented alternate perspectives or critiques of Freire’s “oppressor-oppressed” binary worldview. As Baylor University professor David Corey documents in “Paulo Freire’s Oppressive Pedagogy” (2023), Freire’s book is widely cited in academic social sciences, frequently assigned in philosophy of education courses, and has “exercised a powerful influence not only in higher education, but also in K-12 teaching.” Faculty have a right to select texts appropriate to their courses, but institutions have a responsibility to ensure students encounter a variety of viewpoints. If not, they risk teaching students that “life is a battle between good people and evil people,” as Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt pointed out in The Coddling of the American Mind (2018). The authors demonstrate how binaries like “good vs. evil” or “oppressor vs. oppressed” ultimately “harm the individuals and communities who embrace it.”

Nothing will change unless people speak up. But speaking up carries costs.

That reality hit home when I learned my alma mater was considering requiring graduate students to write about their racial complicity in “systemic oppression” as part of their thesis work. I wrote a formal complaint to the dean, arguing that compelled speech of this kind amounted to ideological indoctrination and might be legally questionable. I asked whether the institution was a truth-seeking, educational institution or an activist training camp.

Following an investigation that lasted over three months, the dean sent a letter essentially saying, “Nothing to see here.” The letter was perplexing—not for what it said, but for what it did not. Nowhere did the letter address the possibility that students could be required to write about their race or complicity in systemic oppression. Instead, it reframed my concern as a personal grievance and emphasized that the program’s content aligns with its intended outcomes. This side-step said it all: If the intended outcome is activist training, the administration seemed to have no objection.

My complaint ended a long friendship with a faculty member who alerted me to the impending thesis policy. Speaking out when it counts has cost me both professional opportunities and personal relationships. Yet, in my heart, I know staying silent would have exacted a fee from my conscience I could not live with.

A Sharp Chill in the Air

Over the past year, I have repeatedly wondered: Has society truly passed peak woke? Some say the worst of the worst is behind us because people can publicly air concerns they once only whispered. Perhaps. To me, the nagging question is not whether dissenting views are allowed, but what risks people believe they incur when they speak openly.

That concern became impossible to ignore after the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Only the night before he was killed, I watched Kirk in a segment on Next Up with Mark Halperin. On the program, Kirk engaged criticism without resorting to insults. Whether I agreed with his views or not, I observed him demonstrating the kind of open debate a liberal democratic culture depends on to air disagreements. His death shocked me because it shattered my assumption that in contemporary America, speech—even offensive speech—does not carry mortal risk.

As this realization hit, I understood that I now had to consider risks I never did before—not because they were inevitable, but because they were no longer unthinkable. In an instant, the lens on my recent artistic endeavors refocused, as if lighting had abruptly switched mid-scene, revealing a stark, sinister stage. Three days before the murder, a play I directed with material some might have found offensive closed its run.

In February of 2024, playwright Tom Rowan reached out to me after reading an essay I wrote about activism in theater. He asked if I would direct his new play, Dismantling Prospero, which explored the tension between artistic freedom and CSJ orthodoxy in college arts programs. In Rowan’s play, a college dance instructor develops a ballet adaptation of The Tempest and casts himself as Prospero. A colleague committed to DEI intervenes, and the ballet implodes as faculty and students fracture along ideological lines.

I agreed to direct the play mainly because Rowan’s writing did not reduce characters to villains or heroes. They were complex, flawed people pursuing values they sincerely believed in, with tragic consequences. When Rowan and I first discussed the project, I doubted any theater would produce it because it dared to ask questions many would rather keep offstage.

Over a year later, Dismantling Prospero received a FAIR Artist Grant. Emboldened by that support, Rowan submitted the play to a festival in New York’s East Village which, to my surprise and delight, accepted it! Considering the play’s subject matter, I thought the decision to include the play in the festival was remarkably brave. The production received a thoughtful, nuanced response from audiences and critics.

During one intermission, a colleague approached me with a smirk asking, “Is the show cancelled yet?” Another colleague overheard a nearby audience member ask, “Is this really what campus is like?” A reply came quickly: “I am in graduate school. This is exactly what it is like.”

In some ways directing the play was cathartic; in others it was unnerving. Sometimes watching the actors play out the scenes felt like witnessing reenactments of my own professional nightmares. At the same time, that was a clear signal Rowan’s writing was on the money. In the end, I was deeply grateful for the opportunity to direct a play that asked difficult questions. Walking out of the theater after the final performance, I felt a fragile flicker of hope—maybe, just maybe, the stage might be warming to voices left out in the cold.

Three days later, Charlie Kirk was shot on a college campus. This real-world violence, immediately following the fictional campus drama I had just directed, forced me to confront my own naïveté. I had thought the risks involved in presenting Dismantling Prospero were primarily professional or reputational. After Kirk’s death, I wondered whether the boundaries I assumed still existed—between speech and violence, dissent and danger—had collapsed.

I am not suggesting that artists now face the same risks as national political figures. But when violence enters the conversation at all, it alters how people calculate the cost of dissent—even in fields once thought of as insulated from such danger. 

My fear was not entirely abstract. In early 2025, I was writing text messages while riding the subway when a stranger leaned into my ear and said, “You should kill yourself.” He vanished before I turned around. Did he recognize me from public statements I have made opposing activism in education? Or was he reading text messages over my shoulder and objected to what I wrote? It was frightening at the time, but I did my best to put it out of my mind. After Kirk’s death, it haunts me with new resonance.

Days after Kirk’s murder, FIRE released survey data showing that acceptance of violence to silence speakers had risen from one in five college students in 2020 to one in three. Before Kirk’s death, I had considered whether Dismantling Prospero might be a good candidate for a campus tour. Now I wondered what risks that would entail. 

It is impossible to ignore that colleges and universities have increasingly suggested “harmful” words constitute a form of physical violence. Jonathan Rauch noted this dangerous trend decades ago. In his 1993 book Kindly Inquisitors, Rauch warned, “you do not have to be Kant to see what comes after ‘offensive words are bullets.’” Twenty years later, in his aforementioned critique of Freire, professor David Corey pondered whether teaching students “all oppression ‘constitutes violence,’ and that justifies violence in return” was informing campus behavior. By 2025, the equation of speech and violence appeared to shift from philosophy books to the evening news. 

Later in the fall, I watched a video of FIRE president Greg Lukianoff speaking at the university where Kirk was killed. Lukianoff described his own parents’ escape from authoritarian regimes as an attempt to “step outside of history.” “History,” he said, “is the story of being afraid to say what you really think because someone might kill you for it.” 

For a theater director like me, who presents work in public, these are not abstract theories—they are legitimate concerns, demanding a sober recalculation of risk. In sum, taking the year into account—the cost of artistic freedom has, in fact, inflated to new heights.

The New Price of Admission

While I remain hopeful the scene will change again, this time to a more open forum, I have to be honest about the current state of the stage. Before this year, I estimated the price of artistic expression in professional and personal terms; now I can no longer assume it comes without greater risk.

If the prevailing arts culture had truly moved beyond peak woke in 2025, I doubt I would have written this essay. I suspect I would have been too busy in rehearsal—arguing passionately, collaborating freely, and making art without ideological preconditions. If CSJ were no longer the north star of arts institutions, I might be doing this work within a welcoming theater. 

But I have not given up; I have done the only thing I could do—produce my own work. Since 2021, I have produced three stage adaptations of under-acknowledged literature, and I am about to begin work on a fourth. I do not expect my work will break into the current establishment. But creating work outside of mainstream institutions may force change by creating competition through theater offerings audiences are unable to find on legacy stages.

Even so, independent producing has not restored the full scope of artistic freedom I once took for granted. I have so far avoided producing work that directly confronts contemporary orthodoxies. Instead, I have adapted literature from the past, selecting works containing themes that echo in our moment. Old short stories and novels contain an added bonus: they provide an aesthetic distance that allows the audience to watch characters navigate dilemmas in a time and place far from their own, effectively giving the audience permission to view the drama as witnesses rather than defendants.

I did not produce Dismantling Prospero; I was hired to direct it, which was an opportunity to step away from my own productions and experience what the cultural traffic will actually allow. The experience was largely a success. I directed a worthy play that sincerely and respectfully asked questions many would rather keep behind the curtain.

I am proud of the work, but I would be lying if I said I was not more uneasy after the show closed than I was before it opened. Looking back, I can see there may have been dangers beyond the reputational and professional risks I already knew well.

I don’t know whether I would direct another play that baldly critiques contemporary culture. Part of me wants to say “yes” without hesitation. Another part of me knows the calculus has changed. At the very least, every potential risk needs to be bluntly considered.

At the same time, I think about the playwrights who took center stage at the beginning of this essay—surely Lillian Hellman, Mae West, and Arthur Miller would relish any opportunity to critique compelled conformity. In my heart, I know I should not demur either.

But then the wheels in my brain turn to the potential costs.

Until conditions for artistic freedom significantly improve, honesty requires me to ask: how high a price will artists be asked to pay for the freedom to express what they believe?

Index of Hyperlinks

• Mike Cummings, “Defending an ‘Indecent’ play: ‘The God of Vengeance’ in the Yale University Library archives,” Yale News, October 15, 2015.

• American Masters, “The time Mae West spent eight days in jail,” PBS, June 12, 2020.

• Helen Pluckrose, “What Do We Mean by Critical Social Justice?” The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain, March 20, 2021.

• John Moore, “American Theatre’s Leadership Vacuum: Who Will Fill It?”, American Theatre, August 31, 2017.

• “Associate Arts Program Specialist,” City of New York, October 28, 2025.

• Erik Piepenburg, “It’s a Homophobic Slur. What’s It Doing in So Much Theater?”, The New York Times, December 1, 2025.

• Denise Fahmy, et al., “Afraid to Speak Freely,” Freedom in the Arts, May 6, 2025.

• Chapin Lenthall-Cleary, “Which academic majors are the least politically tolerant?”, Expression, January 1, 2026.

• Conor Murray and Molly Bohannon, “IBM Reportedly Walks Back Diversity Policies, Citing ‘Inherent Tensions’: Here Are All The Companies Rolling Back DEI Programs,” Forbes, April 11, 2025.

• United States, Supreme Court. Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services. June 5, 2025. Supreme Court of the United States, slip opinion, No. 23-1039.

• Andrew Sullivan, “How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost Its Way,” The New York Times, June 26, 2025.

• Mary McDonald-Lewis, “The Artist in Exile,” FAIR for All, December 16, 2025.

• “The CAFC Academic Freedom Prize,” Columbia Academic Freedom Council. Accessed January 2, 2026. 

• United States, Executive Office of the President. Executive Order 14173: Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity. Federal Register, Vol. 90, No. 20, January 31, 2025. pp. 8633–8636.

• David Corey, “Paulo Freire’s Oppressive Pedagogy,” National Affairs (Winter 2023).

• Mark Halperin and Charlie Kirk. “The Charlotte Stabbing Shows Why America’s Crime Debate Is More Divided Than Ever, with Charlie Kirk.” YouTube, uploaded by Next Up with Mark Halperin. September 9, 2025.

• Kevin Ray, “Social Justice Activists Are Dismantling Theater: I Watched From the Inside,” The Black Sheep, January 22, 2024.

• Noah Simon Jampol, “Review: The Aisle Is Full of Noises: ‘Dismantling Prospero’ Demands as it Delights,” Thinking Theater NYC, August 31, 2025.

• Ryne Weiss and Chapin Lenthall-Cleary, “Student Acceptance of Violence in Response to Apeech Hits a Record High,” The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, September 12, 2025.

• Greg Lukianoff. “The free speech message every American should hear.” YouTube, uploaded by FIRE. October 31, 2025.

Other Works Cited

• Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (London: Penguin Press, 2018).

• Jonathan Rauch, Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, expanded edition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

One of my sons suggested I write an essay about growing up in a communist country so Americans, including the current generation of American “democratic” socialists, can learn more about life behind the Iron Curtain, and perhaps would end up appreciating their own country more. I decided to give it a shot, and I ended up comparing my past life with my current American life.

It is different here in North America, at least it used to be until recently. You can be whatever you want to be (with certain exceptions, such as a Nazi, a member of the KKK, a jihadist even—as long as they espouse these ideologies without following up with actions), even Jewish! Not just Jewish, but openly Jewish. And that was new to me when I arrived in Toronto as a refugee from socialist Czechoslovakia.

I grew up in communist Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, a socialist country. My parents were Holocaust survivors who never got over their WWII experiences. My mother in particular did not recover from her experience of hiding from Slovak fascists and Nazi troops in the Slovakian mountains and witnessing atrocities. Today she would be diagnosed as suffering from PTSD.

In Prague, you did not talk about it, if possible. You did not mention that you were Jewish if some mention of Jews came up in a conversation. We, I mean my family, did not go to a synagogue and did not celebrate the Sabbath or any of the Holidays. But, to be honest, Catholics and other denominations kept out of sight and quiet as well. My parents did not tell my sister and I that we were Jewish until I was in the second or third grade, around 1961. The revelation did not come as a big surprise as my parents always discussed who was Jewish and who was not, who from their friends or acquaintances left for “Palestine” (a code word for Israel).

I remember how happy I was to find out that we were Jewish, and I did not hesitate to share this good news with my friends who were unimpressed. I think that it was in middle school when I learned that the communist regime was threatened by three enemies: American “imperialists,” German “revanchists” (who wanted to regain the lost Sudetenland), and, yes—you guessed right—“Zionists.”

Already then, in the ’60s, the Zionists were plotting! The Six-Day War of 1967 was a watershed moment for me. The anti-Semitic propaganda in newspapers, radio, and TV was incessantly toxic and I became a Zionist. I remember evenings and nights when my father was trying to tune into heavily jammed Western radio stations: Voice of America, the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and Österreichischer Rundfunk. The experience of the Yom Kippur War was equally traumatic—the hateful official propaganda, and difficulties getting reliable information.

Life in Prague was difficult in other respects as well. I felt always as the other—different from other kids in school and the neighborhood. I was well aware of the fact that I was the only kid whose parents did not have roots in what’s known today as Czechia. Czechs and the rest of people living in Czechoslovakia were very homogenous and parochial in those days. My mom was from Slovakia, my father grew up in Romania. And we were Jewish, living more or less undercover. Most kids had grandparents living in villages not far from Prague, while I did not. My parents, especially my father, learned Czech somewhat later in life. Their Czech, and mine as well, was perfect—too perfect. I was not familiar with many colloquial expressions. We all lived in a cage that opened once in a while and let a few people out for a few days, mostly to sister socialist countries, members of the Warsaw Pact. We would go to Romania because we had relatives there. Romanians had it worse—less food, less freedom, with beggars in the streets of Bucharest and on the trains. And that was even before Ceaușescu.

Things exploded with the Prague Spring in 1968. Suddenly you could travel to the West and you could be openly Jewish and free. And news reporting was objective. Of course, this did not last long. The Soviet tanks took care of that on August 21, 1968. After the invasion, people were hoping the Americans would come and liberate us, but that did not happen. However, Czechs stuck together for several more months and then gave up. Oppression came back. My parents who were journalists and writers lost their jobs and were harassed and interrogated by the secret police. Although their book of stories about interrelation between Jews and music came out in 1971, it was almost immediately confiscated. My parents speculated that its title, The Song for the Day of Atonement, did the book in.

I started medical school, and classes on communism and Marxism-Leninism were part of the curriculum. I was interested in research and was involved in projects at the genetics institute where I was recruited into their Ph.D. program that would start after my graduation from medical school. That never happened. After two or so years (medical school takes six years in Prague; it is a first degree after high school) I was told by the institute director that higher powers forbade my post-graduate studies. Why? Because I was Jewish. The director was very apologetic, after all his grandfather was Jewish, but nothing could be done.

A few months after this exchange, our family was able to escape. And as a result, I did not have to take the medical school’s exam on “scientific communism.” I knew I could never pass it; until this day, I do not know what “scientific communism” is or was. We ended up in Toronto where I was amazed by the lively Jewish life—synagogues; Jews easily identifiable from their attire, who were freely attending services in these synagogues; Jewish day schools; kosher groceries and bakeries; and kosher restaurants. And Jews were not afraid of being Jewish. Amazing. I finished medical school, married my American husband, and we moved to the U.S. And for many years I enjoyed the freedom, not just to be Jewish, but to pursue a career I was interested in; where nobody told me that being Jewish disqualified me from getting a Ph.D. or becoming a pathologist, and where there was complete freedom of access to books, newspapers, and now social media. Because we have been living in a Southern college town, we did not have a Jewish day school. So the kids went to “regular” schools wearing kipot (yes, we have three boys) and taking off for Jewish holidays.

As life went on, I became American and felt free to express my opinions and to be Jewish, though I still am not able to flaunt it. And this is the meaning of America—you can be what you choose to be, even Jewish.  And you can travel around the world, then come back and still be an American. You can move around the country, and nobody will prevent you. You are free to do it. And free to do many other things. This is America at its best: welcoming, self-reliant, tolerant, taking you in.

I also appreciate how friendly and helpful Americans are, though this is connected with a certain, many times endearing, naïveté and ignorance about the oppressive conditions under which people in many countries live. That might be one reason why some Americans, including college students, express their dislike—if not hatred—of America and their support of socialism and radical Islam.

Perhaps a week spent in China or in Gaza would open their eyes, and they would appreciate being welcomed back home by passport control officers.

The musical  Slam Frank  ran briefly in 2025, but the way it distorts Anne Frank’s story has not received the scrutiny it deserves. This critique is based on the show’s own officially released marketing materials, social media promotions, interviews, and excerpts, the very tools its creators used to define, advertise, and defend their project.

Slam Frank reimagines Anne Frank as a pansexual Latina named Anita Franco, asks whether Anne Frank ever acknowledged her “white privilege,” and repurposes the yellow Star of David that Jews were forced to wear under Nazi rule, transforming a mark of persecution into a visual gimmick modeled on the Hamilton logo.

The show’s marketing goes further in ways that are deeply disturbing. One promotional Instagram post riffs on the infamous Nazi slogan “Arbeit macht frei,” transforming it into “WERK sets U free” framed by rainbow flags. Another asks, “How many of the six million never experienced the joy of gender euphoria?” Still another proclaims, “Anne Frank never came out of the closet—our musical asks what if she had?” 

Otto Frank, Anne’s father, omitted passages about her coming-of-age feelings to protect her dignity, privacy, and youth. Slam Frank’s creators chose to reverse that judgment and exploit a murdered child to advance an identity-driven spectacle—not to illuminate history or Anne Frank’s experience, but to appropriate her trauma, now circulated through their social media in fundraising appeals.

The creators insist the musical is a satire of contemporary “wokeness” (not an endorsement of it), inspired by a viral 2022 Twitter thread debating whether Anne Frank had “white privilege.” I don’t believe them. Listening to how they speak about the show, diary and historical context, as negotiable, there is a good chance neither will you

Slam Frank is not mocking the distortion of Anne Frank’s story, it is participating in it.

Numerous social media posts openly “joke” about whether the show is anti-Semitic; “Seventy-five percent Jewish, twenty-five percent anti-Semitic,” one quips, “it’s definitely both!” says another. This is not how serious satire behaves. Turning anti-Semitism into a punchline doesn’t examine prejudice, it normalizes it. 

Of course, we all bring who we are to art. No viewer arrives as a blank slate. But that does not absolve artists of responsibility, especially when dealing with genocidal trauma. Anne Frank’s diary endures not as something to invite ambiguity, but because it bore witness to real events as they unfolded. It exists to document reality, to ensure that what happened to Jews could not be denied, minimized, or repurposed beyond recognition.  Attempting to de-center that truth is profane. It treats testimony as raw material rather than evidence, and her suffering as something that can be exploited to serve agendas entirely unrelated to the Holocaust or her experience. When audiences are left wondering whether anti-Semitism is being condemned or performed, it causes real harm and the failure is not on the viewer—it is in the work. 

The system that claims to expand empathy now uses it to ration it.

Good satire makes its target unmistakable. In Borat, anti-Semitism is exposed by making those who believe in it ridiculous. In The Producers, Nazis are rendered absurd and powerless. Even when uncomfortable, we know who is being skewered. In Slam Frank, the supposed target is “wokeness,” yet wokeness is never meaningfully interrogated. Instead, the joke lands on Anne Frank and the Jews. The creators defend backlash by repeating that “it’s just satire.” How brilliant—and how cruel.

Art doesn’t need to be polite, but some wounds remain active and some testimony is not ours with which we may play. We do not stage ironic musicals about flight attendants on 9/11. We do not invite audiences to debate whether victims of mass murder would fail contemporary ideological tests. Anne Frank belongs in that same protected moral category.

Claiming to mock the idea that Anne Frank’s story is compromised by “white privilege,” and oscillating between mockery and sincerity does not encourage rejection of anti-Semitism; it reframes it as a question to consider. Jewish history becomes debatable, human suffering becomes abstract, and hatred is no longer something we reject but an idea to amuse us.

There comes a point where analysis gives way to revulsion. Not because something is controversial, but because it violates basic moral boundaries. Simply watching Slam Frank’s ads, social media, or listening to the musical score is profoundly disturbing. You instinctively recognize that something irreparable is being done to the innocent at its center—and that watching feels complicit.

Anne Frank’s life and words are not yours to reframe. Without her consent, twisting her diary to fit a contemporary narrative is a violation—not only of her lived experience, but of the trauma of millions. Her words are evidence; using them to advance a message she never intended is manipulation, not creativity. 

While it is too late to pray for Anne Frank herself, we can hope for the moral conscience of a generation that laughs at, promotes, or endorses this desecration. Some truths are not negotiable, and some voices we are bound to honor. Anne Frank is one of them.

On November 19, 2025, NPR interviewed “Palestinian comedian” Mo Amer in conjunction with his Netflix special Wild World. The host, Leila Fadel, claims that the special “explores free speech and the absurdities American Arabs and Muslims face while navigating life in the U.S.”

I have not seen the special. 

What I find interesting and disturbing is the way the issue of free speech is framed in the interview. Amer is talking about negative reactions people have to something someone says, that is, about “being shunned or canceled over something you say.” It is conceivable that this could be discrimination. But Amer and NPR would have us believe that this is somehow a violation of free speech.

In fact, free speech is a basic right that is enshrined in the Constitution’s First Amendment. Its meaning and application are often matters of debate, but there is absolutely no reason to think that “being shunned or canceled” would violate free speech. If Amer were arrested or imprisoned for something he said, that could violate free speech, though not necessarily. If his words posed an immanent threat to someone’s person or defamed someone’s character, they would not be protected. Our Constitution protects speech that criticizes the government or its policies. As it happens, there are relatively few countries that allow their populations to criticize their governments. Hamas-controlled Gaza is certainly not one of them, nor is the PA-controlled “West Bank.” In fact, there is not a single Arab country that has free speech, nor could anyone feel entirely safe in any Muslim country after criticizing the government. Basic human rights just do not extend that far—as we see tragically in Iran after the government shot down thousands of demonstrators. Similarly, critics of Hamas are not “shunned or canceled”—they’re arrested, tortured, and sometimes murdered. Amer’s suggestion that he could speak freely in Saudi Arabia is simply ridiculous—unless he means that what he says about Israel will not be shunned there.  

Why would anyone think that being shunned is a violation of free speech? The point of free speech is that you can say what you want (again, within limits). It is not that I or anyone else needs to listen to you—much less to agree. Amer seems to feel free only when he can say what he believes to people who agree with him. “Free” for him means “free from criticism.” Ridiculous! One point of guaranteeing free speech in a society is to foster debate. Speech is free only when others can criticize it. Free speech promotes dialogue and discussion that help us sort out which beliefs are true and the best policies to follow.

Can people at NPR and Netflix possibly be so confused about the meaning of free speech? Could audiences really imagine that Americans lack free speech because what they say is criticized? Are audiences drawing the conclusion that is apparently intended, namely, that it is rather people in Saudi Arabia, Gaza, and Lebanon who have real free speech because they can criticize Israel without encountering any opposition? It seems that it is only those who state the “facts” as Amer and Fadel see them who are entitled to speak freely.

There is another side of this perversion of free speech that is even more disturbing. It was widely reported that campus protests against Israel targeted Jewish students, threatening and intimidating them. Some students were trapped in campus buildings when police could not protect them. It was related to me that Jewish students at Hunter College were told by their university administration not to come to class because it would be too dangerous. Yet, university presidents and faculty have insisted that the protestors were exercising their right to free speech in peaceful demonstrations, and that their institutions must protect this right. Even when students broke into university buildings and harassed staff, administrators at Columbia and other institutions refused to press charges. Were they afraid that protesters would feel that they just were not free to express themselves in the U.S.? Or were they concerned that their foreign students could face deportation? Or was it that protestors and administrators thought they were indeed exercising their right to free speech because nearly everyone agreed with them? At the very least our universities should ensure that their students abide by the law. To fail to do so is not to promote free speech.

The human rights that we enjoy in the U.S. are precious and rare. To suggest that people concerned by Muslim support for Islamism are somehow suppressing free speech, as Amer and NPR do, is not just ridiculous. It betrays a complete misunderstanding of what free speech is. We cannot keep our rights if significant segments of the population do not understand or appreciate them. We need to ensure that new immigrants get instruction in American institutions. We need to teach civics classes in schools again. If even NPR and Netflix could be confused, there must be many, many more Americans who need to learn about America.

There may be nothing more controversial in the United States today than the question of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcing America’s immigration laws. Those laws are pretty straightforward, calling for federal authorities to detain and deport anyone found in the country illegally; but those laws have fallen into disfavor in some circles, causing protests and riots, particularly in Minneapolis. 

Many—such as Governor Tim Walz—are calling ICE “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo,” comparing the enforcement of immigration law to the Holocaust.

This comparison equates taking someone who is in the country illegally—at best—and sending them home, to sending people who have committed no crimes and are in their country of birth to rancid ghettoes, slave labor camps, and gas chambers.

This comparison also equates the Jewish people the Nazis rounded up to the people ICE is deporting, when 70% of the illegal aliens ICE has detained under the Trump administration either have criminal convictions, or are currently in the process of being prosecuted for violent crimes. The other 30% are either family members of those with criminal records, or associates suspected of being members of criminal gangs. 

The notion that sending such people back to the nations of which they are citizens is the same as sending them to Auschwitz is absurd and disgusting.

I was stationed in Germany for three years and visited Dachau. I’m also married to a Polish immigrant, and have been to Auschwitz. If you have not been to Auschwitz, you can read about the place some people want to compare ICE detention here. There is no viable way to compare these things, and those doing so need to stop.

As if that were not enough, when Governor Walz has told Minnesotans to gather ’round and record everything ICE agents are doing “for future prosecutions,” one must understand that these politicians are not talking about prosecuting ICE under federal law. They are explicitly talking about prosecuting ICE agents for crimes against humanity in international courts—which is an intentional and a direct comparison to the Holocaust.

There is also the possibility that Walz, Frey, Ilhan Omar—who pretended that ICE detained her son while he was leaving a Target—and others may be doing this to distract from the Minneapolis welfare fraud scandal—a scandal that otherwise would end some of their political careers. To the degree that this is true, they are encouraging violence, knowing people will get killed, to try and hang on to power.

If we did want an apt comparison, we might compare Walz’s anti-ICE riots to Hitler’s Kristallnacht, except that, instead of targeting Jewish people, Walz and Frey are targeting officers of a federal law enforcement agency. One which arrested a very real Jew-hater, namely October 7-justifying Hamas activist Mahmoud Khalil—now, after illegal judicial interventions, soon to be deported to Algeria.

Mayor Jacob Frey has called ICE an “occupying force,” and ordered ICE to “get the f—k out of Minneapolis.” Walz has referred to ICE’s presence as “a war that’s being waged against Minnesota,” and demonized their enforcement of federal immigration law as “organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.”

Walz has gone so far as to compare ICE protesters in Minneapolis to the First Minnesota Regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg. The First Minnesota was a famed Civil War unit that played a central, costly role in defending Cemetery Ridge on the second day of the battle. The First Minnesota was ordered to charge into a much larger Confederate force as a stalling action, buying time for reinforcements to arrive, and, while the First Minnesota was successful, they suffered 80% casualties.

As if this is not enough, Walz keeps threatening to call up the Minnesota National Guard to protect protestors, and illegals, from ICE—a move that would put the National Guard in direct, armed opposition to federal officers.

Anyone who knows the history of the First Minnesota will read Tim Walz’ words as telling protestors to throw themselves against ICE even if it means taking casualties, and, though Walz is smart enough to know how far to push things before it legally becomes incitement, this crossed the line, and now two people are dead because of it.

To truly understand what is happening in Minneapolis, and, to a lesser extent, in other parts of the country, it helps to understand the incentives and the history that led us here.

The incentive is power.

Anyone in the country, legally or not, is counted in the U.S. Census. Congress is then apportioned based upon that count. Because of this, a state like California can inflate its membership in the House of Representatives by allowing people to immigrate into it illegally, or by attracting illegal immigrants from other states. 

This also increases the number of Electoral College votes a state gets, creating an incentive for states to use illegal immigration to boost the representation of their state relative to the country as a whole both in the House and in helping choose the president.

Now that we understand the incentives, let’s look at the history.

On November 8, 1971, Berkeley, California, declared itself a “city of refuge” for members of the armed forces who deserted to avoid the Vietnam War. This was the first law in the nation barring local authorities from turning criminals over to federal authorities. Federal law mandates that local authorities turn over such people, so this law violated the supremacy clause of the Constitution.

America pulled out of the Vietnam war before the federal government had cause to challenge the Berkley law, but then, in 1979, the Los Angeles Police Department issued Special Order 70, instructing officers not to inquire into or take any enforcement action based on an individual’s immigration status. 

In 1982, the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona, declared itself a “sanctuary” for all illegal immigrants fleeing Central American civil wars. Then San Francisco passed a “city of refuge” resolution in 1985, signed by Mayor Dianne Feinstein, declaring support for refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala. San Francisco extended its law with a binding ordinance in 1989 (No. 375-89), prohibiting city resources from aiding federal deportation efforts. This is often cited as the first enforceable sanctuary city ordinance, and laws like this began to pop up in other locations throughout the country.

All of these laws violate the supremacy clause, ordering local authorities to break federal law whenever they arrest someone in the country illegally, by refusing to turn such people over to federal authorities. 

In some cases, in order to avoid “violating” federal law, local authorities have been instructed not to prosecute anyone in the country illegally, creating de facto immunity and encouraging criminal gangs of illegal aliens to set up shop, such as MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha) and Tren de Aragua.

In 2002, border patrol was separated from internal immigration law enforcement, through the creation of ICE via the Homeland Security Act.

Barack Obama was widely criticized for rounding up and deporting more than 3.1 million illegal immigrants, but, as soon as Donald Trump became president, Trump was blamed for all of the policies the Obama administration had instituted and retained, and Obama’s record, once so controversial, was conveniently forgotten. For example, the so-called “family separation” policy—which was actually just enforcement of the 1997 Reno v. Flores settlement mandating that illegal minors not be detained with adults—was falsely attributed to President Trump and illustrated with pictures of “kids in cages” taken in 2014 under Obama. Trump made illegal immigration a central part of his 2016 campaign, and, after Trump won that election, the entire Democratic Party went all-in on destroying him.

Destroying Trump started with Russian collusion, but soon anything Trump wanted to do was spun in the worst possible light, and suddenly “defund the Police” became a thing. ICE then became the poster-boy for police to eliminate.

Joe Biden did not eliminate ICE, but he did transform it from an immigration law enforcement agency into the world’s largest travel agency, flying illegal aliens into the interior of the country, hoping to flip some red states blue and to increase the number of House seats (and Electoral College votes) in blue states.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) found that Joe Biden had funneled $59 million through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to house illegal migrants in luxury hotels, while the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had spent as much as $31 billion on caring for people migrating through Central America into the United States. 

The number of people who illegally migrated into the United States under Joe Biden is not yet fully known. One is estimate is more than 9.5 million between 2021 and 2024, representing those border patrol officers physically saw cross the border, and including 1.5 million “gotaways” during that period. That’s in addition to those who were already here.

Donald Trump ran on illegal immigration again in 2024. In most of the country, ICE is doing its job quietly, with local police either assisting directly, or, in the case of most “sanctuary cities,” local police at least ensure that protestors do not obstruct ICE during operations.

In Minneapolis, however, elected officials are encouraging protestors to obstruct ICE, and are barring local police from protecting ICE from those who riot, obstruct, or commit violence against them.

By invoking the First Minnesota, and by comparing ICE to the Gestapo, Walz has all but declared war. But, just as when he bailed on his soldiers as a frocked Sergeant Major, refusing to deploy with them, this, too, is a war he refuses to fight himself.

Tim Walz talks big, but he lets others suffer the consequences.

People can have whatever opinion they want about immigration law. It is a free country and we do not all have to agree. One thing we should agree on, though, is that the President of the United States swears an oath to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. 

Joe Biden refused to follow his oath, at least in relation to immigration law, but Donald Trump is enforcing those laws, and, in a democratic republic, though protestors can protest laws they do not like, they cannot change them—and cannot stop people from enforcing it.

Changing federal law takes Congress.

Tim Walz can talk to Congress. So can Jacob Frey. Ilhan Omar is in Congress, and, to her credit, she has actually promised to defund ICE and to let anyone able to enter our country stay.

The public does not want these things, outside of those rioting in Minneapolis, who likely don’t even represent the majority in their own city.

ICE is not the Gestapo, immigration law enforcement is not the Holocaust, and Tim Walz is not Winston Churchill.

Winston Churchill was a hero. Tim Walz is a fraud.

The United States is six months away from celebrating its 250th birthday—making it the oldest democracy in the world. Its first few birthdays were kicked off by kicking out a British monarch who took far too many liberties with his American Colonies without granting his subjects anything approaching actual liberty. There were stubborn edicts, stifling censorship, imperious tea and stamp taxes, Red Coats rifling through personal effects, incarcerations without being charged, juries never convened and trial dates that never materialized. 

A nation born of trauma—a people traumatized by a king who held too tight of a grip on a sovereign people from across an ocean. Colonialists under the British crown took full advantage of the geographic distance between the king’s tyranny and the possibility of a new beginning as Americans. The founding generation made a critical and gutsy decision to break with King George III and unite 13 states committed to the principle of individual autonomy and the consent to be governed. The vastness of the United States provided a blank canvas that gave democracy first dibs on the virtues of self-rule. 

The Declaration of Independence, the passage of which we celebrate annually on July 4, announced America’s break with the British monarchy; the Bill of Rights was a direct attack on the monarch himself, and on all infringements on liberty—regardless of whom imposes them. Our founding documents were enacted as checks on governmental overreach—with the emphasis on “the government shall not…” rather than “citizens have the right to…” 

The Constitution is not only a recitation of entitlements; it is also a document concerned with limitations. A warning to government to not trample over fundamental freedoms. Power is to be separated and balances checked. Governmental leaders are in charge, yet not without oversight. 

But it’s not a one-way street. The government is restricted in what it can do, and the people are not off the hook. They are obligated to perform reciprocal duties. Citizenship confers both rights and obligations.

For instance, the right to free speech and freedom of the press carries with it an implied duty that the body politic will benefit from the fruits of those freedoms. Citizens will read newspapers and remain informed on current events. Differences of opinion will not be avoided and surely not censored. They will congregate at town squares and listen to those standing on soap boxes engaged in robust debates. 

Speech communicates the news of the day. It is how vital information about science and medicine is shared. Speech gives voice and shape to public opinion. The First Amendment prohibits the government from impinging on expressive activity. But of equal importance to the Founding Fathers is the received wisdom that derives from speech—the benefits that come from listening. Not all speech qualifies for protection. If it conveys ideas, adds to public discourse, contributes to the life of the mind and advances human progress, the First Amendment guarantees its safe passage.

That’s why the Supreme Court has long ruled that “fighting words,” “true threats,” group defamation, and the “incitement of imminent lawlessness” are not safeguarded by constitutional guarantees. They are proscribed categories of unprotected speech—essentially, non-speech.

The heckler is to receive no veto power simply because he or she is loud. The drafters of the Constitution did not endow those with closed minds the power to shout down those who gravitate to the public square with minds fully open. Why fight a Revolutionary War to privilege censorship? Criticism, even offense, is welcome. Silencing speakers who have something meaningful to say is not.

An electorate that speaks freely and is fully aware of the issues of the day will make known to the government the will of the people. And a government attuned to the public pulse will make better decisions on its behalf. 

Citizenship is shorthand for civic participation, the expectation that all Americans are fully engaged in the experience of a representative democracy.

The gift of the Founding Fathers was in setting a standard that rights come with responsibilities. In 1790, George Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, reassuring them that “the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Everyone—but most especially those torching police precincts and cars, screaming “Death!” to a group of people, desecrating monuments, disrupting diners and public performances, scuffling with law enforcement—should ask themselves: “Am I a good citizen? Do I make America better by my presence? Am I uplifting my community or dragging it down?”

Raving about rights is pure narcissism and self-interest; citizenship is the more meaningful endeavor in honoring the legacy of the American founders. To be a good citizen is the very essence of democracy in action: freely exercising liberties without interfering with the rights of others to do the same. 

In the span of human history, 250 years isn’t really that long a time period. Yet, in this era of highly caffeinated, hyperventilated, hyper-partisan politics, the founding principles that unite us as Americans can easily get lost. There are many obstacles to internalizing our shared values. Declining patriotism. The algorithmic anomie of social media. The cruel erasure of the cancellation culture.

The names and intentions of our Founding Fathers have been sullied. Their intentions blurred—dismissed as the bad faith of terribly flawed white men. Schools dedicated to their memory now whitewashed with graffiti. Statues of them toppled and doused in paint. Discarded historical figures, hardly ever mentioned favorably in schools. American Exceptionalism, a joke.

Various protest movements—Black Lives Matter, pro-Hamas, anti-ICE—have become more vocal and violent since the pandemic. American values have been condemned to the trash heap along with all of Western civilization. Mocked by intersectional grievances. Denounced as racist and colonialist. An entire canon of ideas has been detonated by the claptrap of identity politics—designed not to unite Americans in Americana, but to shame them into renouncing their patriotism, to shirk their obligations as citizens, to deny their peoplehood. 

Both the left and right seem to have lost their way. Pulled off course by malicious gatecrashers, those with marching orders to undermine the United States. Extreme elements within each of the political parties have seized an outsized role in gauging public opinion, speaking falsely, and making mischief.

For these reasons, as we approach this anniversary milestone, most Americans have forgotten how we got here (if they had ever known). We are in desperate need of a national civics lesson. There is an utter absence of curiosity about what the Founding Fathers imagined for this American experiment, what they were thinking when the American journey began. 

July 4 hasn’t always been hot dogs and mattress sales. The founding generation had ideals, and ideas on how to live up to those ideals. Yet, they didn’t leave behind much of a guidebook aside from legislative history and the Federalist Papers. Our founding documents—the Declaration Independence, the Bill of the Rights, and the United States Constitution—taken all together, is a relatively slim volume. We were tasked to figure it out. Apply dusty constitutional amendments to modern settings. Infer original intent. Embrace the future by revisiting the lessons from our past.

How is America doing after reaching a quarter of a millennium? Would our Founding Fathers approve if they were to see our progress? Once an outlier nation at the farthest reaches of an ocean. Emerging as a superpower only to be told that we must atone for our many sins.

That alone would have shocked our founding generation. Sins? The 1619 Project of the New York Times, which received the Pulitzer Prize, couldn’t find a single virtue in the United States. From the moment that white people planted their feet in the new world of North America, every single breathe has been expended in the service of racism and slavery. And little if any racial progress has been made—not the Emancipation Proclamation and the post-Civil War Amendments to the Constitution; not the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act; not Head Start and Affirmative Action; not civil rights laws designed to achieve equality in housing and public accommodations; not a twice elected American Black president, a once elected Vice President, and two consecutive Black Secretaries of State.

Nothing can redeem the United States from its white superracist fortress. Abraham Lincoln, especially, would be quite surprised by this discovery.

The cornerstone of progressive thought these days, which has hijacked the Democratic Party, projects this bitter, illiberal, intolerant vision of the United States. Speech is no longer free but dependent on safe spaces. Open inquiry and the marketplace of ideas have closed shop. Democrats have memorized a pre-approved narrative of American failure, and they are sticking to it. Everyone is entitled to their own truth—regardless of whether the premises are false.

Progressives can’t even agree on basic biology. Our science has never been more advanced, and yet male and female chromosomes and reproductive organs are somehow indeterminate of gender. The Founding Fathers were men of the Enlightenment. They believed in science and were certain that as the calendar flipped from 1976 to 2026, scientific discoveries along the way would remain immutable. 

Imagine how dumbfounded they would be by how dumb we have become.

A bigger shock would be the alliance between progressives and Islamists. Thomas Jefferson fought off the Barbary Pirates. He never imagined that Muslims would not only migrate to the United States, but that they would have such a hold on the American body politic. New York City, Dearborn, Michigan,where most of the population is Muslim, Patterson, Prospect Park, and Montgomery, New Jersey, along with Bell, California—all have Muslim mayors and nearly all-Muslim city councils.

Calls to prayer in the middle of the street in Philadelphia. A female Islamic professor from Minnesota calling for the dismantling of the United States.

The Founding Fathers believed in a strict separation of church and state. Islam, however, is both a religion and a political movement. The founding generation only contemplated Christian denominations and Jews—with neither to become dominant in secular society.

Islam, however, recognizes no separation between the government, Shariah law, and the word of Allah. There is nothing clandestine in the Qur’an’s resolve to see Islam conquer other nations and world religions. Islam has demonstrated little tolerance for religious pluralism. There’s but one truth, and infidels and apostates don’t possess it.

What has happened all throughout Western Europe, Canada, and Australia with no-go zones, Sharia courts, the takeover of once secular city streets for calls to prayer, the ramming of vehicles into Christmas markets, and torching Christmas trees, may very soon be coming to a city near you—unless we hold fast to our constitutional priorities separating church from state. The First Amendment’s free exercise of religion clause does not protect such an expansive and intrusive expression of Islamic religious observance.

The Founding Fathers were very fearful of the mob-mentality of majoritarian rule. Local governments in European capitals have capitulated to their large Muslim populations with their known ties to Islamic extremism and terrorism. 

In Dearborn we have seen the burning of American flags coinciding with chants, “Death to America!” American Jews have been openly harassed and threatened by Muslims—relying on misapplied protections from the First Amendment—since the Gaza war began on October 7, 2023. Pro-Hamas rallies—both on college campuses and on public streets—involved rallying cries for dead Jews. 

Not unlike in Europe, American university officials and local governments refuse—or are simply too terrified—to enforce the law and crack down on such despicably hateful spectacles. The Founding Fathers would have regarded such behavior as simply un-American.

What about the recent actions of MAGA’s America First movement? How might the Founding Fathers have viewed them? 

Put simply, the Founding Fathers, several of whom themselves were born in Europe, felt warmly, and opportunistically, when it came to foreigners. They believed in American patriotism, not nationalism. What they valued most was good citizenship and global relevance. They did not envision immigration that provided asylum without a return on investment. Nor did they desire to see America withdraw from the world. 

Immigrants were welcome so long as they pursued a path leading to naturalization—a commitment to assimilate into the American mainstream. Alexander Hamilton wrote, “Some reasonable term [before applying for citizenship] ought to be allowed to enable aliens to get rid of foreign and acquire American attachments; to learn the principles and imbibe the spirit of our government; and to admit of at least a probability of their feeling a real interest in our affairs.” 

The United States welcomed immigrants who were hungry for more than just food. They wanted a slice of the American dream; and wanted no part of America’s decline.

Hamilton further wrote: “The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family.”

Given what we have seen recently, does that describe the guiding ethos of Somali Minnesotans and Venezuela gang members? The Father of our nation, George Washington, wanted immigrants quickly absorbed into American life, but not without “get[ting] assimilated to our customs, measures, laws: in a word soon [to] become one people.”

Because the miraculous social mobility engine of the melting pot has been abandoned—replaced by the rigidly stagnant politics of identity—we don’t hear much nowadays about the virtues of assimilation and how it unifies the population in a shared national enterprise.

What the progressive left and the isolationist ultra-right have most in common is a mutual hatred of Israel and a receptivity to violence. Without Israel, a Zohran Mamdani and Nick Fuentes would not much agree on anything else. And this animus has not only polluted their political affiliations, but it is also likely to lead to their self-destruction. The history of the United States—and what happens when such tensions are present—is not in their favor. 

The pursuit of happiness is an equal opportunity virtue. America’s vastness was never meant to be wasted on those disinclined to get on the starting line, to avail themselves of the opportunities offered in this New World. The primary author of the Constitution, James Madison, believed it “desirable that we should hold out as many inducements as possible for the worthy part of mankind to come and settle amongst us, and throw their fortunes into a common lot with ours.” 

The Founding Fathers would have been appalled to learn that our immigration system gave birth to sleeper cells. They envisioned immigrants wildly waving American flags on July 4. Their faces flush with patriotic pride. Backpacks loaded with explosives and ball bearings and “Allahu akbar!” on their lips was inconceivable. So, too, would be the chants from the American First ultra-right, “Jews will not replace us!” 

America First is, ultimately, an anti-American concept—because of its inherent coldness and perpetual isolation. The hatred of foreigners and allies like Israel does not further the American experiment. 

The progressive left, with its improbable Islamist bedfellows, and a MAGA movement that wants nothing more than for America to go it alone, is unbecoming of the democratic nation our founding generation bequeathed to us 250 years ago.

A wise Christian saying is that “The cleverest thing the devil ever did was to convince people he doesn’t exist.” Something similar can be said of the modern Red-Green Alliance and its Marxist oppressor-oppressed framework. The greatest trick this alliance ever pulled was convincing the world that they were the oppressed.

Nothing spreads like a mind virus quite as efficiently as Marxism and jihadist Islam. But the worst collision of ideas occurred within the last century, when Marxism fused with jihadism into a single ideological front. At first, this alliance attempted to defeat America—and the West—on the battlefield. When that failed, they adapted. What we face now is not a conventional war, but a psychological and moral one. If the West is to remain free, this is the fight it must win.

America cannot be beaten militarily. It would require a spectacular perfect storm of incompetence and catastrophic decision-making for America to lose where it has always been strongest: the battlefield. No—if America is ever defeated, it will not be by force of arms, but by a force of ideas. A mind virus that teaches that strength is immoral. That weakness is virtue. That says, “It is wrong to be strong. It is best to be weak.” As a young Lincoln said in 1838, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”

That is how America would fall—by forgetting what kind of society produces the most good. A strong society. A society built on capitalism, and, by extension freedom, is the greatest engine of human flourishing ever devised. That is precisely why the Red-Green Alliance of Marxism and jihadism is hellbent—quite literally—on destroying America and the values that make it great.

The greatest disservice done to America’s youth is the glorification of victimhood. The idea that being a victim is righteous. That striving for victimhood is moral. This is the most toxic doctrine one can preach in America because it is diametrically opposed to everything America represents.

To be American is to believe in meritocracy. To believe that, by and large, your destiny is in your own hands. That if you work hard, make sound decisions, and take responsibility for your life, you can build something good. That is not a promise of wealth, but of possibility. Does that mean everyone will sell a company for $100 million? Of course not. But it does mean accepting the challenge of life—and the uniquely American promise that you can be better off than the generation before you.

This is not an indictment of one’s parents. It is a celebration of aspiration. America is filled with people who refuse to settle, who do not accept mediocrity as fate. But once you accept the oppressor-oppressed framework, you accept a worldview in which the game is rigged, effort is meaningless, and agency is an illusion. At that point, there is no incentive to build—only to demand. You might as well throw your hands up and insist that other people’s property become yours, administered by a government already rife with incompetence and corruption, as if this experiment has not failed catastrophically in countless countries around the world.

Critics often tally the deaths committed in the name of religion. Fine. But Marxism—which actually is a religion—is a tsunami of genocide wherever it makes landfall. The Great Leap Forward under Mao—tens of millions dead. The Killing Fields of Pol Pot—nobody really knows the number of mass graves. The Holodomor under Stalin—millions starved in Ukraine. Religion can be bloody, but Marxism turns entire oceans red.

Ironically, the only religion currently positioned to go toe-to-toe with “godless” Marxism on the world stage is Islam as practiced by the majority of Muslims globally. Yet the world directs its outrage at Israel, while Hamas openly declares its genocidal intentions—calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state and the murder of Jews everywhere “until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!” And somehow it is Israel that is labeled the oppressor?

The “Green” in the Red-Green Alliance seeks Israel’s destruction because Israel is the beta test. Iran refers to Israel as the “Little Satan” and America as the “Big Satan” for a reason. Israel’s enemies know they cannot defeat it in a fair fight—just as America’s enemies know it is hopeless to confront the United States militarily. Try it, and you do not merely lose; you may cease to exist.

So they target Israel first. Undermine the allies. Make democracy appear illegitimate. Turn reality on its head. Convince the world that strength is evil and defense is aggression. Portray Israel—constantly forced into existential wars—as the oppressor, while those waging genocidal wars of annihilation are framed as victims.

Israel is founded on Jewish philosophy and values. America is founded on Judeo-Christian ethics and the best Greek of thought via the Enlightenment. These pillars of Western civilization stand in direct opposition to Marxism and jihadism. “I think, therefore I am.” Because I am a thinking human being, I possess inherent worth. Because I possess inherent worth, I have inalienable rights. I am an individual—not a cell in a collective.

The Red-Green Alliance rejects this premise entirely. It insists that your value is not inherent but assigned. That you belong to the collective or you are cast out. This is how you arrive at the absurdity of segments of Western LGBTQ activism defending Hamas and Iran—regimes that imprison, execute, or forcibly “transition” gay people. Rationality is irrelevant. Once you accept one part of the ideological bargain, you are compelled to accept all of it.

The alliance does not need to make sense. In fact, the more ludicrous the alignment, the more effective the psychological capture. This is how you get American college students—the children of some of the hardest-working people in the world—marching on behalf of the most anti-American forces on Earth. “Palestinians” in the “West Bank” handed out candy after 9/11. Years later, American students protested on their behalf. Now they cheer openly collectivist politicians who despise the very country that made their lives possible.

Marxists and jihadists share one common enemy: the West. They despise it because the West is the birthplace of individualism, free thought, and unconstrained speech. And they never answer the most basic question: What happens to the dissenter? What happens to the person who refuses to comply? Who disagrees with the crowd? That free thinker is the most dangerous individual in the world to the Red-Green Alliance. And the United States of America was built to produce exactly that kind of person.

That is why America terrifies them. Because maybe you are not oppressed. Maybe you have agency. Maybe you can change your circumstances. And if you do—if you achieve prosperity, independence, and confidence—who can control you then?

That is the apex of the American Dream: to live freely, think freely, and answer to no tyrant, no collective, no theocracy. And that is precisely why it must be destroyed. The Reds cannot allow it. The Greens cannot allow it. You must belong to the collective or the religion. You must submit.

America is the “no” to that demand.

And where does America get the moral authority to say “no”? From its foundations. From Judeo-Christian ethics and Enlightenment reason. From a belief in objective right and wrong that does not suppress free thought, but illuminates it. Boundaries create freedom. Laws define liberty. A society without borders—moral or physical—has no freedom at all.

In America, the legal principle is simple: everything is permitted except what is prohibited. You can speak freely. You can act freely. You can build freely—so long as you respect a narrow set of constraints designed to protect others’ rights. That is freedom. That is why the American Dream flourishes. And that is why it must be destroyed by those who hate America.

America’s military excellence flows from this same source. The greatest stories in American military history are stories of individuals empowered to think, adapt, and act. Men and women making split-second decisions rather than waiting for permission from tyrants. In totalitarian systems, such initiative is impossible. In America, it is expected.

America as the “Great Oppressor” is the cruelest lie ever told. Tell that to the Jews and Roma of World War II. Tell that to the Americans who died to end slavery. Tell that to Afghan women brutalized by the Taliban. America does not oppress—it liberates.

America is the oppressor of oppressors. And that is what the Red-Green Alliance cannot forgive.

Unable to defeat America militarily, they turn to propaganda. To social media manipulation. To election interference. To academic capture. To ideological grooming. Their goal is simple: convince Americans that America itself is evil.

They may be right about one thing. Freedom is hard. Responsibility is terrifying. The idea that your choices matter—that your failures are yours—is overwhelming. For some, submission is easier. Collectivism promises comfort. Certainty. Someone else in charge.

But that is not America.

America liberates minds. It affirms that our rights are endowed by our Creator—not granted by the state. And the antidote to the Red-Green lie is already within us.

Be American.

Reject the oppressor-oppressed mind virus. And defend freedom with the most powerful weapon ever created: the American mind.

You “had a dream,”
Born from need,
And purpose,
Have thou forsaken both?

A divine invitation,
To protect and guide us,
“Through the night with the light from above,”
Have thou lost thy faith?

Your standing in disrepute,
“Whose broad stripes and bright stars”
Now tarnished,
Have thou the will to repair?

The refuge,
And the demand,
“Give me your tired, your poor,”
Is thy “golden door” corrupted?

The American spirit is cracked,
Not broken,
“Give me liberty, or give me death!”
And give me a sign,

To “Let freedom ring”
Ring again,
“We the People,”
If not us, then whom?

Minneapolis is on fire once again. In fact, the whole state of Minnesota is raw, angry, and frustrated; dry tinder just waiting for a spark.

The Bill of Rights is one of the most important foundations of our country, defining things that no government at any level can ever do, even in pursuit of its legitimate powers. The most important amendment in the Bill of Rights is the first, which says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

In the legend of Camelot, the Holy Grail was not discovered by the greatest knight, nor by the most wise, nor even by the most visibly pious. It was not found by those who spoke most eloquently about virtue, nor by those who cloaked themselves in sanctimony. 

For much of the last decade, American political discourse has rested on a comforting illusion: that extremism moves in straight lines. That the far left and the far right occupy opposing moral universes. That anti-Semitism, when it resurfaces, must belong clearly to one camp or the other—identifiable by familiar slogans, aesthetics, or historical references.

The Qur’an—the most sacred of the Islamic trilogy of holy texts—is a deeply anti-Jewish book, whose admonitions have served as the basis for hateful Islamic attitudes towards Jews from the seventh century to the present.

All “interpretations” of the Qur’an which frame its messages as pro-Jewish necessarily take its verses out of context and manipulate their intended meanings. Sometimes this is done for understandable strategic purposes—often to corner Muslims who hate Jews for tribal reasons but are mostly ignorant of that animosity’s origins—but this tactic is dishonest at best and dangerously naïve at worst. By claiming that “Allah is a Zionist,” this projects some well-intentioned pro-Israel activists’ brotherly aspirations onto a 1,400-year-old text whose own intentions are the opposite. Believing this propaganda leaves those using it vulnerable to exploitation by Muslim cultural terrorists pretending to be “moderate.”

Are there pro-Jewish verses in the Qur’an?

“Yes.” Earlier in Muhammad’s career as a preacher, he applied his (limited) knowledge of Judaism to claim status as a prophet of the God of Israel, and also appealed to the Jews themselves to follow him. When this failed, however, his sermons’ character reversed. Furthermore, nearly all of Muhammad’s supposedly “pro-Jewish” statements belong to the period of his life he spent preaching in Makah (c. 610–622 C.E.), where no Jews lived. It was only with his relocation north to the half-Jewish town of Yathrib (later renamed Madinah) that he encountered the Jews, who then refused to recognize him as a prophet and submit to Islam—that rebuke triggering his anti-Jewish wrath.

The Islamic doctrine of abrogation (coming from Qur’an 2:106 and 16:101) allows for a later revelation to supersede an earlier one which contradicts it. Therefore, most “pro-Jewish” remarks are effectively repudiated by the later anti-Jewish ones. For example, Qur’an 2:83—speaking of a “covenant” with the “Children of Israel”—is abrogated by 9:5, the “verse of the sword”—imploring Muslims to kill their enemies “wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush.” Also, 2:109—saying that Muslims should “pardon and overlook until Allāh delivers His command” regarding those among the “People of the Scripture” (Jews and Christians) who have endeavored to tempt the Muslims away from Islam—is abrogated by 9:29—commanding Muhammad’s followers to “Fight against those who do not believe in Allāh.”

What does the Qur’an really say about Jews?

As Robert Spencer writes in his 2025 book Antisemitism: History and Myth,

Antisemitism is deeply embedded within the Qur’an and Islamic tradition. The Qur’an’s treatment of Jews is consistent and unambiguous: those who do not accept that Muhammad is a prophet and become Muslims are untrustworthy schemers who hate the Muslims and try to frustrate their plans whenever and wherever they can. That the Qur’an’s picture of the Jews does not include the blood libel or the claim that the Jews control the world does not exonerate the Qur’an or Islam in their traditional formulations and interpretations from charges of a deep and abiding Jew-hatred.

Islam’s most common prayer, the Fatihah (Opening), is also the first chapter of the Qur’an. In it, the believer asks Allah: “Guide us to the straight path, the path of those whom you have favored, not of those who have earned your anger, or of those who have gone astray [1:6–7].” In an Islamic tradition [Jami at-Tirmidhi 2954], Muhammad states that “the Jews are those who Allah is angry with.”

pp. 91–92

Most verses in the Qur’an which mention Jews do so in the context of the Jews refusing to acknowledge Muhammad as a prophet in the present time, or having sinned against Allah in the past (often to the point of meriting divine punishment and permanent rejection). The Jews are dishonest, greedy, hard-hearted, even idolatrous people, who loath the Muslims. Indeed, the Jews loath their “own” God (Allah), having blasphemously edited their scriptures to remove revelations they found inconvenient—including supposed prophecies foretelling the coming of Muhammad—and murdered those prophets who brought them those revelations:

• 2:61: “…And they were covered with humiliation and poverty and returned with anger from Allāh [upon them]. That was because they [repeatedly] disbelieved in the signs of Allāh and killed the prophets without right. That was because they disobeyed and were [habitually] transgressing.”
• 2:75: “Do you covet [the hope, O believers], that they would believe for you while a party of them used to hear the words of Allāh and then distort it [i.e., the Torah] after they had understood it while they were knowing?”
• 2:87: “…But is it [not] that every time a messenger came to you, [O Children of Israel], with what your souls did not desire, you were arrogant? And a party [of messengers] you denied and another party you killed.”
• 2:100–1: “Is it not [true] that every time they took a covenant a party of them threw it away? But, [in fact], most of them do not believe. And when a messenger from Allāh came to them confirming that which was with them, a party of those who had been given the Scripture threw the Scripture of Allāh [i.e., the Torah] behind their backs as if they did not know [what it contained].”
• 3:75: “And among the People of the Scripture [Jews and Christians] is he who, if you entrust him with a great amount [of wealth], he will return it to you. And among them is he who, if you entrust him with a [single] coin, he will not return it to you unless you are constantly standing over him [demanding it]. That is because they say, ‘There is no blame upon us concerning the unlearned [The Jews do not consider it a sin to cheat or lie to a gentile or a pagan].’ And they speak untruth about Allāh while they know [it].”
• 3:78: “And indeed, there is among them a party who alter the Scripture with their tongues so you may think it is from the Scripture, but it is not from the Scripture. And they say, ‘This is from Allāh,’ but it is not from Allāh. And they speak untruth about Allāh while they know.”
• 3:181: “Allāh has certainly heard the statement of those [Jews] who said, ‘Indeed, Allāh is poor, while we are rich.’ We will record what they said and their killing of the prophets without right and will say, ‘Taste the punishment of the Burning Fire.…’”
• 4:160–161: “For wrongdoing on the part of the Jews, We made unlawful for them [certain] good foods which had been lawful to them, and for their averting from the way of Allāh many [people], and [for] their taking of usury while they had been forbidden from it, and their consuming of the people’s wealth unjustly. And We have prepared for the disbelievers among them a painful punishment.”
• 5:51: “O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you—then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allāh guides not the wrongdoing people.”
• 5:60: “Say, ‘Shall I inform you of [what is] worse than that as penalty from Allāh? [It is that of] those [the Jews] whom Allāh has cursed and with whom He became angry and made of them apes and pigs and slaves of ṭāghūt [false objects of worship, such as idols, heavenly bodies, spirits, human beings, etc]. Those are worse in position and further astray from the sound way.’”
• 5:82: “You will surely find the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers [to be] the Jews and those who associate others with Allāh….”
• 9:29–34: “Fight against those who do not believe in Allāh or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allāh and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth [i.e., Islām] from those who were given the Scripture [Jews and Christians]—[fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled. The Jews say, ‘Ezra is the son of Allāh’; and the Christians say, ‘The Messiah is the son of Allāh.’ That is their statement from their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before [them]. May Allāh destroy them; how are they deluded? They have taken their scholars [rabbis] and monks as lords besides Allāh [by their obedience to them rather than to what Allāh ordained], and [also] the Messiah, the son of Mary. And they were not commanded except to worship one God; there is no deity except Him. Exalted is He above whatever they associate with Him. They want to extinguish the light of Allāh with their mouths, but Allāh refuses except to perfect His light, although the disbelievers dislike it. It is He who has sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth to manifest it over all religion, although they who associate others with Allāh dislike it. O you who have believed, indeed many of the scholars [rabbis] and the monks devour the wealth of people unjustly [i.e., through false pretense] and avert [them] from the way of Allāh. And those who hoard gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allāh—give them tidings of a painful punishment.”
• 98:6: “Indeed, they who disbelieved among the People of the Scripture [Jews and Christians] and the polytheists will be in the fire of Hell, abiding eternally therein. Those are the worst of creatures.”

In fact, in-depth statistical analysis by dissident scholar Bill Warner reveals that the Qur’an is very nearly as anti-Jewish as Mein Kampf, with the former devoting 6.7% (10,242 words across 123 verses) to condemning Jews, compared to Hitler’s corresponding 7%. Furthermore, all of the Islamic core texts combined—the Qur’an, the Sirat Rasul Allah (Muhammad’s sacred biography), and the Hadith (the sayings of and stories concerning Muhammad and his companions)—contain even more Jew-hatred (9%) than Mein Kampf.

Does the Qur’an affirm the Jewish people’s right to the land of Israel?

All “Zionist” verses within the Qur’an are completely out of context. Mentions of Allah’s bestowal upon the Jewish people of a land in which they would be sovereign are nearly always in the context of Muhammad condemning the Jews for having forfeited that divine gift in the first place. And these rejections of Allah’s commands—to submit themselves, both then and in the past, to the truth of Muhammad’s prophethood—are the reasons for Allah discarding the Jews and installing the Arabs as the new chosen people. In short, such passages are part of Muhammad’s case for the Islamic version of Christian “replacement theology.” As the aforementioned verses demonstrate, what the Jews did in and with their land was to do evil in the sight of Allah—rendering any claim to a homeland irrelevant.

For example, Qur’an 5:21 says that “‘O my people, enter the blessed land [i.e., Palestine] which Allāh has assigned to you and do not turn back [from fighting in Allāh’s cause] and [thus] become losers.’” Regardless of the Saheeh International translation inserting the word “Palestine,” the context of this verse is of Muhammad recounting the Episode of the Spies (Numbers 13–14), in which the generation which came out of Egypt refused to cross into the land of Israel and fight the wicked Canaanites. For this sin, God decreed 38 more years of wandering and banned all Jews born in Egypt except the two faithful spies from one day entering the land. The Torah—which the illiterate Muhammad (so Qur’an 7:158 says) could not read—agrees that this is a sin, but Moses and the later prophets’ condemnations are always balanced with the promise of punishment being temporary and never amounting to rejection. Once the people did cross into the land of Israel and establish a polity, Muhammad says, the Qur’an’s (listed) anti-Jewish verses make clear that their evildoing permanently lost them their right to it.

Qur’an 17:1–7, detailing divine revelations to the Jews and the building of the First Temple, has been cited as an example of Allah’s “Zionism.” Inconveniently, those same eight verses are not intended to be in praise of the Jewish people. Allah speaks of how “You will surely cause corruption on the earth twice, and you will surely reach [a degree of] great haughtiness” (17:4), and

“If you do good, you do good for yourselves; and if you do evil, [you do it] to them [i.e., yourselves].” Then when the final [i.e., second] promise came, [We sent your enemies] to sadden your faces and to enter the masjid [i.e., the temple in Jerusalem], as they entered it the first time, and to destroy what they had taken over with [total] destruction.

17:7

While affirming that there was indeed a First Temple, and that it was built by Jews in Jerusalem, this statement, as the Qur’anic commentaries confirm, is in the form of a castigation.

So, too, 17:104 says that “And We said after him [i.e., Pharaoh] to the Children of Israel, ‘Dwell in the land, and when there comes the promise [i.e., appointment] of the Hereafter, We will bring you forth in [one] gathering.’” This verse is also irrelevant because, when they took possession of the land, the Jews rebelled against Allah, corrupted their scriptures, and murdered the prophets telling them of the coming of Muhammad. In fact, verses 97–98 say that

And whoever Allāh guides—he is the [rightly] guided; and whoever He sends astray [as a result of his own preference]—you will never find for them protectors besides Him, and We will gather them on the Day of Resurrection [fallen] on their faces—blind, dumb and deaf. Their refuge is Hell; every time it subsides, We increase [for] them blazing fire. That is their recompense because they disbelieved in Our verses and said, “When we are bones and crumbled particles, will we [truly] be resurrected [in] a new creation?”

Surah 17 is traditionally nicknamed Bani Isra’il (“Children of Israel”), meaning that its pronouncements refer specifically to the Jews. The Jews indeed “disbelieved in Our verses” and are, therefore, deprived of the land Allah gave them, their “refuge” being “Hell.”

Further, Qur’an 8:39, 9:33, 48:28, and 61:9 all command Muslims to fight against non-Muslims until, says the first of these verses, “the religion [i.e., worship], all of it, is for Allāh.” With non-Muslims being the majority of the planet, and that planet’s creator demanding that “all” other religions be destroyed, Islam’s mission to subjugate the entire world is clear. This means that even if Allah gave the Jewish people a land in which they were sovereign, Muslims later conquered the land of Israel according to divine injunction and right.

For Muhammad’s part, his ultimate view of the Jews was the same as Hitler’s:

The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.

Sahih Muslim 2922

Indeed, if Allah ever did support Zionism, it was limited to the periods of the First and Second Temples alone. After the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 C.E., the Jews lost all title to the land of Israel. And after Muslim warriors conquered the region in 637, ownership passed to them. Then, after the birth of political Zionism in the late nineteenth century, Qur’an 2:191 enjoined the conquerors’ descendants to “kill” the Jews “wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you.” Meaning that the Jews re-establishing an independent polity in the land the Qur’an says Allah gave and then took away from them—“expell[ing]” Muslims from what is now “their” land—must be met with death.

National defense is one of the primary responsibilities of any federal government, but when our founders wrote the Constitution, they were thinking about invading armies more so than invading narratives. The United States is too powerful militarily for any nation to consider invading, so warfare today is asymmetrical.