Once upon a time, the vast majority of American citizens held similar values, even if we disagreed on smaller, secondary issues, we all believed in freedom and in protecting one another’s God-given rights. There was a shared objective moral standard that was eternal, unchangeable, that was upheld not only by our government, but by educational institutions, entertainment, and regular everyday people. Folks would help one another if they were in need, regardless of where their political beliefs laid on the spectrum. People were decent to one another, for the most part.
In the second decade of the 21st century, that has largely disappeared, replaced by deeply ingrained tribalism that lies along political, racial, and sometimes even religious lines. We have never been more divided as a country, and this chasm that exists between us threatens to destroy the great experiment our Founding Fathers started well over two centuries ago.
Nowadays, college campuses and universities are filled with students and faculty who have abandoned the values this nation was built upon, burning the American flag and cheering for organizations like Hamas in Palestine, a group comprised of the same kind of people who flew planes into the World Trade Center in 2001, and are calling for the genocide of the Jewish people.
Thankfully, as Gideon Askowitz of the Daily Wire points out, not everyone is like that. In fact, there are many who are standing up and fighting back.
Last week, the Philos Project went to Columbia University to demonstrate solidarity with the Jewish students. The Philos Project’s mission is to “promote positive Christian engagement in the Near East by creating leaders, building community, and taking action in the spirit of the Hebraic Tradition.” Susanna Hoffman, 24, said, “We believe that as Christians, our roots are in Hebraic tradition. We are trying to restore the values that we are losing in the West as evidenced by everything that has been happening at Columbia University and the campuses across America.” When asked how she thinks we can restore Judeo-Christian values, she replied, “We believe it starts with Christians uniting with Jews because that is the bedrock of our civilization. We are trying to educate Christians to understand that foundation so they can speak out against the values proclaimed on these campuses.”
Those values are that all men are created in the image of G-d and, as such, are inherently blessed with rights — rights which no government can remove from the people — and that the government’s sole role is to help guide and order a society to allow it to flourish in a manner commensurate with G-d’s moral and ethical code. This heritage commands us to love our neighbor and look after the needy. It also instructs us on how to order our everyday lives.
Askowitz goes on to note that unlike postmodernist though, the enlightened tradition should be used to help create a just and productive society, not one that abuses liberty and is built upon selfishness. However, thanks to the current political climate in our nation, these beliefs are being misrepresented as being only for conservative people, but that’s not the case at all. Askowitz points out that it was a liberal president, John F. Kennedy, who once stated, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
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As the President of Jewish Students for America, I work to ensure that a bipartisan group of students dedicated to combating anti-Semitism across our nation do so with these founding values at the center of our mission. To rebuild this nation, we must reconnect with our fellow man and recognize our shared heritage. Only by partnering can Jewish and Christian Americans rebuild our nation’s heritage because America’s heritage is the sum of our shared values.
I have personally seen many college campuses where the lack of moral clarity from the administration served as the primary cause of anti-Semitic incidents. What’s more, this lack of moral clarity from these institutions corrodes the next generation into a misguided worldview that abandons this rich tradition.
“Our group advocates for more specific legal measures that will help combat some of the causes of anti-Semitism. For example, we lobby Congress to withhold federal funding from universities that don’t uniformly apply roles of conduct, adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, and enforce immigration laws. However, to succeed in the long run, our country needs a moral reckoning. Only then will our universities and other institutions recognize what is right and wrong,” Askowitz said in his piece for the Daily Wire.
Askowits says that if we want to see the United States survive well into the future, we need to make a return to the values and principles upheld by our nation’s founders, especially the self-evident truth that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Our Founding Fathers always upheld the importance of keeping God and His law at the center of our nation. Askowitz includes a quotation from another famous president, John Adams, who once said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Christians and Jews should be able to unite on these principles and values with absolutely no problem. And that might be the only way to preserve this nation.