Page:The International Jew - Volume 2.djvu/161



This is one of the dangerous doctrines being preached today, and most assiduously by Jews and those who have been influenced by Jewish thought, namely, that the United States is not any definite thing as yet, but that it is yet to be made, and it is still the prey of whatever power can seize it and mold it to its liking. It is a favorite Jewish view that the United States is a great unshapen mass of potentiality, of no particular character which is yet to be given its definite form. It is in the light of this view that Jewish activity must be interpreted.

That doctrine with which so large a mass of Americans are inoculated is making havoc with the whole Americanization program today. It is “broadening” America out of all semblance to its distinctive self and blurring those determining ideals and ideas on which American institutions are based. The attempt, first to give the people to understand that the United States is “nothing particular” as yet, and second to make it something different spiritually from what it has always been, is peculiarly agreeable to the philosophy which sways the internationally-minded Hebrew. We are not making Americans; we are permitting foreigners to be educated in the theory that America is a free-for-all, the prize of whatever fantastic foreign political theory may seize it.

There you have the secret of the great refusal of the foreign population to change themselves into conformity with America; why should they, when they are taught that America may be changed into conformity with them?

It is time to limit our “broad-mindedness” until it will fit within the limits of the Constitution and the traditions which made America what it is—the desired haven, even in preference to Palestine, of all the Jews and every other race.

So, then, what is the conception of “Jewish rights” which the Kehillah and the American Jewish Committee are organized to defend? It is only by deductions from the acts of these bodies that the answer can be formulated.

In the Jewish records for the year 5668 (1907-1908) we read: