One of the unmistakable features of the modern Left is the increasing hostility to Jews and Jewish issues, particularly Israel. The new darlings of the coalition of the vibrant have a habit of displaying hostility to Israel. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Somalia) sounds like a member of Hamas when it comes to our greatest ally. Despite the loud noises from other members of the Left, Omar has suffered no consequences. You can’t help but get the feeling that behind closed doors, the woke women of the Left are not enthusiastic for the Tribe.

Another unmistakable feature of the modern Left is they tend to preach against that which is a feature of Jews and Israel. A current example popular on the Right is the fact that the Left hates walls, but Israel seems to love walls. The Israelis have built border walls that are just only impressive. They work. In fact, the Israelis are really proud of having solved their problem with Arabs secretly crossing the border. Meanwhile, here in the United States, opposing a wall on the southern border is the top priority of the Left.

It’s not just political things either. Group solidarity has become the new fascism with the Left, even as their demands for conformity get shriller. The surest way to get fired from your job is to say out loud that white people have a right to exist. Those “It’s OK To Be White” signs are treated like acts of terrorism now. Yet, tribal solidity is very Jewish. It is the defining feature of Jews. In fact, it is the quality that has allowed them to survive and thrive in the West. You see it in this story about their efforts to fight Tay-Sachs disease.

Genetic diseases tend to be very nasty, as nature tends to use harsh measures to defend against harsh threats. Resistance to malaria, a terrible disease common in sub-Saharan Africa, is the great example. One copy of the gene is a powerful weapon against a powerful disease. Two copies means a monstrous death. Tay-Sachs disease is a rare inherited disorder that progressively destroys nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord of new born children. Afflicted children die a terrible death in a few years after birth.

Tay-Sachs was never common, but it was not unknown either. Jewish hospitals had wards just for sufferers of the disease, so it was common enough. In the late 1960’s a test was devised to check if someone was a carrier of the disease. Parental screening had the effect of preventing the birth of children with the disease, but also encouraging carriers to have children. Screening allowed parent to choose a different path in order to make sure their children did not have the disease. As a result, Tay-Saks closed to wiped out.

That is a remarkable result and it is only possible when a group of people has both a strong sense of identity and a strong sense of a shared future. That tribalism that has kept Jews from being swallowed up by their host populations turns out to be pretty good for all sorts of things that are good for the Tribe. The campaign against breast cancer is another example. Jewish women have much higher rates of breast cancer. Jewish activism and philanthropy has made it the best funded cancer research on earth.

Jews should be very proud of having worked together to prevent a terrible disease and it should be an example to all people. It’s not about the shared past, so much as the desire for a shared future that makes tribalism work in the modern world. If you look at your people as a large extended family, you will want your people to survive and thrive into the future. That means you cannot just look at yourself as a lonely individual looking out only for you. You are part of a larger whole and must sacrifice for the greater good.

Despite this obvious upside to group identity and solidarity, the Left is violently opposed to even the hint of it. Even Jews are getting the treatment, as we see with the bright new faces of the ascendant. It’s a strange thing that many write off to some secret conspiracy, but it may simply be an example of implicit rightness. The people having this bizarre response to identity politics are the people most likely to experience it up close and personal, so it is informing their politics, like a reaction to an infectious disease.

In America, Progressivism is based exclusively on the college campus. The days of left-wingers organizing the working classes are no more. The defining feature of the Left is their fear of being anywhere near real work. Instead, they fester and boil on the college campus, where they come up with new ways to rage about the people on the other side of the walls. They also spend a lot of time around Jews. Other than maybe finance or perhaps the law, Jews are most over represented on the college campus.

As a result, American Progressives are the people most exposed to Jews. An ideology that is supposed to explicitly trump biology is therefore going to evolve in response to the most extreme version of ethnic-nationalism. In other words, this indomitable quality of the Jewish people is what Progressivism has evolved to oppose. Let loose on the general population of America, a people with a frontier mentality, the result is like small pox on the American Indians. Wokeness is the Tay-Saks of white America.

Reality is that thing that does not go away when you stop believing it. The reason Jews are the most successful tribe in human history is they have a shared identity and shared future. That sense of a collective self is what has seen them through the worst of times, despite being a tiny minority. Ethnic identity is what made it possible for the West to accelerate past the rest of the world. Identity politics is the antidote to the mind virus of Progressivism. It turns out, implicit whiteness is the germ of complicit rightness.

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