Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

As I mentioned last week, I’d have voted against the Antisemitism Awareness Act pushed by the Republican leadership in the House.

The legislation was both bad politics and bad policy.

On the political side, the GOP designed it to embarrass the Democrats. Instead, Democrats wound up rescuing the legislation because 25 Republicans voted against it. More Democrats opposed it than Republicans—over 80 Democrats opposed it. But without Democrat support, the legislation would have failed. Their assistance neutralized the issue.

On the policy side, the legislation expands powers within the Department of Education at the very time we need to cut powers there. These colleges and universities torn apart by antisemitism on campus need to be rescued by laissez-faire government. Let the donors, alumni, and future determine the future. We are already seeing employers less likely to recruit from these campuses. Donors are pulling their money. Enrollment is shifting elsewhere. The free market is working.

Empowering the Department of Education to establish investigative committees on antisemitism will actually do nothing, particularly when staffed by a Biden bureaucracy already hostile towards Israel.

Also, the legislation has no chance of passing the United States Senate. So the House GOP advanced bad policy through bad politics and will lose anyway.

Most importantly, there is a clear First Amendment issue at stake. Hate speech is protected speech, and protest is protected speech. The legislation arguably both infringes on protected speech and increases federal bureaucracy to combat that protected right.

But many of you perhaps think the legislation would ensnare Christians discussing the New Testament. In fact, Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk, amplified by Tucker Carlson, claimed the House GOP was attempting to ban Christianity or punish Christian groups.

This is a lie.

The legislation uses an antisemitism standard developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance that is globally accepted — including already in use by the United States government¹. Kirk, Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and others willfully misrepresented an example in the IHRA standard. The example read, “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.”

That last part is italicized because the grifters went out of their way to downplay it. Saying the Jews killed Jesus is not antisemitism.² Saying the Jews killed Jesus, therefore Israel or Israelis are bad, is antisemitism. Using the crucifixion to hate the modern nation-state of Israel and its citizens is absolutely antisemitism. That is the point of the example.

TPUSA, which keeps a list of antisemites on its roster, if not its payroll, is being too cute by half on this stuff. The organization has set up a website distancing itself from Candace Owens’ growing antisemitism. If you search the internet for TPUSA’s views on Israel and Owens, your search engine will helpfully direct you to a special website putting distance between Owens and TPUSA. If you aren’t interested, you’ll get directed to the main TPUSA website where their relationship with Owens is highlighted.

It. Is. All. A Grift.

So kids, to review, the right could have made very substantive policy arguments about campuses, the need for their donors to cut funds, and employers to cut hiring. Instead, they proposed expanding not just government but a government bureaucracy that itself is filled with antisemites.

Prominent voices on the right with large platforms decided to attack the legislation with lies to generate culture war emotionalism. That emotion falls flat on the facts and discredits the people who advance the argument.

So many of the people who insist the media and government are manipulating us are themselves being manipulated by the hucksters and grifters on the right. In the process, we are losing ground because more and more of the Right’s arguments are based on lies and half-truths.

Y’all, we can win. But not with lies and those who profit from lying.

Side note — I rarely play the game of “why is so and so silent on this,” but I do find it notable that Tucker Carlson has said very little at all, if anything, about the progressive antisemitic protests on college campuses, but did use his platform to attack the Antisemitism Awareness Act by falsely claiming it would ban Christianity.

Christianity is not a political weapon to be wielding in the public square as a cudgel against others. It is truth being used by idol worshippers and liars for temporal, political ends, not to glorify God. There will be a reckoning.

1. Yes, before you get defensive, the US Government is already using the standard and definition and the legislation just references that standard and definition already in use. Did you go to church this weekend? Did you mention Jesus in public? Were you arrested for it? Of course not.

2. But it is actually bad theology. The whole point is that the Jews and Gentiles together killed Jesus, i.e. everyone is responsible. Singling out the Jews is bad theology that historically breeds antisemitism.