Alan Caruba
Most of us who live in the populated areas of the nation, huddled within fifty miles or so of either coast,  can name friends, co-workers, and in-laws who have different identities than our own. They have a different religion, they came from other nations or are descended from people who did, or they are a different race.
Americans are so accustomed to this diversity that we rarely give it much thought. Asked who we are, we tend to answer, “American”, followed by a confession of faith, or by some hyphenated throwback to being Italian-America, Irish-American, et cetera. The assimilation of many different peoples into a single democratic experiment is one of the most extraordinary stories of the past two hundred-plus years.
This may explain, in part, why Americans have had a hard time understanding why the Iraqis, once freed of the domination of Saddam Hussein, would not have rallied around the flag and begun at once to create a democratic nation. The problem—one that apparently no one in the highest circles of government had given much thought—was that Iraqis and no other people in the Middle East have any real experience with democracy and, as is the custom of the region, are more likely to identify as either a Shia or Sunni Muslim, the single common factor.
On the edge of this ancient cauldron of oppression and discontent is Israel, no less ancient than the descendents of Mesopotamia, of Egypt or Persia. Though we give it little notice, the modern state of Israel commands more news coverage than any other nation than our own and this is true even in places like Asia that have no ties to its population of European and Russian Jews or the Jews and Christians that fled there from their former Arab nations where they lived as a barely tolerated people .
Why is that? Why does a tiny nation no bigger than the State of New Jersey and with a population of about seven million command so much attention? Israel commands no oil wealth, but its economy is highly dynamic, a leader in high tech, a center for medical research, and a magnet for tourism. While no one takes umbrage that the Turks have Turkey, the Fins have Finland, or the Greeks have Greece, there is endless perturbation that 3,000 years since its founding and 2,000 years after their exile, the Jews are now a sovereign nation called Israel. A people who for millennia were “the other” now have regained their home.
The thing that has most fascinated the world has been the way the Jews, scattered to many nations, retained their identity and, over centuries, would end their Passover prayers, saying, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Reviled, exiled, persecuted, killed, the enduring triumph of Judaism has been its bond with their Creator and with each other.
In his new book, Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet “refusnik” who demanded the right to emigrate to Israel, was jailed for eight years, and is now a respected member of the Israeli government, writes about “Defending Identity: It’s Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy.”
“Democracy asserts the value of freedom; identity gives a reason for freedom,” says Sharansky.
As Americans, we simply have no experience with a government that demands we identify entirely with its dictates, but Sharansky, born and raised in the former Soviet Union, experienced it first hand and he did so as a Jew, a people within Russia who had long been despised and persecuted. He reminds us that, in the Communist Manifesto¸ Karl Marx not only called for “the abolition of the family”, but also to “abolish countries and nationality.” His Communist paradise depended on nullifying all ties to anything other than the state. George Orwell wrote about this in “1984” with his invention of Big Brother.
As a virtual island of true democracy, Americans tend to forget that China remains a Communist nation even if it has largely adopted a capitalist economic system. Its neighbor, North Korea, is the ultimate form of Communist dictatorship. We have avowedly Communist dictators operating in Cuba and in Venezuela. Former president Vladimir Putin successfully reestablished Communist state control in Russia, although it no longer openly describes its political system as such.
Sharansky points out that, “The history of the rise and fall of the communist utopia (Soviet Russia) which cost the lives of tens of millions of innocents could probably have been shorter if it had been isolated and shunned by the democratic world.” Little wonder that Lenin referred to Western intellectuals as “useful idiots.”
Grappling with ideas such as identity, democracy, freedom, and liberty are more than mere intellectual exercises. They determine how millions of people around the world will live their lives. This is probably the single best reason to read Sharansky’s new book.
Sharansky worries that Europeans have been abandoning their religious identity and their national identity in the quest to avoid a repeat of the two wars that devastated their homelands in the last century. In doing so, they have thrown open the doors to a people for whom their identity as Muslims overrides any allegiance to the nations in which they live, whether they have been invited to adopt a new national identity or whether they have been purposely isolated from native-born citizens. It doesn’t just threaten Europe. It threatens the whole of Western civilization.
Couple this with his warning that, “Hatred towards America is ubiquitous in Europe today.” Americans, secure in our own identity, protected by the rights articulated in our Constitution, cannot grasp why any other nation or people would hate us.
We sent our soldiers to defend Europeans against the Nazis and left some in place to defend against the former Soviet Union. We sent our soldiers to free Asians from the Empire of Japan. We sent them to overthrow a viscous dictator in Iraq. We rush aid to places like China, Indonesia and Myanmar when disaster strikes. We give billions to the United Nations. We are eager to trade with other nations and, most of all, we want to share the benefits of democracy with them.
Sharansky fears that a new generation of Americans might lose our passion for democracy, a system that requires our participation, the willingness to mobilize and argue our differing points of view; and yet retain a common commitment to our national values.
These values, however, have enemies. Only our identity as Americans will protect us from those enemies. We renewed our identity on Memorial Day when we paused to remember the many Americans who sacrificed their lives to protect those values and their nation. We will do so again on the Fourth of July. We must do so every day.
Alan Caruba's weekly commentaries are posted on the website of The National Anxiety Center and are widely disseminated on the Internet. He also has a daily blog called Warning Signs. Love to read? Visit his monthly report on the best in new fiction and non-fiction at Bookviews.com.
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