Credit where credit is due

We’ve been subscribing to the Boston Globe since we moved east. I seldom read the editorials, but have sampled some of the writers. One writer I’ve learned to ignore is Jeff Jacoby. I’m pretty conservative*, but Jeff’s columns were too predictably right-wing and shallow for my taste. 

Recently, I broke my fast and read Jeff’s column on JD Vance, Trump’s VPOTUS selection. My boy Jeff was totally on target. We completely agree.

“Of course America is the homeland of people who have lived here for generations. Of course there are millions of Americans who feel bound to that homeland by their “shared history.” But much of what makes the United States so extraordinary is that for more than two centuries it has also been the homeland of millions of people — immigrants and the children of immigrants — with no lengthy family or property ties in America. At the heart of Americanness is not blood or soil but the embrace of fundamental principles and beliefs. Vance is wrong. America’s greatness is rooted precisely in the ideas that he regards as secondary.”

I’m also no fan of Ronald Reagan, America’s first Alzheimer patient president (Trump aspires to be the second). But even St. Ronnie sometimes appealed the better angels of our nature, and Jeff has the pull-quote:

“On Jan. 19, 1989, in a final ceremony to present the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Reagan said he wanted to make “an observation about a country which I love.” That observation, simply stated yet profound, isolated a key truth about the United States. “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman,” Reagan said, quoting a letter from a correspondent. “You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”

Read the whole thing at the link. 

*I don’t mean “conservative* as in how the GOP brands itself or how the MSM brand the Trump cult. Even famously right-wing types like Bill Buckley and Barry Goldwater would scorn the modern GOP. I mean conservative as in get the nanny state out of reproductive choice and the marriage business. As in a healthy America (universal single payer) and well-educated America (public schools and libraries). As in immigration is a strength and only people who belong to a well-regulated militia should be allowed to bear arms.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/07/23/opinion/jd-vance-dismisses-american-idea/