A new poll from YouGov/The Economist points out that young Americans appear to be remarkably ignorant about one of modern history’s greatest crimes. Some 20% of respondents aged 18-29 think that the Holocaust is a myth, compared with 8% of those aged 30-44. An additional 30% of young Americans said they do not know whether the Holocaust is a myth. “Many respondents espouse the canard that Jews wield too much power in America: young people are nearly five times more likely to think this than are those aged 65 and older.”

I have been reading Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik’s Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship. It is a remarkable read, for in it he surveys the leadership qualities of King David, Queen Esther, Benjamin Disraeli and Abraham Lincoln, among others. He makes two profound observations that are so helpful for 2024

What motivates the rulers of Iran? Why do they invest billions of dollars in arming themselves and their proxies (e.g., Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis of Yemen, etc.) against Israel? Is it simply to destroy the growing acceptance of Israel by several Arab nations? Was the 7 October genocidal attack designed to thwart the seemingly imminent recognition by Saudi Arabia of Israel? Or was it something more egregious, more dastardly?

Columnist Daniel Henninger correctly observes that “There was a time when most American schoolchildren had a functioning knowledge of the Holocaust and the camps. No longer. Universities’ hiring and enabling of activist left-wing professors—proponents of the anti-Israel movement called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions—has affected a generation of students. A Quinnipiac poll found 51% of Democrats younger than 35 don’t support sending military aid to Israel after Hamas’s attack.”

Even a cursory study of history indicates that the central goal of geopolitics is maintaining a balance of power in the world. This was true in the ancient world with a balance between Egypt and the various Mesopotamian powers. It was true in the Napoleonic era when Napoleon sought dictatorial control over Europe, only to be defeated and a new balance established at the 1815 Congress of Vienna. Both World War I and World War II saw Germany destroy the fragile balance of power in Europe. Post World War II saw a perilous balance of power maintained between the United States and the Soviet Union. Today the balance of power in the world is shattered and, in 2023, only the United States can restore this much-needed balance.

The story of the Pilgrims is the story of the beginning of the holiday we know as Thanksgiving. But sometimes in America, we equate the Pilgrims with the Puritans, and assume they were identical groups. They were not. Pilgrims were also known as “Separatists,” meaning they chose to separate from the established Church of England, the Anglican Church. The Puritans remained in the Anglican Church and chose to attempt to “purify” it from within—hence the name “Puritan.” In 1608, a group of Separatists, who would become the Pilgrims, fled England and settled in Holland. They desired freedom of worship there.

Lance Morrow, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, made this poignant observation: “A decent conscience, uncontaminated by ideology, knows what it is looking at. The torments that Hamas ‘militants’ inflicted on Oct. 7—mass slaughter, rape, the beheading of babies—amounted to behavior that the high court of any uncorrupted intelligence in the world would describe as evil.” Indeed, President Biden courageously spoke of the Hamas raids as “pure, unadulterated evil.”

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas on earth. More than 2 million people live inside a sliver of land, just 25 miles long and 7 ½ miles at its widest. On Saturday morning, 7 October 2023, Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip broke down the barriers separating Gaza from Israel and engaged in a well-planned and well-executed series of raids involving mass murder, the kidnapping of children, elderly and women; the storming of a music festival to shoot and kill whomever they could find; and rape, execute and slaughter every Jew they could find. To add to this horror, Hamas terrorists filmed all of this and placed it on social media sites for the entire world to see.

With the 1945 victory in World War II, the United States began to construct an entirely new world order based on freedom of movement, global trade and a monetary system rooted in the American dollar. The implementation of that order produced the United Nations, NATO, the World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and other entities. Today, that order is coming apart and its effects are widespread and potentially destabilizing.

As columnist George Will so eloquently puts it: “This nation is slouching into the most predictable fiscal crisis in its history.” On 1 August 2023, Fitch Ratings lowered the credit rating of the United States one notch to AA+ from a perfect AAA. The firm, citing a “deterioration in governance” along with America’s mounting debt load, suggested that “it could be a long time before that decision [i]s reversed.” This credit rating change is similar to the drop to AA+ in 2011 by S&P Global, which has kept its rating there. There is a profound lack of willingness to compromise and reasonably discuss the national debt on the part of both political parties.