Yes, JB, I'm going to apologize to you--publicly--and to everyone else. But I'm not going to do it now because I want to mean it, and I'm way too upset to mean it right now.
If it's any help in understanding why I went on the warpath on this thread, a few weeks ago some nudnik wrote a letter to the editor of Jewish Press saying that Jews are free and secure is not because Americans are pro-Jewish but because in America we have "rights." Do you understand what that means? He went on to say that in order to remain free and secure in America Jews must defend the "rights of all"--ie, homosexuals. He implicitly tied the freedom to observe the Holy Torah to an evil enlightenment secularism and the "rights" of homosexuals. Only rednecks are the enemy. Everyone else (Jews, moslems, homosexuals, atheists) are comrades in this great struggle against evil incarnate in the trailer park.
My beliefs are very primitive. G-d exists and has made His will known to Israel and, through them, the human race. It is the duty of Jews to keep Torah and non-Jews to observe the Noachide Laws. The one and only answer to anti-Semitism is not secularism, liberalism, tolerance, multiculturalism, etc., but only converting non-Jews to the Noachide Laws and the transformation of the entire world into a Judaic Theocracy (the only true Theocracy that can exist).
Yehoshu`a Bin Nun didn't whine about the nasty intolerant Canaanites--he slaughtered them, at G-d's command. No Jew had any "right" to observe any other religion or worship any other "gxd." This is light years away from the accursed Jeffersonian/Painian "freedom of religion" that assumes that no actually true religion exists. What caused Jews to lose this original Theocratic worldview? Why did the Zionists re-establish Israel as a secular "western" democratic state? Is it too much to ask for the world to return to where it was 3300 years ago when G-d's voice was still ringing in Israel's ears? Why this love affair with Voltaire? And why are moslems getting more slack cut than chrstians when they still practice "convert or die" to this day?
There is one thing, however, that you should apologize for. You said that until 75 years ago (ie, 1938) Jews in America were subject to "convert or die." This is a blatant and obvious non-truth, whatever you meant by the statement. It would be a true qiddush HaShem if you apologized for this hurtful and false statement.
Hopefully I can apologize tomorrow truly with all my heart and not merely engage in rote behavior. See you when my blood pressure comes back down.
I think I owe you an apology.
The 75 is a reference to FDR and his turning away of the St. Louis — filed with 900 or so Jewish refugees -— back to Nazi Germany, among his other lovely acts.
But you are correct, with noted exceptions like General Grants’ Order No. 11 (expelling Jewish US Citizens), the various FDR, Joe Kennedy, probably James Baker, and Pat Buchanon, the USA has been a literal beacon among the nations.