For the proud liberal, a quick thought experiment—or, rather, litmus test. Is the following group diverse? Four college students: one white, one black, one Asian, and one Hispanic. “Yes, of course,” you reply.

But what if I were to also note that these young adults hail from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Stamford, Connecticut; Brentwood, California; and Highland Park, Texas—towns located within what political scientist Charles Murray termed “SuperZips,” ZIP codes that rank highest based on a combination of income and education? Specifically, all four of our hypothetical subjects grew up in spacious suburban homes. They took tennis and golf lessons at local country clubs in the summer. They were handed keys to brand new—or relatively new—cars when they turned sixteen. All their parents are white-collar professionals, with at least one holding an advanced degree.

Drum roll. If you still feel the group represents diversity, you’re a subscriber to the 1960s-and-after Left. If your answer is an adamant, “No, this group is definitely not diverse,” you’re either an increasingly lonely living fossil or a time-traveling left-winger who’s arrived from an era prior to the emergence of the counterculture.

Diversity Is Fragmenting Democratic Voters

What started becoming evident with the dysfunctional nature of the Occupy gatherings has crystallized in the wake of grand jury decisions not to indict officers in the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Indeed, a once-uneasy schism has become a rupture. The Left is divided—although far from evenly—between those who believe that “identity” is the engine of history and those who believe that class struggle serves the same function. Members of the latter cohort, concerned above all with tackling the wealth gap, are rapidly becoming an endangered minority. Economic inequality, once the traditional concern of the Left, is being eclipsed as the top priority by trendier matters. Jacobim Mugatu pulled it off with “Derelicte,” but middle- and upper-middle-class millennials have shown little interest in making poverty and paucity sexy.

To survey the history of the Left is to witness the carnivorous appetite of the Progressive spirit, an insatiable yearning to defy custom. Its sweeping trajectory is that of an ideological matryoshka doll, one nested figure recurrently swallowing the next. The movement swells, yet leaves little trace of the previously consumed constituency—that is except for the faint scent of resentment and cynicism. The labor activist was trumped by the female activist. The female activist was usurped by the black activist. The black activist was deposed by the LGBTQ activist. The LGBTQ activist is currently being dispatched by the Hispanic activist.

Thus, for the past century, the Left has been chopping itself up into fragments to appeal to a myriad of constituencies. Is there a point at which this penchant becomes politically self-destructive? There are already signs that the Obama administration’s progressivism is edging working-class white men, a key voting bloc, toward the Right. Obviously, such a shift could prove pivotal in the 2016 election. But more importantly, is there a deeper cost to having benched class, that which, by cutting across race, ethnicity, and gender, actually unites as opposed to separates? An old-school reformist will undoubtedly—and correctly—respond, “socio-economic mobility.”

How the Left Can Unite Once Again

Short of addressing culture, the Left ought to first revamp its attitude toward alternative methods of education. Children in economically depressed locales—urban and rural—must be provided greater connection to charter and private schools, places of learning where competition in the form of both reputation and salary drive student performance. With respect to life beyond high school, colleges and universities need to work harder to pursue genuine diversity and find the so-called “diamonds in the rough.”

Conservatives prudently champion equality of opportunity instead of equality of outcome. The former approach means boosting access to doors without then pushing the unwilling, uninterested, under-qualified, and unqualified through them. For too long, public institutions of higher learning have been content to pluck “minority” candidates from middle- and upper-middle-class America to check their diversity target boxes. Sending representatives into underrepresented areas and running outreach programs to encourage applications are expensive and time-consuming efforts. Yet they are precisely what will help bring about genuine and organic social advancement. If resources on campus are limited, funds can be diverted away from the “-studies” departments replete with aloof highbrows who pump out irrelevant, esoteric drivel.

It wouldn’t be too surprising if the modern Left, with its blinding infatuation with “diversity” grounded in race, ethnicity, and gender, eventually pushes even some of the most devout conservatives to consider the analyses of Karl Marx. The Left itself, however, may also wish to revisit its roots, not only for the sake of future admission to the White House, but also progress, its raison d’être. For class, not identity, has proven to be the universal fault line upon which seismic change occurs.

Last week, bullets from jihadists’ AK-47s pulverized the European Union’s hopelessly—and, indeed, dangerously—naïve vision for society. Moving forward, we must dedicate as much of our attention to radical Islam as to the Western culture that bred and allows radical Islam to flourish. To do otherwise would only further tighten the noose clutching the neck of liberty.

France—realm of rationalism, existentialism, and deconstructionism, those oh so uplifting conceptual frameworks that have entombed generations in labyrinths of self-destructive questions about knowledge and the cosmos. It is also the realm of another disastrous “ism,” multiculturalism, the unofficial ideology of the postwar European project, the one that has—as recent events fatefully and vividly illustrated—wildly succeeded in paralyzing those with a moral compass and letting run rampant those without one.

At the heart of the European continent’s debilitating obsession with “tolerance” is guilt. For France, memories of colonialism, imperialism, and the Vichy Regime weigh on its collective conscience with the same heaviness as a PBR hangover on a Brooklyn hipster. Previously, one might have speculated that it would have taken a suicide bomber’s obliteration of the Louvre to clear the scales from the eyes of the French. Today, so psychologically mired in the iniquities of “dead white men,” a significant portion of the population would probably (quietly) celebrate the metaphorical cleansing of its sins from yesteryear.

Terrorism experts have confidently predicted that copycat incidents will ensue. If al-Qaeda—or whatever group helped orchestrate last week’s attacks—were really smart, it would wait another or year or two until the uproar has subsided. Allow the public to return to its corrosive, multiculturalist lull, further eroding the backbone of French society. Thus, the next time around, the target will be even softer than it was before. After all, modern-day secularists are selfishly betrothed by the here-and-now. Islamists, however, see the struggle for civilization as an eternal endeavor.

With Western Friends Like This

It’s true that France’s security forces are some of the best in the world. They would be even better if they weren’t hogtied by PC-red tape spewed out by bureaucrats schooled at the École Normale Supérieure and drunk on the diatribes of Michel Foucault and Edward Said. But as for defense strategy, the heated debate over whether Islamic terrorism is a perversion or the literal fulfillment of the Koran and Muhammad’s teachings is extraneous. Islamic terrorism, one way or another, is tied to the faith of Mecca and Medina. Forthright recognition of this fact will prove the first step to countering rabid opponents of profiling and, finally, penetrating the banlieues, the domestic breeding grounds of extremism.

Alas, it is far from clear that the enraged denizens of the République—and beyond—are willing to tread in this direction. “We vomit on all these people who suddenly say they are our friends,” noted a prominent cartoonist at Charlie Hebdo. His cynicism is understandable. Undoubtedly, most of the “Je Suis Charlie” demonstrators would have—if they had known about Charlie Hebdo prior to the attack—pilloried the satirical publication as “racist,” “bigoted,” and “hateful.” Calls for the editors, illustrators, and writers to be arraigned on “hate crime” charges would have been vehement and widespread.

So is the cartoonist’s pen—to put a contemporary spin on a classic adage—mightier than the sword? What’s the successive move after marching, making a placard, or retweeting a cover from Charlie Hebdo? “Solidarity” has been used a lot by the press to describe the condition of the French people. Yet solidarity in what? Merely shock, anger, and frustration? Solidarity in this situation is rather pointless unless it further encourages coming to terms with the present and pursuing meaningful changes in policy and culture. Indeed, ideas cannot be killed—if they inspire action. But at the moment, there’s a surfeit of hollow slogans campaigning against a bloodthirsty menace bent on world domination. Phrasing it differently, there’s a cluster of dry pens facing an army of sharp swords.

The Land of Hollow Men

Of course, the sensitivity illness dogging France is not unique to the dominion of Brie and baguettes; it courses through the veins of the liberal ethos, shutting down conversation and fomenting ethical vacuums. Still, the incubation of homegrown radicalization can also be deemed an unintended consequence of France’s noblest of movements: the Enlightenment. The progressive’s zealous drive toward a society of ever-increasing reason shaped by the “collected will” echoes from the Reign of Terror. Tragically, the fundamentally warped interpretation of human nature that left France’s citizens susceptible to tyranny in the late-eighteenth century has done so again in our own epoch.

If the eighteenth-century Irish politician Edmund Burke were to spring back to life, he might retitle his foundational work “Reflections on the Regression in France.” Clearly, it’s high time for the courageous in the West to guillotine hypocrisy and empty gestures by confronting reality as it truly exists—not as it appears in the minds of starry-eyed utopians.

Check out the following two recruitment pitches on YouTube. (I challenge you to watch all of the second one.) This video is from the Islamic State, while this video is from USAjobs.gov, the federal government’s employment website. (It’s not encouraging that the latter, released more than a year ago, has just over 21,000 views while the former, released in late-November, already has more than 600,000 views.)

Notice a disparity in passion? The Islamic State’s video grabs your attention and never lets go. USAjobs.gov’s, unless you’re raging on a PCP-crack cocktail, sends you into a coma. True, pursuing an honest career with the civil service isn’t—and shouldn’t be—as riveting as linking up with a millenarian crusade, but the lack of imagination displayed in USAjobs.gov’s 14-minute snoozefest is emblematic of bigger problems.

If 1) you’re Muslim, 2) you desire a global caliphate, and 3) you can reach the Levant, you’re in luck! The Islamic State offers an ever-expanding spectrum of exciting opportunities on the glorious path to Jannah (paradise). The thought of smiting infidels gets you out of bed in the morning? You can become a jihadi; the Islamic State’s armed ranks are growing dramatically! You quietly harbor an irritating self-preservation streak that inhibits your eagerness to use a suicide vest to separate your head and spinal column from your torso? Join the Islamic State’s sophisticated public works apparatus! There are now rewarding openings in road maintenance, postal services, and landscaping—just to name a few areas.

But what if you’re a patriotic American who wishes to fight back against the spread of radical Islam? You can enlist in the military. Yet what if you want to contribute to this vital campaign as a civilian in, say, the State Department or Pentagon? Best of luck! You’ll almost certainly have to enter and endure the Seventh Circle of Hell, more commonly known as USAjobs.gov.

Enjoy the Innards of Big Government

From top to bottom, USAJOBS.gov is a dreadful experience. More annoying than the experience itself is that virtually every person who’s ever encountered the Web site knows it’s a disaster. (Lampooning USAjobs.gov’s archaic interface and obscure terminology is a customary pastime during happy hour at DC watering holes.)

For giggles, let’s pretend for a second that you’re a job seeker who possesses the superhuman patience necessary to bear an extensive series of coding errors, trippy graphic malfunctions, vertigo-inducing font alterations, contrary instructions, and portal transfer failures. You still need to be fluent in admin-speak to get through a USAjobs.gov application. (How do you not intuitively know the difference between an SF-86A questionnaire and an SF-86C certification? For shame!) Given the abstruse job titles and ambiguous job descriptions, deem yourself fortunate if you even apply for a position that’s actually suited to your interests and skills.

To be sure, if you haven’t previously worked for the federal government, you’ll find its language jarring, if not prohibitive. One minor misstep in the herculean undertaking that is a USAjobs.gov application (Darn it! I knew I should have submitted an SF-86C, not an SF-86A!), and you might just be informed of the misstep a few months later—after you’ve been rejected. Also, without an accessible way to evaluate your credentials relative to the General Schedule (“GS”) pay scale, you’ll probably burn hours applying to positions for which you’re unqualified (or over-qualified).

It Could At Least Be Simple

Americans who have grown up with the Internet, let alone broadband Internet, are obsessed with efficiency. Online expectations are soaring. It’s been reported that online shoppers switch to an alternative brand if a website doesn’t respond within five seconds. What innovative and intrepid millennial is going to stick through the painful process of completing a USAjobs.gov application?

Drudge Report’s Web site is retro and frankly rudimentary, yet it’s still wildly popular because it effectively serves its purpose. If you were a sensible graphic designer looking for a job, you wouldn’t apply to a firm whose website looked like Drudge Report’s. Form obviously isn’t everything. Still, USAjobs.gov lacks both form and function.

Without a doubt, this all means that the federal government isn’t capturing as much of our country’s best and brightest as possible. This is deeply concerning. With the Islamist threat facing America, underscored by the terror attack in San Bernardino, the federal government needs to be able to entice top talent. It’s just downright ridiculous that our country is actively handicapping itself.

Bureaucrat Types Attract Their Own

This all leads to an important question: Who, exactly, is being hired through USAjobs.gov? The answer is, in many cases, the type of person who would not first consider employment with organizations that place a premium on audacity, creativity, deadlines, and competition.

Make no mistake; there are lots of wonderful, upstanding, dedicated people in the civil service. Unfortunately, the federal government rewards and attracts precisely the type of attributes that makes the federal government what it has long been: a bureaucratic nightmare. If you’re into politics, you’ve probably fantasized at least once about Google and BCG teaming up and bulldozing the administrative mess.

A major motivation behind the development of USAjobs.gov was hope for a meritocratic hiring system (i.e., no more “old boys” network). Well, spend a little time inside the Beltway speaking with federal employees, and you’ll quickly notice a trend. It often seems that every one has a family or a close friend already entrenched within the federal government. No wonder they were able to successfully navigate USAjobs.gov’s labyrinthine dungeon.

USAjobs.gov is a dangerous travesty. Too much American talent is being dissuaded from serving the country simply because of a crappy Web site. To be blunt, serious effort must be directed toward overhauling the entire federal hiring system, not just its website—ASAP. Enterprising members of Congress ought to set up a competitive bidding procedure for the job. Let a few top tech companies and consulting firms run wild. They’ll produce a great product at relatively low cost to the American taxpayer.

In the meantime, we can finally put USAjobs.gov to good use. Rather than waterboard jihadists for intel, we can force them to sit at computers and apply to become Administrative Operations Assistants with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.

“If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” That longstanding public relations mantra has become only more germane in the epoch of the digital sound byte. At this year’s AIPAC Policy Conference held last month in Washington DC and attended by 18,000 activists, there was a lot of explaining on a key front.

In addition to shaping legislation, it’s clear that pro-Israel advocates are committed to stemming the rise of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism on American campuses. They’ve launched countless trendy initiatives in recent years to counter their adversaries’ claims, to show young people the Jewish state is about freedom, not “occupation.” That makes sense. Israel’s security significantly depends upon succeeding generations of Americans continuing to believe in the country’s mission.

Many, if not most, of the campus initiatives seek to persuade Jews as well as non-Jews. But shouldn’t it already be apparent to Jews that, for a variety of reasons, Israel is important? Shouldn’t it be evident to them that it deserves to exist? Shouldn’t they be eager to stand up for their historic homeland? Yes, yes, and yes. But there’s a Zionism gap among Jewish millennials.

That, pro-Israel advocates plainly recognize. Pew’s major 2013 survey, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” asked participants: “What’s essential to being Jewish?” “Caring about Israel” trailed “leading ethical/moral life,” “working for justice/equality,” and “being intellectually curious.” (It barely eked out “having a good sense of humor.”) Regarding support for Israel, the poll noted: “Among Jews 65 and older, about half (53%) say caring about Israel is essential to what being Jewish means to them. Among Jews under age 30, by contrast, 32% express this view.”

How did the Zionism gap come about? This is the question these influencers—who are of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations—do not ask, but must be asking if they wish to affect the future. Or if they are asking it, it’s not reflected in outreach efforts they designed, funded, and implemented.

A Casualty of Jews’ Success at Assimilation

Assimilation, broadly understood, is the obvious reason younger Jews aren’t as interested in Israel as their forebears. They weren’t around during the Holocaust and they didn’t witness the Jewish state’s security crises in 1967 and 1973. Further, they didn’t grow up in an age of synagogue bombings and college admissions quotas. Life for them has been just like life for other Americans their age: yoga class and organic protein shakes.

Yes, they’ve been treated well by America. Actually, they’ve been treated so well that Irving Kristol felt it necessary to note that intermarriage, not anti-Semitism, was “the greatest single threat” to their community. (That was in 1991 when intermarriage was approaching 40 percent. Since 2000, the rate has been well over 70 percent.)

To be sure, a multitude of complex factors produce assimilation. But one should be of principal concern to those striving to inculcate Zionism among young American Jews: liberalism—specifically, the radically egalitarian liberalism of the Continental Enlightenment, which prizes collective parity, as opposed to the classical liberalism of the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment, which cherishes individual liberty.

This former type of liberalism, which ought to be termed “left-liberalism,” has ruled the commanding heights of culture since the 1960s. Its secularist faith in “justice,” “reason,” and “equality” has governed the ethical bearings and spiritual impulse of American Judaism for decades, and is now bearing its most matured fruit. That fruit is sentiment among Jewish youth toward Israel that ranges from apathy to antipathy.

Effects of the Left’s Hatred for Community

According to Mondoweiss.net, at least 20 percent of the Israel-pressuring Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) on campus is Jewish. Writing in The New York Times on March 29, Eric Alterman, a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College, posited that pro-BDS Jewish Voice for Peace “is perhaps the fastest-growing Jewish organization on campuses nationwide.” (On March 24, Sen. Cory Booker, during an interview on the “Michael Medved Show,” called BDS “an anti-Jewish movement.”)

Could it have been any other way? Doubtful, for this range of troubling reactions to Israel represent left-liberalism fulfilled. Left-liberalism, because it hails an extreme interpretation of “tolerance,” requires its devotees to suppress their own interests—whether religious, ethnic, moral, cultural, or national—in order to respect, or really celebrate, the interests of all other communities. That is, of course, if they hope to remain “enlightened” citizens in good standing.

In point of fact, left-liberalism is innately repulsed by the very notion of “community” because community, purportedly, denotes some artificial form of barrier between “us” and “them.” That denotation begets separation, misperception, and—ultimately—persecution of “the Other.” (See, if you must, Michel Foucault and Edward Said.)

True, Jews have faced the tension between particularism and universalism since the fall of the ghetto wall. True, most of Israel’s founders were both secular and left-leaning while many Zionists since 1948 have been both secular and left-leaning. But according to not Democratic Party politics but rather the philosophy of left-liberalism—whose chief progenitors were René Descartes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Karl Marx—they were hypocrites. That they struck a “balance” between particularism and universalism necessarily meant they were violating, to an extent, the sanctity of both poles.

The Anti-Defamation League, which was founded in 1913 in response to Eastern European pogroms, offers an unambiguous example of leftist Jewish confusion. The “non-partisan” organization disdains “actions that divide us along religious and ethnic lines” while it also “promotes the security and well-being of Jewish communities around the world.”

We Love Everyone Except Ourselves

American Jews, especially of the more progressive stripe, will likely learn, only once it’s too late, that they can’t have their granola cake and eat it too. For it’s impossible to champion worship at the altar of multiculturalism then expect individuals to leap to the defense of something so exclusive as a Jewish nation-state. “When it comes to campus discourse on Israel, one thing is conspicuous,” Andrew Silow-Carroll lamented in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on March 31. “There is no pro-Israel left.”

Truth be told, today’s young Jews who harbor less-than-positive attitudes toward Israel are not contradicting left-liberalism, they’re epitomizing it. They have simply managed to elude to a greater degree the contradictions that their parents and grandparents either could not or would not.

Jewish conservatives—synonymous these days with “neoconservatives”—have kvetched for half-a-century about Jews on the Left betraying their own “interests” through support of the Democratic Party. Allegedly, those interests involve, among other things, Israel. Frankly, the foreign policy approach of the Left toward Israel is one thing, but left-liberalism’s effect on the willingness to support Israel is quite another. It’s the latter, inexplicably, that Jewish conservatives have largely ignored.

From the pro-Israel perspective, what is needed is the rebuilding of Jewish identity, meaning a solid and multifaceted understanding of what’s unique about the Jewish experience. (Spoiler alert: What’s unique about the Jewish experience is not, as the majority of mainstream Jews myopically assert, persecution and “social justice.” Other peoples have suffered and done good deeds as well.) After all, if lacking a healthy Jewish identity, what practical reason in twenty-first-century America does a Jew have to proactively back Israel?

Time to Reconstruct the Jewish Identity

American Jews must not continue to presume that successive generations will be able to subsist eternally off the spiritual inspiration of their ancestors. It’s important here to keep in mind that a lot of Israel’s markedly secular progenitors ascended from very observant backgrounds. Yet a swath of American Jewry is convinced that Matisyhau, “Seinfeld,” chicken soup, lox, and Hanukkah presents will be enough to keep the flame alive. They’re mistaken. Not even Birthright will do the trick.

But how to reconstruct Jewish identity? The path forward centers on education. American Jews desperately require a knowledge of ritual, Hebrew, and history that is more robust than the one currently being passed to them by family members and rabbis. It’s not unusual to find pro-Israel Jews who, if questioned, will struggle to name the year of Israel’s founding. Similarly, it’s not uncommon to encounter mainstream Jews who can recite the Ashrei—one of Judaism’s central daily prayers—but be unable to translate a single line into English.

Admittedly, there’s a stark disparity between what should be done and what can be done. What should be done is an overhaul of Hebrew school curricula at temples and synagogues. Hebrew school remains the experience that still binds together mainstream American Jews. Alas, it’s usually dismal and, occasionally, traumatizing. To get a sense of the coming-of-age trial, check out Philip Roth’s, “The Conversion of the Jews,” featured in his classic collection of essays, “Goodbye, Columbus.”

All those connected to Hebrew school education, from parents to clergy, need to develop means to make teachable content more interesting, relevant, and challenging. Remarkably, actual Torah study is frequently limited to memorizing the singular part of the Five Books of Moses read aloud at bar and bat mitzvahs. Plus, few non-Orthodox Jews ever see a single page of Talmud, the codification of Jewish law that presents the basis of the (few) customs they observe.

All for None, None for All

What most Jewish kids do learn at Hebrew school (and from their parents) is that Judaism embraces universal human culture. Naturally, they proceed to ask themselves, “If Judaism embraces universal human culture, why do we need Judaism?”

None of this is to say that AIPAC—and other organizations that lobby on behalf of Israel—are ineffective in their legislative campaigns. It is to say, however, that they’re misspending resources aiming to sway young Jews. That’s because insufficient energy is being dedicated to figuring out what ails Jewish millennials.

In turn, no number of glossy booklets praising Israeli innovation—from microchips to cherry tomatoes—will win young minds. Likewise, no amount of slick films highlighting Israeli humanitarianism—from aiding Syrian refugees on Lesbos to assisting flood victims in Missouri—will win young hearts.

Until the pro-Israel crowd gets serious about the corrosion of Jewish identity, it will always find itself in a reactionary posture, and its endeavors to galvanize mainstream Jewish support for the Jewish state will increasingly prove in vain.

Much of the Jewish-American community is fixated on the “alt-right.” Over the past year, countless op-eds have been penned and declarations made comparing the United States to the Weimar Republic and intimating, à la Philip Roth’s 2004 novel “Plot Against America,” that concentration camps are just around the corner—from Main Street. (A search for “alt-right” on the eminent and progressive Jewish Daily Forward returns over 6,600 results.)

There’s allegedly a contemporary Judenrat to boot. Only yesterday, Jewish trepidation was kicked up a notch by Omri Boehm, an assistant professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research, with a New York Times op-ed, which accused “Zionist leadership” of forming an “alliance” with “politicians with anti-Semitic tendencies.”

It’s true that some individuals who identify with the alt-right—a vague, fringe phenomenon that barely constitutes a “movement”—are anti-Semites. That’s both the sufficient and obvious reason many Jews perceive a threat to their values and physical security.

The real reason, nevertheless, is one to which they have deliberately blinded themselves: The alt-right is an enemy of convenience. Like a Rorschach blot, it’s a nebulous void into which personal anxieties can be effortlessly projected while ignoring the real adversary—an adversary that’s far more dangerous and whose origins lie much closer to home.

Indeed, the Jewish-American community is markedly left-leaning and, uncomfortably, the most pervasive and pernicious form of anti-Semitism in the United States not only has long been situated on the Left, but also is a creation of modern liberalism.

For One, Target Higher Education’s Leftism

Until the alt-right crossed their radar, when it came to anti-Semitism Jewish Americans were primarily (and correctly) concerned about the American campus. But it’s telling that they virtually always looked upon anti-Semitism at colleges and universities like whack-of-mole, a target whose ugly head pops up at random. In other words, rarely have they considered that anti-Semitism isn’t an arbitrary occurrence at our thousands of institutions of higher learning, but that it is a product of our institutions of higher learning.

It’s hardly shocking they haven’t. Most American colleges and universities are unrepentant bastions of liberalism and, again, the Jewish-American community is predominantly liberal. Since exit polling began in 1972, Democratic presidential candidates have received on average 70 percent of the Jewish vote. Since 2012, at least 90 percent of donations by Ivy League employees have gone to Democrats. The percent for “non-exclusive” schools isn’t far off.

What’s more, there’s a perceptible correlation between the likelihood of anti-Semitism on a campus and a campus’s political leanings. The most prototypically liberal institutions of the Ivory Tower—Columbia, Michigan, Berkeley, and prestigious liberal arts schools—are, lo and behold, the places repeatedly addressed by organizations dedicated to countering anti-Semitism.

What (liberal) Jews additionally have difficulty grasping is the fact that the most pro-Jewish schools in America are Christian in orientation, if not in action, like Hillsdale College and Liberty University. This is evidenced by Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a grassroots organization active on well more than 200 campuses. The Anti-Defamation League has analyzed and documented more than 1,000 anti-Israel events at colleges and universities over the past two years. Laudably, CUFI holds more than 40 events across the country every month. That works out to about 1,000 pro-Israel events at colleges and universities over the past two years.

Yet when pushed on Christian Zionism, Jews commonly revert to a stale narrative. “Evangelicals,” they lament, are supportive only because of a belief that the gathering of Jews in Israel is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. (As such, they seem oblivious to equally strong currents of Zionism among Catholics and other denominations of Protestantism.) By the way, I know quite a few evangelicals, and not one has yet requested that I repatriate to the Holy Land!

Jews’ Main Fight Is With Themselves

The point is that Jews aren’t tackling the roots of campus anti-Semitism, which, as they themselves purport, are usually given a slick moral and intellectual veneer by masquerading under the banner of anti-Zionism. In fact, they won’t even concede that there are roots beyond an ancient, amorphous, and infectious hatred. That’s because to do so, they would need to acknowledge they’re brawling with themselves.

The left-liberalism that has dominated colleges and universities since the 1960s is convinced progress and social justice can only be achieved by tearing down the “artificial” barriers of humanity. (Of course, in practice, it’s only the religious, ethnic, and national barriers of the Western and Judeo-Christian traditions that are worthy of assault.)

The hot topic today among those (futilely) striving to combat anti-Semitism on campus is “intersectionality.” This phony postmodern concept, which describes the interconnected nature of “oppressive systems,” is used to explain—or rather justify—why environmentalists and members of the LGBT community, for example, have joined Muslims to protest “Israeli apartheid” and back the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

Yet if environmentalists and members of the LGBT community sincerely cared about Israel’s actions, they likely wouldn’t participate in activism that quickly evolves into anti-Semitism. Israel, after all, harbors the most inclusive society in the Middle East and is a global leader in environmental innovation.

Sure enough, liberal Jews hoping to contest blatant anti-Semitism and anti-Semitism that superficially poses as “criticism of Israel” are increasingly in a bind. Every day that passes, the front that seeks to delegitimize the Jewish state and, hence, Jewishness itself features more and more of their otherwise natural left-leaning allies—staunch advocates of “peace,” “justice,” “equality,” and “tolerance.”

The Left Hates Jews Because the Left Hates the West

In reality, the front has little to do with human rights. The plight of Palestinians, although real, is mainly just the uniting foil to attack the Jewish state, whose foundation in ethnicity, tradition, and community is an affront to universalistic modern liberalism, and the Jewish people, whose beliefs inspired the Western civilization that modern liberalism so detests.

If Jews were serious about defeating anti-Semitism in America, they would go after its source and, accordingly, cease obsessing over the alt-right. They would focus on colleges and universities, hitting them where it really hurts: endowments. Jewish parents could easily stop writing tuition checks to schools that are notorious incubators and breeding grounds for Jew hatred in all of its forms.

Channeling Alasdair MacIntyre’s 1981 work, “After Virtue,” writer Rod Dreher has popularized the “Benedict Option,” in which Christians would partially and voluntarily withdraw from decadent modern society to build their own local communities. Jews could readily pursue an academic “Moses Option.”

I anticipate, however, that an “elite” diploma and its trappings will prove in most cases irresistible. After all, rabbinic sages suggest that only 20 percent of the Hebrews actually chose to flee Egypt. Despite being slaves under Pharaoh, the unknown was simply too unsettling to warrant change.

Although the fight against anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry must be nonpartisan, my recent attempt to draw attention to left-wing anti-Semitism triggered a depressingly partisan response. I was labeled a “liberal” by self-avowed anti-Semites and an “anti-Semite,” among other hateful terms, by self-avowed liberals.

Clearly, many readers weren’t willing to seriously grapple with the argument of my most recent article, unkindly dubbed on Twitter “the Federalist version of the ‘Renegade Jew.’” (At the same time, a lot of people, Jewish and non-Jewish, really appreciated it. To label them all anti-Semites too is absurd.)

Indeed, the reaction was revealing. I anticipated one similar to that which recently met historian Gil Troy (who, like yours truly, is Jewish) after he merely argued that Bernie Sanders contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss. That’s what I got: a heap of name-calling and essentially no sincere analysis. But I was still stunned by its venomous nature.

The Left has only further demonstrated that it demands absolute conformity in thought and belief. All Jews, apparently, must stay within a well-defined box. The suffocating atmosphere within that box, of course, is secular and despises diversity in tradition and culture. What I deduced from the critical response to the article was that the only good Judaism is non-religious Judaism.

I’m neither a “secular Jew” nor a “cultural Jew.” So to be castigated as an “assimilationist,” a “kapo,” and a “self-hater” is beyond ironic. I’m not Orthodox, but I keep and respect many of the traditions. If I’m trying to “cozy up” to anti-Semites, I’m going about it in an odd way.

For if a Holocaust ever does come to America, I’ll be far easier for the brown shirts to pick out than those ethnic Jews who have acculturated and abandoned the ways of the past. And if the crematoria come to these shores, left-liberals will also be to blame for the excessive and inappropriate use of the term “anti-Semite.” By crying wolf, they will have desensitized the public and only made it that much harder to discern the real enemy.

Alt-Right Is Not All the Same as Anti-Semite

Now, my article compared left-wing anti-Semitism with the alt-right, not right-wing anti-Semitism, which is a broader phenomenon. My detractors pulled a clever trick, perhaps so clever they didn’t even recognize it. They equated the alt-right with anti-Semitism. Yet what we’re dealing with resembles a Venn diagram. The overlapping space between the alt-right and right-wing anti-Semitism is alt-right anti-Semitism. It’s like the way the overlapping space between left-liberalism and anti-Semitism is left-wing anti-Semitism.

Even the Anti-Defamation League in its primer about the “New White Supremacy”—which it appropriately designates “an extremely loose movement”—describes the alt-right as a “white supremacist” phenomenon, not specifically an anti-Semitic phenomenon. “A number of Alt Righters,” it further explains, “are also blatantly anti-Semitic and blame Jews for allegedly promoting anti-white policies such as immigration and diversity.”

But how many alt-righters, let alone anti-Semitic alt-righters—who were, after all, the focus of my article—are there? Plus, what tangible, concrete steps can be taken to defeat “an extremely loose movement”? If you’re earnest about stopping anti-Semitism, it’s vital to pinpoint individuals and institutions rather than to vocally lambast the ill-defined “alt-right.”

Here, not back there, is where I hoped for constructive discussion. I am convinced that left-wing anti-Semitism is more pervasive and more dangerous than alt-right anti-Semitism. I am convinced, first, because of its influence. Alt-right anti-Semitism, like right-wing anti-Semitism, in general, is overt and stupid (meaning literally vulgar) and, therefore, is much easier to be tracked and combatted by law enforcement, nonprofits, and private citizens concerned with fighting bigotry.

Left-wing anti-Semitism, on the other hand, too often is afforded a pass because it’s given an intellectual veneer by masquerading under the façade of anti-Zionism. (Frequently, it’s downright overt as well, and it usually almost always appears, lo and behold, in connection to disapproval of Israel.) If “you” can say that most of the alt-right is anti-Semitic (which it undoubtedly is), then I certainly don’t see why I can’t also say that most of the “criticism” of Israel is anti-Semitic.

Taxpayers Fund Left-Wing Anti-Semites

Here’s the second reason I’m convinced that left-wing anti-Semitism is more pervasive and dangerous than alt-right anti-Semitism. Members of the alt-right—at least according to the publically available data we have on political donations—do not hold teaching positions in academia. Education is of prime import. As such, the opportunity to shape the minds of our country’s future generations is unparalleled in its influence. Left-wing anti-Semitism is, to be sure, alive and well among the professoriat—and its students.

Alas, anti-Semitic “incidents” on campus are not broken down by ideological source. Still, there’s substantial evidence that Jew hatred, in contemporary times, is almost exclusively a product of the Left on the American quad. It’s evident from recent documentaries on campus anti-Semitism, such as “Hate Spaces,” which features commentary and analysis from professors Alan Dershowitz of Harvard, William Jacobson of Cornell, and Richard Landes of Boston University as well as journalists Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal and Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post.

There’s also Canary Mission, an authoritative website that tracks campus anti-Semitism. I strongly encourage left-liberals to build a website that similarly calls out alt-right members of the professoriat—not because I want to be proven correct that there are so few, but because if there are some, they too should be subjected to intense public scrutiny.

Next, I was criticized for “downplaying” the threat of the alt-right. Since I believe that left-wing anti-Semitism—especially that which manifests on college and universities campuses—is a bigger problem, then, yes, I’m necessarily “downplaying” the relative threat of the alt-right. Few things in this universe aren’t subject to a zero-sum reality. In other words, I don’t believe the two forms of anti-Semitism are actually split right down the middle, 50/50, in their presence.

I don’t know exactly how much is to the left of the median marker. But given my protracted time in the Ivory Tower in the United States and in Europe paired with the extensive statistics those dedicated to countering bigotry have compiled, I’ve personally concluded that in America, anti-Semitism is markedly more a crisis of the Left. My critics, without supplying evidence as to the alt-right’s breadth while demanding that I give greater weight the alt-right, only reinforces my article’s argument about the phenomenon being largely an adversary of convenience.

This Is about Refocusing On Bigotry that Gets a Pass

Once more, this was not an article about the alt-right. Enough of those have been already. Dayenu! The crux of the article was that anti-Semitism on campus is a significant issue and, moreover, it’s a product of modern liberalism. Tellingly, I went through literally thousands of mentions on Twitter and virtually no one bothered to attack either of those two points.

I’m committed to defeating anti-Semitism on both the Left and the Right. But with inherently limited resources—time, energy, and money—we have to pick and choose our battles. That’s the choice every organization and individual dedicated to a cause must make. Saying, as quite a few did online, “I’m capable of dealing with both forms of anti-Semitism, thank you very much” is intellectually lazy. Yes, I have no doubt we as a society can deal with both. And we do need to. But which one is the larger problem at this moment, meaning the one that is going to negatively impact the most people in the greatest way?

Like I said before, I’ve spent a lot of time on college and universities campuses on both sides of the Atlantic. The only anti-Semitism I ever experienced on campus came from individuals who not just identify with the Left, but staunchly so. I’ll readily admit that the anti-Semitism wasn’t overwhelming. But it was consistently there in a variety of forms, the way in which Israel was portrayed at “anti-occupation” protests or the way in which Jewish “influence” was discussed in the classroom, bar, or pub.

Additionally, I grew up in Pennsylvania and have also since spent considerable time in Michigan—two parts of “Middle America,” where left-liberals allege prejudice runs amok. Yet I can count the number of times I faced anti-Semitism on one hand.

In fourth grade, a classmate told me that I was “going to hell” because I didn’t believe Jesus was the savior. (Even then, it’s hard to accuse a nine-year-old of conscious anti-Semitism. I’m sure she was repeating something she heard from her parents.) Then, in seventh grade, I had to miss a test because it was scheduled for Yom Kippur. That wasn’t the bad part, though. When I returned the following day, the teacher wouldn’t provide me “extra credit” questions he had provided all the other students.

The reason I wrote the article was to illustrate this point. I’m confident that, today in the post-1960s world, Jews who have grown up in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles have seen swastikas and endured anti-Semitic verbal insults. I’m also confident that the first time the average Jewish American will encounter a sustained and systemic manifestation of anti-Semitism will be as an undergraduate at college.

So I’m not again misunderstood, let me declare that we should ceaselessly go after Jew hatred, and all other forms of intolerance, wherever it is found. Thus, it’s a fallacy that a contemporary neo-Nazi, just by being a neo-Nazi, somehow represents the most virulent form of anti-Semitism. Simply, the most virulent form of anti-Semitism is the most virulent form—regardless of who espouses it and what affiliation they claim.