I’m always struck by how childhood memories are largely a blur, with a few moments of clarity built in.
As our country prepares to mark its semiquincentennial anniversary—an unwieldy term I had never encountered before, meaning 250 years of independence—I thought back to an afternoon at my grandparents’ old house in London 50 years ago, during the hot summer of 1976.
They had just returned from a visit to New York, shortly before they moved to the city permanently, as the United States was celebrating its bicentennial. Among the trinkets they brought back with them was a commemorative ashtray (the object itself rather dates the story!) showing the White House looking like a warm, inviting place, and an engraving of Abraham Lincoln alongside a quote attributed to him that stated, “The best way to defeat an enemy is to make him your friend.”
To my 8-year-old mind, already immersed in American movies, cartoons and TV series like “The Six Million Dollar Man” (and again, the title rather dates that show), these souvenirs demonstrated a side of America I didn’t know existed: folksy, kind and encouraging. It all seemed quite gentle and child-friendly, in contrast to England, which back then still had a relatively strict, Victorian attitude toward kids.
In some ways, America became what England might have been.
For many years afterwards, that was the interpretation I subconsciously carried with me: England as gray, severe and restrained, America as bright, colorful, open and exciting. And even once I was old enough to realize that this depiction was very much the product of a child’s mind and didn’t really correspond to reality, it stayed with me.
In later years, and particularly after I moved here in 2004, proudly becoming a citizen in 2017, my abiding fascination with America deepened.
As an Englishman, I had been frustrated with the tongue-in-cheek “us against you” versions of the American Revolution that I heard from American friends. On one occasion, someone even asked me, in a delightful adaptation of the 21st century’s fixation on feelings and perceptions, if I felt “uncomfortable and excluded” on July 4. “Why, because of George III?” I replied.
In some ways, America became what England might have been. If you watch the 1970 historical drama “Cromwell,” with Richard Harris in the title role as the regicidal Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, you’ll notice that the apocryphal opening scene in the film takes place in the Cromwell household as the family is packing their belongings before embarking on the long sea voyage to a new life in America. A delegation of parliamentarians arrives, persuading Cromwell to give up on the New World and remain in the old one to carry out a revolution.
Many of the principles of the Cromwellian revolution, in the middle of the 17th century, were incorporated into the American struggle for independence some 150 years later. During the 1650s, England was a republic, with Cromwell resolute that Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649, would never be succeeded on the throne. Just as George Washington rejected John Adams’ suggestion that he adopt the title of “king,” Cromwell gave a similar response when his close advisers urged him to do the same.
Of course, there were many differences. Cromwell’s England was an early example of a modern dictatorship with certain features that we now associate with austere Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan; no Christmas celebrations permitted by the Puritans in power, music and dancing banned from public places. But it was also a rough prototype of what was to emerge in the United States, with a commitment to religious freedom (except if you happened to be Catholic), the separation of powers, and a widespread distrust of unjust rulers.
Even Jews were allowed to resettle in England, having been expelled in 1290 under Edward I—another commonality with America, which welcomed Jews from the outset, blessing them with citizenship in a country with a great deal of religiosity but no established religion. And when America rose up against British rule long after Cromwell was dead and gone, there were plenty of Britons who supported independence, from the Whig leader Charles Fox, who exclaimed “Thank God that America has resisted” after learning of the victory at Yorktown, to the brilliant pamphleteer and public intellectual Thomas Paine, who took the step of crossing the Atlantic, authoring “Common Sense” in his new environs of Philadelphia.
As a Jew born in England who now lives happily in America, there are, therefore, plenty of reasons for me to celebrate the semiquincentennial in terms of my own personal history and identity.
At the same time, there are enough reasons to feel apprehensive. Both major parties are dealing with motley factions of Marxists, isolationists, loudly ignorant “influencers” and, frankly, antisemites. Those of us who remain in the political center fret that the 2028 presidential election will be a contest between extremes. For the last two decades, foreign policy has veered between apologetic weakness and coldly transactional calculation. In our cities, we are electing more and more officials who detest this country and what it has stood for historically.
And yet I see no reason to give up. After many years of arguing, including in this column, that Jews could survive and even thrive in Europe despite the antisemitic climate that has prevailed there during this century, I have now accepted that I was wrong on that score. But I am very far from reaching the same conclusion when it comes to the United States.
No question, we have a fight on our hands here. Yet it is one we enter into armed with hope.
Unlike in Europe, the historical record is our ally in America, not our adversary.
The United States was one pillar of the postwar empowerment of the Jewish people, while Israel was the other. In America, Jews have uninterruptedly enjoyed civil rights, political engagement, and, in the case of many of them, affluence and wealth, which they worked hard to earn. No one—not Tucker Carlson, not Zohran Mamdani—can change that basic fact.
Once the fireworks have disappeared from the sky and the barbecues are packed away, we will return to these struggles. But for now, let us pause and give thanks for this wonderful, maddening, bewildering and thoroughly beautiful country.
America, you have my humble gratitude for accepting me and my children into your fold. May God bless you. Always.
