Former British Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks warned Americans on Tuesday about the country’s growing social divisions and urged them to “renew the covenant” during the American Enterprise Institute’s annual dinner in Washington, D.C.
“Today, one half of America is … losing a strong sense of the American narrative,” Sacks said. “In place of a single collective identity, you find a myriad of ever smaller identities.”
“Instead of a culture of freedom and responsibility, we have a culture of grievances that are always someone else’s responsibility,” he went on to say. “Because we no longer share a moral code that allows us, in Isaiah’s words, to ‘reason together,’ in its place is something called emotivism. … And because half of America doesn’t have strong families and communities standing between the individual and the state, people begin to think that all political problems can be solved by the state. But they can’t. And when you think they can, politics begins to indulge in magical thinking.”
The rabbi, drawing on parallels between the history of the Jewish people and the U.S., then called on Americans to “renew the covenant” of the nation by rebuilding family and community life, all the while critiquing both the rise of “safe spaces” on the Left and the rise of nationalism on the Right.
“Nationalism is about power; patriotism is about pride. Nationalism leads to war; patriotism works for peace. We can be patriotic without being nationalistic,” he said.
“We believe the only safe space there is, is one in which we give a respectful hearing to views unlike our own. … We need people willing to stand up and say, ‘Rich and poor alike, we all have collective responsibility for the common good,'” he continued. “And we need a culture of responsibility, not one of victimhood, because if you define yourself as a victim, you can never be free.”
Sacks, a prominent Jewish thinker and politician, was at the National Building Museum to receive the Irving Kristol Award, AEI’s highest honor. The conservative think tank states that the award is given to individuals who make “exceptional intellectual and practical contributions to improve government policy, social welfare, or political understanding.”
Past recipients of the award include Robert George, professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and House Speaker Paul Ryan.
