The Fourth of July is a time to remember Americans who have contributed much to their country, and this Fourth weekend is a good time to remember two such Americans who died in recent weeks — and whom I’d had the good fortune to know and joust with intellectually since the 1970s — Allen Weinstein and Ben Wattenberg.

Both were sons of Jewish immigrants, born in the 1930s and raised in the Bronx, then which then had the highest Jewish percentage of any American county and also large Irish, Italian and black communities.