Patriotism is not enough for the same reason that the most doting mother is happier if her child is good than if he is bad. A mother loves her child because he is her own; she loves what is her own. But she also loves the good. All human love is subject to the law that it be both love of one's own and love of the good, and there is necessarily a tension between one's own and the good, a tension which may well lead to a break, be it only the breaking of a heart.'Leo Strauss I was raised as a secular Jew deeply attached to the state of Israel. My conversion to Catholicism at the age of 31 did nothing to change those feelings of attachment to the Jewish state. When I stepped away from the Catholic Church and reaffirmed my identity as a Jew 17 years later, I did so in defiant terms, as an expression of solidarity with Jews around the world confronting the specter of newly resurgent anti-Semitism. If Jews were once again going to suffer persecution, I wanted to stand with them and fight...
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