The first appearance of the phrase “Jewish question” was in not in Germany, France, or anywhere on the Continent. It was in Britain, in 1754. In 1753, Parliament passed a bill allowing for the naturalization of Jews living in Britain. The bill, publicly called the “Jew-Bill,” provoked a massive controversy, leading to its repeal the following year. Joseph Grove wrote his “Reply to the Famous Jew Question” in response to the bill and the controversy. In 2026, nearly 275 years later, Stephen Miller, a Jewish American, is spearheading the most potent revival of today’s version of the original Jewish Question—that is, whether a religious, ethnic, or national minority can belong to a polity or not—in Britain’s most successful colony. And […]
I was amused to read today that in the course of railing against protesters in Washington, DC, Stephen Miller made a repeated point of calling them old and white. Not simply because the base of the Republican party is old and white. But also because he so perfectly illustrates a point I made years ago, in The Reactionary Mind, about how the right so often mimics the left: Conservatives often are the left’s best students. Sometimes, their studies are self-conscious and strategic, as they look to the left for ways to bend new vernaculars, or new media, to their suddenly delegitimated aims….At other times, the education of the conservative is unknowing, happening, as it were, behind his back. By resisting […]
Apparently, Stephen Miller thinks that Donald Trump can suspend the writ of habeas corpus. There’s just one problem with that idea, as a little known law professor wrote in the Cornell Law Review in 2014: “Congress alone can suspend the writ.” The name of that professor was Amy Coney Barrett.