My Love Affair with America

In 2000, the New York Times published an excerpt from Norman Podhoretz’s book My Love Affair with America, a book that bears the delightful subtitle The Cautionary Tale of a Cheerful Conservative. This excerpt contains no explicit reference to the author’s Jewish upbringing, but it’s hardly a coincidence that the robust enthusiasm for America he expresses therein is a defining feature of neoconservatism, a movement largely founded and led by those like Podhoretz whose parents and grandparents were East European Jewish immigrants. Jews, of course, and despite everything, have particular reason to be grateful to the United States. Since tomorrow is Independence Day, this seems like especially timely reading: