I can see the same sickness setting in, here in the US. The clearest signs, such as officials being granted the right to rule by decree, and the soldiers and police officers being diverted from their duties to defend their countries, instead being forced to participate in bloodsports against their will, are a long way off. Things happen faster in the information age, though, and even the disrespect being shown for the rule of law and those who enforce it is worrisome, as it is self-reinforcing and nearly impossible to quell with reasoned argument.

I hope it won’t happen in our lifetimes, that we must choose between loyalty to liberty and loyalty to the USA.

… You know, ten years ago, if anyone had told me I’d ever sound like a survivalist whacko, I’d have thought they were idiots. Of course, I thought the same of anyone who willingly served in the armed forces, or even as a police officer. What a difference an actual attack makes…

I don’t need to make any other answer. Apparently, you can’t take that as a legitimate answer.

That is why the question is so offensive. It shouldn’t even have to be asked. You would never ask someone of German ancestry if they would fight for Germany or America in a war. You would ask it of recent immigrants, perhaps, as shown by what happened in WWII.

But I am, as I stated, a third-generation American. The question is not an honest one. It is an offensive one. It is, as I said, an accusation of dual loyalty, even though the questioner says he doesn’t mean it that way.

My friend Heidi’s great-grandparents came from Germany around the same time as mine came from Russia and Latvia. She spent a summer in Germany as a teenager. But no one would EVER ask her if she would fight for Germany or America in a war. Don’t pretend that they would.

Offensive. The question is not honest. It is offensive.

John M’s question doesn’t seem offensive to me at all, though may be difficult for you to answer.

I wouldn’t be offended if someone asked me if I would defend the land of my ancestors (Germany), or the United States in a war. Without a doubt, I would defend the United States. John’s question is an honest one.

Sometimes democracies make war on themselves. I see no reason to assume democracies couldn’t make war on democracies, were there equally strong differences of opinion between them. Say, enough Americans come to believe that the principles of self-defense are not only foolish, but extremely dangerous to their belief that “it’s better to not have guns and not need them, than to need them and have them.” Most likely we would turn away from democracy before actually going to war, but a mobocracy like the old Confederacy, or like the post-modernist’s libertarian/anarchist utopia, might go for it.

Imagine this question to Rudy Giuliani during a presidential debate: “If Italy went to war with America, whose side would you be on?”

It’s beyond offensive. It would be stupid. Nobody would ever think of questioning Rudy’s loyalty to America. And yet, Jews are constantly questioned on their loyalty to their home nations.

Your analogy is a false analogy, John. It is comparing two completely different questions. You asked the question about America fighting Israel, and you’re trying to answer it with an American fighting for Israel in a war with a third party. That’s crap logic. It’s not a “tiered” loyalty thing. You’re asking an outright loyalty question: Us or them?

And it’s obvious YOU don’t think you’re being offensive. You’re the one that asked the question in the first place. But you don’t get to determine what I find offensive. I do. And I’m telling you that questioning my loyalty to the nation of my birth—for a fictional situation, in fact—is about as offensive as you can get.

The only way you could get more offensive would be to be outright anti-Semitic.

Start off with the history of Intel, the EEPROM and Intel’s chip that IBM used for its first PC to those pics sent from Mars, stents to keep America’s blood flowing and all those improvements to the F16 etc., that has provided the US with the advantage it has in this world.

I totally understand your reasoning, and I can see how the question itself really too simplistic.

Robert,

” try to promote the balkanization of the US by questioning the loyality of Jewish Americans”. That’s just so over the top, and an obvious breach of the “civility” rule, that it merits no response.

In asking a what if question, one needs to consider what would have to happen in order to make the hypothetical even possible.

For the United States to go to war with Israel, assuming Israel has not been taken over by Al-Qaeda, it would have to become a country that every patriotic American (today) would fight against.

Of course, I am sure that the US Army has the contingency plans about this just like it has contingency plans for every country and every combination of countries. That is a matter of training and preparation and not what is expected.