The degree to which Senator George Allen's career has demonstrated that he traffics in lies and misrepresentations about public policy, or support for bigots and bigotry, or excessive secrecy about governmental policies are certainly legitimate subjects for public inquiry and debate. A recent diary by Kos has sought to frame the public attention towards Allen in this direction.
Allen's statements about his mother's religion and why her father was imprisoned by the Nazis may be be a bridge to a much larger problem of truthfulness about who he is and what he stands for.
But, standing alone, lies and secrecy about a parent's Jewish backround are a bridge in a different direction: toward understanding of the shame and fear some people have of being discovered to be of Jewish ancestry or the Jewish religion. Fears of the passions that Adolph Hitler aroused in people who became Nazis or Nazi sympathizers or enablers are by no means over.
The coming of the Jewish High Holidays Saturday night--culminating with the Jewish New Year--reminds me of the time in which I, as a newly minted state legislator in 1974 wished a constituent who lived in a disproportionately Jewish neighborhood and had a surname generally linked to the Jewish people, a happy new year, referring to the Jewish New Year.
His prompt response was one of anger and fear. How did I know he was Jewish? He had not told me that. Was there some sort of governmental list that demonstrated that? Was his life somehow in jeopardy because of such a list? He was relieved to find out that there was no such list. Adolph Hitler had been dead then for 29 years, but the fear of the power of what Hitler stood for was very much alive with him.
Another constituent that I first met that year was a high school classmate of my father's. A brilliant man who earned many degrees, he never enjoyed the success that he had hoped for. When he learned his son, a friend of my younger brother, was planning to apply for medical school, he promptly changed his name and the names of all his family to hide their Jewish ancestry. In recent years, as an octegenarian and a nonegenarian, he has started to come to grips with his fears and begun to list his birth name as well as his legal name in the Philadelphia phone directory.
Even in 2006 I have a Jewish inlaw with a successful career as a TV anchor under a name that implies he is a White Anglo Saxon Protestant and a recent complaint from a state government worker living in a nearby Montgomery County suburb that he has been repeatedly passed over for promotion because he is Jewish with an obviously Jewish surname. Anti-Semitism and the fear of anti-Semitism are by no means over.
The hiding of one's backround is by no means limited to Jews. The number of people with names indicating that they are White Anglo Saxon Protestants far, far exceeds the actual number of White Anglo Saxon Protestants in our country. Hiding one's past and starting over anew with a reconstructed past is an important part of American life for the families of many immigrants and their descendants regardless of their faith traditions.
In 1998, the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal, coexisted with Democratic gains in the Congressional elections, to the surprise of many. Obviously there were swing voters who understood that if governmental investigations of adultery were to become the norm, a lot more people than Bill Clinton would be jeopardized by them.
All lies are not created equal. Some lies may even be heroic. Many hundreds of thousands of lives the Nazis sought to end were saved by diplomats, clergy, and ordinary citizens who lied to Nazi and other governments about who various people were, and who was living where. Those who have lived in deadly fear of an oppressive government are rarely among those who most fervently believe in the ethics of full personal disclosure.
The Allen family backround controversy sheds light on the fears that led many people to emigrate to our country and their life strategy of keeping who they had been abroad a secret.
This controversy also illuminates why so many religious organizations who work with immigrants are so disturbed at federal attempts to track down the details of who immigrants were in the countries they fleeing.
Immigration advocates tend to believe that immigration to our country is inherently about breaking with the past and starting over. They viscerally recoil at vigorous efforts to screen out immigrants based on the identity or classification criteria developed or strongly influenced by information developed by foreign governments.
The Allen/Webb election should be about George Allen and James Webb and who will best represent the concerns and needs of their fellow Virginians. It would be ironic and unfortunate for Democratic interests if Senator Allen were to suddenly emerge as the candidate of the many thousands of Virginians who are recent immigrants or descendants of recent immigrants.