From NYC — The New American Test: Can We Defend Democracy Before It’s Too Late?

Democratic mayoral candidates Andrew Cuomo Zohran Mamdani Brad Lander and Scott Stringer seen speaking during a Democratic mayoral primary debate June 4 2025 in New York. AP Photo Yuki Iwamura

By Dr. Shmuel Legesse

In recent years, a quiet revolution has begun across the Western world not with guns and armies, but of ideas. It is a revolution that rejects responsibility, erodes reason, and replaces dialogue with division. From London to Los Angeles, democracy is being tested not at its borders but in its soul.

As a Black Ethiopian Jew, Israeli, and American who has lived on three continents, I have seen what happens when moral courage collapses. I watched it in parts of Africa, where political power became more important than principle. I saw it in Europe, where fear of confronting extremism has left synagogues guarded and free speech fragile. And now I see it in America, where growing tolerance for ideological extremism whether far-left, far-right, or religious is threatening the moral DNA of this great nation.

America once stood as the guardian of liberty. Today, it risks becoming its experiment. Across cities like New York, voices once committed to justice and coexistence are being replaced by radical movements that normalize antisemitism, glorify violence, and undermine faith in democratic institutions. The rise of anti-Israel activism that spills into open hate against Jews, the calls to criminalize political disagreement, and the romanticizing of authoritarian worldviews are not signs of progress. They are warnings.

We have seen this play before. Europe’s twentieth-century tragedies did not begin with war; they began with words that told citizens to doubt their own moral clarity, to justify hatred in the name of justice, and to divide humanity into “us” and “them.” That same moral fog is descending again not through dictators, but through complacency. If this continues unchecked, America’s next generation—Jewish, Christian, secular, or otherwise will grow up in a country where freedom of faith and speech are redefined as privileges, not rights.

To understand where this road leads, look across the Atlantic. In parts of Western Europe, the combination of radical politics, uncontrolled social fragmentation, and moral relativism has produced neighborhoods where Jews fear walking with a kippah and Christians hide their crosses. Europe, which once vowed “Never Again,” is struggling again to protect its minorities—not only from the far right, but from imported ideologies that despise pluralism itself. In London and Paris, demonstrations routinely blur criticism of Israel into calls for its destruction. In Berlin, Jewish schools require guards. In Brussels, political parties court extremists for votes. The continent that birthed the Enlightenment is watching its own light flicker.

This is not simply Europe’s failure; it is a warning to America. The same forces of division are shaping its universities, city councils, and congressional races. They arrive cloaked in moral language “justice,” “liberation,” “equity” but their goal is not reform; it is replacement: replacing Western democratic norms with tribal loyalty, replacing rational discourse with emotional coercion, replacing shared citizenship with ideological purity.

In New York, once the beacon of pluralism, we now hear chants that demonize Israel and glorify those who murder civilians. We see public officials hesitate to condemn antisemitism because they fear losing votes. We see campuses where Jewish students are told to “go back to Europe,” though their ancestors fled that continent to escape persecution. This is not progress. It is regression disguised as revolution.

The danger is not only for Jews. When any group becomes an acceptable target of hate, every group becomes vulnerable. The same ideology that normalizes antisemitism today will attack Christian belief tomorrow and silence dissent the next day. The erosion of moral clarity never stops where it begins. The founders of America understood that democracy without morality cannot endure. George Washington called religion and morality “indispensable supports” of political prosperity. The point was never that the state must impose religion, but that a free society must preserve conscience.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, whose teachings shape my own work, taught that “freedom requires restraint.” Without shared moral language, liberty decays into chaos. The purpose of democracy, he said, is not to silence difference but to sanctify it to turn diversity into dialogue, not division. That vision made America exceptional. And that vision is under assault. Some activists and politicians now portray Israel as evil, faith as backward, and patriotism as prejudice. They frame civilization itself as an oppression to be dismantled. In doing so, they invite chaos where there should be covenant moral partnership among citizens who disagree yet remain bound by shared values.

America must wake up before it repeats Europe’s mistakes. Democracy is not self-renewing; it must be defended by citizens who know that freedom comes with duty. Jews and Christians must stand together not as tribes protecting themselves but as moral partners protecting a shared civilization. Muslims and secular allies who cherish liberty must join that defense, for if extremists define Islam to the world, they will destroy both faith and democracy. All Americans Black and white, rich and poor, believer and skeptic must recognize what is at stake. The question is no longer political; it is civilizational. Will America remain a land of freedom under law, or become another society governed by fear and resentment? If we fail to act, the forces that eroded Europe will dominate America’s public life. Universities will become indoctrination centers. Houses of worship will be targeted. Free speech will shrink behind intimidation. And one day Americans will wake up to find that the democratic world they inherited has been replaced by a new orthodoxy not religious, but ideological that allows no dissent.

A Father’s Fear

As a father raising four Black, religious Jewish children in New York City, this fear is personal. My children were born here, educated here, and taught to love both Israel and America. Yet I now worry for their future. Will they be safe wearing kippa on the subway? Will they one day have to hide their Jewish or African identity to hold a public job? Will they be treated as equals in the country that once promised freedom for all? If my children ever have to choose between their safety and their identity, then something sacred about America will already be lost.

The Moral Awakening

Decline is not destiny. America can still renew its moral compass. The answer is not censorship or confrontation, but education and courage. Schools must again teach civic virtue the ability to disagree honorably and defend the rights of others even when we differ. Media must resist the economics of outrage. Faith leaders must affirm that belief and freedom are allies, not enemies. Every generation must fight for the soul of democracy. This is ours. When I walk through Jerusalem, I often think of America. Both nations were built on covenants promises between people and God, and between citizens and each other. Both now face the same moral test: whether they will remember who they are before forgetting becomes irreversible. The future of democracy will not be decided by armies or elections alone, but by whether free societies still believe in the moral foundations that made them possible: faith, family, freedom, and truth. The time to wake up is now.