Every American is a Jew

Every American is a Jew

In the philosophy of Ethical Individualism developed by Russell McAlmond, founder of the Center for Human Equality in Oregon and author of Ethical Individualism: A Human Relational Philosophy, every human being stands as a unique mosaic of experiences on a horizontal line of equality.

No group label—race, religion, ethnicity, or ideology—defines or diminishes an individual’s inherent dignity and worth.

This framework rejects “groupism,” collective guilt or privilege, and the dehumanizing practice of judging people by superficial affiliations rather than their character and uniqueness.

McAlmond’s Ethical Individualism aligns directly with America’s founding values as expressed in the Declaration of Independence: that all are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights, each person a distinct individual whose liberty and potential must be respected.

These principles are not abstract; they are the moral foundation that makes the United States exceptional. When those principles are threatened by any form of group-based hatred, every American who cherishes them has a duty to defend the targeted individuals—not because of shared identity, but because the attack on one person’s equality and uniqueness endangers the equality and uniqueness of all.

This duty is especially urgent today regarding Jewish Americans.

Antisemitism has risen sharply in the United States, with incidents documented and verified across government reports, law enforcement data, and independent monitoring organizations in the years following 2023. This surge represents a clear resurgence of group hatred that singles out Jews for vilification, dehumanization, and violence.

Such targeting is not a marginal problem; it is a direct assault on the American promise that no citizen shall be persecuted because of their ancestry or faith.The response required is unambiguous solidarity. We cannot allow any individual, group, or political faction to single out Jewish Americans for persecution without every believer in our founding values rising in immediate, forceful opposition.

This is no different from the moral imperative to oppose racism against African Americans. In both cases, the mechanism is the same: the reduction of unique human beings to hated group stereotypes, the assignment of collective blame, and the erosion of the principle that each person must be judged by character and conduct alone.

Ethical Individualism demands we reject both with equal vigor. There is no hierarchy of acceptable prejudices.

The lesson of history, captured powerfully in the spirit of “First they came…,” remains clear. When they first come for the Jews with hatred and dehumanization—when synagogues are vandalized, Jewish students are harassed on campuses, or public figures traffic in ancient blood libels and conspiracy theories—we must speak out as strongly and assertively as we can.

Silence or equivocation is not neutrality; it is complicity in the unraveling of the individual rights that protect every American.

Group hatred of Jews in the USA is un-American. It violates the horizontal equality at the heart of Ethical Individualism and the Declaration. It is immoral, regardless of the perpetrator’s political party, ideology, or claimed grievance.

Zero tolerance for antisemitism must stand as a non-negotiable American standard, just as zero tolerance for racism must stand as a non-negotiable American standard.

These are not competing causes; they are the same cause—the defense of the individual against collectivist dehumanization. McAlmond’s Ethical Individualism teaches that true diversity is not the counting of group identities but the boundless variety of irreplaceable persons. Antisemitism, like any racism, flattens that variety into a target.

It must be opposed root and branch.

“Every American is a Jew” is therefore not a statement of ethnic identity but a declaration of principle. It means that when Jewish Americans are attacked for being Jewish, the attack is on the very idea that any American can live free from group persecution. It means that every citizen who affirms “all men are created equal” and each person’s unique worth must stand in the breach. It means that the fight against antisemitism is the fight for Ethical Individualism itself—the fight to keep America a nation where individuals, not tribes, are sovereign.

The Center for Human Equality in Oregon exists to advance this vision. Through Ethical Individualism, we call on all Americans to reject group judgmentalism in every form, to extend respect and solidarity to every unique individual, and to defend the founding principles that make such respect possible.

When hatred targets Jews, we do not ask “Is this my group?” We ask only whether the principle of individual equality is under assault.

If it is, we answer with moral clarity, courage, and unity. The alternative is the slow surrender of the American experiment to the very tribalism our founders rejected. Ethical Individualism offers the antidote: see each person as they truly are—a singular human being worthy of dignity.

In that recognition, every American becomes, in spirit and in duty, a defender of the Jew and every other individual whose equality is threatened. That is the only consistent American response is that every patriotic American who believes in our founding values stand with the Jewish people in their hour of need.