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Every American is a JewIn 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.&nbsp;

Every American is a Jew

The Center for Human Equality stands for a simple yet revolutionary idea: every human being possesses inherent dignity as an individual, not as a member of any collective. Grounded in Ethical Individualism as articulated by McAlmond, our philosophy holds that moral treatment arises from the recognition of each person’s unique existence, character, and actions. This framework flows directly from the founding American principle that all of us are “created equal,” endowed with unalienable individual rights that no group, government, or ideology may lawfully override. When we judge or condemn people according to their membership in a religion, ethnicity, or civilization, we abandon that principle. Antisemitism is one such violation. It is no different in structure from racism, and both are incompatible with the American experiment. The Declaration of Independence did not proclaim that groups are equal or that rights attach to races, religions, or nations. It declared that individuals are created equal and that governments exist to secure the rights of individuals. Ethical Individualism makes this concrete in daily life. It insists that we evaluate one another by conduct, integrity, and respect for the rights of others—not by ancestry, scripture, or collective identity. This is not abstract theory; it is a pragmatic program for ethical relations. When applied consistently, it prevents the slide into collective blame that has repeatedly produced catastrophe.History demonstrates the lethal consequences of group judgmentalism. The Holocaust stands as the most systematic example: millions of unique human beings were murdered because they were classified as members of the Jewish people rather than judged as individuals. The same logic of collective guilt has justified pogroms, expulsions, and discrimination across centuries and continents. Ethical Individualism rejects this logic at its root. It refuses to allow any person’s rights or safety to be determined by the real or imagined actions of others who share a label. Once we accept that Jews, or any other group, may be held collectively responsible, the door opens to the same reasoning against every other group. The Center therefore opposes group judgmentalism in every form. Antisemitism fits this pattern exactly. It judges Jews as a monolithic entity—whether defined by religion, ethnicity, or supposed civilizational traits—rather than as distinct individuals. This is structurally identical to racism, which assigns moral or legal status according to skin color or ancestry instead of personal character. Both practices substitute group identity for individual evaluation. Both violate the American commitment to equality under law and the ethical demand that we treat each person as an end in himself or herself. The Center opposes antisemitism for the identical reason it opposes racism: because both represent the moral error of collective judgment.This error is being promoted by the Democratic Socialists in New York in today's USA. It is also showing up in the Republican and Libertarian parties. Elements within various political parties have at times trafficked in antisemitic tropes, whether through conspiracy theories about Jewish power or through selective demonization of Israel that collapses into prejudice against Jews as such. Certain followers of Islamic ideology and activism present in the United States have likewise promoted antisemitic narratives that portray Jews collectively as enemies or conspirators. In each case the mechanism is the same: individuals are reduced to their group membership and held accountable for the supposed sins of that group. Such views are immoral because they negate individual rights. They are un-American because they contradict the founding rejection of hereditary or collective guilt in favor of personal liberty and responsibility.America’s strength has always rested on its refusal to organize society around group entitlements or group condemnations. When we allow antisemitism—or any parallel prejudice—to gain ground, we erode the very foundation that makes peaceful coexistence possible among people of different backgrounds. Ethical Individualism offers a clear alternative. It calls us to build relationships and institutions on the basis of mutual respect for individual rights. It asks each of us to judge our neighbors by how they treat others, not by the accidents of birth or the doctrines they inherit. This approach does not require us to ignore real differences in belief or behavior; it requires only that we refuse to punish or demonize people for belonging to a category.The practical program is straightforward. Reject every appeal to collective Jewish guilt or collective Jewish power. Refuse to accept antisemitic reasoning whether it comes from the political left, the political right, or from religious or ideological sources. Insist that criticism of any government or policy—including the policies of Israel—must be directed at specific actions and leaders rather than at Jews as a people. Extend the same standard to every other group. In this way we defend the individual rights of all Americans while preserving the moral clarity that group-based hatred destroys.The Center for Human Equality therefore affirms without qualification that antisemitism is un-American. It contradicts the Declaration’s assertion of individual equality. It repeats the historical pattern of group judgmentalism whose worst expression was the Holocaust. It cannot be justified by political expediency, religious doctrine, or cultural grievance. The only consistent American response is to meet it with the same principled opposition we direct against every other form of collective prejudice. To secure a future worthy of the American founding, we must choose Ethical Individualism over identity-based enmity. We must see one another not as representatives of tribes but as fellow individuals possessing equal claim to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Only then can the United States fulfill its promise as a society in which no person is condemned for the group into which they were born. This is not a partisan demand. It is a demand of conscience rooted in the principles that define us as a nation.

Antisemitism is Un-American

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The Center for Human Equality champions Ethical Individualism—a philosophy that rejects group judgmentalism and affirms the equal dignity, uniqueness, and irreplaceable worth of every individual. It emphasizes judging people by character, actions, and personal merit rather than group identity, while advancing universal human rights and the opportunity for each person to thrive. This framework prioritizes individual autonomy, creativity, and voluntary cooperation over coercive collective or governmental control. In this light, economic systems must be evaluated not merely by aggregate outcomes but by how well they respect and enable individual rights, foster creativity through free choice, and minimize coercive control over enterprises and the economy. Capitalism—characterized by private property rights, voluntary exchange, market prices, and minimal government intervention—proves far more compatible with Ethical Individualism than socialism, which relies on heavier state or collective ownership and control of the means of production. Defining the SystemsCapitalism with minimal government control centers on private ownership of property and capital, free markets where prices emerge from voluntary transactions, and competition driven by profit and loss signals. Government’s role is limited to protecting individual rights (rule of law, contracts, defense against force and fraud), providing public goods where markets may underprovide them, and correcting clear externalities—without micromanaging production, prices, or allocation.Socialism with heavier government control involves collective or state ownership (or dominant control) of the means of production, central planning or extensive regulation/redistribution to achieve collective goals, and subordination of individual enterprise to societal or governmental priorities. Even “democratic socialism” typically expands state intervention in key sectors, imposes price controls or heavy regulations, and redistributes via taxation and mandates far beyond minimal protections. These are not pure binaries in practice—most economies are mixed—but the degree of government control distinguishes them: minimal (enabling markets) versus heavier (directing or supplanting them).Historical and Empirical OutcomesHistory demonstrates capitalism’s superior record in generating prosperity that benefits individuals. Extreme poverty afflicted roughly 90% of the world’s population around 1820 at the dawn of modern capitalism and market expansion. By recent decades, it has fallen below 10%, with over a billion people escaping extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015 alone—largely through market liberalization, trade, and private enterprise in places like China (post-reforms), India, and East Asia. In contrast, socialist experiments with heavy central control—Soviet Union, Maoist China, Venezuela, and others—produced chronic shortages, stagnation, famines, and collapse despite initial industrialization in some cases. The Soviet economy ultimately failed to match Western living standards; Venezuela’s shift toward state dominance led to hyperinflation, mass emigration, and humanitarian crisis. North Korea versus South Korea, or pre- versus post-reform China, offer stark natural experiments: market-oriented reforms correlated with dramatic gains in individual well-being.Indices of economic freedom (e.g., Heritage Foundation) consistently show strong positive correlations between higher economic freedom (private property, open markets, lower regulation/taxes) and higher GDP per capita, faster growth, longer life expectancy, and lower poverty. “Free” or “mostly free” economies enjoy incomes more than twice the average of less free ones. These outcomes matter for Ethical Individualism because material abundance and opportunity expand the scope for individuals to pursue their own ends, exercise creativity, and achieve self-realization—without requiring collective permission.Theoretical Foundations: Rights, Knowledge, and IncentivesEthically, capitalism aligns with individual rights by treating property and voluntary contracts as extensions of personal autonomy. Individuals own the fruits of their labor and can exchange them freely. Socialism’s heavier control often requires overriding these rights—through expropriation, price mandates, or allocation by fiat—to serve collective ends, subordinating the individual to the group or state.Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek highlighted the economic calculation problem: Without private property and market prices, central planners lack the dispersed, tacit knowledge and dynamic signals needed to allocate resources rationally. Markets aggregate millions of individual preferences and local information far more effectively than any bureaucracy. Socialism’s heavier control struggles with this epistemic challenge, leading to misallocation, waste, and stifled innovation. Incentives reinforce this. Capitalism ties rewards to value created for others (via consumer sovereignty), encouraging creativity, risk-taking, and efficiency. Profit signals success in serving needs; losses discipline failure. Heavier socialist control dilutes these incentives through diffused ownership, political allocation, and reduced personal stake, often breeding bureaucracy, rent-seeking, and lower productivity.Creativity flourishes under freedom. Capitalism’s decentralized experimentation—millions of entrepreneurs testing ideas—has driven technological leaps from the steam engine to smartphones. Centralized control tends toward conformity and risk-aversion, as planners prioritize political goals over discovery.Alignment with Ethical IndividualismEthical Individualism celebrates the unique individual over collective categories or coercive uniformity. Capitalism empowers this by enabling voluntary association, free expression of talents through enterprise, and protection of personal sphere (property, contract, association). It rejects group-based redistribution that treats individuals as interchangeable members of classes rather than sovereign agents.Socialism with heavier control, by design, elevates collective or governmental authority over individual enterprise. Even benevolent intentions lead to expanded coercion: mandates on what businesses can produce or charge, restrictions on hiring/firing based on equity goals, or state direction of “key sectors.” This risks new forms of group judgmentalism—class-based policies that judge by economic role or identity rather than individual merit—and reduces the freedom to create, innovate, or fail on one’s own terms.The Center’s emphasis on character over group identity finds stronger support in capitalism’s merit-based, competitive environment than in systems that often prioritize engineered outcomes or collective ownership. Individual creativity and freedom thrive when people retain agency over their labor and resources, not when those are subordinated to central directives.Minimal government control does not mean zero government; it means government serves individuals by protecting rights rather than directing their economic lives.ConclusionCapitalism with minimal government control is markedly more compatible with Ethical Individualism than socialism with heavier government control. It better safeguards individual rights through private property and voluntary exchange, unleashes creativity via decentralized incentives and knowledge aggregation, and prioritizes personal freedom over collective coercion in economic affairs.By enabling individuals to own their efforts, experiment freely, and cooperate voluntarily, capitalism aligns with the Center for Human Equality’s vision of honoring every person’s unique worth and potential—free from group-based mandates or centralized control. Historical evidence and economic reasoning affirm that expanding individual economic liberty has been the most powerful engine for human flourishing, dignity, and equality of opportunity in practice. Policies advancing this framework—strong property rights, open competition, and restrained intervention—best serve the ethical priority of the individual. This approach does not guarantee perfection but offers the greatest scope for each person to thrive as a unique, irreplaceable human being.

Socialism and Ethical Individualism

Muslim worshipper in white clothing performing prostration on decorative prayer mat during dawn prayer, surrounded by Quran texts and religious items

Ethical Individualism and the Rejection of Antisemitism: Toward Human Relational EqualityAt the Center for Human Equality, we stand firmly on the principles of Ethical Individualism, as articulated by Russell McAlmond in his foundational work Ethical Individualism: A Human Relational Philosophy. This philosophy insists on three core axioms: the primacy of individuality, the equal inherent value of every human being, and the categorical rejection of group judgmentalism. It calls us to relate to one another not as members of collectives defined by ethnicity, religion, or ancestry, but as unique, sovereign individuals—each a “mosaic of experiences” worthy of dignity, respect, and personal judgment based solely on character and conduct. In this light, we unequivocally condemn antisemitism in all its forms, including the widespread expressions of hatred toward Jews emanating from segments of Muslim communities around the world. Such prejudice represents a profound violation of human relational ethics. It substitutes group stereotypes and collective blame for the recognition of individual uniqueness, poisoning interpersonal and intercommunal relations. Antisemitism does not merely harm Jews; it degrades the moral fabric of societies that tolerate or encourage it, fostering division, mistrust, and cycles of violence that undermine the possibility of genuine human flourishing for all. The Error of Group JudgmentalismEthical Individualism teaches that judging individuals by the perceived characteristics or actions of their group—whether racial, religious, national, or cultural—constitutes a fundamental moral error. No person is reducible to their ancestry, faith tradition, or demographic category. Jews, like Muslims, Christians, atheists, or any other group identifier, are not monolithic entities but unique individuals. Each possesses infinite personal value and an irreplaceable set of experiences, aspirations, and moral agency. To treat “the Jews” as a collective scapegoat is to erase their humanity in the same way that racism or any other form of group-based prejudice erases the humanity of its targets. This pattern of group judgmentalism mirrors precisely the ideological pathology employed by the German Nazis in the 20th century. The Nazis did not evaluate Jewish individuals on their merits, contributions, or character. Instead, they constructed a narrative of collective guilt and existential threat, using Jews as convenient scapegoats for Germany’s economic, social, and political woes. This dehumanization enabled atrocities on an unimaginable scale. Today, when antisemitic rhetoric—whether in the form of conspiracy theories, calls for violence, or blanket condemnation of Israeli policies as inherently “Jewish”—attributes societal problems to Jews as a people, it repeats the same relational and moral mistake. Blaming an entire group for the failures or frustrations of another is not justice; it is a cowardly evasion of personal and collective responsibility. The Immorality of Religious LegitimizationNo interpretation of any world religion can legitimately sanctify such hatred. The ethical core shared across Abrahamic traditions, including Islam and Judaism, commands love of neighbor, justice, and compassion. Sacred texts repeatedly affirm the equal creation of all human beings in the divine image and the imperative to treat others with the dignity we ourselves seek. Claims that “God wants” hatred of Jews—or any group—represent a grotesque distortion of religious teaching. True faith elevates the individual soul; it does not license tribal warfare or perpetual grievance. God does not endorse scapegoating. God calls us to love our neighbors, not to hate them under the banner of faith. The Center for Human Equality opposes antisemitism from any direction—whether from Muslim-majority societies, Western far-left circles, far-right extremists, or any other source. We likewise reject all racism and group-based bigotry, even when proponents cloak it in the language of a “major world religion” or claims of historical grievance. Ethical Individualism demands consistency: the same principles that condemn Nazi antisemitism condemn contemporary antisemitism. The same framework that rejects anti-Muslim prejudice rejects anti-Jewish prejudice. Human equality is not selective; it is universal.A Call to Relational RenewalAdopting Ethical Individualism requires a deliberate shift in how we engage one another. It means rejecting the lazy comfort of group narratives in favor of the harder, nobler work of individual encounter. It means holding individuals accountable for their actions—whether acts of terrorism, incitement, or hatred—without imputing guilt to millions who share only a faith or ethnicity. It means building societies where Jews, Muslims, and people of all backgrounds can relate as unique persons, free from the shadow of inherited collective enmity.This is not naïve idealism. It is the pragmatic path to human relational health. When we treat people as unique individuals of equal value, we open doors to trust, cooperation, and mutual enrichment. When we indulge group judgmentalism, we close those doors and invite conflict. The choice is clear.The Center for Human Equality therefore calls on religious leaders, educators, political figures, and ordinary people across the Muslim world and beyond to reject antisemitism in word and deed. Denounce conspiracy theories. Teach the equal dignity of every human soul. Model Ethical Individualism in daily relations. Scapegoating Jews will solve no problems; it will only multiply them. True progress begins with the moral courage to see the Other not as a symbol of grievance, but as a neighbor deserving of respect.Every human being is created equal in value, yet remains irreducibly unique. To honor this truth is to fulfill our highest ethical calling. To deny it—through antisemitism or any parallel prejudice—is to betray our shared humanity. Let us choose the path of Ethical Individualism: a world of individuals relating in dignity, equality, and peace.

Muslim Antisemitism is Immoral

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The Center for Human Equality holds that Ethical Individualism, as articulated by McAlmond, faithfully embodies the founding principles of the United States and provides the only consistent framework for human equality. This philosophy insists that every person must be evaluated as a unique individual—by their character, choices, ideas, and actions—rather than by membership in any racial, ethnic, or ancestral collective. It therefore demands the complete rejection of “whiteness” as a coherent or morally relevant category. The American founding documents are explicit on this point. The Declaration of Independence asserts that all men “are created equal” and are endowed with unalienable rights. It does not speak of group entitlements or group guilt. The Constitution likewise protects individual rights to life, liberty, and property without reference to skin color. These principles were imperfectly realized at the time, yet their logic was color-blind from the outset. Ethical Individualism simply completes that logic: no person inherits moral credit or moral debt from the pigmentation of their ancestors. Martin Luther King Jr. captured the same truth in his most famous line: people should be judged by “the content of their character,” not “the color of their skin.” That admonition was not a call to replace one form of group judgment with another. It was a call to abandon group judgment altogether. Any doctrine that treats “whiteness” as an inherent system of values, interests, or culpability violates King’s standard as directly as the older doctrines it claims to oppose.The contemporary concept of “whiteness” does precisely that. It asserts that individuals who happen to have lighter skin share common values and collective goals—chief among them, supposedly, the limitation of opportunity for everyone else. This is not an empirical observation; it is a racial essentialism that collapses millions of distinct human beings into a single moral category. It ignores the historical reality that populations now labeled “white” arrived in America at different times, faced different prejudices (Irish, Italians, Jews, Slavs, and others were once excluded from full membership in the “white” category), and pursued wildly divergent beliefs and interests. It further ignores that human beings of every ancestry display the full range of virtues and vices. Attributing collective traits on the basis of skin color is racism, whether the label is applied to “whiteness,” “Blackness,” or any other pigment-based abstraction.This form of judgmentalism is not confined to one political faction, though its institutional power is currently greatest on the political left. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) frameworks routinely treat racial groups as the primary units of moral and policy analysis. They often assume that statistical disparities between groups are proof of systemic malice by one group against others, rather than the complex product of individual choices, family structure, culture, and cognitive distributions. When universities and corporations adopt training that teaches “all white people are racist” or frames “whiteness” as an oppressive essence to be deconstructed, they abandon the epistemic standards that once defined higher education. Scholarship requires evidence and falsifiability; these claims rest on unfalsifiable assertions about invisible collective essences. Institutions that once aspired to truth-seeking now require participants to affirm group-based guilt or privilege as a condition of employment or enrollment. Such requirements are intellectually embarrassing and morally corrosive.Group judgmentalism is not absent on the political right. Certain strains of antisemitism attribute collective malice or disloyalty to Jews as a people. Certain forms of religious or cultural exclusion similarly treat entire categories of non-Christians or immigrants as possessing uniform and threatening characteristics. These positions are equally incompatible with Ethical Individualism. They substitute one set of collective stereotypes for another and deserve the same rejection.The Center for Human Equality therefore calls on all American citizens, regardless of ancestry or political affiliation, to reject the concept of “whiteness” in its current ideological usage. Reject the premise that skin color confers shared values, shared guilt, or shared destiny. Reject the notion that any individual can be held morally responsible for the actions or supposed interests of people who happen to resemble them in one superficial trait. Reject the demand, from any quarter, that citizens must view themselves or their neighbors primarily through the lens of racial collectives.In its place, adopt Ethical Individualism. Treat every person as an end in themselves, possessed of their own mind, their own conscience, and their own capacity for moral agency. Measure fellow citizens by what they say, what they do, and what they build—not by the shade of their skin or the ancestry they cannot change. This is not a partisan prescription. It is the consistent application of the principle that made the United States a proposition nation rather than a blood-and-soil nation.When individuals are freed from the demand to represent or atone for their racial category, they become capable of genuine cooperation across every line of ancestry. They can compete on merit, cooperate on shared interests, and disagree on ideas without the constant, exhausting overlay of collective racial scorekeeping. That is the only path consistent with the founding creed, with King’s dream, and with the simple recognition that human beings are individuals first and members of statistical categories second.The Center for Human Equality therefore urges every American to reject “whiteness”—not as a description of light skin, but as a theory that reduces unique human beings to instruments of group identity. In its place, affirm the radical and still-unfinished American idea: each person stands alone before the judgment of conscience, law, and their fellow citizens, accountable only for their own character and conduct.

Rejecting Whiteness

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The United States of America was founded on a revolutionary idea: that all individuals are created equal, endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This principle, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, rejected the old-world hierarchies of group privilege, hereditary status, and collective guilt. It affirmed the dignity of the unique person over the claims of tribe, clan, or class. Yet today, a corrosive resurgence of tribalism threatens to unravel this foundation. At the Center for Human Equality in Oregon, founded by Russell McAlmond, we champion Ethical Individualism—the belief that every American must be treated as a sovereign individual, not reduced to a member of any group. We stand firmly opposed to group judgmentalism in all its forms. The path forward lies not in elevating or demonizing tribes, but in recommitting to the individual rights that unite us as Americans.Tribalism—whether based on race, ethnicity, ideology, religion, class, or any other collective marker—divides people into opposing camps. It encourages individuals to view their fellow citizens not as neighbors with shared humanity, but as avatars of their group identity. This mindset fosters suspicion, resentment, and conflict. In place of reasoned debate and mutual respect, tribalism substitutes loyalty tests, purity spirals, and zero-sum power struggles. It promotes the supremacism of “my tribe” over others, implying that some groups deserve special elevation while others merit suspicion or diminishment. Such thinking is profoundly un-American. The Founders explicitly rejected rule by faction or interest group, designing a republic grounded in individual liberty and equality under the law precisely to guard against these dangers. History bears witness to tribalism’s failures. From ancient blood feuds to modern ethnic conflicts, societies organized around group identity have repeatedly descended into violence and stagnation. In America, the ideal of e pluribus unum—“out of many, one”—was meant to transcend such divisions by forging a common national identity rooted in shared principles, not ancestry or grievance. When Americans are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin—or any other group attribute—we build trust and cooperation. When we revert to group-based scorekeeping, we erode that trust. Demonization of entire categories of people as “oppressors” or “privileged,” paired with the elevation of others as inherently virtuous or victimized, recreates the very hierarchies the nation was founded to dismantle. This approach does not heal past wrongs; it perpetuates new ones by teaching Americans to see one another as enemies rather than compatriots.The harms of tribalism extend beyond interpersonal relations. It poisons institutions, from education to government to commerce, by prioritizing group quotas, narrative conformity, and collective guilt over merit, truth, and individual accountability. It undermines the unity necessary for solving real national challenges—economic opportunity, technological progress, infrastructure, and defense of liberty. Bitter rivalries between tribes distract from the common good and sap the energy required to improve the country. Instead of working together to expand freedom and prosperity for all, tribalism channels human effort into perpetual grievance and retaliation. No matter how a “tribe” is constructed—whether by immutable characteristics or chosen ideologies—the outcome is the same: fragmentation that weakens the republic.Ethical Individualism offers the antidote. This philosophy insists that rights belong to persons, not groups. It demands that we evaluate individuals based on their actions, choices, and character, not inherited identity. It rejects both supremacism and collective condemnation, affirming the equal moral worth and potential of every unique American. By focusing on the individual, we honor human diversity in its truest sense: the infinite variety of thoughts, talents, dreams, and responsibilities found within each person. This approach fosters genuine empathy and understanding, because it requires us to engage with people as they are, not as avatars of a category. It encourages personal responsibility, innovation, and voluntary cooperation—the engines of American success.Returning to these principles requires courage and clarity. We must reject policies and rhetoric that sort Americans into favored and disfavored groups. We must teach our children to see beyond surface identities to the shared humanity and equal rights of every individual. Educational institutions, media, and leaders at all levels should promote critical thinking and individual agency rather than group loyalty. Civil discourse must be restored, where disagreement is met with argument rather than ostracism. Only by treating every American as a unique individual—possessed of equal rights and equal dignity—can we build a society that moves forward in human relations rather than backward into division.The Center for Human Equality calls on all Americans to reject the siren song of tribalism. Our nation’s greatness stems not from perfect group harmony but from the audacious commitment to individual liberty and equality. By recommitting to these founding ideals, we can overcome resentment, heal divisions, and renew the American promise. Let us choose unity through individuality. Let us choose progress through respect for the unique person. In doing so, we secure not only a more peaceful and harmonious society, but a freer and more prosperous one for generations to come.

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Every American is a Jew

Antisemitism is Un-American

Socialism and Ethical Individualism

Muslim Antisemitism is Immoral

Rejecting Whiteness

The Resurgence of Tribalism in the USA