Alastair Campbell quotes Umberto Eco to that effect. And Tucker Carlson’s bizarre friendship with the notorious Nick Fuentes has made the work of more sensible people exponentially harder. Whatever gains America has made since the dark days of Joe Biden are in danger of total erosion thanks to people like Carlson, Fuentes and Candace Owen. Meanwhile, the Left mocks with glee and is likely to make political gains. And should they win in the next election they will be tenacious like never before in holding on to and using power.
Meanwhile no state tradition, whether of the Political Right or Left, can be confused with the whole of Catholic tradition or her social teachings. Saint Thomas More and so many others throughout history, beginning with St. John the Baptist(**), show this time and time again. Points of agreement can never amount to total state identification for Catholic Christians. One may be a citizen as long as one may also withdraw from citizenship for conscience sake.
See also Ross Douthat: Antisemitism is threatening Trump’s coalition
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(**) Herod Antipas was Jewish, both by religion and in the way he was generally regarded in his historical context, though his family’s background was complicated and often viewed with suspicion by some of his Jewish subjects.
Background on His Family
Herod Antipas (c. 20 BCE – after 39 CE) was the son of Herod the Great (king of Judea, ruled 37–4 BCE) and his wife Malthace, who was a Samaritan. Herod the Great’s father, Antipater the Idumaean, came from Idumea (ancient Edom, south of Judea). The Idumeans had been forcibly converted to Judaism around 129–125 BCE by the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus I, requiring circumcision and adherence to Jewish law. By Herod the Great’s time, his family had been practicing Judaism for two generations and fully identified as Jewish.
Religious Practices and Identity
Herod Antipas ruled as tetrarch of Galilee and Perea (4 BCE – 39 CE) and observed key Jewish practices:
His coins avoided human or animal images to comply with Jewish prohibitions against graven images.
He celebrated major festivals like Passover and Sukkot in Jerusalem.
He intervened (along with his brothers) when Pontius Pilate offended Jewish sensibilities by placing votive shields in Jerusalem.
Contemporary sources, including the historian Flavius Josephus and the New Testament, treat him as a Jewish ruler operating within Jewish law (e.g., John the Baptist criticized his marriage to Herodias as violating Leviticus).
Perceptions and Controversies
Many pious Jews distrusted the entire Herodian dynasty because of their Idumean origins, recent conversion, heavy Roman alliances, and Hellenistic influences. Josephus notes that Antipas “liked to pose as a Jewish leader” but faced skepticism, and later rabbinic tradition sometimes downplayed or denied the family’s full Jewish status. However, in the Second Temple period (before rabbinic Judaism formalized matrilineal descent), conversion made one fully Jewish, and the Herodians were accepted as such by Romans, most contemporaries, and even critics who still engaged with them under Jewish law.
In short: Ethnically, he had Idumean (Edomite) and Samaritan roots, but religiously and legally, Herod Antipas was Jewish — a practicing Jew ruling over Jews in a Jewish client state. Modern scholars and ancient sources overwhelmingly describe him this way, despite the political and cultural tensions. —–Grok A.I.
Catholic Critique 