Ryan paused for a second and then continued: “Of course, you’re right when you say that your dentist and the Jew who runs your neighborhood newsstand aren’t participants in a conspiracy to destroy us. I’m sure that most Jews in this country have their hands full just making the payments on their condos and putting their kids through dental school. They don’t have time for much conspiring.

“But you’re also wrong. It depends upon how you look at it. I’ll give you an example. The United States fought a war against Germany a few years back. It was a bloody, hard-fought war. It was a deadly serious war. Americans were told that Germany was our enemy. Germans were told that America was their enemy. We killed millions of them, and they killed hundreds of thousands of us.

“Now you can easily convince me that there were lots of German dentists and newsstand operators and university professors who didn’t hate Americans and who weren’t conspiring against us. They were just ordinary Germans, whose hands were full earning a living and raising their families. Some of them may not even have agreed with the policies of their government. Is it fair to say that all these Germans were our enemies?”

Ryan paused for effect and then answered his own question: “Of course, it is. They were our enemies because they paid with their taxes for the bullets their soldiers used against us. Even if they weren’t in the trenches and the tanks, they were keeping the home front going, in one way or another. They thought of themselves as members of the German nation, and we were at war with the German nation.

“Do you get the idea, Yeager? Your Jewish dentist pays his taxes too, with his contributions to the United Jewish Appeal. He may not be in the front lines with the fellows from B’nai B’rith, but you can bet that he does his part on the home front in lots of little ways. He votes for the politicians who vote for your taxes to be sent to Israel. He writes letters with the right slant to the editor of the Washington Post. He’s probably very civic minded, working with the PTA, where he can keep an eye on the teachers hired by the school board; serving on the county library board, where he can have some input into the types of books the library stocks; and acting as a patron of the local art museum or theater group, where he can ensure that we get a few carved African masks and tom-toms in the museum or some really freaky stage performances, with an affirmative action cast.

“Or maybe your dentist is one of those really rare Jews who doesn’t pay a bit of attention to what the B’nai B’rith tells him and doesn’t even buy Israel Bonds. He still thinks of himself as a member of the Jewish people, and the Jewish people— the Jewish nation, the Jewish race, whatever you want to call the damned thing— is at war with our people, make no mistake about it."