Brooklyn’s Anti-masking Protests Betray a Broken Culture
The demonstrations say less about one particular community than they do about the brokenness of the American condition.
Over the past week, ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn have engaged in anti-mask, anti-shutdown protests. It may be tempting to see these protests as the product of communities that are at odds with the dominant culture, adamantly refusing to comply with American behavioral and social norms, but that gets the story precisely backwards. The protests are profoundly American. The members of these communities are so at home in the American public square that they can air their grievances without fear of retribution, as their own particular expression of their constitutional rights. The callousness of these protests and of their cause
