I finally got around to reading Carlos Lozada’s analysis of JD Vance and his book, “Communion,” which appeared in my print edition of The New York Times July 12 (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/07/opinion/jd-vance-communion-clash-civilizations.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share ).
Before I offer any commentary, note the few closing paragraphs reproduced below. Just above the second to last paragraph there is a picture of a tick. Why? Who knows. Was it crawling along the printing plate unknown to the pressmen when the order to “roll ‘em” came? That’s my guess, as the article made no mention of ticks, Lyme disease or any other crawling creatures.
Just another crazy part of the Vance phenomenon.
I haven’t read “Communion,” so I am relying on Lozada’s pull-quotes and interpretations of the text from the man who wants to be our elected leader come 2029. Central to Vance’s beliefs is that America and the Western world are in a conflict within themselves. They are losing their foundation as a “Western Christian civilization” to a “secular global liberalism.”
A now practicing Catholic, Vance says the soldiers who fought and won World War II were battling to save “Western Christian civilization, and the values particular to it: the concept of natural rights, including freedom of speech; a sense of duty to one’s neighbors; an obligation of the strong to protect the weak; a belief in free will and individual conscience.”
Funny, but in the long history of organized religions, many of those concepts are part of their DNA. Christianity, Catholicism, does not have a monopoly on those attributes. Of course, in past epochs anyone practicing free speech, free will and individual conscience could be castigated. Even put to death. Let’s chalk up those reprisals to pre-Enlightenment times.
What really got me to writing this composition is Vance’s attack on immigrants. “As our leaders have ushered in an unprecedented increase in demographic diversity through immigration,” he writes, “they have simultaneously discarded the most powerful force for cultural cohesion: Christianity.”
Huh? Does Vance not know that Latino immigrants are almost exclusively Catholic? That their presence has increased attendance at churches?
Am I being too simplistic? Maybe Vance is okay with Latinos but not with Moslem or Hindu immigrants (he has, after all, wanted his wife to convert from Hinduism to Catholicism)?
Vance has been publicly silent about Donald Trump’s push to expel Afghanis, many of whom came to America because they assisted our fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Sending them back to their native land would be tantamount to a death sentence. Is that the Christian thing to do?