Star Parker

The Republican-controlled House has voted to boot Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., off the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

I salute Republicans for leadership, beneficial for the country and beneficial for Black Americans whose interests Omar pretends to represent.

Omar pushed back from the House floor, playing, of course, the race card. She accused Republicans of questioning her as an American because she is of a "certain skin color."

No. To quote one well-known Black American, this is about the content of her character, not about the color of her skin.

Anyone following the story has read the long series of antisemitic, anti-Israel diatribes from Omar since she has been in Congress.

But she is not just antisemitic and anti-Israel. She is anti-American.

Last year, she lumped Israel and the U.S. together in comparing both to the Taliban. "We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan and the Taliban," she observed.

A number of years ago, George Gilder wrote a book called "The Israel Test."

The test, per Gilder, is summarized by a few questions: "What is your attitude toward people who excel you in the creation of wealth or in other accomplishment? Do you aspire to their excellence, or do you seethe at it? Do you admire and celebrate exceptional achievement, or do you impugn it and seek to tear it down?"

Those who admire success and seek to emulate it pass Gilder's Israel Test.

Of course, the test is about a state of mind, an attitude toward life. Israel is just one focal point.

You must have self-inflicted blindness not to appreciate that no country in the world has ever achieved what the United States has achieved and contributed. The creativity and innovation on every front of science, technology and entrepreneurship is mindboggling.

Americans have won 403 Nobel prizes, 43% of all since the award began 122 years ago.

But Omar and her lefty friends are more interested in focusing on what was and what is not perfect in our nation so they can trash everything and advance their left-wing agenda.

Israel's story is miraculous beyond words. Out of nothing, in just 75 years, a booming modern economy has been created, despite having to fight at least three major wars along the way against enemies that far outnumbered them.

Omar and her crowd hate this. They hate a story in which individuals take personal responsibility for their lives, fight, struggle against great odds and achieve.

Omar deserves to be booted because of her antisemitism. But more deeply, she deserves to be booted because she fails Gilder's Israel Test.

She loves to talk about her childhood in Somalia. Somalia has a national per capita income of around $500. Why doesn't she spend time trying to inspire change in her beleaguered home country?

Omar and her colleague Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez prefer making allegations about institutional racism rather than looking at what really drives poverty and underachievement in our poor communities. As a start, it is perpetuated by the Omar-AOC mindset looking for whom to blame, looking for whom to hate, rather than starting with freedom and personal responsibility.

We're in the middle of Black History Month.

Let's not let Omar and her lefty crowd hijack our great American story.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in his historic "I Have a Dream" speech, the problem is not our great American values, but failures to live up to them.

The struggles, and achievements, of Black Americans to participate fully in the American saga and dream have made this country greater.

We are getting closer. But we must turn from the naysayers and move in the direction of life, family and freedom.

As for Omar, she ought to spend less time accusing others of denying that she is an American and more time learning and embracing the values that define, and make great, our free country under God.

Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the weekly television show "Cure America with Star Parker."

Photo by Heidi Kaden on Unsplash