Certainly, assimilation had made little difference to the fate of many in Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Theodore Herzl wasn’t the only one to feel that “the Jew who tries to adapt himself to his environment, to speak its languages, to think its thoughts” was still identified as a potentially treacherous “alien” by fellow Europeans.
For me the question was not so much what “is” the West, but what could it be -- whether, for instance, the increasingly multiethnic nation-states of Europe could create a dynamic and pluralistic identity for themselves, learning from the experience of the U.S. as well as multinational empires in the past.
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