You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish rye bread, and you don’t have to like Iowa Rep. Steve King — or what he has said — to know that he was scalped by the identity-politics-driven hypocritical posturing left.

Earlier this month, King remarked: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” That was not his first foray into dangerous territory. In its January 16, 2019, issue, The New York Times has a long list of what they consider to be other offensive statements or actions. Some are, some are not, but even those that are not could be described as unwise, given the current power of the PC police, the posturing self-appointed guardians of our — or more accurately “their” — culture.

Why King would conflate white nationalists and white supremacists with Western civilization is worth remarking on — some other time.

But you don’t have to be a political genius to suspect that endorsing, as King did, a Toronto mayoral candidate who had recited the “14 words” spoken by a neo-Nazi (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”) is stupid at best.

What happened to the doctrine of “clean hands”? How can the left criticize anyone?

Where were they when Charles M. Blow, columnist for the New York Times, wrote, “The founders, a bunch of rich, powerful white men, didn’t want true democracy in this country, and in fact were dreadfully afraid of it. Now, a bunch of rich, powerful white men want to return us to this sensibility, wrapped in a populist ‘follow the Constitution’ rallying cry and disguised as the ultimate form of patriotism.” That’s a few more than 14 words, but how is it significantly different from what King has said?

How much criticism of Blow’s column have you seen?

Rep. Hank Johnson (D–Calif.) compared Jewish Israeli settlers to termites in 2016 while speaking at an event sponsored by an anti-Israel organization that supports boycotts of the Jewish state. How much criticism of that speech have you read in the New York Times?

New York Times technology writer Sarah Jeong tweeted such edifying comments as: “White men are bull—”; “#CancelWhitePeople”; “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men” and “f— white women lol.”

But the Times covered for her: she was, after all, young, foreign-born (Korean), and a woman. Bliss it is to be alive, Ms. Jeong must think. But to be young, foreign- born, and a woman is very heaven.

In the rap “singer” Jay-Z’s latest album there are these lyrics: “You wanna know what’s more important than throwin’ away money at a strip club? Credit / You ever wonder why Jewish people own all the property in America? This how they did it.”

Ah, well, the self-appointed guardians of “our” culture might say, he’s just a rap singer who doesn’t like Jews. What’s new?

This is what’s new: a nominee to a position in the US government has been grilled about her religion. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D–Cloud Cuckoo Land) stated to a nominee to the federal bench, a faithful Catholic: “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country.” And fought against, Sen. Feinstein might have added but didn’t.

Democratic Sens. Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) and Kamala Harris (Calif.) have questioned nominees about their membership in major Catholic organizations causing the Senate, remarkably, to pass, unanimously, a resolution disavowing opposition to federal appointees on the basis of membership in the Catholic organization Knights of Columbus.

What we have here, and have had for many years, is a culture war. That is made very clear by other quotes from King which the Times headlines as “Incendiary Remarks and Divisive Actions.” Inter alia, King introduced a bill to make English the official language of the U.S. (How incendiary can you get?) And he referred to multiculturalism as, “a tool for the left to subdivide a culture and civilization … and pit us again each other.”

And King asked where did any subgroup of people other than whites contribute more to civilization? If by civilization he meant, as he probably did, the constitutional republic we live in, the answer is pretty clear: nowhere. The genius of the Founding Fathers has been extolled for decades across continents. It is true they were white, which is not to say people of other races couldn’t have accomplished what the Founding Fathers accomplished: but none of them did. That is a consequence of historical developments, not racial genetics.

King is focused on the consequences; the left on the genetics. King’s statement is certainly no more objectionable than the widely unremarked column of New York Times columnist Charles Blow quoted above.

There’s a culture war going on in the U.S., and for years the left has been winning. Now, finally, traditional American culture has a champion. Donald Trump, with all his faults — and let him who is without fault write the first editorial — seems to understand what’s at stake. That gives Western civilization a chance. Western civilization, from whence come all our rights, including the right not to like Levy’s Jewish rye bread, as well as the right not even to like Levy.

Daniel Oliver is chairman of the board of the Education and Research Institute and a director of the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco. In addition to serving as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was executive editor and subsequently chairman of the board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.