New York City has a new mayor, someone named Bill de Blasio. To be mayor of NYC, it seems one must take idiotic positions and say idiotic things, like this: “It is our obligation to defend Israel, but it also something that is elemental to being an American because there is no greater ally on earth.”

Ordinarily, I would not mention this except that for several days I have been pondering American traditions, really the absence thereof. Being a new country without inherited traditions, America has thrashed around looking for some. Arguably, it has come up with the World Series, the Superbowl, the Times Square ball on January 1, Black Friday, Academy Awards and the Miss America Pageant, though I wouldn’t swear by any of these. Politicians and government have seen this as an opportunity to invent some in the form of holidays. These haven’t caught on that much as traditions, however. Nobody even knows what days most of them occur on anymore. The Fourth of July picnics and fireworks qualify, but few people know that it has something to do with freedom and independence. Americans unceremoniously dumped gold and silver coins when ordered to, so their once-hard money was evidently not a tradition. Elections are fading fast as a tradition as fewer and fewer people vote. The Constitution once was a tradition, but now it’s just a damn scrap of paper. A good many people regard the flag as a tradition; others regard it as something to burn at appropriate moments. This is still legal. Maybe the National Debt clock should be a tradition.

So, de Blasio’s observation that defending Israel is an American thing may just as well enter the tradition sweepstakes as anything else, because Americans still lack deep, enduring, meaningful and country-wide traditions.

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