Torah Ideals

What a great article.

After reading it I still don’t understand why so many Jews vote for liberal Democrats. It seems to me that the liberal agenda is diametrically opposed to the basic values of Judaism and Christianity.

Don Atkinson
A conservative, but no longer a Republican

The Jewish contribution to the world is immense and good. Also, you are correct that conservatism must not just look to the past. Your essay is incorrect, however, in the premises you offer about liberalism. Such is not the liberal of today.

The liberal of the 1960’s and 1970’s is long gone. I doubt a Senator “Scoop” Jackson can be found among them. There used to be a time when liberals stood up, or fought, our enemies. Now, President Obama tries to force house builders in Israel to placate those who would murder them.

The sanctity of life? It is the liberals who brought us legalized abortion when there was no desire for it among the citizenry. Liberals want health care for everyone? They do not. They want health care for everyone who will be ordered to get it or pay a penalty. That is not freedom. Many liberals are against the right to self-defense, constitutionally protected by the Second Amendment. Many are against the death penalty. I believe these last two subjects are parts of Judaism.

Can you imagine American Liberals faced with a situation such as Entebbe? We saw how European Liberals dealt with Hitler. What we have today are leftists and Progressives running the Democrat Party. That old Liberalism is gone.

Israel is admired for holding to “Never Again,” for fighting when smacked, for being decisive, for standing free among tyrannical nations. Most present-day Liberals in America, save for Ed Koch and his like, chortle at such things, or do not even care.

I cannot figure out why Jews in America are so quiet.

This short article was a great help to me in clarifying my own views. Specifically, the need to balance liberal & conservative ideals.

The real heritage of Judaism to me is the concept of G-d as the all-righteous and as the source of all morality and as corollary, the idea that the Law is immutable, universal and eternal.

In so much as any ideology abandons or tries to negate these universals, that ideology is ipso facto, anti-Jewish. In my opinion, much of what now passes for “liberalism” now in western societies falls into that category.

We have tried to replace G-d’s law with situational ethics, moral relativism, and a blind multiculturalism that requires us to find good in everything, even that which is evil.