Almost every week I get an unfortunate lesson at Shabbat after-services kiddush of how many of us have replaced our liberal Jewish values with the illiberalism of Leftism. I was speaking with a young Jewish worshiper. We were talking religion and politics , particularly about the State taking money from citizens He was arguing that to be truly Jewish, liberal and kind, we must allow government to have broad access to most of our “disposable income”.
He said ,(paraphrased) “ That is not wealth or income we really individually need.” He went on, “Our Democrat politicians should then do good for the whole community and distribute much of such disposable money to others who need it more.”
What a classically Leftist value, let’s take the disposable wealth from another man because he does not deserve it.
How utterly contemptuous of the notion of freedom this idea is.
Wow. Barak Obama, the champion of “after a certain point a man has made enough money and the rest belongs to me, the enlightened one of the state to redistribute,” fame would be proud of this man’s values. So would Karl Marx and the rest of the men on the Left who have destroyed almost every country they have touched with such horrible illiberal values.
What a tragedy for America. Millions of intelligent but highly unwise Jews are replacing liberal Judaism with illiberal Leftism.
Hundreds of thousands of our young across America, now, almost fully indoctrinated into this terrible ideology, demand all this free stuff like free college, healthcare, maternity leave, daycare, retirement care, eldercare - wretched socialism. 
We can now see why hundreds of thousands of our young across America, now, almost fully indoctrinated into this terrible ideology, demand all this free stuff like free college, healthcare, maternity leave, daycare, retirement care, eldercare- why they yearn for wretched socialism.
These young are blind to the immorality, destruction of liberty and degradation that comes with such leftist attacks on private property rights. They are clueless about the mountain of future- destroying debt being piled surreptitiously onto their shoulders because of this ideology. They haven’t a notion about the 20 trillion dollars of private property that has been plundered and mostly wasted by the Left since the start of the Great Society to “help the poor”.
This Leftist value system , this new religion, has taken over our media, universities, the Democratic party, Hollywood, and much of our non-orthodox Jewish and Christian institutions. And with the dogma of this religion, these men and women essentially yearn to return to our oppressive past, to Egypt, to the false comforts, idols, and destructiveness of slavery and tyranny.
It's a constantly repeating story of men, always chasing the allure of being cared for, always yearning for Mom and Dad in the guise of the powerful leader,- the big powerful state, but always ending up horribly disappointed- standing in lines for toilet paper as they now do in the socialist utopia of Venezuela.
On the other hand, Judaism and American liberalism is a call to liberty and adulthood, in many ways, but especially in the great value placed on protection of private property. A man cannot grow up to be free, face the challenges of life; cannot create wealth, without the dignity of work and the ability to keep and control that which he earns. That was one of the greatest gifts given our people by God when he intervened and delivered us from slavery. For what is a man but a slave when another may take from him the fruits of his labor?
This image of property and liberty joined at the hip, deeply connected, has reverberated across time, across centuries from biblical Israel to the development of America. Madison, Locke, Adams, Washington and Jefferson channeled our Jewish and Egyptian experience. They placed this great liberal value, liberty intertwined with private property, as a pillar of our American heritage.
It thrived - up until the illiberal progressive leftist era began by the likes of Marx, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Then, the illiberalism was supercharged by the radical leftism of FDR.
Even up until 1921, a fine Supreme Court justice George Sutherland expounded:
The individual has three great rights equally sacred from arbitrary interference: the right to his life, the right to his liberty, the right to his property…The three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty but to take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave…If the time shall ever come in this country, as it has already come in poor distracted Russia (under Lenin), when the property of rich or poor may be taken by the hand of arbitrary authority, liberty and property will depart together, and the rule of law, so far as these rights are concerned, will have ceased to be.”
Just over a couple of decades later from Sutherland, the American experiment of liberalism and its conjoined protection of private property was turned on its head. Liberal America headed down the road of hard illiberal Leftism, basically trying to undo the American Revolution from the slavery of tyrannical England. .
The progressive icon FDR put out his first crude 1940’s style tweet of fake news, calling Republicans “fascists” for their defense of private property rights. His radical un-Constitutional New Deal statism terribly hurt a whole nation by harshly prolonging the Depression. His massive expansion of the power and scope of the state made shambles of limited government and what he called a very “elastic Constitution”. All this has deeply harmed America. It has empowered today's "enlightened ones" of the State to reach deep and hard into the pocket of every American citizen, instead of taxes for security and other necessary expenses, making gigantic claims on his hard, honestly earned wealth-all that “disposable stuff.”
Now, four thousand billion dollars a year go to the greedy and insatiable power- hungry anointed ones of the State to “dispose of” as they see fit. And here we are again, mired in what Sutherland spoke about: A regression to Egypt and soft tyranny.
“Disposable income and wealth”? Who, may I ask dear fellow Shabbat worshiper, gives a citizen a right to say any part of a man’s private property, his wealth, is “disposable” and open to be grabbed by some politician to dispose of as he wishes?
How can that be seen as anything but a legalized form of theft, an act of tyranny and slavery?
Because of such common and illiberal values known throughout history, our wise and liberal American founders placed severe limits on how deeply a neighbor, in the guise of a politician, may reach into a man’s pocket and withdraw his property. In article 1 section 8 of our Constitution, that hand may only peak into that pocket and withdraw only that small amount to pay for 22 discreet lawful projects of the federal Government- no more- not a dollar more. .
But now, our fellow citizens of the Left reach deep and hard every year to plunder and steal nearly $4000 billion dollars from their neighbors in order “to dispose” of the money for hundreds if not thousands of illegal Leftist projects. They disregard the law. They break the law daily. They ignore our social compact, our moral agreement with each other to have a liberal and free America.
Look at where we have come - intelligent Jews of the Left utterly relaxed in a country oozing with wealth. We are living on the fumes of the past, a past derived from freedom, protection of private property and capitalism. But now those calling themselves progressives are on a hard and fast path to sheer regression - rooting for our destruction - cheering on the Pharaohs of Washington D.C. who now come each year to plunder and “dispose” of ocean-sized parts of our liberty and private property.
“Disposable income” indeed- it's a disposing of our dignity, autonomy, wealth and freedom.
How far so many American Jews have sunk, trading the false comforts of Egypt for a Leftist Democrat bill of goods- liberalism replaced with degradation of Leftism. Thank heaven , at least half of us Jews, Christians, agnostics, and atheists in America are making an effort to return us to a liberal, free, Constitutionally -based, adult America, where the individual citizen, not the man of the State “disposes” of property.
That's one big reason Donald Trump and not another Leftist is in the White House. It’s why, this week we thank God Gorsuch is on the bench and pray Mr. Cavanaugh soon will be.