Jewish liberals in the Democratic party have been AWOL in defending traditional liberal ideology while the party's woke-progressives captured the voice of the party. The time has come to fight back!
American Jewish liberalism must fight to save its soul. For example, the last four years saw Jewish liberals outrageously desert their post (AWOL) with regard to four major issues:
a) they completely failed to speak out and fight to defend the classical definition of free speech (tolerant dialogue without harassment and violence) on college campuses.
b) they failed to speak out and defend Jewish students from virulent antisemitism.
c) They failed to protect poor inner-city neighborhoods when they were flooded with illegal immigrants who displaced residents from housing, jobs and social benefits,
d) and they failed to protect families from unpopular, scientifically yet proven, psychologically disturbing, medical experiments in biological gender change.
In the last election the Democratic Party paid the price for failing to protect Americans on these issues, for failing to aggressively combat the machinations of woke-progressivism. Democratic Jewish liberals must stand up and fight to save the liberal soul of their party and end its falling prey to woke-progressivism.
I. My 'first love'-American Jewish liberalism
Let me explain my strong feelings on this subject. I grew up in a 'classic', American secular, liberal Jewish family. I became Orthodox in my mid-twenties, married, made Aliyah in 1978, settled in Yishuv Psagot outside Ramallah in 1982, and rapidly adopted a conservative (not religiously, politically) National-Religious social philosophy. But I still have a warm place in my heart for 'my first political love'- that special 'brand/recipe ' of liberalism, American Jewish liberalism .
(My friends who grew up' Orthodox -second generation Holocaust survivors - Bnei Akiva' in America are not capable of existentially understanding my early romance, and ongoing fascination, with American Jewish liberalism, but so be it.' First loves live forever'.)
Secular American Jews, who make up about eighty percent of the American Jewish population, have a three to four generation love affair with the Democratic party, and it is not going to end soon. A majority supported Harris in the last election.
Why? Because today's secular Jews are well educated professional, solidly middle class, and have, since FDR and his New Deal, long supported minority civil rights and social welfare programs. These social ideals are the core definition of American style liberalism, and have been the basic ideology of the Democratic Party until four years ago.
In their core nature, Democratic Party liberalism, and secular American Jewish social cultural values, are at least first cousins if not identical twins. For example, at the age of twenty I started searching for my Jewish spiritual root specifically because I got fed up hearing that my Reform rabbi's sermons were identical to the New York Times editorials.
More specifically, the Jewish Renaissance – the Golden Age – of Jewry in America (from 1945 till 1985) very much corresponds/overlaps with this intense, real political romance between American Jewry and FDR New Deal Democratic Party liberalism.
2. This op ed is thus born out of both anger and 'love'
The last four years has seen this 'first love' of American Jewish liberalism 'taken hostage' and 'silenced/anesthetized ' by the aggressive, intolerant, non-democratic 'cult' of woke progressives in the Democratic Party.
Progressive wokes are a minority (roughly thirty per cent') of the political membership of the Democratic party, but over the last four years we have only heards the voice of woke progressives from the Democrats. Liberal Democrats have not risen up to combat and to defend the traditional liberal social values that I grew up valuing. It's as if they handed the Democratic Party over to the minority progressive cult without a fight.
To see this 'shutting down' of the voice of traditional liberalism in the Democratic Party makes me very sad, very angry and very worried. These feelings are the motivations behind the writing of this article.
3. Helping the reader: a very brief definition of 'liberalism' versus 'woke -progressivism'
Progressivism (the term 'woke' is a catchy synonym for postmodern progressivism) is a non-threatening euphemism for the ideology of 'social cultural Marxism'. It arbitrarily divides society into two classes: the oppressing class (Whites, Europeans, Jews, males, Wall Street capitalists, bi-gender two parent families, traditional institutionalized religion ) and the oppressed minorities ( women, non-white, third world minorities, the American Black community, and full range of novel sexual, gender, and non-family-partner relationships and self-identities).
The problem here is not that progressivism draws attention and emphasizes the suffering and injustices of these populations (many of which are very real) but that they then want to deal with these injustices by arbitrarily and undemocratically socially engineering and restructuring society ( from the elitist top down) .
They want, in pure Marxist fashion, to take from what they term 'the more privileged classes and 'give' to the 'less privileged' classes . The 'privileged oppressing classes' thus become 'the enemy'. Such progressive social-political analysis is straight out of the Marxist political play book.
American liberalismhas three main goals.
A) maximizing individual freedom of choice so that the person can pursue self-fulfillment and creativity according to his specific, personal social-cultural values
B) creating a socio-political atmosphere which creates a maximum amount of social tolerance of alternative social value systems and life styles, and
C) using the government to provide the monetary and social welfare benefits that will allow those of the lower social classes to have a chance to compete equally with those who were born into more privileged families and communities.
In brief, progressives want to undemocratically restructure from above social inequalities. American liberals, in contrast, want to lessen social inequalities by providing additional social resources to the needy, and then letting all compete on an equal, very tolerant, and maximumly free 'playing field"
4. Why I am so angry at Jewish liberals of the Democratic party over the last four years
Very simply , I am angry and hurt because, over the last four years, Jewish liberals have silently 'kept their traditional liberal social values' to themselves and have been afraid to openly and actively disagree with, and combat, the non-liberal, non democratic ideological program of woke-progressivism. They have been afraid to defend and publicly advocate the American liberal social values for which they were elected.
Democratic liberals have been afraid to openly and publicly combat the woke-progressive agenda for four reasons.
One, they were afraid to lose primary party nomination fights to a militant, energized woke-progressive minority in the party.
Two, they were afraid that they would be endlessly harassed by ongoing attacks by the progressive 'no holds barred', cancel culture (which means that we write you off our list of acceptable personages) on all social media sites.
Three, they were afraid they would appear 'old fashioned' and out of step with the new social values of a younger generation of Democratic voters under the age of 35-40.
Four, the current, widely accepted of social norm of 'moral relativism' ('the only truth is that there is no truth') weakened their own self confidence in the objective truth of their own liberal social philosophy (outlined above), and thus has weakened their conviction and eagerness to combat a social philosophy that openly negates the ideology of classic American liberalism.
5. The most outrageous examples, of the last four years, of Democratic liberals' failure to defend liberalism and attack woke-progressivism
We can identify four glaring examples of Democratic liberals' failure to defend traditional American liberalism.
One, the failure to protect free speech and a tolerant political discourse. Tolerant free speech, free of harassment and violence, was the DNA-the 'flag ship'- Ten Commandments' of Democratic liberalism throughout the twentieth century. With the outbreak of the war and Gaza the woke progressivism took over the academic campuses and argued that 'free speech' can include violent demonstrations, , harassment and blatant hate speech against Jews because the 'right to free, tolerant, peaceful discourse ' has to be subordinated to the right of the 'oppressed classes' (non-European Palestinian Arabs) to resist the 'oppression' of the European, colonial settler class/state of Jewish Israel.
Now I would expect Democratic liberals, proud and confident in their liberal ideology, to stand up and blatantly argue with the woke progressives, and say clearly and outright, "YOU ARE WRONG"!! As liberals we reject the Marxist class analysis of subordinating free speech to the resistance of the oppressed class to the oppressing class. We are confident and argue that the key to developing a truly free democratic society is through open, tolerant discourse of competing ideologies on a level playing field of political interplay.
But Democratic liberals were afraid to fight the good fight of protecting a liberal definition of free speech. They called for the tolerant liberal definition of free speech but did not risk fighting for it.
Two, the failure to proactively combat the ideological antisemitism inherentindistinguishing between Zionism and the life of the Jewish people
The progressives argue that we can distinguish between the Jewish people and the Jewish religion and Zionism-the building of a Jewish state in the land of Israel. Thus, to call for the extermination of the Zionist state should not be considered antisemitism.
However, any Democratic liberal knows that the call for the extermination of the Jewish Stae is outright antisemitism. One, any reality based liberal knows that the extermination of the Jewish State means the 'extermination' of the Jewish People. It would mean the uprooting and death of seven million Jews. It would constitute a second Holocaust in less than a hundred years.
Second, as explained above, liberal social philosophy rejects the social cultural Marxism classification that sees Whites as an oppressing class, and Jews (whites) and the State of Israel as 'inherent colonial oppressors '. American Democratic liberals have traditionally (and correctly) seen Zionism as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people.
During the past year, again, Democratic liberals have criticized progressive antisemitism, but have not argued the 'good fight'. They have not fought the ideological fight explaining the outright falsity of the progressive arguments of Jews and the Jewish state as ' agents of oppression'.
With out active, ideological support from Democratic liberals, Jewish students, and many Jewish professionals, have felt horribly abandoned, adrift , with no strong political leaders to argue their case. The horrible reality is that most liberal academics are simply afraid to confront progressive academics on this issue.
Third , Democratic liberals have abandoned the inner city poor, and the manual labor class, by not actively opposing waves of illegal immigrants entering America.
Undisputedly, the wave of illegal immigrants to inner city neighborhood has adversely affected the quality of life in these neighborhoods (former Democratic strongholds). The wave of illegal immigrants has created housing shortages, increased rents, increased crime, and created unfair competition for low paying jobs.
Again, Democratic liberals were afraid to actively oppose massive illegal immigration, as they did not actively oppose other woke-progressive agendas. Democratic liberalism supports purposeful, legal immigration. Liberalism requires that there are clear legal guidelines, because legal guidelines help make the political playing field more tolerant and open, and encourage purposeful political dialogue and compromise. Illegal immigration breeds distrust and political revenge.
Progressives promoted massive illegal immigration for two ideological reasons. One, because they are motivated to pursue a utopian, universal agenda where a host country is "morally" called upon to help alleviate social problems in all corners of humanity. And two, a more hideous reason, they want to make America a predominately non-White ethnic country, believing a country of non-white minorities will be likely to support their woke-progressive political agendas, and vote Democratic.
Also here, Democratic politicians did not combat the progressive agenda of illegal immigration , and did not forcefully advocate and explain the liberal ideology of purposeful, legal immigration.
Fourth, Democratic liberals failed to critically discuss and question woke-progressive attempts to socially engineer experiments in gender identity and change.
Progressives, for utopian reasons of promoting radical individual self-identity freedom, made serious efforts to legitimize radical programs of giving sex changing hormones to pre-adolescent children (whose scientific consequences have yet to be seriously explored) and to forbid requiring parental consent for such life changing procedures. Progressives also encouraged bringing drag queens to libraries to read stories to very young children, and created a credo of allowing biological males to enter female bathrooms and play female sports.
These are historical radical changes in social norms. The majority of American society does not yet understand or accept them. Liberalism advocates that radical changes in social norms should be carefully debated and explored in an open, tolerant social arena, and that it is best for social unity that radical changes in social norms should be introduced in a gradual, controlled manner, otherwise they become socially divisive and destructive.
Again, Democratic liberals refused to openly and critically question such radical changes in social norms. Democratic liberals did not call for an open, scientific debate on these changes. They were simply afraid to be attacked by the progressives. Again, Democratic liberals went AWOL on truly advocating and fighting for a true liberal agenda
Summary: America truly needs a combative, energized liberal, and not progressive, Left
The last thing America needs now is a political Left which is dominated by the elitist, social engineering, social cultural Marxism of the Democratic woke progressives
America needs a Left dominated by the traditional FDR-New Deal liberalism that American Jews fell in love with for most of the twentieth century (as described above) This article calls for Democratic liberals to fight 'the good ideological fight' of traditional liberalism against the 'cancer' of woke progressivism., something they have failed to do over the last four years.
Today's Democratic liberals should take a lesson from the fight of the liberal social democrats in the 1930's to prevent communists from taking over the American trade union movement.
The liberal social democrats of the 1930's stood up and won. I wish the same degree of success to today's Democratic liberals.