I subscribe to John Adams’s view of the relationship of religion to the politics in our republic. The country needs people who govern their own lives in the light of God. Only such people are competent to steer the ship of state away from the shoals of corruption and ruin. Without people having an inner map, the country would survive only by chance.
My first political concern, then, has been deeply tied in with my own religious commitment, in which life comes first — Therefore choose life, said Moses in Deuteronomy.
The greatest disasters to the human cause in the times that have informed me were the great dictatorships. I was born when Hitler was already dead and Stalin had but a year to go. The stench of their shambles, however, permeated the air, and clung to the people who had been through their dark night and who bore its wounds. To show that the evil was real, Mao was just ready to make his run at the record of total deaths caused — the Babe Ruth of death. So as haunting memory and as unfolding horror, they figured large, unparalleled in their voracious appetite for human life and their contempt for the human spirit.
Jewish traditions teach that our public concerns must build upward from what is closest and best known, the place where we are most knowledgeable, competent, and, most importantly, loving. I saw the people whom the horror had touched, and I lived with the knowledge that such things are possible, and even probable if we fail to recognize the next one rising, and accept full responsibility for pre-empting the existential threat that he represents.
Hitler’s Holocaust eradicated a full third of all the Jews in the world; Stalin killed off many, especially the religious, and had Soviet Jews in his crosshairs when, blessedly, he died. Hitler and Stalin both had interests in the Middle East, and so did more than a few Nazis as well as the Soviet government. Like the Wuhan laboratory, they were cooking up virulent, function-enhanced viruses of the mind. Linking onto the worst of religious tradition, just as Hitler had done in Germany, they developed the exterminationist Jew hatred that for more than a century has tried to eliminate what is now the world’s largest Jewish community, Israel, after having destroyed and expelled other Jewish communities that had been present elsewhere in the region since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, millennia ago.
America has identified itself at its inception with the ancient people of Israel — look at the hundreds of Biblical place names all across our land. Read the early sermons of the earliest preachers. America identified itself with the fight against the Jew hatred that was at the core of Nazism. Our young men and women gave their lifeblood to extinguish that regime of hate from the earth. America has stood with Israel for decades as it has been relentlessly targeted for extinction by its relentless and hate-filled enemies.
This is at the top of my own political commitment, ahead of any party. I voted for Carter in ’76 because of Gerald Ford’s notification to Prime Minister Rabin that he was going to cut off aid to Israel for not yielding back more land to Egypt, which had nearly extinguished Israel in its Yom Kippur surprise attack. Carter led me to vote for Reagan in ’80 through his increasing siding with Sadat against Menachem Begin as well as his colossal blunder of enabling the antisemitic mullahs to take over Iran. Bush the Elder replaced the magnificent George Schulz with the Israel-hating James Baker and so lost my vote in ’92.
In this light, the argument for Trump is a simple one for me.
Obama initiated a policy of deliberately downgrading America’s relationship with Israel while simultaneously (and at first secretly) planning on appeasing Iran. Donald Trump reversed both policies: Israel was backed warmly, and Iran was isolated and impoverished due to effective sanctions. As a result, the Sunni states felt empowered to warm their relations with Israel, eventually resulting in the Abraham Accords, the first peace treaties with Israel and its Arab neighbors that resulted in warm partnerships rather merely an end to open hostilities. Iran’s penury severely crimped its ability to fund its terrorist clients in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and its global reach (such as the bombing of the Jewish community center in Argentina that had resulted in 85 deaths).
When Joe Biden took over, he immediately reversed the Iran policy, taking its Houthi clients off our terrorist list, opening up its frozen cash and allowing its oil exports, with a total cash flow during his presidency of hundreds of billions of dollars. Flush with money, Iran opened up the pipelines to its terror clients, and as a direct result, we had an ever-accelerating missile bombardment of Israel from Hamas, Hamas’ October 7 orgy of murder, rape, and kidnapping, Hezbollah’s massive bombardment of Israel, Iran’s first two direct attacks on Israel via missiles and drones, the Houthis’ takeover of the Red Sea shipping lanes, and the Houthis’ attacks on Israel. Biden presided over this disastrous collapse of the peace into fiery chaos. But this was not enough: he tossed gasoline on the fire through tolerating the UN’s alignment with Israel’s enemies, through taking no decisive steps to deter Houthi pirating closing of the sea lanes, and through ineffective resistance to international tribunals taking up vicious lawfare against Israel that defies the norms of international law and of our own concepts of sovereignty and liberty.
What’s to choose? Ms. Harris is on every side of the Israel issue, as she is on every other issue of import. For her, it is all just a laugh on the way to unmerited promotions, the story of her career and about the only thing for which she has displayed a real talent. She has the feeling of a character fresh out of the pages of Brave New World, ready to pop some soma, play a round of centrifugal bumblepuppy, give a tug on the zipper, and sing “Orgy Porgy, Ford and Fun.” The Obama/Biden crew would be left unmolested to cut Israel loose and join the young Ivy Leaguers in getting a warm Facebook commendation from the Khomeini for helping him finally destroy the Little Satan, Israel, as his first step towards destroying the Great Satan — America.
As long as we hold fast to our First Amendment, none of us are compelled to accept any one religious framework to guide our politics. That allows us to see that one of the most important blessings of our shared religious heritage is to realize the only valid compulsion when it comes to God is the inner voice of our soul, created in God’s image.
America’s soul has long aligned it with the cause of the Jewish people. This was true at its start, when George Washington wrote to Newport’s Jews that all were citizens here on an equal basis. It was true though our mighty and successful effort to shatter Nazism. It is the soul of our long commitment to securing Israel’s security in the face of Nazism’s Middle Eastern heirs.
This last year has made it clear that this commitment to Israel is nothing less than the choice for civilization against a new barbarianism, armed by science and defended by a new sophistry that exudes a nihilistic contempt for all we have ever valued. Forget the noxious froth of the Harris campaign — that is where the actual danger to democracy crouches, ready to pounce.
That’s the choice that I see. My vote will express this viewpoint and my affirmation of the civilization that depends upon us to carry on a few more years, while we raise a new generation who knows its precious value.
I trust and pray you see it this way as well. My prayers are with you and this great country as you make the solemn and consequential choice this election offers.
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