Most non-orthodox Jews in America undergo cognitive dissonance when they get to know political views of people like me.  I am a constitutional conservative, non-orthodox Jew who pulled the lever hard and strong for President Trump and would do it again over any Democrat (man or woman of the left).  I would do it again even if 27 Playboy Bunnies signed nondisclosure agreements, because, in the wide scheme of things, Playboy Bunnies are meaningless in comparison to civilization affecting things like whether we hand $150 billion dollars to America- and Jew-hating terrorists in Iran, deny that boys are boys and girls are girls, reject protection of private property and by doing so run up more trillions of dollars of debt to place on the shoulders of our kids, appoint another radical Supreme Court justice who basically rejects most of our Constitution, trash our police, destroy our national sovereignty at the borders, and hollow out our military. 

So the question, in essence, is, where does the philosophical argument from these Jewish Deplorables come from?  How could a decent, fairly nice, Torah-studying, graduate school-educated Jew fall so low, be taken over by the Dark Force? 

Terrie Frankel and Fred Shinn at Prescott Valley, Ariz. rally for Donald Trump (photo credit: TwinsofSedona).

I'm sure those reflecting on such anomalous behavior by this urban coastal Jew feel particularly harsh toward truly prominent, influential Jewish intellectual conservatives like Dennis Prager, Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, Melanie Phillips, Jonah Goldberg, Daniel Horowitz, David Horowitz, Michael Medved, and the late great Milton Friedman.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of my non-orthodox Jewish kin have likely never heard of, read a word of or listened to a second of these prominent and very wise people.  Most live in the tragically narrow intellectual bubble of leftist/liberal-progressive-Democrat-L.A.-Upper West Side-Bethesda-MSNBC-NPR-Hollywood-academia.  They cannot wrap minds around the fact that a reasonable man like me may not personally like a leader's personality, his general demeanor, and his behavior.  I may not want to work for him, like to be his friend, or encourage such a man to marry my daughter.  I may not choose him for my list of 1 million Republicans to be president, but I'm a big boy.  I have a bit of wisdom.  I didn't vote for a son-in-law or a guy to meet me for coffee at Starbucks. 

I voted for a guy who has at least a modicum of Western Judeo-Christian values and whose decisions greatly affect our civilization and the 320 million of us who live within it.  I weigh that against the alternative of any Democrat – nice, kind, monogamous, mature, or well spoken.  That Democrat leader now generally embraces leftism and by doing so rejects something vital to the job of president.  They reject, for the most part, core American values.  That is what matters.  That is why my deplorable behavior.

The majority of the 62 million of us who voted for Mr. Trump take their Jewish, Christian, and American values very seriously; all are intimately entwined.  There are three values particularly of importance.  They are, Mr. Prager notes, on all of our coins.  They are the core values of America: Liberty, E Pluribus Unum, and In God We Trust.  The Republican Party, particularly its constitutional conservative wing, is the party that in varying degree shares, embraces, and promotes these values.  The Democratic Party, for all purposes, has abandoned all three and, in fact, actively works to daily destroy each.

Liberty

America and Judaism are steeped in and characterized primarily by a love of liberty.  When is the last time you ever heard Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Rachel Maddow, or a New York Times op-ed writer even mention the word?  It's breathtaking how you can go years without a prominent Democrat even referencing the most important value of America and our Judeo-Christian culture, liberty. 

When has a vote by Democrats in Congress increased our liberty by even a miniscule amount?  The talk is all of surrendering liberty to the State.  "You will see the doctor I command" is the latest.  The solution is always Government and more Government.  It's relentless, every few months, the next two thousand pages of laws in a bill to bind and constrict our freedom.  Then the unaccountable fourth branch of government, the Bureaucracy, is unleashed on us to make law on top of law.

But tune into another "deplorable" Jewish man, Mark Levin, on talk radio and the issue comes up daily.  It is a nonstop conversation about liberty.  Conservatives like me cherish the freedom of all individuals to lead their lives as they see fit.  It's the most important part of our Jewish and American heritage.  But the Democrats, the men and women of the left, yearn to control as much of our lives as they can.  They are in essence liberty destruction machines.

That's why we now have a Leviathan-sized federal government, this unconstitutional fourth branch of government, and in blue states, the iron-fisted rule of the State lording it over every nook and cranny of our lives.  "You will bake that cake; hand me loads of your private property in taxes; buy the health care plan I demand; pay for abortions I deem right; burn the fuel I want burned; define marriage as I see proper; go to the government school I want; save for retirement as I allow; drive the car I see fit; hand over the gun I don't like; build your houses as I deem right; pay your employees how much I order; run your businesses, schools, and universities how I demand; and on and on."  Tragically, liberty is not a concern to the Democrat left.  It is a precious value in most of the Republican Party, hence our intense cultural civil war.

(Correction: There is one liberty the left is keen on: unrestricted killing of an unborn boy or girl.  That is the left's liberty lodestar.)

E Pluribus Unum

Republicans, in general, deeply care about this fundamental American and Jewish value; the Democratic left does not.  The left daily undermines it.  It's how we now have all these hyphenated Americans and "press one for English."  It's why we have anarchy on our borders and kids in our schools learning to hate this country.  It's why über-wealthy, young, ungrateful, and foolish men in the NFL are bending the knee to the greatest country ever in history.  A people divided fight and make war upon each other.  The Democrat left feeds this war daily with its open borders, attacks on assimilation, multiculturalism, diversity and inclusion, race-class-sex agendas.  Conservatives, on the other hand, demand thoughtful American unity; national sovereignty; ordered, secured, and rational national borders; and powerful assimilation.

In God We Trust

This is the most tragic of the values differences.  Where once we had a conservative American culture with children in school starting the day with a prayer to God, thanking him for our parents, teachers, schools, health, and country, we now have the Democrat left working daily to utterly sterilize this great country of its religious character.  Once we had a God-based America with shame internalized if you had children out of wedlock, took money from your neighbor by being on the dole, or acted publicly in an unholy manner. 

But now, thanks to our friends on the Democrat left, we get the opposite.  We get God and the Bible laughed at and ridiculed in our schools and on late-night TV.  We get 70 or 80% of boys in some communities growing up with no father at home and society normalizing such things.  We get a sense of entitlement and pride in ordering a neighbor to go out and work and hand his money over to us with no obligation in return.  We get, instead of "God created all men equal," the regressive pagan mantra on college campuses and public schools that your essence is in your skin color, sex, sexual proclivities, or ethnic origin.

We get Democrat leftist leaders using profanity in public, calling the president of the United States Hitler, a fascist, and a racist on TV.  We get bratty, spoiled, ungrateful kids shrieking at the police and their college professors and demanding free stuff from their rich neighbors.  We get the left hating, castigating, resisting, undermining, and attacking two great God-fearing countries, America and Israel.  And then the Democrat left sends the next million dollars to the ACLU to keep up the work of erasing God from our country.  Deplorables, conservatives, are appalled at this pagan anarchy and nihilism.

This is why I am a proud Deplorable.  I understand that Deplorables are the only group trying to stem the tide rushing in to wash away the greatest liberal, God-based social experiment that has ever been tried in human history.  It's called America.  So yes, indeed, I don't really like the character or personality of President Trump.  He probably wouldn't like my personality too much, either, but he is the only Republican leader I have to work with now. 

Mature adults work with what they have.  Supporting any Democrat-leftist, whether sweet, spotless in character, monogamous, smoothly articulate like Barack Obama, or marriage material for my daughter, would be a terrible affront to something of civilization-level proportions.  It would be an affront to the basic values of Judeo-Christian Western America.  So yes, I say, honestly, and without any great enthusiasm for what I have to work with, that "R" lever will be pulled hard and strong again in 2020.