The leaves change.  For this American Jew, it signals that the Jewish New Year is around the corner.  It reminds me that the biblical values of Judaism, along with Christianity, gave rise to this most decent and greatest of societies in human history.  American Jews in particular, a people beleaguered in every other place and time, should all be deeply grateful for this wonderful America and its sublime values.

But daily, those values are now being battered and pilloried by one of the most potent cultural wrecking machines devised by man: the ideology of leftism.  Here are three examples in just a week. They come from the radically Leftist mainstream media like the New York Times, ABC's Good Morning America, and the assault weapons of hard radical leftism presented to us by the collection of Democrats running for president.

This week alone, they attack three foundational pillars of America: the innocence of our children, our life-affirming culture, and our Ten Commandments.  They are on a particular wrecking roll this week.  Relentless, determined, loud, often vicious, and definitely powerful they remain.  America stands strong but remains battled and battered in a cultural civil war, no less important than the violent one we fought in the past.

One of the greatest gifts we received from our biblical tradition is its respect for the preciousness of our children — their health, growth, and education, and especially their innocence.  Moses himself at the end of his life chose one last word of advice to his people.  He implored them that the most important thing they must do as they enter the Promised Land is to take care of their kids — their bodies, souls, and minds.

Just look at how such advice, such an American value, was debased this past week.  The New York Times, the Bible of leftism, flat-out attacked our kids.  They did so by publishing a big splashy celebratory report on DragCon, conventions where mothers bring their prepubescent  American sons, flamboyantly dressed like women, to strut on stage in front of large numbers of adults.  What kind of USA mother does that to her kid?  What kind of American parent intentionally warps reality for the child with regard to his God-given nature and then thrusts him up in public for the gawking of adults?  ABC, a pillar of our unfree press, then had one of DragCon's stars, Desmond, on its morning show to cheer him on.  It is not at all different from the newest chaos spreading around America, Drag Queen Story Time, where adult men come to our schools, religious community centers, and libraries dressed as women to read stories to our kids.  What kind of parents do this?  Parents who have drunk the Kool-Aid of leftism do this.

For the edification of these parents, there is a good, elevated, moral reason it says in our American biblical tradition that men and boys should not dress, particularly in public, in clothes of the opposite sex.  God brought order to the chaos of the universe, separating light from dark, good from evil, animal from human, and male from female.  Leftism rejects this.  It rejects the God of the Bible and our God-based America.  With such rejection comes a powerful force of blatant chaos and regression, destroying distinction and order with everything it touches.  That is why the Left wars on sex in this way, why the BBC recently said it recognizes 100 genders, why clueless and befuddled college kids announce their preferred pronouns before speaking, why we can't even figure out what bathroom to use, why a man acting like a man is now called acting with "toxic masculinity" and a woman acting like a lady is called a deplorable traitor to her feminist sisters.  It is leftism on full display. 

It is essentially child abuse to foist this poison onto our kids.  It destroys their innocence and their ability to see and embrace the goodness and reality of an ordered world.  Before you can even take that first step out into the world as a decent, grounded American, you need the block and tackle basics.  You need to be able to stretch out your waistband, look down, and know first who and what you are.  This you should start learning, clear and strong, just out of the crib.  The Left wars against such basics of American life — such fundamental Western norms.

Then comes suave, articulate, high–SAT score but low-wisdom Mayor Pete to lay into our civilization.  America, as a Judeo-Christian civilization, is based on an almost obsessive valuing of life.  As it says in the morally uplifting words of the Bible, "I place before you life and death; choose life."  Mayor Pete and his leftism reject that.  Speaking pretty much for the rest of his America, trashing ten or twenty other Democrat contenders for president, he let us know in his NPR smooth voice that an unborn boy or girl is not a human.  Barely a yawn would be elicited by this crew at the prospect of killing a boy or girl moments before the child begins his life outside the womb.  A man using one of the most barbaric assault weapons to drive a steel spike into the head of a child and macerate his brain and then rip apart his limbs is, by these folks, called "a choice," a woke, progressive way of supporting "women's health."  "Orwellian" can't begin to describe the wretched deplorableness of such values.  People with American values call it, in the vast majority of cases, a flat-out moral abomination.

Finally, to round out the week, we get the blasting of two of our Ten Commandments from these men and women of the Left.  They reject the concepts of Do not steal and Do not covet, other fundamental values of America.  Instead, they blithely encourage the opposite.  Just listen to these folks going on and on how they, the enlightened ones of Big Government, are enraged that a man has become rich — that his private property, his hard and honestly earned money, belongs to them to hand it to people more deserving of it.  What kind of America did these people grow up in?  What kind of teachers or parents did they have?  Books they read?  What kind of teaching does such wreckage to the moral compass of Americans?  This has nothing to do with who we are as a free people.  This is covetousness and thievery on a grand scale.  It is also as old as the hills — Marx, Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Fidel, Hugo, and Barack, and now Bernie, Elizabeth, Joe, Kamala, Cory, and Pete — all Lords of the Left, whipping up crowds against the greedy rich folks who need to be put in their place for their crimes of wealth accumulation.  Then they will be stripped of their money while all the regular, good, compliant folks of the masses will be handed a life of "free stuff" from cradle to grave — all from the likes of the enlightened ones in government and the Democratic Party.

A trifecta of shock-and-awe leftism was on full display this past week — coming in hard and fast from multiple fronts against the pillars of America.  Sadly, tragically, shockingly, millions of frankly ignorant, unwise, and untutored ingrates cheer it on, Kamala rally after rally, CNN town hall after town hall.

For the upcoming Jewish New Year, I hope many more of these lost Americans regain their senses and reject such chaos, illiberality, and regression — especially for our kids' sake.  I hope many more who embrace Americanism channel bravery and stand strong to civilly confront and renounce such values.  It will help get Desmond out of the dress, little Johnny or Mary out of the womb unmolested, and Elizabeth's hand out of our pockets.  That is what President Trump basically means by helping make America great again.

A happy and hopeful Jewish New Year to all of us American Jews and non-Jews alike.