This week, just after the election, my fine Rabbi gave a very conciliatory and compassionate talk. There was a lot to admire in it. He was speaking to a congregation where likely 95% of the congregants were passionate Kamala supporters. Most of them were deeply saddened, many despairing, some enraged by the election results. He spoke eloquently about how all of us American Jews are on a journey together. He argued we all basically have the same end in sight regarding our religion and our country -- being good Jews and Americans, striving to make our religion and country better. The Democrat Jew, he argued, takes a different path to those ends from the Republican Jew. We must respect each other's paths and love each other as fellow travelers on this journey. He, as our religious leader, was there not to judge but to embrace each Jew no matter for whom they voted.

I respect and admire his sentiments. However, I think it reflects in good measure of what deeply afflicts America and non-orthodox Judaism (as well as mainline Christianity). It is reflective of an America and religious traditions that have weakened due to focusing on the feminine aspects of human nature. In doing so it ignores, denigrates, or discards its vital masculine part. We hear it all the time now -- the trope of “toxic masculinity.” We see it in the irrational and intense hatred of the very masculine Donald Trump.

The majority of Americans know that compassion without strong standards is an America lost. The loving God without the judging God is no God at all. Americans let their thoughts about this be known in the landslide election. They demanded a return of the masculine, to standards. This they got in a Republican party chock full of standards -- and standards-oriented men like President Trump.

So, I’d say, yes Rabbi, I can, and we all should, feel some feminine compassion for the suffering of our fellow American Democrats and Jews over losing an election. Compassion is fully present in the typical Republican mind just as it is in that of the Democrat. I, however, know that the return of standards is a great and necessary thing for our country. Civilization depends on it. I also know the ends we seek, the Democrat end saturated almost exclusively in compassion and the Republican one balanced between compassion and standards are irreconcilable. We were dying as a country until last Tuesday when the masculine trait of standards was revitalized.

So, indeed we can feel compassion for the poor souls that have caught this Democrat-induced and Democrat-spread malevolent social contagion of gender confusion, but standards demand that we assert that there are only two sexes and two genders; men do not become pregnant; boys cannot become girls; surgeons who cut off breasts and penises of young mentally ill people should be in jail; mothers who dress their boys as girls should be reported to CPS and guided to a competent psychologist; men should not be competing with women in sports, and they should not be in our girls showers and locker rooms.

Yes, we all can and should feel compassion for pregnant women struggling with not wanting to give birth to their child, but standards demand we give great moral weight to that living boy or girl within her body. That child is not her body. It is in her body. It is not her “choice,” rather it is a living human being. That fully alive boy or girl is not something abstract called “reproductive healthcare.” And standards demand that we not, as the Democrats demand, sanction a doctor who for religious reasons declines to kill a living unborn boy or girl. 

And certainly, we can have lots of compassion for people who genuinely get irritated, insulted, and disgusted hearing or reading words they find problematic or offensive. But standards call for us to demand these Democrats get in control of their feelings because freedom of speech is one of our God-given rights not open for a vote, repeal, or debate.

Compassion does call each Democrat and Republican to feel and care for the poor. Most do. But standards demand we care for the poor in the right way. Standards say you do not build a Leviathan-sized, liberty-crushing government and welfare state, armed with soldiers of the State carrying hundreds of thousands of assault weapons who come to our homes and demand we hand over our private property to our neighbor because some Democrat bureaucrat or politician says he deserves our money. That started with the compassionate democrats under LBJ and his Great Society Program. Now, decades later, after stealing over 20 trillion dollars of private property and dispensing it to fight poverty, the average inner-city poor family remains in shambles, their boys left without fathers, their poverty rates unchanged.

I could go on and on about how the focus on compassion without standards leads to terrible ends. We could talk about intense compassion towards immigrants overwhelming standards of a secure border with it all this leading to deaths, poverty, sex slavery, child abuse, and social dysfunction throughout America. But as the Rabbi also mentioned in his talk, King Solomon had that ring which comforted him -- the ring that said “this too shall pass.” That has been my comfort for now 12 years of this compassion-driven Democrat party creating such chaos and regression in the American experiment. This too shall pass, I thought almost each day. And thank God it has passed for now with the arrival of a big dose of masculine standards.

Image: Ted Eytan