Though the push from the right is energizing the Republican Party back to the notion of a constitutionally based society, the danger from the left is the ever-accelerating push even further away from the country’s foundational ideals. The Sanders cult is testament to the power the radical left yields over young Americans, who want to out-radicalize Obama’s agenda.
To American Jews who truly care about both America and Israel, this phenomenon is frightening. More young Americans are becoming indoctrinated on college campuses and elsewhere against true Jewish/biblical values and the state of Israel, and it is becoming harder to undo the damage. These are the voters fueling the Sanders campaign.
The spectacle of a 74-year-old Vermont-by-way-of-Brooklyn Jewish Socialist resonating with young urbanites is not surprising, considering how he identifies more with supporting the Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street movements than with protecting American interests at home and abroad. Sanders’s outrageous fiscal promises are shameful – and become dangerous when coupled with his policies that would undermine the security of Israel, America’s other allies, and America itself.
Sanders’s purposeful distancing of himself from his own heritage serves to underscore his estrangement from Israel and Jewish interests and encourages others to do the same. And the image of a Jewish socialist relic who hasn’t learned from history’s mistakes can never be a positive one for Jews, wherever they live.
Sanders’s road to the White House is still a long and doubtful one. Let’s hope that when all is said and done, the lasting image we have of the aforementioned hand movements will be the wringing of those hands in frustrated defeat.