I n his thoughtful contribution to the symposium on frum journalism in the Pesach issue Rabbi Avi Shafran makes the important point that alongside an unabashed commitment to Torah ideals in choosing which topics to cover and how to cover them it’s crucial for Torah-faithful media outlets to eschew chauvinistic reflexive identification with any one political party or ideology. As he put it “A mesorah-respecting medium must not adopt an attitude that conservatives or liberals or Democrats or Republicans or the United States or Israel or even observant Jews are always right or always wrong. Because they’re not.”

This is a topic that has been much on my mind in recent times as I’ve watched with deep dismay one American societal institution after another jettison ostensibly deeply held convictions in matters of policy politics and — most distressing of all — basic morality and decency. It happened in the political realm with elected officials and political thinkers in the media world with radio talk-show hosts and columnists and with astonishing speed and intensity among the evangelical leadership.

For some it was a willingness to be compromised to look away to downplay or offer mealy-mouthed rationalizations that to use Bret Stephens’s phrase “acted as bathroom deodorizer to mask the stench of” the truly odious. But for others it went far beyond a mere deficit of moral courage. It was instead an outright shameless selling of one’s soul for ratings for access and career advancement or a hoped-for seat at the table of power.

There has long been a disturbing tendency among some in our community and in certain corners of the frum media world to treat the right wing in American politics as “our side ” and the personalities who people it whether behind the microphone the halls of government or in some D.C. think tank as “our people.” They’re not.

True if we tally up issues of domestic and foreign policy the Torah community finds far greater common cause with the right than with the left side of the political aisle and that ought to guide how we vote and whom we support between elections. But then we tend to conflate a congruence on policy with an affinity in values and outlook on life not really thinking about the chasm separating what they and we actually stand for.

But aren’t the values of the right closer to ours in so many areas? The very question highlights the tragedy of our times when as conservative radio personality Charles Sykes wrote in an election postmortem:

As our politics have become more polarized the essential loyalties shift from ideas to parties to tribes to individuals. Nothing else ultimately matters. In this binary tribal world where everything is at stake everything is in play there is no room for quibbles about character or truth or principles.

So what if we are closer in these regards to right than to left albeit only on the most superficial level? Considerations of “closer than” are relevant only when a choice between two options is unavoidable. Indeed a choice should be made — to side with the truth wherever that leads. Truth must be a guiding light in these crazy times not a casualty of them.

Shelo sam chelkeinu kahem v’goraleinu k’chol hamonam. Our family educational and moral values are distant from theirs. These are not subtleties or perhaps better put we Jews believe that subtleties make all the difference. And in some areas such as societal normalization of alternative lifestyles the moral bankruptcy isn’t subtle at all; the political right has openly thrown in with everyone else. Try finding a conservative politician still willing to speak on that issue as a Torah Jew would.

The way we write and talk about the politicians and theoreticians of both left and right must reflect that moral clarity that stark divide in worldview. Our children must never get the idea that we frum Jews and some conservative talk-show host are at nearly indistinguishable points on a spectrum just that we’re the ones with beanies on our heads.

A number of weeks ago a media to-do flared about the admirable moral precautions Vice President Pence takes in interacting with the opposite gender. When some in the liberal commentariat went into a lather about this a good friend urged me to take them on writing “The left is killing [Pence] for a comment we should defend.”

I responded that I’d already written a column here on this very topic (in May 2015). But truth be told I was put off by my friend’s urging to go after “the left.” I’ve had my fill of the constant harping on the left and only the left as the moral bogeyman — a status it so often richly deserves — while we maintain a forgiving silence about the right.

Here we are in a time when the decades-long Number One media star on the Number One right-wing media network has just had his public career ended (hopefully although we’ll see about that) after a liberal newspaper’s investigations revealed that he is a morally decrepit bully whose serial disgusting behavior has cost him $13 million in payoffs thus far. This comes just months after the boss of that same Number One network was himself booted out of his position for the very same reason.

Meanwhile the former head of another leading conservative media outlet — described by a colleague as “one of the most vicious people in politics [who] likes to destroy people” — wields outsized influence on the current national scene. As David French writes “[t]ime and again prominent conservative personalities have failed to uphold basic standards of morality or even decency. Time and again the conservative public has rallied around them seeking to protect their own against the wrath of a vengeful Left.”

Beyond the minority of actual degenerates in the ranks of conservative media the behavior and character traits of some of the most popular right-wing media figures are the diametric opposites of everything we teach our children and students to emulate and still they inexplicably command significant followings in our community. Yet some boast of their friendships with these figures and their words of wisdom —only their put-downs of the left never their analyses of political philosophy — are repeated with delight in our conversation and featured in our publications.

There’s the thrice-divorced radio personality whose true arrogance is plainly visible through the comically exaggerated hubris he affects. There are the two perpetually angry Jewish hosts ostensibly brilliant but apparently not enough so to hold their own in dialogue with dissenting callers whom they harangue and hang up on. Then there’s the host who fancies himself a moral scold but whose past ethical indictments of a certain presidential candidate were trampled underfoot in his rush to climb aboard the latter’s bandwagon. (Moreover while he can sound to the casual listener as almost Orthodox in worldview he’s a modern-day Kara’i who lambasts Chazal). But for all their personal flaws at least these media figures promoted a conservative vision and policies that were good for America and for Americans of faith. Until this past year — when truth itself became a casualty and I realized I’d been had.

These phony conservative thought leaders reneged on the whole array of positions and values they’d espoused for decades. They savaged the Democratic candidate for failings that are dwarfed by identical ones in her Republican opponent yet elicit not a peep of censure. Remember the Clinton Foundation and e-mail scandals which would horrifically enmesh a Clinton presidency in a web of pay-for-play and potential blackmail vis-א-vis foreign governments? The sitting president’s refusal to release tax returns vast and ongoing familial business entanglements with foreign governments and individuals and brazen disregard of the Constitution’s emoluments ban are epic and unprecedented geometrically increasing the very same concerns raised about Mrs. Clinton’s ethics.

To my mind the assault on truth the sellout of principle the hypocritical double standards are the most dangerous of all for us. Our entire mesorah everything we have to pass on to the next generation is based on an undying commitment to truth at all costs.

Our children are bright and good and they are watching. If we are not willing when need be to say “An ethical pox on both your houses ” if we will not have the courage to stand with neither right nor left but as the party of truth then all the divrei Torah and gedolim stories in the world — about emes and integrity — will be of no avail.

Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 657. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com.