Opinion
By Joan Swirsky
12/3/25
A long time ago, in 2006, my son Seth wrote an article ––Why I left the Left–– for RealClearPolitics.com.
When President George W. Bush’s “brain” Karl Rove read it, OMG he invited Seth to lunch at the White House! That was many years after I personally left the Left, but I couldn’t think of a more apt title for this article.
I’m not sure what motivates people to become politically active. In my case, it was reading and hearing and watching events and people who infuriated me, and what I learned about myself is that anger, at least in my case, is not only energizing, but mobilizing.
I vividly remember my first political awakening. When my husband Steve and I and our three children––Seth, the oldest, was in kindergarten––moved to a community on Long Island that was convenient for his business travels by both car and plane, our then-apolitical selves had no idea that the town was a quite-infamous bastion of ultra-leftism.
Even though we had three kids under five, one of the first things we did when we moved into our new digs was to sign up to host a NY Times-sponsored Fresh Air child for several weeks––a Black child from New York City’s poorest neighborhoods, the motive being to provide a kind of suburban summer-camplike treat, which we did for three years.
So, when a vote came up to invite 75 Black children from a school in the neighboring borough of Queens, NY, to be bussed daily to our nationally reputed stellar school system, both Steve and I voted in favor of that proposal. Steve had been a star basketball player on our high school team in New Haven, where he, the only white guy, was affectionately called “the lightbulb” by his teammates.” And I, the co-captain of the cheerleading squad with a Black girl, knew firsthand that what would come to be known as “diversity” was a good thing.
WHAT???
But, to our shock, the referendum was defeated!
That was when I attended my first schoolboard meeting.
Chairing the meeting was the president of the school board, a handsome, articulate and wealthy business owner who presided over the packed-hall meeting with a grim––okay, furious—demeanor.
“The community has spoken,” he intoned with all due solemnity. “But the community is wrong.” His opinion was greeted with wild applause which echoed and affirmed his stern disapproval.
“Therefore,” he continued, “We are going to ignore this vote, and we are going to issue an invitation to the principal of [X school] to let us bus those 75 students to our town to give them the superior education all of our own students benefit from.”
Ummm…
Full disclosure here. I was a chronic truant in high school and never went to college but blissfully married my high school sweetheart (who I met at age 14), who did go to college, and we lived a truly beautiful and fun and fabulous life on the Dartmouth campus––in Sachem Village––for four years, along with 47 other married couples.
But still, when Mr. School Board President said he planned to ignore––actually violate––the vote of the citizens of our town, a little red flag went up in my uneducated head and I said to myself, “I don’t think that’s the way democracy works.” I thought that if a vote didn’t go your way, you worked harder the next time to convince potential voters that your candidate or your idea was the way to go.
And yet, arrogant as he was, and confident that he could get away with this violation, Mr. School Board President never counted on the response of the principal in Queens.
And what did that principal say? He said that he too read the newspapers and monitored the results of the election and that he didn’t want to send his students to a community that didn’t want them!
Kapow! That is called putting Mr. School Board President in his place!
LETTUCE?
Neither Steve nor I were as informed as were the voters from our parents’ generation, but following in their footsteps, we registered as Democrats and cast our first votes for the Democrat John F. Kennedy in 1960. And then, after his brutal assassination, for the Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson.
Just a few years later, in 1970, about three or four Lefty neighbors told me that Cesar Chavez, a labor organizer in California, had called for a boycott of lettuce and that I should not buy even one head of lettuce until the strike was over and Chavez’s demands for better pay and working conditions for the lettuce-picking farm workers were met.
It sounded reasonable to me, and I felt quite virtuous as I entered my local supermarket and studiously avoided the lettuce section to go straight to tomatoes. But guess what I saw? The children of those finger-wagging leftists buying lettuce for their parents!
SWAMPS?
A few years later, in 1973, Steve and I moved to another home in the same community. One of the neighbors who welcomed me said that I had “moved to the right neighborhood.”
Whaddaya mean? I asked.
“We think right,” she said.
It took me more than a month to figure out that “thinking right” meant thinking like a liberal.
I figured that out when a property developer/builder suggested to the board of directors in our small enclave that he construct some low-income housing in the vast lush fields and streams that lay directly adjacent to our homes.
Again, Steve and I had no objection, but the formidable liberal/leftist/progressive factions in our community––those who championed affordable housing, melting-pot communities, and “fairness” to all––immediately formed an SOS (Save Our Swamps) committee to stop any possibility of low-income people from coming within an inch of their hallowed ground.
THE TURNING POINT
Only three years later, Jimmy Carter ran for president and hearing, seeing, witnessing his uncontrolled virulent anti-Semitism––that he strongly and aggressively maintained until his dying day at age 100––made him the first Democrat I ever voted against…for all time!
At that time, leaving the Left was easy, a no-brainer. But after that, it became even easier. And in recent history, voting for a Democrat has become equivalent to voting for anyone endorsed by arch anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan or Communist poster boy, Vladmir Putin!
I had always been––and continue to be––a one-issue voter, namely the safety and security of Israel.
No, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes and Matt Gaetz and all you other obsessive Jew-and-Israel haters, this is not dual loyalty!
This is the knowledge that one of the tiniest populations of people on earth––and one of the most contributory to mankind––needs and deserves the friendship and support of the most powerful nation on earth, the kind of morally-driven support for an important ally of staunch Western values that has been given to Israel by President Harry Truman who first recognized the state of Israel on May 18, 1948, as well as by President John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson President Richard M. Nixon, President Ronald Reagan, President George W. Bush, and the undisputed Winner, President Donald J. Trump!
JUST ONE SIMPLE QUESTION
Over the past couple of months, I have had two funny and very revealing experiences. The first was when I joined a thread on Facebook of people who were clearly informed about American politics. As I became more familiar with this group, I learned that all 14 of them were graduate-school friends who had earned PhDs in International Relations from a quite prestigious school. And all of them were liberals!
Finally, I weighed in. This is what I asked, verbatim: “I’m not going to ask you 12 or 10 or 7 or 5 or even 2 questions. I’m only going to ask you one question: What have Democrats ever done in history to improve our country?”
Surprisingly, three out of the 14 on this thread answered me. And astoundingly, they all had the exact same answer! They said Social Security. They had to go back ninety years––to August 14, 1935––to think of that one single, solitary thing!
And not long after, a nice guy came to my door with a flyer that urged me to vote for the Democrats running for election in our county and state this month. Again, I asked him the exact same question. And again, he had the exact same answer: Social Security!
When I pointed out to him the ancient genesis of this benefit, this very earnest Progressive/socialist told me with pride that Democrats had also initiated the welfare system and food stamps.
IMPOVERISHED
Clearly, the liberals/leftists/progressives among us believe fervently in the nanny state, the state of perpetual dependency, the state of tolerance for all, including the burgeoning masses of anti-Semitic racists, anti-Americans, nihilists, and even admirers of the murderous jihadists of Hamas, to which countless campus and pro-jihadist demonstrations testify.
It still astounds me that there are so many of this species that either cannot see or refuse to acknowledge the rank hypocrisy of their thinking, no better demonstrated then this recent and damning example from the clinically deranged dames on The View.
EMPOWERED
Bottom line, why I left the left is because the leftists/liberals/progressives of the 20th and 21st centuries hate the America I love and cherish and thank God for every day for blessing me to be born in this magnificent country, with all of its:
- extraordinary freedoms,
- unlimited opportunities,
- deep respect for law and order,
- exceptional tolerance for the differences among us,
- historical and deserved respect for the patriots in the police departments and military services who put their lives on the line every minute of every day and night––for decades on end––to protect our safety and security.
For everyone who cherishes this laundry list of blessings, the best thing you can do is to leave the Left yourself!
Joan Swirsky is a New York–based journalist and author. Her website is www.joanswirsky.com, and she can be reached at [email protected].
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
