Posted on 10/25/2014 2:33:32 PM PDT by GrandJediMasterYoda
Bingo. You forgot the air quotes around “Christian” in your post. LOL!
This thread exhibits one of the reasons that Freerepublic is so great — an actual exchange of ideas among people who share basic values but are prepared to listen to one another. I’ve been a member for a long time and I think this is worth pointing out.
To the very sensible discussion that’s already been offered I would just add a tiny bit to underline something that’s been mentioned but not focused on as much as it should be - and that’s the fact that most American Jews are not as loyal to Israel as they used to be or as one might expect. As they become detached from real commitment to Judaism they become detached from commitment to Israel as well. They wind up being just another group of liberals. There’s good reason for the joke that the tenets of Reform Judaism are the platform of the Democratic party with the Jewish holidays thrown in. Jews who are consciously jewish, and especially the Jews who are observant, are much more likely to be politically conservative. I also think that Obama is SO bad that even the liberal Jews are starting to wake up. But I agree that it’s taking way way longer than it should.
Now that I think about it, yeah. I do. Also, have you noticed that no Jewish bankers have gotten Ebola?
And you think Democrats were totally free of such people? Ever heard of John E. Rankin or the Ku-Klux Klan?
something not easily forgotten.
You know, there's holding a reasonable grudge, and there's just plain ridiculous. This is the latter.
One day Republicans must find out how the Democrat party gets its hooks into multigenerational ethnic groups and never lets go.
13 There was no welfare state during that great immigration. At that time, America’s wealthy, nouveau and blueblood, were Republicans and Jew-haters, something not easily forgotten. Catholic haters too, BTW.
15 The FACT is, Israeli Jews are OVERWHELMINGLY opposed to Obama - and many of them vote in U.S. elections. I wonder if you blamed English-Americans for Clinton.
16 After making a poorly thought out post about Jews, I was informed by one Observant Jewish Freeper that what I called liberal Jews were really “Secular liberals of Jewish descent”. In other words, they were ethnically Jewish, but not observant of the faith. ...
17 ... What most liberal Jews never forget is the idea that for many years, Jews were excluded from many aspects of American society. ... Jews remember that they were frequently barred from entry to country clubs even into the 60’s even after they had attained the requisite wealth. ... Many liberal Jews “remember” (and I put that word in quotes because they are not remembering from their own experience, they are remembering stuff that was told them as children) the union movements of the 30’s which (per the lore) sought to improve labor conditions and wages, particularly in the case of garment workers in NYC, of which many were freshly-emigrated Jews. ...
Below is a piece written by Winston Churchill, "Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald, FEB 1920.
“First there are the Jews who, dwelling in every country throughout the world, identify themselves with that country, enter into its national life and, while adhering faithfully to their own religion, regard themselves as citizens in the fullest sense of the State which has received them. Such a Jew living in England would say, 'I am an English man practising the Jewish faith.' This is a worthy conception, and useful in the highest degree. We in Great Britain well know that during the great struggle the influence of what may be called the 'National Jews' in many lands was cast preponderatingly on the side of the Allies; and in our own Army Jewish soldiers have played a most distinguished part, some rising to the command of armies, others winning the Victoria Cross for valour.
There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews, it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd) or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.”
I have yet to read an opinion from ethnic Jew/agnostic-atheistic/former communist David Horowitz about the apparent connection between communism and Jews.
A few years back on FR, a Jewish Freeper from NYC posted to me that a new generation of ethnic Jews is growing in the NYC area who are politically conservative.
Wow, that’s a keeper and an eye opener. Thanks for posting.
I’ll send this thread to my Jewish-sans-FR friend tomorrow. Will circle back and post his thoughts if he weighs in strongly.
Thanks all for input ... and more if more is coming.
Israeli American relations are fine. Israeli-obama/dempcrap/george soros puppet relations are in the toilet. i would go to Israeli to fight to defend them if necessary and Taiwan, and certainly Canada. most countries could disappear and i wouldn’t care except for the big sucking sound the sink hole would nak
That’s just the point. Jews have had to rely on a king or central government to protect them from the rabble.
Jews aren’t unaware of Jew-hate on the left. They just see it as part of the larger culture and don’t feel any safer embracing the right.
Sorry, but Lapid is just another hack politician trying to destroy Netanyahu.
Screw this guy.
At what percent did American Jews vote twice to elect this jive punk ass mooselimb?
So it may be a strech for me to feel for Israel if American Jews refuse to.
This Econtalk may interest you: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/10/rodden_on_the_g.html
It’s worth the listen. It’s not just Jews, blacks and Catholics that blindly vote Dem.
My opinion is that urbanites vote Democrat because Dems promise to manage their neighbors. Living that densely packed creates certain psychoses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun#Mouse_experiments
The Wikipedia article is notable for the parallels in most urban societies of today.
Well all I know is when he was first running for President, he visited New York city more than any other city for fundraisers, same during the reelection campaign. He would visit 2 times sometimes 3 times a week blocking up traffic up the wazoo. And almost always those fundraisers were held by Jews. I mean imagine that: A radical Muslim running for President and those Jews were constantly holding fundraisers for him more than any other city in the US. I grew up in NYC so I know, it’s what I call the “Self-hating Jew capital of the USA” it really is. Remember that time in 1995 they invited the terrorist Arafat to Lincoln center to partake in a concert and Rudy Giuliani kicked his ass out? That’s what the Jews do in NYC, they coddle terrorists. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was President of Iran, every year they would organize a dinner for him at Columbia. I mean imagine that: A guy who wants to nuke Jews into oblivion and these pukes are holding a dinner for him. It’s the self-hating Jew capital of the country, it really is. They even have a “Jews against Israel” organization in Brooklyn.
http://forward.com/articles/202796/jews-march-in-new-york-rally-against-israel-war-in/
“Jews against Isreal”.
Too pathetic to be funny
These are the main reasons American Jews are Dems:
1. There have been 4 (perhaps 5) distinct waves of Jewish immigration to the US.
A) Mid 1800s, from Germany, capitalist, store owners, business men.
B) Late 1800s - WWI, mainly from Eastern Europe. Worked in the "sweat shops" of the Lower East Side and helped form the labor movement. Politically socialist.
C) Post WWI - pre WWII , also from Eastern Europe, but now including anyone who was getting the Nazi vibes. Those who didn't go to the US or Canada went to "Palestine" to work the land. Same socialist ideals as the earlier wave, they created the "kibbutz", the communal farm, where kids would eat and sleep separately from the parents. This was as close to pure Marxism as was ever created. It was successful only as long as everyone contributed equally and as long as the Arabs kept attacking. Israel's economy was run by the Labor party for decades with high union participation. It was only unleashed when Bibi became finance minister in the mid 1990s and he privatized many government services and deregulated. That's why Israel has so many NASDAQ listed companies.
D) Post - WWII. (notice that there was nothing during WWII, as the US and other countries made sure the Nazis had as many Jews available to slaughter as possible) These were destitute people who used to have businesses in Europe and started new ones in the US.
E) 1970s - 1990s, Soviet Block. These people lived the reality of communism that the emigrants of 80 years earlier idolized, but never endured. They are majority Republican and want nothing to do with the Dems.
So, which of these groups comprise the Dem (dumb) Jews? Primarily the ones from B and C, plus their kids and grandkids who vote Dem because mommy and daddy did. This is also the group of "progressives" who value their leftism more than their Judaism, even as their leftist brethren organize Gaza flotillas and Divest Israel campaigns. If they attend a synagogue, it's usually Reform, which has the most lenient observance standards. They will also be the most fervent ACLU members. They are most likely to sue communities to to remove Christian symbols from flags and memorials because they have so little connection to their own faith that they feel they must deny it to others as well.
Typical example: Paul Krugman.
"Krugman was born to a Jewish family,[11] the son of Anita and David Krugman (1924–2013). His paternal grandparents immigrated from Brest, Belarus, then Poland, to the United States in 1922."
Nothing there that I disagree with but I think it kind of skims over the specific question as to WHY most American Jews are liberals and thus Democrats.
I still believe, as I said in my original post, that the largest number of American Jews came to the US between about 1880 > 1920. His type “B”.
“Form the labor movement, politically socialist”. Yes.
They also MISSED the deadliest years of Stalinism. Jews were eagerly persecuted and harassed for hundreds of years in Czarist Russia, so they were happy to see (indeed, as you have pointed out, some Jews were the ideological leaders of) the Marxist Revolution circa 1917 and believed it to be the harbinger of better times. So what did they do? They started reading the NY Times in their new country with their newly-learned language as best they could and longed wistfully for Mother Russia.
We know how that worked out, but Russia, then having turned into Communist Russia, did so without them. They never got news about all the great stuff that was going on in the gulags (actually, very few did) but the NY Times was very effusive about these new industrial leaders in Europe and Russia who were making trains run on time and of course, improving the lot of common people everywhere within their borders.
So the “why” for me, is this happenstance of history; where agrarian people came to the New World, were forced to work in industry, and naturally became caught up in the unionization part of the general industrialization that was going on at the time. They longed for the nation of their births, believing that the revolution that had occurred there, without them, was bound to make things better for their people. Forget not that all these people were willing to give up all that was familiar (Czarist Russia, pure hell for them) to trade for their new lives. And if a few dozen million people were exterminated that those early 20th century American Jews didn’t especially know about, no big deal. So it is this residual “lore” that is passed down to present-day Jews all throughout their childhood.
The analog to present-day Hondurans and El Salvadoreans who come to the US is obvious, but I have no interest in wandering off into that topic.
So today, the question is, why do or how can Jews overlook blazingly obvious and many-times repeated evidence that the Arab world wants them destroyed; versus logically thinking through...”Hmm, four wars, three of which were near-existential, 2 intifadas, gave them back Gaza, 9000 rockets over the past year, OK, let’s feel sorry for them”.
It’s because that lore was implanted when they were children that it has the force it does over their thinking. They don’t apply logic nor rationality to their situation, they believe they are being loyal to their culture by honoring the traditions of their parents WHICH IS NOT observing the religion, it is repeating and identifying with the lore. Because they are lazy suburbanites. They identify with the underdog, no matter how much of a scumbag the underdog is, even when the underdog actually wants to kill THEM.
I should also add, that the final layer of liberal cement was laid in when those recent immigrants and their kin saw the depressions of 1907 and 1921 rapidly overcome, the boom boom times of 1925-1929 and then the emergence of FDR as the national father figure in the depths of the depression into WW2.
You forgot the original American Jews: Sefardim were the dominant group until perhaps the 1840s, and they were most numerous in the South.
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