Posted on 04/02/2015 7:39:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Liberals believe that social engineering can bring about universal success; conservatives want to foster individual responsibility and initiative. For liberals, the failure of an individual is a failure of society; for conservatives, individuals should be allowed to succeed or fail on their own merits. There are degrees, of course; most conservatives eschew Social Darwinism or Ayn Rand’s egotism, and most liberals do not believe in the strict application of the Communist maxim, “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” But that is the bright line that divides us conservatives from the liberals.
Why are (most) Jews liberals? That is a trickier question than it might seem. The usual explanation is that Napoleon freed the Jews from the ghetto, and Jews ever since have looked to the secular enlightenment as the source of their welfare rather than the often oppressive attitudes of traditional society. The European Socialists in general advanced Jewish interests while European conservatives in general impaired them. Without the French socialists (during the brief postwar premiership of Leon Blum), Britain almost certainly would have arranged for a successful Arab invasion of Palestine to crush the State of Israel in the cradle. There is something to that, but not enough.
Judaism, as historian Paul Johnson once observed, balances individual and collective. Christians who observe an Orthodox Jewish service will be struck by apparent lack of cohesion. During the preliminary reading of Psalms, worshipers proceed at their own pace, sometimes singing lines out loud. When the congregation stands, individuals will rise and sit down at their own pace rather than as a group. The recitation of the Eighteen Benedictions, the prayer at the center of each Jewish service, is an individual audience with the Lord, and some congregants will remains standing even after the leader begins the public repetition; latecomers will stand and recite after the service has moved on. A derogatory German expression cites “Geschrei wie in einer Judenschule,” or screaming as in a synagogue, referring to the occasional cacophony. There are to be sure moments when the congregation speaks as one. When the congregation declares the Shmah (“Hear!”), it does so in two parts: the first (Deut. 6:4-9) is written in first person singular, and the second (Deut. 11:13-21) restates the same themes in first person plural.
In that respect Judaism is in inherently conservative. Christians enter the Church together as Gentiles to be inducted into Israel, and although they are adopted as individuals, they worship as a body; Jews are already members of God’s people and go to synagogue for a private audience with Almighty as well as collective functions. Jewish law provides for the poor, but the prophets want every man to sit under his own vine and fig tree — not the vine and fig tree of a collective farm. And the 10th Commandment specifically forbids a Jew to covet anything of his neighbors (as the rabbis observed, it reads “do not covet, covet,” the only one of the Decalogue to use the emphasis of repetition).
That’s the problem: The vulnerability of the conservative model, as de Tocqueville observed in 1835, is that the losers will use their political power to expropriate the winners and vote themselves rich. It is a proud and self-confident people indeed that is composed of individuals willing to accept failure, pick themselves up, and try again, rather than coveting the success of the winners. If popular jealousy erupts against the success of one’s own countrymen, all the more so will it be directed against a minority.
It is a high-class problem, but the Jews must deal with the fact that they are the most successful people in the history of mankind by any measure: longevity, contributions to arts and sciences, Nobel Prizes, business and philanthropy (Olympic medals being the great exception). Their neighbors have envied their success (and attributed it to a global banking conspiracy or other nefarious enterprise). The aspect of Jewish success that other peoples most envy, though, is Jewish longevity, at a moment when most of the peoples of the world feel the cold breath of mortality on the backs of their necks. Antisemitism is the rancor the dying have for the living. Nowhere is that more evident than in the case of Iran, a formerly great nation now facing demographic death. The exception that proves the rule is China, among whose 1.5 billion people there is not a single Jew-hater. China is confident of its own longevity, and the principle that has held China together since the founding of its imperial system is a merciless meritocracy which rewards success and disdains failure.
Jews are liberals because they hope that if everyone succeeds, no-one will envy the Jews’ success. It is a Utopian premise, and wrong, but not quite as crazy as it sounds given the alternative: to assert Jewish success and Jewish particularly in a world full of failures is a dangerous thing. One finds some great nations with a natural affinity to the Jews, such as China and India, and many with an inherent antipathy — not just Iran, but most of Western Europe. In my view, there really is no choice, since it is impossible to engineer the success of peoples who are determined to destroy themselves. But the prosperity, strength and happiness of the Eternal People are unbearable insults in the eyes of peoples who have passed their best-used-by-date. For 3,500 years, we have watched other nations ruin themselves, and become dust on the scales and a drop of the bucket. Alone among all the peoples who lived between the Indus River and the Pillars of Hercules, we speak and write a language that was spoken and written more than 3,000 years ago. How could the fragile, extinction-prone peoples of the world in their existential anguish not covet Jewish longevity?
That is true not only globally but among American constituencies. Now that the Democratic Party has become the party of rancorous losers, its traditional support for Israel has diminished. 83% of Republicans support Israel against the Palestinians, but only 48% of Democrats do:
Americans have become “a nation of takers,” in Nicholas Eberstadt’s phrase. We elected Barack Obama twice, and now have an administration that is unabashedly hostile to the State of Israel and its existential interests. There may or may not be a natural majority for the conservative position in the United States, which means that Israel might be abandoned by its principal ally. The impulse to submerge Jewish success in the liberal project for universal success is misguided but entirely understandable. The alternative is no bed of roses, as we are learning at the moment.
Article printed from Spengler: http://pjmedia.com/spengler
Love Spengler’s writing. So brilliant. Nice to see it here on FR.
Fie on that. Don't forget, all of his disciples and most of the early Christians were Jews. Wise up. If it had not been for that classical misunderstanding, your salvation, should you choose to repent and accept its Author, would not have been accomplished.
A brilliant post. I’ve seen it in other “minority” groups as well. Welcome to the Silent Majority — because we can’t get a word in edgewise at the holidays unless it’s Politically Correct!
Signed,
Refugee from a Protestant+Catholic majority Democrat family embarrassed to admit they are Christians
In the back of their minds I think many Jews worry that conservative Republicans want to discriminate against minorities including Jews. They believe the religious right controls the Republican Party and is a threat to liberty.
For many decades Jews were prominent among the people who worked for civil rights for blacks. Remember, Barry Goldwater and W.F. Buckley, the two biggest conservative names of fifty years ago opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. Even though Goldwater and Buckley later regretted their opposition to the bill, many Jews still identify conservative Republicans as the people and party that would discriminate against them.
Many of them still haven't lost the feeling that conservative Christians can't wait to oppress everybody. Yes, many of them are bone ignorant. I mean, Roseannne Barr anyone?
But your vote is secret.
Until 1936 blacks were solid republicans, and the female vote was more republican than males until the late 1960s, and the democrats were at least as Christian as the republicans, so why were Jews voting against the minorities and for the Christian party of the South and KKK? Why did Jews vote for the Socialist party when it was available, for instance in 1920 when the Socialists got 38% of the Jewish vote, while the blacks were voting republican?
Horowitz says that the Jewish tradition is business (read capitalism) and this and a sturdy work ethic has crated much envy and general hostility toward the Jewish community. Freud discovered late that there is another major human driving motivation which is to be accepted by ones peers. Thus many Jews rejection of Jewishness is to reject capitalism and embrace liberalism.
They managed to corral a number of prominent blacks like Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Dubois. But while persuading most blacks to ditch the Republican Party, the party that freed the slaves, for the communist party was almost an impossible task, it was easy for the Dems to attract blacks in the sixties with promises of civil rights.
Many Dem operatives were socialists at heart and remain so today. The northern Dems, which had a lot of Jewish members, wasn't nearly as racist as the southern Dems. Certainly, Jews weren't going to be attracted to any party that was considered overtly Christian or religious.
Lol!!
We all need a Coming Out song. Maybe a parade... No, wait, that is taking it too far. :)
Exactly, and not just that “everyone” says not to do that. Everyone will make FUN of you. Forget the best parties. Forget the access to the good table. Expect derision and avoidance.
Why do you think Alinsky methods work so well? People would rather be hit with a wooden stick than made fun of.
Like I said, they were lefties, and they have always voted for the politics that they support.
Jews vote liberal, because they are liberal, they are not mouth breathing idiots that don't know the two different parties and which one they personally prefer.
The exception would be Jews in Britain who tended to be Conservative, at least until recently. It's the exception that proves the rule, because British Jews did feel excluded from the heavy working class emphasis of the Labour Party.
As you say, it's also easier for outsider or marginal groups to rise in a party of outsiders. The way isn't blocked by members of the prevailing majority. It was easier for the Irish and the Jews to rise in the Democratic Party because all the places weren't already taken. The Italians, who came later and found the Irish and Jews already settled in the Democratic Party, sometimes found that they could make their way up as Republicans.
The other factor is that there's a strong collective emphasis in Eastern European Jewry. That may have a lot to do with the history of socialism in Eastern Europe. Jewish liberals like to relate that collective feeling to the Biblical prophets, but it wasn't ever as strong in German or Sephardic Jews as it was in those from Russia.
It might also have something to do with the feeling that Yiddish speaking Eastern Europe was the closest thing Jews had to a homeland for centuries. Jews elsewhere were fewer in numbers so there wasn't such a strong group consciousness.
A lot of the talk about Jews and politics echoes liberal or leftist talk about people from Middle America voting against their true interests by pulling the Republican level. People, whether Jews in New York or Los Angeles or Gentiles in Kansas or Oklahoma, probably have a better idea of what their "true interests" are than outsiders trying to score political points.
FWIW, "Spengler" has some pretty strange ideas about the "dying peoples" of Europe and elsewhere. They may not be reproducing at a great rate, but he might at least consider that the fertility obsession just may be his own more than anybody else's.
“Jewish friends whose daughter and grandchild lives in Israel. They are conservatives.”
_______
My roommate in graduate school went to Israel to study for a summer and came back telling me that it was the biggest party he’d ever been to. Topless beaches, dancing from sun up to sun up, lots of young tourists from Europe who really let their hair down. I think that people may get a stereotypical “Holy Land” impression when they think of Israel, but there is a whole lot of secularism in Israel.
Jews can't go back to "Temple" because it hasn't been rebuilt yet.
Synagogues are not "temples." The "Reform" call them that because they are supersessionists who deny that the Jerusalem Temple will ever be rebuilt. They think their synagogues have taken its place.
This raises an interesting question. Why is it that the conservative chrstian majority have historically had so much trouble identifying with fellow-chrstians of "minority" ethnicities? Really, does this make any sense? People just assume the word "chrstian" means "white person" and then "Blacksandhispanics" (one word) automatically morph into non-chrstian "victims of chrstianity!" I know that no one's perfect and people are just human but maybe--just maybe--if chrstians had been chrstians first instead of "white" or "Black" or "Hispanic" or "Asian" or whatever we wouldn't even be in this mess today.
Meanwhile, liberal Jews look with such tender solicitude on non-Jewish and nominally chrstian minority communities, treating them almost as Lost Tribes of Israel.
You know, none of this really makes any sense.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2540/jewish/Cold-Soup.htm
...This insanity is what makes us Jewish. This is what shows how special we are in our relationship with God.
That’s called truth. It’s not about me. I don’t want to be religious. I don’t want to believe in God; I don’t want to hear about this. But He wants me here, so here I am.
The same thing happens on Passover. Every Jew sits by a Seder. Ask the average Jew at a Seder, do you believe in God? Leave me alone. Are you religious? He chokes on the matzah laughing. So you’re celebrating the Exodus from Egypt 3300 years ago? History is not my subject. Then why are you here? Where should I be? It’s Passover! That’s what’s so magnificent about the Jew...
i did not know that—all my Jewish friends are Reform. The Temble will be rebuilt after Iran blows up the Mosque at the Dome of the Rock.
Agree with most of your statements. If you read comments by many American Jews who vote for Dems, they associate conservative Republicans with oppression of minorities and restrictions on civil rights. That view is a crock, but that’s what many of them think.
It’s not that Jews absolutely will not vote for Republicans. There have been a number of elected Jewish Republicans like Jacob Javits and Michael Bloomberg. But they tend to be liberal Republicans. At least on social issues.
And today many Jews associate the Republican Party with fundamentalist Christians. While those types of Christians do influence party policy (for the better in my opinion), it turns off many non-religious Jews.
So if Republicans dropped all the social issues and just went straight Libertarian on everything, would many of those Dem-voting Jews jump ship?
Some probably would, but like my parents, breaking off identification with a party you’ve been a member of for many years is tough for a lot of people.
I don’t favor the Republican Party dropping social issues. That’s one big reason I vote Republican after decades of being a Democrat myself.
But there have been a number of liberal Jews who left the Dem Party. Actor Ron Silver, playwright David Mamet, and comedian Evan Sayet are all previously liberal Jews who turned to the Republican Party after many years, decades on the other side. They can be persuaded.
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