Excellent explanation kabumpo your entire post should be a Icon on FR as a primer...
Tangent to this, 2 things Conservatives should never due around Reform Jews, at least the ones I know ( I am close to the community here...) and more...
1.) Do not try to convert them to Christianity, it pisses them off royal, and maybe the Nexus-Lexus of why they stay away from the Republican Party, because so many Christian Conservatives try to hammer both points home. Let them practice their faith, if you can reach them at an epistemological level politically, be happy with that victory.
2.) Do not say yes I have Jewish friends, that are members of Jews for Jesus, Oh, that is a real sore subject.
3.) The Reform Jews I am close to are family orientated, busy, and still are getting their media from the lame streams and will not go to Fox or "Glenn". You could discuss what Glenn says about Anti-Semetism in Europe and like I did, and they were shocked they did not know about it. The bigger surprise was when I told them "Glenn" is the only one taking about it. It may take a book from Levin, Prager, or Horowitz to get the conversation going.
3a.) Many of my Reform friends still listen to NPR, and read the NYT's. Very educated, but do not know the following authors: Ayn Rand, Fredrick Hayek, etc. etc. Loan them your books in that arena our "classics" if you will....
4.) Subject matters we believe in Lower Taxes and Gun rights have tidbits that will give any person cause to challenge their core beliefs. Denoting firearm ownership for Seniors and the less than mobile adults as an equalizer for thugs got the attention of a Reform Jew I spoke too, because it made sense. Ditto that a conversation about the Flat-Tax S. Forbes Ideas when someone was going through estate-tax-hell. "Our" ideas are not reaching many Americans where it effects their lives, Reform Jews as well. The Conservative movement has the trouble of contextualizing our ideas into little gems like my example.
As a rap up, if you want to make inroads with Jews you know to at least consider pulling the lever of "O" please do not got there for items 1 or 2......
Oops... Last line should be “Not Consider pulling the lever for “O””
Well, thank you, Taildragger, for your appreciation. I grew up in an intensely Jewish ultraleftist milieu, so this is something I know. I would say that 99% of suburban, middle class and well to do Jews are (unconscious) leftists first and Jews second. If there was an election with Hitler running as a Dem versus George Washington as a Republican, they would vote for Hitler.
Recently I forwarded a piece on the killing of the Jewish children in Toulouse, France (by Greenfield or Steyn) to several Jewish friends - they all wrote back rejecting and repudiating the article - it was truly shocking to me. One of them even wrote something snide about Ann Romney - who had nothing whatsoever to do with the article - in his response to me.
So they don’t even care about their own brethren if the context of the tragedy isn’t liberal (i.e., fundamentalist Christians have done something bad).
Well, thank you, Taildragger, for your appreciation. I grew up in an intensely Jewish ultraleftist milieu, so this is something I know. I would say that 99% of suburban, middle class and well to do Jews are (unconscious) leftists first and Jews second. If there was an election with Hitler running as a Dem versus George Washington as a Republican, they would vote for Hitler.
Recently I forwarded a piece on the killing of the Jewish children in Toulouse, France (by Greenfield or Steyn) to several Jewish friends - they all wrote back rejecting and repudiating the article - it was truly shocking to me. One of them even wrote something snide about Ann Romney - who had nothing whatsoever to do with the article - in his response to me.
So they don’t even care about their own brethren if the context of the tragedy isn’t liberal (i.e., fundamentalist Christians have done something bad).
Ironically, both Rand and Hayek were themselves Jewish, as are quite a number of the conservative or libertarian intellectuals and pundits of today and the recent past.