Question for David B,
in response to his post immediately below: Assuming it is true that Jews have disproportionately benefited from government programs in the past, either as recipients or employees, what's the case that this has actually caused individuals to become liberal Democrats? Is there any evidence that Jews arrived in the U.S. as free market libertarians, and then decided that government was a good thing after having experience with government programs? There was a stereotype in the early 20th Century of Jews as disproportionately likely to be radical leftist socialists upon arrival from Europe; was this just a myth? Is disproportionate experience with government a cause of political liberalism, or just a reflection of preexisting cultural and ideological associations? Big questions, and I'm not one to know the answers, but your suggestion as I understand it doesn't seem intuitively persuasive to me.
David's point about Jews and government positions should also apply equally to American blacks, who comprise an extremely large percentage of the public workforce.
The Jews are not generally known as a stupid people, so when you conclude that you are better at perceiving anti-Semitism than the Jews as a group, you might want to reexamine your underlying assumption.
One can surely identify examples of anti-Semitic conduct from both the left and the right, but when Bill O'Reilly rants about the "War against Christmas," an exclusively right-wing campaign, he is practically channeling Henry Ford's views on the same subject. I'm not persuaded that the playing field has changed much at all.
I would also not discount the idea that, given the level of persecution visited upon Jews, Jews want to have a disproportionate voice in government action and are therefore very interested in shaping the state in a certain way - which is a generally liberal viewpoint. I think this sounds a bit conspiratorial and I don't mean it as such. I mean this in a Public Choice rationale - Jews have a high interest in ensuring against and for government action in certain areas that are a product of their history and that leads the average Jew to be more liberal.
I apologize if this seems anti-Semitic because it is not. I am trying to offer a positivist kind of answer to the question and am giving a few choices just off the top of my head.
There is a ready counterfactual example that would disprove my intellectual thesis. African-Americans, again perception and not empirical, tend to not have the same "life of the mind" culture and yet are very liberal. I guess there is more than one way to skin a liberal, er cat.
It also did not hurt that the main news outlet for so many was the Yiddish Daily Forward.
That doesn't work, because the New Testament continues with the message of helping and aiding the poor.
Second: I disagree completely with the argument that government largesse is why Jews used to be liberal. To the contrary, economically it was completely against interest. The tax regime in place before Reagan took far more than it gave. (i.e. if they weren't being taxed at socialist rates it wouldn't have been such a big deal to come up with the money for a private college education. As for the "anti-semitism" at the elite schools - Jews would simply had made another private school the Jewish Harvard rather than CCNY).
Third: Thomas Frank recognized in his book, "What's the Matter with Kansas" values are far more important than economics in these issues. Jews during the mid and late 1900s (who are now the elderly Jewish types you see who still make out checks to the ACLU and the Democratic National Committee) were deeply scarred by the Holocaust and were attracted to the pacifist promises of the far-left. It did not make a difference to them that their voting decisions were hurting themselves financially. The most important value for them was to establish the pacifist state promised by the far-left. What I'm seeing is that younger Jews who don't have those hang-ups revert to normal and naturally are very right-wing.
I think to discuss this intelligently we need a bit more information. What is this "liberalism" that we are speaking about? How is it defined? Are we talking about social issues? National security issues? Government involvement in the economy? What community are we talking about? All American Jews?
It's very easy to make a generalization such as "Jews are generally liberal," and from that generalization start exploring all sorts of reasons why that might be so. I am not entirely convinced, however, that the premise is accurate in the way that it is stated, especially with respect to modern political attitudes.
Jews have long been heavily involved in the labor movement in this country, a liberal movement for economic rights of working people.
Jews have a history, in other countries and this one, of facing discrimination, and thus could identify with liberal causes such as the civil rights movement for equality for African-Americans.
Jews, I believe, are similarly turned off when religious conservatives proclaim that America is a "Christian nation" and the like. They also are probably extremely wary of the blurring of the line of separation between church and state and of public policy that is in any way based upon religion.
Perhaps this orientation translates into voting?
(Other factors certainly are also involved.)
If the action is one that is moral, part of its morality is the choice to engage in it. Being forced to do something otherwise virtuous doesn't make you virtuous. And having the government do something on your behalf using other people's resources certainly doesn't make you virtuous.
Of course, that leaves aside the large number of secular Jews who don't give a rip about their Scripture.
In any event, it seems that EVERYONE is ignoring DB's actual point: that the historical experience of Jews vis a vis entrepreneurism isn't really the experience that people seem to assume when said people assume that Jews ought to be libertarians. THAT is is his only claim.
Whether that's TRUE, I don't know (and am largely indifferent to), but the argument seeminly being made here is that something else is influencing Jewish liberalsim, but that is irrelevant.
The people to whom DB's argument is directed are those who think that [1] Jews are over-represented as successful entrepreneurs [2] therefore they ought to be more libertarian and less liberal.
People who take this view already believe that [1] causes [2], therefore if [1] is not as it seems (i.e. more Jews have experience as public servants than as entrepreneurs), then if you believe the causative relationship between [1] and [2] exists, you must believe that experience as public servants is more likely to make you liberal than libertarain.
Whether there actually IS such a relationship is irrelevant. If you don't believe so, then the argument is not directed toward you.
If you have D.B.'s argument correctly (and you very well may have), then I'm struck by D.B.'s implicit agreement with Karl Marx that a primary if not the primary determinant of one's politics is one's economic class/relation to the mode of production.
If the foregoing is correct, then it becomes easier to say why Jews tend to be liberal Dems. During much of the 20th century, Jews tended to live in urban environments, particularly in the Northeast, where liberalism is more the norm. During the same period, social environments that fostered a more conservative mindset, such as country clubs and elite boarding schools, were largely closed to Jews.
This would also explain the why many Southerners seem to trend liberal (at least in the past) because, as with Judaism, the Southern focus is on the extended family and community, and less on the individual.
Conservative Christians want to convert Jews, not drive them into the sea.
The constant drumbeat of conservative Christians attempting to link elements of their religious ideology with the ideology of the Republican party specifically or conservatism generally is an inherently exclusionary message. If O'Reilly et al. tell me, either expressly or implicitly, that "conservatives" must support Christian causes, is it any wonder that as a non-Christian I am going to be turned off by that message?
I daresay that it hardly paranoid to think that O'Reilly et al. do not want an atheist such as myself in the same party as they occupy, nor do I think it overly paranoid to assume, based on their rhetoric, that at the VERY LEAST they want to convert me (which I think of as an attack in its own right); it's perhaps only moderately paranoid, given the rhetoric employed, to think that perhaps they DO want to drive me into the sea. I can understand why someone Jewish would feel the same way.
I'm a Jew, and I've heard *that* one before. Don't mind me while I put on my bathing suit.
It doesn't help that Christian conservative support of Israel is grounded in Apocolyptic theories in which all the Jews die and go to hell.
Conservative Christians want to convert Jews, not drive them into the sea.
That you can't recognize the obvious connection between those two statements is a perfect illustration of the first one.
"The Jewish neocons primary goal--though not their exclusive goal--has been to protest Israel," says the editorial. And since the present administration, Conservative Republican, chapions Israel, the "neocons," NOT the liberals, enjoy Jewish backing.
What do you think of that?
Also, if Jews feel they are under attack from conservative Christians, I'm not aware of it. Debates such as abortion, feeding tubes and the War on Christmas do not pit Christian against Jew, but conservative against liberal. As for me, please put Christ back into Christmas. That would be far preferable to the crass commercialization of Christmas we are all subjected to these days. (I mean, do they really have to play the sound of sleigh bells in between each play at NFL games?)
Mine is: "And the difference is exactly what?"
One other thought: in my experience, among the small population of libertarians, Jews are OVER-represented. Certainly, a number of the major intellectual figures in libertarian thought are/were Jews, if non-practicing ones (Mises, Rand, Rothbard for starters). So yes, perhaps a larger percentage of Jews "should" be libertarians, but a pretty decent percentage of libertarians are, in my 25 years of involvement, Jews.
I *do* think that it's more effective to do something yourself than to try to get government to do it because you aren't subject to capture problems like the government is.
And we've got less than 48 hours to go.
As I understand it, his campaign was against stores or businesses that forbid their employees from saying Merry Christas and against absurd attempts by liberal zealots to forbid displays of religious symbols on government property.
Hardly shades of Father Coughlin.
Back to the topic of why Jews lean left.
What I find puzzling is that the historic practices of horrific anti-semitism (on the large scale and not local pogroms) could not have been undertaken without state coercion and force. The state has not been to kind to Jews over the centuries (a similar argument, of course, has been made about black Americans and slavery and Jim Crow segregation).
Why this hasn't led to greater scepticism mystifies me.
Given that governments will likely always exist, and that throughout history governments have been stronger rather than weaker, any group who had been persecuted might want to try the influence route over the limiting route. (this seems more like an argument for why large numbers of Jews might want to be in government). I think I might be treading close to dangerous "Jewish Conspiracy" ground here, except that I wouldn't see anything nefarious in it, if it were true. It seems more like a spontaneous ordering thing to me.
The real question would then become, why are there *any* Jewish CONSERVATIVES, as opposed to libertarians (who believe in the limiting approach) and liberals (can't beat 'em, join 'em) (I don't think that limited government is inherently conservative, though conservatives might share it, so possibly Jewish conservatives would be of the limited government variety, but that just leads to another question [1] do there exist big-government Jewish conservatives and, if so, [2] why?.
The German, Soviet, and American State involvement in their respective oppressions were all certainly representative of the attitudes of their respective populaces. Plenty of pogroms and lynchings took place without the need to involve the state. On the other hand, it was until massive government intervention (in the form of the victorious armies in Europe and the Civil Rights Act in the US) occurred in the US and Germany that these attitudes began to change.
Government is a tool. Used for evil, it begets evil. Used for good, it can beget that, too (as much as it pains my libertarian consciense to write that). One lesson of the 20th Century is, as other posters have noted, that if you have a seat at the government table, you are less likely to get run over.
For the same reason that there are Christian conservatives--because they have beliefs about social policies that they do not trust people to adhere to of their own accord. Look at Joe Lieberman, who is just as big a fan of media censorship as many Christian conservatives.
Christians believe that you must accept Jesus to enter Heaven. They are compelled by their faith to express this believe to all who don't ascribe to it and to attempt to convert them to Christianity through exposure to the New Testament. You may regard an attempt to convert you this way as an affront, but surely it is a minor one. You have resisted any entreaties so far and are likely to do so in the future.
Jews have real enemies in this world who would like nothing more than to kill them and send them straight to Hell. Some of these enemies are fellow leftists (who may not share any belief in Hell). If liberal Jews spent a fraction of the effort resisting their real enemies as they do their supposed ones, the results would be telling.
1) Most minority groups are enriched for Dems, because historically Conservatism was associated with preserving the status quo - which tends to exclude newcomers moving by immigration or by economic self-improvement. Pre-Goldwater, wasn't the GOP associated with old money and its interests?
2) The flip side of #1: From FDR onward, Dems were more associated with championing protection of minorities. Readers of this blog will tend to think that the measures taken were pernicious for unintended consequences, but for the most part the dominant culture didn't think that way when current voters were growing up. Persecuted minority status is deeply ingrained in Jewish culture, and Jews were heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement.
3) For Jews in particular, Democratic politics, academia, and law were important avenues into the halls of power. All these tended Democratic and still are biased in that direction. Of course, the landscape is changing.
4) The anti-Israel part of the Left is a relatively recent development.
5) To take off from Orin's post - they didn't have to come here as radical socialists...starting as an FDR democrat was sufficient to be a liberal today.
One theory I saw put forth somewhere on the right side of the blogosphere a few months ago is that (1) neither the Left nor the Right are particularly fond of Jews or blacks, but the Left made both constituencies an offer they (supposedly) couldn't refuse: Embrace our politics, and we will not only tolerate you, we'll even look after your interests! This sounds a little simplistic to me, but it does explain why the Left is so keen to excoriate blacks and Jews who are conservative. (Clarence Thomas, anyone?)
Assuming this Jewish paranoia even exists, how many liberal Jews do you know of who are more concerned about proselytizing or one's preferred form of holiday greeting than they are about suicide bombers or the latest pronouncement by the president of Iran?
2. Where liberalism disfavors state intervention... well, there are no chances of a REAL establishment of religion, nor much close to it, but liberals tend to be sensitive and hypersensitive to anything coming anywhere close (Christmas-type things, even talk of values). Jews would be more likely to be sensitive here since the one certainty is that anyone edging near establishment has in mind a religion other than Judaism. Once burned, twice shy.
3. Current liberalism's highest value is inclusion. Excluding anyone, judging anyone, is an offense (in extreme cases, this can get to the point of being almost amoral save for inclusion). To a group whose history is one of centuries of exclusion, making inclusion the paramount value probably sounds like a heck of a good idea.
Ah, yes. Following conservative Christian strategy has always been the best course for Jews through the ages. If only my grandfather had told me we had things so backward all these years!
Also, City College was indeed the Jewish Harvard in the 1940s and 50s. But does anyone really think this was a result of anything other than a combination of convenience (location+price) and anti-semitic quotas on the part of more prestigious schools? When the Jews left the city and quotas were eased, the Jews left City College.
I don't think modern conservatives are alienating Jews that much, certainly not as much as certain liberals like to think they are with talk about stealing Xmas et al. It so happens that Judaism is unusually liberal about the prospects of others for heaven - Christianity isn't, and why on earth should it be expected to change its worldview to suit others? Tolerance means allowing others to pursue their views unmolested, not enforcing a generic emotional tolerance which amounts to intolerance.
More generally, I think the Jewish liberalism can simply be explained as the high price the Republican Party has paid for cozying up to Father Coughlin, Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, et al (just look at the recent Phillip Roth book), and for more generally embracing pacifism in WW2. Modern liberal jews by and large remember those days directly, or their descendants did and indoctrinated their children.
Either way, as is commonly reported, conservatives are gaining ground among Jews, especially in the modern orthodox demographic (which is how I was raised). Go to Yeshiva University and try to get a minyan (quorum of 10) of liberals. I dare you.
I certainly did not mean to dismiss as something insignificant "local pogroms" by setting it at one end of the spectrum.
Those were obviously horrific and terrible attacks. One doesn't want to think, for example, of how terrified Jewish children must have been.
Brings tears to the eyes to even imagine it.
No offense, but historically it hasn't been us Jews who get all bent out of shape when we try to politely say no. You Christians tend to be very passionate about saving our souls, our lives be damned :)
Houston Lawyer,
I myself regard it as a major affront.
However benign you may consider today's attempts at converting Jews, you should recognize that the history of this activity is very grim. Leave aside the more violent episodes for a moment. It's still worth remembering that Jews have always been a small minority in Christian countries, and subject to all sorts of social and economic pressures to convert, even in relatively tolerant countries, where physical coercion would have been out of the question. Such pressures existed, for example, in the US until just a few decades ago.
Given this context, it is hard to see evangelism abstractly, as simply the presentation of a religious point of view, with which Jews are free to disagree.
And of course there is always the danger that frustrated evangelism will turn to something other than friendly persuasion. After all, in the Christian view, souls are at stake here.
Despite all this, I am a hard core right-wing Republican activist on the GOP state central committee. While I wish I had gone further in life, I recognize that my risk-aversity to some extent has kept me from doing so, but at the same time I have always admired the entrepreneurs and investors who DID take risks and made our wealthy society possible. They should not be penalized for their success.
The gravest problem facing American Jews is that our embrace of liberalism and its pernicious manifestations (feminism, gay culture, etc.) has resulted in a death spiral for our people. Our birth rate is so low and our intermarriage rate so high that it won't be long before we will no longer have to be concerned about anti-semitism because there won't be any Jews left anyway. Hitler couldn't have asked for more.
Orin, I don't think that's what David said. He said that Jews of previous generations took part in government as employees when other sectors of the large-organization economy shunned them. It may or may not be a big point but employment ion government is not at all the same as benefiting from government programs.
I think it takes two or three generations for such alignments to wear away. The puzzle in regard to Jews is that, even though it is happening, it is happening more slowly than you'd have thought. Could there be a tendency in Jewish children to honor their parents' political choices more than the norm? I have no idea.
Uhhhhh . . . one wants you dead, and the other doesn't?
Responding to Preferred Customer:
I think the idea that conservative Christians' linking their religion to the Republican party is going to make those of us who are not Christian (in my case, who are not even religious) feel excluded is probably overdrawn. After all, everyone recognises that political parties are made up of groups with common interests. Insofar as the goods I want realised correspond decently well with the goods the Christian Right wants realised, well, I throw my lot in with them. If I thought they wanted to engage in active suppression, and that there was a realistic chance of that happening, then obviously that equation would change. But until that point . . . well. Not really an issue for me. I mean, I'm not all that emotionally invested in the idea of being a Republican, I just tend to vote that way is all.
On the other hand, with regard to this:
I think your basic point is sound, but could be extrapolated further -- that the worst excesses of prejudice have often been the outcome of individuals down at the grass-roots level, getting to do their prejudiced thing, often through popular government mechanisms. During WWII, for example, many times the Nazis didn't even have to cart the Jews off to be gassed -- they just let, say, the local Poles slaughter their Jewish neighbours. There's a Times column on a particular incident of that sort, I think, from some years ago. The column, that is, not the incident.
In many cases, even, the government's "involvement" such as it is, is just to step aside, to stand out of the way, to decline to prosecute the mobs who lynch Black men in the South, or to tell the villagers that anything goes. I suspect something similar was going on in Rwanda -- even though the slaughter was in some sense orchestrated, it seems like all sorts of perfectly ordinary civilians took part, using whatever was close at hand to slaughter their neighbours. This is not to say that there are not government programs with the same genocidal effect (e.g. the Holocaust, of course, or what we did to the Native Americans, whether we actively wished their extermination or no), but that active government participation is not really a sine qua non for genocide.
On the other hand, I think your two examples of government intervention changing attitudes are disputable. I am not sure about the de-Nazification program so I will leave that aside, but in the case of the Civil Rights Acts, there's a strong argument that they didn't actually change any opinions, just tip the balance of power, so that racism would be punished, not protected. By the 60s, if I recall, it was just a Democratic rump that was bent on maintaining Jim Crow -- a majority of Democrats (representing faithfully their constituents' views) voted for it, and every Republican but Barry Goldwater did the same.
Yea, that's it. Regardless of how wrong you are, maybe you should pick your words a little more carefully in the future.
Mine is: "And the difference is exactly what?" '
Uhhhhh . . . one wants you dead, and the other doesn't?
And from a historical perspective, as a previous commenter noted, attempts to convert have quickly become attempts to kill. From a Jewish perspective, attempts to convert us are attempts to exterminate us as a people.
The inference that because many Jews in the DC area are civil servants, many Jews elsewhere are as well is silly. DC is full of civil servants, especially if you restrict your focus to the middle class or to those who'd use online dating services. Including that as a data point misses the obvious outside explanation.
As a Jew, I'll agree with those who say that Jews feel excluded from the Republican Party by the bible-thumpers. I personally think most Evangelical Christianity-based political positions to be really silly at best, and at worst representative of the political philosophy my ancestors fled Russia to escape.
That ties into another point--secularism. Most of the Jews I know are avowed secularists and assimilationists. We don't think government should be based on religion, any religion. The hostility of the Jews I know toward the Republicans stems from exactly the same cause as that of atheists, agnostics, liberal Christians...we see the Republicans as in thrall to a group that wants to force their religion on us. (And for a libertarian like me, the fact that that wing of the Republicans seems to be MIA these days only hastens the flight left. If I can't have restraint in government, I'll take humanism.)
It seems that Jews who have actually lived under socialism, as it is taken to its logical extent, which is to say, perverted beyond any plausible usefulness, are far more likely to embrace libertarian, rather than than liberal, ideas. That has certainly been the case with me and the majority of my peers - fellow educated Russian Jews in their 20's.
I suppose that could have some influence away from classic liberalism/libertarianism, but who knows?
Jewish people are well educated, at least moreso than the general public, right? Aren't these people less likely to change parties in their adult years? maybe they are just inflexible, like may other generalized groups.
Lord knows there are all sorts of reasons why these groups should be Republicans -- and Affirmative Action, Israeli support, and pro-market economics would be prominent here. But the fact is that this hasn't been the case. The only question is whether this will continue into the future.
When we are talking about Jews in the US, what denomination initially comes to mind? Historically, it has been the Reform movement- a religious movement founded in late 19th-century Germany whose most deeply held tenets involve a liberalization of Halacha (Jewish Law) and tradition. Compared with traditional (Orthodox) Judiasm, Reform Judiasm (especially today) is very liberal.
The Reform movement has always had egalitarian worship services (no Mechiza to separate men and women in Synagogue) as well as relaxed Sabbath and Kosher rules and a willingness to incorporate elements from outside Jewish tradition into the liturgical services (such as playing an organ in Synagogue.)
Add to that a traditional orientation away from Messianic Judiasm (the Reform movement dropped Messiah references in the prayers a long time ago) and specific decision to align itself with causes like social justice (consider also the conditions in late 19th century Europe and early 20th century America) and you have the recipe for a broad-based, liberal religious movement.
The apex of the Reform movement's liberalization was clearly in the 1960's and 1970's; not coincidentally, that was also the time when the Reconstructionist (an even more liberal Jewish) denomination began to appear, and the Reform movement adopted even more radical changes to its belief system, such as replacing references to God as "Lord" with non-gender-specific terms like "Sovereign" as well as in some cases doing away with Hebrew during the services (in which the Rabbi or Cantor would play the song "Listen" by Jeff Klepper on the guitar in place of the traditional "Sh'ma".)
And from the 1970's to the 1980's, the Refrom movement found itself shrinking as Synagogue attendance began to decline.
So what's up with Reform Judiasm now? Hebrew is back; the number of Synagogues with organs is dwindling, God is "Lord" again, the Torah is read and discussed again, and the movement is growing.
And Jews in America are now being seen as becoming more conservative. Coincidence?
That is precisely Ayn Rand's position. She was not opposed to personal generosity, and was herself quite a charitable person on a personal level. As she explained, it gave her personal happiness to be able to contribute to certain others and that was her motive, not guilt or coercion.
She believed that men are, in fact, motivated by rational self interest, the same philosophy held my our founding fathers, and that laissez faire capitalism, not altruism or any other form of statism, is the only moral system of government.
But Minnie, as I mentioned in a post that has seemed to be vanished, it's simply not true. Jews were punished, by MAN, in THIS WORLD, for violating God's rules, including the rules of charity and tithing. The idea that Christianity should oppose redistribution of wealth on principle is a minority position amongst Christians (tho a majority amongst American evangelicals), and a very new and, should I say, politically convenient one at that.
But a Jew..back in the day..not providing his tithe....well lets just say tax evasion is treated more leniently in America.
and, is there any doubt that being anti-israel is being anti-semitic? have you seen those anti-war parades with people dressed in fake suicide bomb belts? those are not rightists. I know that they do not represent all leftists, but 'mainstream' leftists do not speak out against them. no, they have michael moore, who calls suicide bombers freedom fighters, sit in a place of honor at the democratic convention. again, the moral cowardice is telling.
the leftists these days are the ones who say that we just need to understand the people who want to kill the jews, that we need to use diplomacy with them, and that we need to guarantee them their right to be violently rejectionist while we wonder what horrible thing we must have done to make them that way. they are the modern day chaim rumkowski.
having said that, the republicans have never quite understood the understandable atavistic offence that most jews take at public expressions of all-inclusive christianity. (read the first pages of david frum's excellent book on being a republican speech writer and being invited to a prayer breakfast in the executive office building.) finally, justly or not, republicans are still associated with the unaccepting, genteely racist protestant society of the early twentieth century as well as with the dixiecrats who jumped to the republicans in the fifties and sixties.
I am not sure what you are talking about, but if what you say is true, then that was, of course, terrible. If people thus only "gave" because they would be punished if they didn't, then that would hardly constitute "charity", would it?
Actually, it's called communism. The state takes away the money from the individuals to redistribute as it sees fit. Unfortunately, but predictably, as history has shown, states "saw fit" to distribute most of it into the pockets of the corrupt leaders of any particular state. An interesting read is Ayn Rand's testimony during the 50's for a true description of what life was like in the real Russia at the time she emigrated, not the Hollywood version.
The Jews who established the largely socialistic political institutions in Israel didn't have the experiences that David mentioned.
Unfortunately, there is a long intellectual and religious tradition of favoring collectivism over individualism. Collective action (even if coercive) still has a strong appeal to well-meaning people who want the big social problems solved (or at least addressed seriously).
Hopefully, as the evidence accumulates, more young Jews will realize that individualism works better.
As Stalin, Mao and Pot Pol have proved, communism doesn't work in large communities. Its a ghetto phenomenon. Unfortunately, liberals still believe an government instituion can perfect the flaws of human character, and Jews are baffled and frustrated when they can't use their ghetto experience to benefit everyone.
I always figured Jewish folks voted liberal democrat or further left because everybody on the right, according to so many prominent internet and MSM liberals, are basically Jew and minority-hating fascists. If I were Jewish and heard that mantra over and over again and didn't think long and hard about it, I'd probably believe it, assume that Republicans are just busy building a better gas shower, write them off as the spiritual heirs of the Nazis (I mean, they just adore that Austrian guy Hayek and his pal von Mises, they must be bad, right?) and act accordingly.
That said, a good number of my colleagues and close acquaintences in D.C. are observant Jews of varying degrees of orthodoxy. They tend to be conservative in their personal and political inclinations, and based on what they tell me usually vote Republican. As a practicing Catholic I find I have much in common with them in terms of world view on a lot of social and economic issues. Probably the greater number of my Jewish colleagues practice reform Judaisim or don't practice at all, and they tend either to be sort of religious left, or secular left in outlook and really, really reflexively, impenetrably liberal.
1) the concept "liberal" of my youth (growing up in the 1960's and 70's) was embodied in the thinking of Allard Lowenstein, Jacob Javits and others, has been obliterated by the rhetoric and jargon of today's political and Internet landscape.
2) there is an anti-Israel sentiment among today's "liberals" that makes people like me shudder in disbelief.
3) to somehow attempt to categorize Jewish people, Blacks, Asians or Christians in my opinion is to do a disservice to personal opinion and choice..."we don't all think alike!" just like they don't "all look alike."
4) the stereotype of Jewish "socialists" is older than my long ago deceased grandfather.
5) many of the Jewish immigrants to this country came through NY City and stayed. Many entrepreneurs created businesses in the garment trade. Stereotypes or simply good business. One such relative, a great aunt once told stories of fighting the elevator union in lower Manhattan (the shop was on one of the upper floors and she needed to get a shipment out).
6) the apparently held belief among some Christian fundamentalists that Jews cannot enter Heaven unless there is an embrace of Jesus can clearly be construed as a thinly veiled anti-semitism.
Yikes. Maybe we should go back to Berstein's point that not as many Jews were entrepreneurs as some folks might think. That idea looks better, at least by comparison.
First, Jews, like most, are creatures of habit. Decades ago, the Democrat party was more welcoming to Jews and did embrace principles more similar to those of Jews. So, Jews identifying as Democrats made sense.
But, times change. Some Jews have caught on, but many others either pay no attention, or don't "get it," or believe the half-truths and fictions that their party continues to tell them. And they keep on voting for "their" party, though it left them a while back.
Secondly, the status of Jews in the world changed in many societies - particularly in America. Jews no longer need worry in this nation about being denied jobs and housing, about being attacked for their religion, etc. The Holocaust happened so long ago, many Americans have no clue what it really was. In other words: Jews are no longer perceived as "victims."
The Democrat party of today's era is one which embraces victims. Lose your "victim status" - and your cause is no longer one worth fighting for.
Will more Jews catch on eventually? Dunno. People have busy lives, and those who are writing comments here pay far more attention to political issues than your average, every day Jew or non-Jew. Change happens slowly, though - so, maybe there is hope.
If the main reason to support something is Christian, and if the secular arguments that are the public face of the movement aren't very convincing, few Jews are going to favor it.
This happens to varying degrees with intelligent design, abortion, and gay rights, among others.
You rock! Very good summary of the comments.
What amazes me is that is that no one has yet remaked upon the entire basis of DB's post. As a reminder, here it is:
Who is emailing DB with the assertion that "American Jews should logically be more conservative on economics because Jews have been such successful entrepreneurs..."???
Is it me, or is that statement silly stereotyping at its most charitable, and garden variety anti-semitism at its most pernicious? Why does DB feel it necessary to "respond" to such "assertions" in the first place?
It was pointed out to me in response that DB wasn't necessarily endorsing that view of human nature, but rather might just been providing some counter-evidence for people that did believe that. In other words, DB could be saying, "if you believe that politics is largely determined by economic position and are therefore puzzled by the large number of liberal Jews, you should consider the fact that you may be overestimating the number of Jewish entrepreneurs and underestimating the number of Jewish government employees."
Again, I'm not sure how convincing that is, but in my book, it beats some of the more recently-suggested explanations.
Huh? If you think the Jewish ghettos were places of great wealth you are very badly mistaken. Most Jews in the ghettos were very poor. This is no surprise when you consider that they were often barred from professions, universities, land ownership, and other activities, as well as often being taxed at higher rates than the rest of the community.
That still doesn't explain the pesky liberalism question, though. I guess it just CAN'T be that liberal Jews come to liberalism through their values, thought, study, and experience. So let's keep trying to posit other explanations.
There are many different ways to interpret "fear of God."
Some of us happen to believe that liberal values aren't really being practiced by Democrats and today's so-called "liberals." I am not alone in my opinion of this....
I agree that there are liberals out there who condemn conservatives reflexively, and I agree that this is not a good thing. But that's not what this thread has been about.
Still, if I ever notice a thread on the VC in which the issue is "Why are some Jews conservative?" and the bulk of the responses attribute the conservatism to Jews misunderstanding their own history/religion, reflexive fealty to outmoded ghetto politics, just doing what grampa did, genetics, and/or any of the strange to downright offensive theories that have been floated in the thread we're in now -- well then, I'll be happy to say those aren't helpful ways to approach the issue.
As to liberalism not being practiced by Democrats, I wouldn't be the first to suggest that the Republicans aren't exactly classic conservatives these days. But that's a bigger issue. Tell you what: I'll assume you came to your opinions through thoughtful deliberation if you'll assume the same about me.
Expressing faith in one's class is not uncommon, to the contrary. Still, a lot of evangelization on that subject, within that class, is warranted; conversions from a pseudo-liberal to a more substantive liberal faith would be welcome. Put differently, that statement certainly reflects a formal, classical liberal disposition and no doubt reflects the attitude of some individuals, but how common it is is more debateable. I remain both an agnostic and a skeptic, occasionally a heretic, when it comes to such assured expressions of faith.
"I guess it just CAN'T be that liberal Jews come to liberalism through their values, thought, study, and experience."
ibid.
I do understand your point, but am just wondering who these friends of DB are that email him with comments containing such assumptions as "Jews have been such good entrepreneurs." This sounds strangely similar to "Asians are so good at math" or "Blacks are such good basketball players."
I'm not saying the emailers are bigoted...but at minimum the emails seem based upon silly stereotypes. I suppose you could say that DB is actually refuting the stereotyping by pointing out that not all Jews were entrepreneurs, but I have to ask 1) Is that basic fact really worth a posting? and 2) What does that have to do with anything other than refuting stereotypes of Jews.
Respectfully, I'm not sure I understand your point. "Faith in one's class"? If you mean that people generally believe in their own opinions, fine, but that's not inconsistent with respect for others.
"Conversions from a pseudo liberal to a more substantive liberal faith"? Is the claim that I was expressing a substantive liberal belief, but others are merely pseudo-liberals? Or the other way around?
If you are skeptical about the good faith of "liberals" in dealing with "conservatives" in general, see my response to Peg. Let's not lose sight of the fact that this thread has been mostly devoted to conservatives arguing that there is apparently no rational reason that Jewish liberals could be Jewish liberals.
Fair enough, I definitely see your point. I guess I was just distracted by all the even more bizarre claims about Jews in this thread.
And, as you completely missed the point, it is true for Jews in the past as well as Christians that at periods in our history state was an organ of the church.
The purpose of charity is not the warm fuzzy feeling. It's the direct result - poor people fed, clothed, taken care of, etc.
To be fair though, rather than "stupid," the terms "self-centered," "uncharitable," etc. would be the appropriate substitutes. But do continue with the sermonettes about how "liberals" abjure from expressions of disrespect, intellectual laziness and simplistic assumptions. And I'll read with rapt attentiveness, eager to learn from my betters.
So, if we recast the question as, "why are many Jews liberals or socialists (aka the range in the current democratic party) vs espousing right-wing libertarian ideas", does the disussion change? That drops out all of the "evangelicals are coming to get us" and the "conservatives want christianity integrated into all aspects of our life" POVs, which few, if any, Jews on the right would support.
The issue is really not about compulsury charity, it is about the legitimacy of communitarian majoritarian action of any sort.
On a more serious note, also recognize why Jews succeeded more than many of their equally discriminated brethren. Jews are, much more than any other social group, internal and collectivist. Jews, in facing past discrimination, have often relied on each other, and in doing so, have eschewed the values of individualist empowerment upon which much of liberterianism relies.
"Daniel G., though I personally oppose economic liberterianims, I think there would be significantly more liberterian Jews if they had a less incestuous relationship with their evangelical/fascist brethrens. "
Do you mean the relationship described by the republican party, or the neo-conservative support of George Bush (largely backed by religous conservatives) or some other incestuous relationship? Or all of the above?
Do some liberal jews see libertarian jews as "Uncle Toms" because of this relationship with the religious right? Its an interesting parallel with the feelings libertarian jews have towards liberal jews' ambivalent(?) relationship with the (increasingly anti-semetic) hard left.
charity:
(noun) 1 : benevolent goodwill toward or love of humanity;
I'll stick with my "understanding", thank you, and you and your like minded statists (Lenin, Marx, etc.) can stick with yours. But in the meantime, please keep
your hands out of my pockets. I'll restrain myself from commenting on the moral validity of a position where one only wants to give if everyone else is forced to give.
As a right wing atheist Jew this sounds fine to me.
We work together to protect the only democracy in the Middle East and to hopefully bring peace and democracy to the rest of that region.
Then we sit around and wait for the Rapture.
If it comes then I guess I was wrong... my bad, but certainly not the Christians' fault.
If they're wrong, well I got what I wanted.
Where is the conflict?
Now, I admit, if particle physics ever advances to the point where we can build some kind of "rapture machine" to bring on the Rapture then there would be some conflict over whether or not to do it but I have to admit this possibility is not high on my worry list... somewhere below being nibbled to death by lemmings.
In any event, old traditions and cultural affinities die hard, and they need a compelling force to force a new valence. E.g., the Republican loss of African-Americans during the New Deal or the Democratic loss of White southerners after 1960. Something big happened to shift allegiances.
Nothing comparable has emerged to force Jews to desert their home in the Democratic party.
As for the thesis that it has to do with their employment in the government, I have not seen the research, but this strikes me as highly implausible. I have seen little evidence that Jews as a group have relied heavily on government employment for economic success, and indeed, their success in education (and, with that, the private sector) is very well established.
Finally, as to Barry's comment - the idea that American Jews were first attracted to the Democratic party's "pacifism betrays a lack of historical knowledge. FDR, Truman, Johnson, Kennedy and Carter could scarcely be labelled pacifists, and at the time the grandparents and parents of today's voters were forging their early partisan identities, the most salient war was WWII. (Remember Bob Dole's comment about "Democrat wars"?) Analysis on that level -- or its obverse -- is more about rallying the partisan faithful than trying to understand.
While Justin is certainly correct that I don't speak for him, I don't think what he said contradicted what I said. I oppose generally writing off everyone who embraces a relatively mainstream political philosohpy (liberalism or conservativsm) as stupid or lazy. Justin referred to a particular position on a particular issue as "selfish." That's quite different.\
Daniel G.:
You're probably right that one thing keeping Jews away from the current Republican party is the influence of the evangelical Christian right. You can decide to lay down with them and try to avoid fleas, as Michael Friedman does. But even if one believes that the Christian right has the "correct" position on Israel, albeit for the wrong reasons, many liberal Jews are still too horrified at the positions of the Christian right on a whole host of other issues to ally themselves with them.
School prayer? I lived through that from 5th grade to 8th grade at a private school. Made a point of keeping my head up during chapel when almost everyone else was bowing in prayer. Some kids complained I was being arrogant, obnoxious and rude. Nothing like a little persecution to build character and confirm one's personal convictions.
Abortion? I'm no fan myself. It seems obvious to me that although a fertilized egg is not a human being an 8 month fetus is. It also seems obvious to me that the decision on when to consider a fetus to be human (and when to consider it to be something that is not yet human but that still has rights to be protected) is a legislative function, not a judicial one.
Creches or the Ten Commandments? Definitely not high on my list of problems. Anyway, I assume most Jews don't object to the Ten Commandments. As long as there's no measurable impact on my tax bill I can live with it - it's certainly less annoying than the portion of my tax bill that goes to things like Piss Christ or women parading around wearing clothes made of raw meat and much less annoying than the portion that goes to agricultural price supports.
I could go on, but the point isn't what your or my opinion is on those issues. The point is that the fact that the Christian right might arguably be "good on Israel" is not going to be sufficient for Jewish folks with liberal leanings. (I note that it's even plausible to think that the Christian right/Neo-con position on Israel isn't even in Israel's best interest).
Of course Jewish folks without liberal leanings, like yourself, can feel free decide that even though these folks think you're going to hell and would like to further establish their religion in the public square, they make fine allies. And if the Christian right agreed with me about the various issues I list above, I might say, "fine, we'll see who gets the last laugh in the afterlife." But the other stuff is too important.
As for the Jewish habit of being llberal-Deomcrat...
1) Entrepreneurialism != social conservatism. The attraction
of lower taxes and regulation is offset by the fear of
persecution. Because...
2) Centuries of oppression and persecution by traditionalist
and reactionary forces are not quickly forgotten.
3) American Jews embraced liberalism because it liberated
them, and in the process internalized the whole liberal
agenda - which most continue to support.