Some opinions on the age old question
In Why Are Jews Liberal?, longtime Commentary Magazine editor-in-chief and Congressional Medal of Honor awardee Norman Podhoretz attempts to provide a definitive answer to one of the most perplexing anomalies in American politics. After all, considering their choice of professions and traditionally strong family values, Jews seem odd candidates for contemporary American liberalism, yet they remain among its most loyal constituents. So why do so many Jews remain on the Left? Mr. Podhoretz believes that this can be best understood by thinking of liberal Jews as not so much adherents of Judaism who happen to vote “left”, but as adherents of a surrogate religion, Liberalism. When the majority of Jews left Eastern Europe and the thousand-year-old religious civilization they had developed there, they in effect “converted” out of traditional Judaism and into Liberalism, which became their new belief system. Considering the shock and dissonance of leaving one world for another and the age-old hope for what we call in the Yiddish language a besere un shenere velt, “a better and more beautiful world”, it isn’t implausible that Jewish immigrants to America would seek to channel their angst and yearning into a politics that seemed to have many of their interests in common.
Nonetheless, Mr. Podhoretz accurately notes, this all happened in the last century and the century before that. Today, when liberalism continues to stand for high taxes (which hurt middle class families) and racial preferences in schools (Jews don’t count among the officially preferred races), Jewish persistence in voting left can only be explained as the sort of tenacity usually reserved for religious worship. Surely, it can’t be in our own interest.
But you don’t vote for something that clearly isn’t in your interest. It’s unlikely that the voting patterns of an entire ethnic group, particularly one as politically aware as the American Jewish one, can be dismissed as wholly irrational. I beg the reader’s indulgence in begging to differ with the great Podhoretz: Jews don’t vote against their interest. (No one does.)
It is liberalism, rather than conservatism, that appeals to Jews because it is liberalism, and not conservatism, which defines freedom as something the government makes sure you’re not deprived of, instead of something for which the government needs to stay away for you to have. Throughout the long and often tragic history of the Jewish Diaspora, it was the “hands-off” governments (like Czarist Russia) in which Jews were in greater danger than in the “hands-on” ones (like Austria-Hungary). The greatest fear of Jews then (and now) is not the “conservative” concern of the government doing away with our liberties, but the “liberal” concern of the government’s inaction when our liberties are violated. Earning upper-middle class salaries doesn’t make most Jews less worried about an angry mob tearing down the door; as we see it, the more we have, the more obvious targets for the mob we become.
This is not to say that Mr. Podhoretz’s thesis is without merit; on the contrary. To look at Jewish voting habits as a species of religious conviction goes a long way toward explaining the commitment of so many American Jews to practically any and all liberal policies, not all of which have anything to do with keeping the government closer or farther away. But we must remember that while America is a relatively young country, the Jews are an old people, a people with a long memory. That’s a burden we bear, and it’s against no-one’s interest.
Some opinions on the age old question
In Why Are Jews Liberal?, longtime Commentary Magazine editor-in-chief and Congressional Medal of Honor awardee Norman Podhoretz attempts to provide a definitive answer to one of the most perplexing anomalies in American politics. After all, considering their choice of professions and traditionally strong family values, Jews seem odd candidates for contemporary American liberalism, yet they remain among its most loyal constituents. So why do so many Jews remain on the Left? Mr. Podhoretz believes that this can be best understood by thinking of liberal Jews as not so much adherents of Judaism who happen to vote “left”, but as adherents of a surrogate religion, Liberalism. When the majority of Jews left Eastern Europe and the thousand-year-old religious civilization they had developed there, they in effect “converted” out of traditional Judaism and into Liberalism, which became their new belief system. Considering the shock and dissonance of leaving one world for another that comes from leaving everything one knows, which and the age-old hope for what we call in the Yiddish language a besere un shenere velt, “a better and more beautiful world”, it isn’t implausible that Jewish immigrants to America would seek to channel their angst and yearning into a politics that seemed to have many of their interests in common.
Nonetheless, Mr. Podhoretz accurately notes, this all happened in the last century and the century before that. Today, when liberalism continues to stand for high taxes (which hurt middle class families) and racial preferences in schools (Jews don’t count among the officially preferred races), Jewish persistence in voting left can only be explained as the sort of tenacity usually reserved for religious worship. Surely, it can’t be in our own interest.
But you don’t vote for something that clearly isn’t in your interest. It’s unlikely that the voting patterns of an entire ethnic group, particularly one as politically aware as the American Jewish one, can be dismissed as wholly irrational. I beg the reader’s indulgence in begging to differ with the great Podhoretz: Jews don’t vote against their interest. (No one does.)
It is liberalism, rather than conservatism, that appeals to Jews because it is liberalism, and not conservatism, which defines freedom as something the government makes sure you’re not deprived of, instead of something for which the government needs to stay away for you to have. Throughout the long and often tragic history of the Jewish Diaspora, it was the “hands-off” governments (like Czarist Russia) in which Jews were in greater danger than in the “hands-on” ones (like Austria-Hungary). The greatest fear of Jews then (and now) is not the “conservative” concern of the government doing away with our liberties, but the “liberal” concern of the government’s inaction when our liberties are violated. Earning upper-middle class salaries doesn’t make most Jews less worried about an angry mob tearing down the door; as we see it, the more we have, the more obvious targets for the mob we become.
This is not to say that Mr. Podhoretz’s thesis is without merit; on the contrary. To look at Jewish voting habits as a species of religious conviction goes a long way toward explaining the commitment of so many American Jews to practically any and all liberal policies, not all of which have anything to do with keeping the government closer or farther away. But we must remember that while America is a relatively young country, the Jews are an old people, a people with a long memory. That’s a burden we bear, and it’s against no-one’s interest.