Why Obama doesn’t need to worry about the Jews

The oft-repeated idea that Jews are abandoning Obama over his demand that Israel return to its indefensible 1949 borders is horsefeathers. Liberal Jews care more about the Democratic Party than they do about Israel, and neoconservative Jews care more about “democracy” than they do about Israel.

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Rhona N. writes:

Most Jews have abandoned Judaism as a religion. It is merely a cultural phenomenon for most. Their new religion is liberalism and the Democratic party.

LA replies:

Ok, they’ve abandoned Judaism. But have they also abandoned loyalty to and concern about the Jewish people? It seems to me that that’s the issue here.

Rhona replies:

I have heard this from the mouths of many Jews — they are exceedingly proud that they vote against “their own interests.” It makes them feel morally superior. That’s why liberalism is a religion to them. And don’t forget, they haven’t felt any pain from this — yet. They can just move.

Jeremy G. writes:

The question isn’t whether liberal Jews have abandoned loyalty to the Jewish people. In their minds there is no contradiction between supporting Obama and being loyal to the Jewish people. The amazing reality is that liberal Jews live with intense contradictions in many areas in order to maintain their liberal beliefs (their present religious belief system). One possibility that comes immediately to mind is for liberal Jews to believe that Obama really knows what is best for the Jewish people, better even than Netanyahu. Problem solved!

Mark Jaws writes:

While I have known for over 30 years that liberal Jews are first and foremost liberals, and then Jews, there is yet another point to consider when discussing the potential Jewish abandonment of Obama. Rich liberal Jews made Obama, and they can just as easily break him. They provided him much needed money and media cover. He knows that, and his Jewish supporters know that he knows that. While Obama is no friend of Israel, I don’t think his puppeteers will ever allow him to go too far with Israel.

May 26

Allen G. writes:

Because of their arrogance and narcissism liberal Jews have lost loyalty to decency. By supporting ideas that no civilized person can live by (e.g., one man / one vote in South Africa), they have a hard time not being seduced by anything that smacks of equality. That is why the future conflict in the destruction of Israel will be based on images that relate to the weak against strong etc .

Allen G. continues:

It is because Jews are basically narcissistic. They are the chosen people and therefore they are morally superior. (Of course they believe that everyone is equal and that the reason they do better in school is that they value education, not that they have a higher than average IQ.)

Rhona N. writes:

And this should put to rest Kevin MacDonald’s ridiculous claims that Jews are covertly cooperating to assert their own interests. If anything, Jews (most of them, anyhow) are the most suicidal people on earth!

Rhona N. writes:

I agree partially with what Jeremy says, but I think there is another side to it. Many Jews are proud of not being loyal to the Jewish people. They take it as a sign of transcending petty ethnic allegiances for more important goals. They are better than that. They support the poor, the sick, the criminal, the Other, precisely because they aren’t Jews. They take pleasure in their moral largesse and they critique those who may be patriotic or who put the needs of their communities first. These people are racists, rednecks, xenophobes, and the Jews feel superior to them. If Obama is not good for the Jews, so what, Obama is doing what is right for the oppressed. That is more important.

James R. writes:

Rhona wrote:

they are exceedingly proud that they vote against “their own interests.”

I think if we pair Rhona’s observation with some of the observations in the thread on liberals and status competition we’re getting a large facet of the truth. Liberals in general are proud to “vote against their own interests,” and frequently disparage their opponents as acting out of self-interest. [LA replies: Ok, but, again, they take that position because they think it’s morally right, not (primarily) because they are seeking higher status.]

Of course, in their own lives, while liberals vote against their own interest, they act in their own interests. Their personal behavior frequently fails to match their beliefs. Thus you do get such things as liberals asserting that intellectual differences are socially determined, but behaving otherwise when they go to the sperm bank. Wealthy liberals calling for higher taxes on people like themselves, while they make sure they will shield their own wealth from any such taxes. Criticizing insider relationships, but then writing bills to reward their friends and punish their opponents. Calling for social sacrifice but then shielding themselves from it, and indeed insuring they will be the ones who reap the lion’s share of the “sacrifice” (by controlling the resulting programs and directing them to their own benefits).

American Jews, in Rhona’s example, who are proud to oppose “Jewish interests” fall into this category of liberal behavior. Note that any sacrifice of “their own interests” is actually vicarious: it’s not they themselves whom they are putting at risk, it’s not they themselves who are sacrificing their own direct personal interests. [LA replies: This would not apply to “Peace-Now” Israeli Jews who really do seek the ruin and danger of their own country.]

But they can engage in a sort of moral preening. Indeed, this sort of behavior is the inevitable consequence of the liberal/progressive hostility to “self-interest.” If a nation or people acting in its self interest is morally tainted, there is only one ethical option available: act against those interests. Thus America (and the West) acting in its own interests is morally objectionable, and can only be done as a sort of “unprincipled exception” (to keep themselves in office once they have been elected, they have to accept the lesser of two evils, and sometimes dirty their hands in this way). A good part of “liberal hypocrisy” has this attitude as it’s origin, because while they believe acting out of self-interest is unsavory, they also think they are entitled because of their superior morality.

As T.S. Eliot once wrote, “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm– but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

James R. adds:

Two-thirds of my point is that it’s not Jewish people, or even just liberal Jewish people who act this way, it’s liberals generally, and liberal Jews are a subset of progressive liberalism.]

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 25, 2011 09:01 AM | Send