If you’re not a leftist, why vote Democrat in 2012?
Dennis Prager asks the question.
He’s got a few more things to say:
For many non-leftist Democrats, it is emotionally impossible to vote Republican.
I can illustrate this best with a personal example that I often use in speeches to Jewish audiences.
I was raised both as an Orthodox Jew and a liberal Democrat. In my early 20s, not wanting to practice religious laws solely out of habit or fear, I experimented with religious non-observance.
I remember well the one time this yeshiva graduate ate ham. It was emotionally difficult.
I also well remember the first time this lifelong Democrat voted Republican. And it, too, was difficult. In fact, it was actually more emotionally difficult to vote Republican than to eat the ham.
Now, how could that be? How could it possibly have been more emotionally trying for a lifelong Democrat to vote Republican than for a lifelong observant Jew to eat ham? Isn’t religion a far deeper conviction than politics?
The question implies the answer.
Liberalism and leftism are religions. While I felt I would be sinning against God when I tasted ham, I was certain I was sinning against both God and man were I to vote Republican.
it is truth
secularism is a religion and it trumps all other belief systems
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574402591116901498.html
i’m sure many have seen this article already; but here it is again if you haven’t
Yes, but voting ones self interest is not a religion.
What you say is true, but is does not go deep enough, particularly when it comes to Jews, who we would credit with a little more savvy.
There is an element of pathology. It certainly wll ot do to conflate jews with all “non leftists”. I think someone here s confused about what “non-leftists” actually are.
“Secularism”, may or may not be a religion, it is hard to say as the term covers so many beliefs and is not synonymous with “Liberalism”, but Marxism most surely s a religion. It is n fact a cult.
There is something very dark and serpentine iat work here, and, I imagine, that if we trace itback in time we will find that it has to do with propaganda and political direct action targeted at Jews in the interwar period (and perhaps before).
Roger L. Simon (the good one at Pajamas media) is a Hollywood conservative Jew (surely in only a slightly larger minority group than Sammy Davis Jr. who said he was in a very small minority group as a black, one eyed, Jew).
He has written to his Jewish colleagues that the Democrat Party is NOT their religion.
Sigh. My fellow Jews are geniuses in science, medicine, business, the law, the arts but complete idiots when it comes to politics. I guess something has to bring the average down. I’ve come to think of it as a remanent of the socialism of the Pale of Settlement that would free them of the depredations and virulent anti-Semitism of the Russians, Lithuanians, and Poles. Living in New York doesn’t help either.
Exactly right Paul in Boston. Jews are still reacting to the dangers the religious right posed a long time ago. BTW it wasn’t just the old country, there was Father Coughlin and his like in this country.
But let’s not stereotype. There are a few super Zionist Jews who are confident enough of the Christian right benevolence, or in the use of violence if need be, see the religious right as allies. We’re proof that not all Jews are herd animals. Unfortunately since change of belief seems to depend more on trauma than logic so the majority of Jews probably will not wake up to the dangers the left until blood starts to flow. Obama’s malicious stupidity will be harder to rationalize then.
Along those lines maybe Obama’s re-election will be a good thing if the results are so catastrophic that the very stupid American electorate learns from it. This statement is a result of a meeting I had this week with two twenty-something graduate students. Both were Obama supporters and both literally had the maturity of 8 year olds. The traumas of a second Obama term may mature them.
final note; I was at a military academy graduation Wednesday at which Obama spoke. We parents were wondering how Obama would make the speech about himself.
Bob–so did the president make it about himself? His recent speech on the Middle East was mostly about himself, although he did manage to scare or ally without increasing our pull in our enemies.
I am a former Democratic Party activist, not just a nominal Democrat. It turned out in 2008 that it was easier than I thought to vote Republican.
If the subject matter weren’t so serious you’d have to find humor aplenty in this situation. The very people who were certain Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham and Ronald Reagan wanted an oppressive theocracy in America, were and are the same people that longed for one IN REALITY.
Alex, no the president delivered a rather mundane nondescript speech. Janet Incompetano was there and her speech was memorable it that it was fit for a small high school graduation. It was something about climbing Mt. Everest even though K-2 is the harder climb.
BTW, I have to congratulate myself, when the President spoke I wanted to stand up and shout “liar!” or “get off the stage”, but did not.
I couldn’t bring myself to vote Republican in 2008 even though I could see all the danger Obama posed. This was partially out of psychological dissonance, but a part of me was worried that casting a meaningless Massachusetts vote against Obama might get me put on a government list somewhere. The Obama administration has proven that it carefully checks the backgrounds of any group/business it may provide assistance to (note the proponderance of GM dealerships that weren’t protected when it was found that they made contributions to the GOP).
I was able to bring myself to vote for Republicans in the November elections, but I still remain wary of the implications of casting a vote against Obama and his union goons who police the polling sites. At this point, I’m leaning towards sitting out 2012.
Prager is right. The ruling class had tried during most of the 20th century to make the two parties very smiliar. That’s why we had liberal “Rockefeller” Repubicans, and conservative Blue Dog Democrats.
No matter how much you hear from the MSM about how the Reppublican Party has shifted to the right, it has only done so in response to the Democrats FIRST shifting to the far left.
The far-left was a small fringe element of the Democrat Party as recently as 20 years ago. In 1991, the far left Progressive Caucus was formed with only 6 members. By the 111th Congresss, the term just ended, the Progressive Caucus had grown to 80 members. After the infamous “shellacking” the Democrats took in Nov. 2010 midterms, the Progressive Caucus lost only one net member. The “shellacking” came almost exclusively at the expense of the Blue Dogs.
For perspective, in the 111th Congress, when the Democrats had an overwhlelming House majority, the Progressive Caucus made up 32% of the House Democrats. In the current 112th Congress, they make up 41% of House Democrats. They’ve gone from almost nothing in 1991 to 41% of the House in 20 years, with barely a peep out of the MSM about how the Democrat Party was becoming increasingly dominated by the far left. Anectdotally, I can say that I’ve spoken to lifelong Democrats who aren’t even aware of this dramatic leftward shift.
Prager asks the correct question. Why vote Democrat if you’re not a Leftist?
http://thatsmycongress.com/index.php/2010/11/15/progressive-caucus-expands-influence-within-house-democrats/
Jack, how about you grow a pair and vote as if your children and grandchildren are counting on you and millions of other courageous Americans? Jeeezz.
No matter how much you hear from the MSM about how the Reppublican Party has shifted to the right, it has only done so in response to the Democrats FIRST shifting to the far left.
Gotta strongly disagree with this. The GOP has not moved right; in fact, it has moved left over the last 40 years. It’s just that the Dems have lurched light years to the left.
Read one of JFK’s speeches. He’d be too far right to run today as a Republican. Seriously. Read one.
I once tripped up a leftist troll with a quote I attributed to Rush Limbaugh. The troll responded that that sort of far-right lunacy was to be expected of fascist right-wing extremist like Limbaugh. I then revealed that it was a quote from JFK, not Limbaugh, and he cyber spluttered in rage at having been caught out like that.
Point made.
I am not a “leftist” and I am still vacillating between voting for Obama and not voting. As hard as I try (for the sakes of you guys), I still can’t see Obama as a leftist. He still looks pretty durned centrist to me.
Paul in Boston Says:
May 20th, 2011 at 10:46 am
“Sigh. My fellow Jews are geniuses in science, medicine, business, the law, the arts but complete idiots when it comes to politics. I guess something has to bring the average down. I’ve come to think of it as a remanent of the socialism of the Pale of Settlement that would free them of the depredations and virulent anti-Semitism of the Russians, Lithuanians, and Poles. Living in New York doesn’t help either.”
Hi,
This isn’t a snide question. And only if you get a chance …
When you refer to ” … the socialism of the Pale of Settlement that would free them …” are you referring to Marxist derived doctrines of international, universalist, class abolishing socialism adopted by some of the people in question; or, are you referring to an actual, on the ground, Jewish equivalent of the ethnic Russian Obshchina. Say, expressed as a kind of defensive and communal, social lager?
“Simon Says:
May 20th, 2011 at 6:12 pm
I am not a “leftist” and I am still vacillating between voting for Obama and not voting. As hard as I try (for the sakes of you guys), I still can’t see Obama as a leftist. He still looks pretty durned centrist to me.”
Consider then his views on rights, and his problem with the traditional Constitutional formulations, negatively expressed, of liberty; and by implication rights.
Under one system, that which is not prohibited you may do or pursue. Under the other that which is expressed you may do or have a right to have provided.
The Bill of Rights of course largely protects our preexisting liberties and natural rights by memorializing certain of them in writing, and placing explicit restrictions on the government’s ability to infringe upon them.
Contrast that traditional predicate with one that says you have a right to have something provided to you (a positive liberty or right), and the resulting correlative legal onus it develops and then places on another, to accept the duty to provide.
Someone here referred to Dewey and his Hegelian-ism the other day. Obama demonstrates himself to be a member of that school of thought in his criticism of our Constitution as a “Charter of negative (-ly formulated) liberties.
On these questions, this old Stanley Kurtz piece is as relevant and insightful today as it was when it was published a decade ago.
Prager should have started with bacon.
Some of the comments on this thread are truly chilling.
A second term for Obama will literally lead to millions of deaths in America. Count on it.
“” The GOP has not moved right; in fact, it has moved left over the last 40 years. It’s just that the Dems have lurched light years to the left.””
OB
Surely the average democrat has to know this. And they have to know their surge leftward has demonstrably made for worsening conditions for people’s lives (See Detroit as a simple microcosim).
What seems to overide all the logic of what’s causing the deteriorating conditions, is a perverse sort of relief in not feeling responsible to do anything about it because that requires an imperialistic and judgemental attitude. Which basically means these folks have been trained through peer pressure dynamics that doing the right thing for people’s lives can never feel right. So they do nothing but deny they have any hand whatsoever in it all.
DNW May 20 at 6.17 pm
Marxism. C.f. Many leaders of the Russian Revolution. No one had yet experienced Lenin and Stalin in their full glory. Even later it still didn’t matter. My father grew up in Poland between WWI and II. He had friends who despite knowing what was going on, went off to the USSR to help build socialism. They wound up in the Lubyanka and then disappeared. Self deception when you live in a safe place like the US is much easier and lasts a lot longer.
Paul in Boston,
“My fellow Jews are geniuses in science, medicine, business, the law, the arts but complete idiots when it comes to politics.”
That’s American Jewry you’re talking about. I can’t help noticing this wide and ever widening rift between Jews across the two ponds (Atlantic and Mediterranean; I’m on the east side).
Bob from Virginia,
“Exactly right Paul in Boston. Jews are still reacting to the dangers the religious right posed a long time ago.”
Quoted for truth. In my debates with Jews on Daily Kos, Jews who profess to be pro-Israel, the points I made regarding the danger of Islamic imperialism were anathematized the usual way (the R-word, what else?), and I was accused of being duped by those “White Christian conservatives,” whose agenda is, I was told, to round up all Jews and kill them in the final scenario (but that’s not racist at all, no sir).
As a believing Orthodox Jew I follow the Torah’s command that the Jews are not to trust in any kind of alliances, because they might fail even when the ally is sincere (cf. how France almost failed to send naval aid to the American revolutionaries because of the troubles besetting the French monarchy at the time). But I thank all you who stand with Israel at these perilous times. HaShem keep your country safe from your own challenges, and may you all live to see the demise of this foul regime (in the media and academe as well as government).