American Jews overwhelmingly tend to vote Democrat for one simple reason: they see the choice as being between 1) the Democrats and their belief in nothing versus 2) the Republicans and their beliefs based on their Christian faith and heritage.
Given that choice, then, rather than side with people of faith – which they see as a different and potentially antagonistic belief system – they feel safer in the party that is devoid of any values or convictions.
The “thinking” behind this is that, if people believe in things then they might fight for those things. They might even commit atrocities in their name. Only those who believe in nothing have nothing to kill or fight for. If everyone just believed in nothing, the “thinking” goes: then the Jews would be safe, for if one doesn’t believe in anything then they can’t believe the Jews are bad.
These people believe that it is beliefs and not what was believed that led to the Holocaust and to all of the other world’s atrocities. It’s why the Modern Liberal’s Blueprint for Utopia as rendered by John Lennon sought a world without countries, religions or any other values or convictions (just all the people living for “today.”)
This fear was perhaps best articulated by Rabbi Joshua Hammerman who declared that “Emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burn mosques [or by extension engage in pogroms, crusades and holocausts], bash gays [or, by extension, bash Jews] or indiscriminately banish immigrants [including the Jews].”
How deep – and insane – is this fear? Consider that what led Rabbi Hammerman to feel such terror was not a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan or a gathering of Neo-Nazis. It was his horror a few years back, over the possibility that the proud Christian Tim Tebow might lead his team to the Super Bowl which would then “embolden” his “faithful,” leading to the possibility of rampages and atrocities.
The Modern Liberal is, of course, wrong. In fact, he is as wrong as wrong can be. First, he is wrong to believe that a nation without values will keep the Jews safe. In fact, a nation without values is exactly the one that would be willing to commit atrocities because there’s nothing morally to stop them. Further, as anyone who knows my work knows: Indiscriminateness of thought does not lead to indiscriminateness of policy. Instead it leads invariably and inevitably to siding with evil over good and wrong over right.
This is why the Jews are not only typically the first target of the Liberal but the people he has the most hatred for. Witness the singling out of Israel for divestment and boycott and the blood libels offered by the likes of Jimmy Carter and John Kerry.
Secondly, he is wrong about Christians being antagonistic to Judaism. Yes, in the past – in the Old World – Christians saw Jews as an a different religion, one that, if adopted by their children would see them denied eternal life. But American Christianity is different.
From the start – in starting this nation and from the moment the settlers arrived – American Christians saw the Jews differently. They saw Judaism not as another religion but as the antecedent and a necessary and true part of their own heritage and beliefs. After all, not only was their savior a Jew, but he made it clear that he’d come not to change His father’s laws – the laws that the Jews brought to the world. American Christians – unlike any other Christians in the past (and elsewhere today) – see Judaism as part of their own religion and whole-heartedly embrace the Jews, the Jewish people and Israel.
Are there Christian anti-Semites? Of course. But anti-Semitism from the Right in America is episodic. Jew-hatred from the Left, on the other hand, is official and endemic – in the universities, in the media which spins stories about the Middle East to make the Jews look bad and culpable in the attacks upon them and in the Democratic Party of Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.
That the Christian Right overwhelmingly tends to embrace Judaism is evident in the phrase they use to describe America’s heritage: Judeo-Christian, and in the overwhelming support for Israel found in the Republican Party and its supporters.
Jew-hatred is endemic to the Left – be it National Socialism (Nazism), Communism or today’s Democratic Party. For the Jews, prosperity and safety are not found in siding with those who reject all values but in those who have the better values. It’s not a coincidence that the first Judeo-Christian nation in all of human history is also the place that has provided the Jews with the most welcoming, free and safe existence since the original land of Israel. Nor is it surprising that the Europe the Democrats seek to emulate was not only the home of Nazism and Communism but today is seeing a resurgence of Jew-hatred.
