Why Jews Vote Their Values, Not Their Economic Interests

KRISTOL, LEONARD FEIN, IRVING

Why Jews Their Values, Not Their Economic Interests Vote A Defense of Liberalism LEONARD FEIN The 1988 presidential race is likely to be a close one and the Jewish vote could be decisive. How...

...It is an argument between two different understandings of what it is about Jews as a group that most wants asserting...
...The difference between Fein and myself is the difference between a liberal and a conservative, not between a "good Jew" and a "less-good Jew...
...All this may well come as a surprise to those who have listened, these past years, to the repeated reports of a rightward turn by American Jews...
...they are making an analytic statement...
...The Inner Life of America's Jews, [Harper and Row, 1988...
...8' (Portions of this article are adapted from Leonard Fein's new book, Where Are We...
...The first, of course, would be a change in the circumstances that give rise to it—that is, a move toward a resolution of the problem of the Palestinians...
...It isn't so much that liberals "bleed too promiscuously...
...in 1976, Gerald Ford won 28 percent...
...In the liberal view, the defense of Jewish truth is as important as the defense of Jewish turf...
...But we wouldn't argue—as Fein does—that those who disagree about how to protect these values (which are Jewish and American as well as human values) are motivated by some narrow self-interest There are really only two issues of public policy that have a significant bearing on the American Jewish condition today...
...But the fact is that elections in which a third of America's Jews vote for the Republican candidate are not evidence of a new turn in American Jewish politics...
...But the main objection to affirmative action is that the racial and ethnic quotas it generates are leading to the fractionating of American society, (There are black thinkers who object to this process on exactly the same groundsj Such a society would violate traditional American ideas, and would surely be harmful to the American Jewish community...
...We are only just beginning to understand and appreciate the linkage...
...And Judaism is the name we give our organized imagination...
...These are all important issues, but the prior issue is the character and the meaning, hence also the interests, of Judaism...
...And it will not do to say that if you're talking about Jewish interests, you can't drag such terms into the conversation...
...its impact on our politics may prove overwhelming, its impact on our liberalism insidiously subversive...
...One is the United States' policy toward Israel...
...Are the Jews of America stuck in self-defeating politics of mindless Utopian compassion, as the neocons now suggest...
...So lefs debate it But lefs keep moralistic posturing out of the debate The difference between liberalism and neo-conservatism is a disagreement about what works...
...Now in 1988 there is no persuasive evidence that the shift the "neocons" predicted has even begun, let alone that it has concluded...
...Jewish votes did not...
...it is not about the wisdom of affirmative action or about the threat of the Soviet Union...
...The energies of Jewish organizations are so invested in matters relating to Israel that they have inadequate resources for other arenas of Jewish concern...
...But let no one suppose that the argument between the one set of premises and the other is an argument between self-denial and self-assertion...
...The more compelling fact by far is that the Jewish "surplus" for the Democratic presidential candidate over the years—that is, the amount by which the Jewish vote for the Democratic candidate has exceeded the general vote— ranges from a low of 18 percent to a high of 36 percent...
...The analysis can be debated, but it misses the point to dismiss it as idle moralizing...
...Yes, it is often not easy to sort out the competing values that are at stake in our public choices and commitments...
...Or is our political behavior informed by enlightened self-interest...
...As disconcerting as it may be to acknowledge the distortions that linkage sometimes creates, it is better to talk about them than to sweep them under the rug...
...Right Jews shouldn't And we neo-conservatives don't...
...The prophets took account of both muscles and morals...
...It is that tradition that American Jews have adopted as their own...
...And while some Jews in our time have been relieved to exchange these dreams for muscles and guns, it would be a mistake to underestimate the holding power of the dreams...
...To all of which there is, these days, an important and somewhat ominous amendment...
...It is simply not the case that the prophets were victims of unanchored fervor, that they were escapists who responded to human misery by preaching of good (and just, and peaceful, and make-believe) times to come, realism be damned...
...The difference between liberalism and neo-conservatism is not a disagreement about values or about whom to help...
...But Jewish liberals do not, as the neo-conservatives claim, ignore the question of whether this or that piece of public policy is "good for the Jews...
...Their commanding claim on our attention and respect derives from their central insight: The welfare of a society, in the most pragmatic terms, cannot be separated from the moral quality of that society...
...Whether the substantive techniques of the prophets are deemed wise or foolish, they were political teachings, not sentimental moraliz-ings...
...Liberals and conservatives, neos and classical alike, are in substantial agreement that American Jews remain, at least for the time being, dramatically more liberal than the general population, as they have been for the last 60 years...
...Above all, liberals are dreamy, while conservatives are practical...
...In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower—running against Adlai Stevenson, a candidate with a particular stylistic appeal to the Jews—won 36 percent of the Jewish vote, and in 1956 Eisenhower won 40 percent of that vote...
...But surely we can insure that the wrenching conflict in the Middle East will not cause us to abandon a tradition that has served us well and to whose service, from time immemorial, we have ourselves been so devoted...
...in 1968, Hubert Humphrey won 81 percent of the Jewish vote...
...The question before us, then, is not about facts...
...There is no specifically "Jewish moral" view either...
...In the same year, Jewish money went heavily to Senator Alphonse D'Amato in New York...
...it is about the interpretation of facts...
...Further, each time we welcome such superficial friends of Israel with a warm embrace, we move farther from our traditional allies...
...Finally—and this is only a sketch of a broader set of Israel-related issues—many of us begin to feel queasy as elements of the liberal community distance themselves from Israel, at times even making common cause with Israel's enemies...
...Here is the heart of the dispute between Jewish liberals and Jewish neo-conservatives...
...The heart of the neo-conservative critique of Jewish liberalism is that there is a radical distinction between idealism and realism, between Jewish values and Jewish interests, and that Jewish liberals obstinately persist in ignoring that distinction...
...it needs a reason...
...Liberals understand that without moral ambition, the American Jewish community will not survive...
...The reality of Jewish life—its political and social reality as well as its religious reality— cannot be measured in terms of Jewish firepower...
...In the liberal view, Jewish interests and Jewish ethics cannot be disentangled, and should not be...
...It is not possible to contemplate the mystery of the Jewish experience, to fathom how the Jews have lasted this long, without acknowledging the force of our dreams...
...Their power derives from the fact that they brought the two worlds into intimate conversation...
...The other public policy issue that affects American Jews is affirmative action directed at racial and ethnic minorities, as currently interpreted, i.e, effectively in terms of quotas...
...Tflere is no specific "Jewish interest" in such issues...
...The argument goes back a long way, and it will never be finally settled...
...Or is there something that Jewish voters know that Jewish neo-conservatives have forgotten...
...And that is, quite simply, that we not seek to hide our own distress and that we not, as some of us do, cast our lot with the Jerry Falwells and the Jesse Helmses on the inadequate grounds that they are "good for Israel...
...The issue between a liberal like Fein and a neo-conservative like myself is liberalism versus neo-conservatism, not Jewish idealism versus Jewish non-idealism...
...In the liberal view, what is good for the Jews is to devote their energies, in their own community and in the larger public square, to making the world whole again...
...Jewish organizations, for example, that have traditionally devoted their energies to domestic intergroup relations have neglected that arena as they have focused on Israel—or, perhaps more important, they have allowed their commitment to Israel to affect and even to shape their efforts in their traditional work of coalition-building and maintenance...
...I have not here raised any specific policy questions, preferring to focus on the assumptions that inform our policy choices...
...For the time being then, the masses of American Jews have retained their hold on a politics that defends both our interests and our values...
...Fair enough...
...The political attitudes and the voting behavior of America's Jews are rooted in a very specific understanding of how we are to go about answering the question, "Is it good for the Jews...
...But the stiff-necked Jews, stubborn to the last, insist, in their voting and in their opinions, that they have interests that antedate and overtake the interest of their economic class...
...In a 1988 American Jewish Committee survey of American Jews, Steven Cohen found that roughly twice as many Jews as non-Jews identify themselves as liberal...
...Amen...
...But it is also absolutely crucial to understand that the central reason we remember the prophets as keenly as we do is precisely that they stood at the intersection of the world of religion and "the real world" — yes, the real world of politics, the real world of society—and did not flinch...
...The dispute is not about the extent of black anti-Semitism or the sincerity of the Christian right...
...Can it be that these reports were merely wishful thinking on the part of Jewish neo-conservatives...
...Jewish voters did not...
...Interests and values do not always coincide...
...But there is one question that cannot be neglected, for universities or professional schools, and in general restricts employment possibilities for Jews...
...The plain arithmetic is that in a score of years the percentage of Jews voting for a Republican candidate for the presidency has doubled...
...It has been about the world that might yet be, the world beyond the river Jordan...
...I refer here to the role that our commitment to the state of Israel plays in shaping our politics here in America...
...If I oppose a more steeply progressive income tax, that has nothing to do with Jewish pocket-books but with my analysis of the effects of such taxes on economic growth and on the health of American society...
...As an example, note that the Reagan tax program, lowering the rate of taxation on rich people—which Fein sees as an example of Republican selfishness and lack of compassion—had the effect of increasing the share of taxes paid by the rich...
...Yes, its expression sometimes deteriorates into a search for cheap grace, a kind of moral hemophilia that leads us to bleed too promiscuously, to shed easy tears that cloud our analytic vision...
...In the liberal view, what is good for the Jews is to practice what they have preached, and not, as the neo-conservatives in effect insist, to adjust their preachings to fit their class interests...
...But for the most part, liberal America evinces no more than the distress so many of us feel as we witness the unfolding events in the Middle East...
...Our strength in this nation—for that matter, our ability to help defend and protect the state of Israel—rests first and foremost on the strength of American pluralism...
...Jewish history has been a cruel teacher, but it has not been our only teacher...
...In 1960, Kennedy won 82 percent of the Jewish vote, a higher level of support than he won even from Catholic voters...
...our complaint is that because they prefer to stick to old ideas that don't work, they spill others' blood—including the blood of those they want to help...
...We may not—we cannot—do very much about Israel's policies regarding the Palestinians...
...How are Jews to choose...
...We remember tomorrow...
...And that is a landslide difference...
...Is it true, as Irving Kristol, editor of The Public Interest, has so forcefully and repeatedly suggested, that the Jews' 'stubbornly stick their heads in the sand and hope that yesterday's realities will return...
...And yes, there are some Jews, many of them quite vocal, who insist on deriving their politics from other starting places, from other premises...
...True, there are elements on the left that have written Israel off...
...It has been about God, and about godliness...
...For centuries, they were what sustained us...
...in 1964, Lyndon Johnson won 90 percent of the Jewish vote...
...The conflict is classic: it is, as Kristol has observed, the contemporary expression of the ancient conflict between the prophetic tradition and the rabbinic tradition, and, as he himself said, it is "absolutely crucial to an understanding of the relationship between any religion and the real world—the real world of politics, the real world of social life...
...That is not how they saw themselves, and that is not how they were heard...
...Those grounds are inadequate because they neglect the costs of such support...
...we can do still less about the policies and behaviors of the Arab states in general and of the Palestinians in particular toward Israel...
...For every ounce of protection we gain for Israel, we lose a pound of protection for pluralism—and that subverts both Jewish interests and Jewish values...
...Jews, for example, voted two-to-one for Mondale while the rest of the country was voting two-to-one for Reagan...
...We need to be very clear here, because the matter is both so sensitive and so volatile: Liberal America has not abandoned Israel...
...Kristol's well-known line, A Neo-Conservative Replies IRVING KRISTOL Whenever I read one of Leonard Fein's critiques of Jewish neo-conservatives, I feel as if I have stumbled into another synagogue just in time for another dreary sermon on how Jews should not forget the high moral ideals that pervade Jewish thought and Jewish sensibilities...
...Jewish life has always been about tomorrow...
...There are other issues that Fein and I surely disagree on—eg, the current structure of our welfare system, busing for school integration and the Equal Rights Amendment These issues should be discussed on the basis of whether they are productive or counterproductive, whether ttey make us a better society or worse...
...But in 1972, Richard Nixon won 35 percent of the Jewish vote...
...It is dangerously short-sighted to suppose that by supporting a Falwell or a Helms we will end up benefitting Israel...
...But failing such a move—and there is no reason to feel especially optimistic that we will soon witness it—there is a different kind of remedy available to us...
...So we are talking about a "Jewish interest" that is also an "American interest" and one that is consistent with both Jewish and American ideals...
...The economic class interests of Jews are offset by a resurgent sense of group identity, an identity rooted in the perception that while one is permitted to be rich, one is not permitted to be comfortable...
...If the United States is not strong, and is reluctant to use its strength, the survival of Israel is at risk...
...Is it simply perversity that compels us to vote our values and neglect our interests...
...Quite the reverse, in fact: if you want to have a serious conversation about Jewish interests, you cannot exclude Judaism from that conversation...
...Yet I must conclude with a warning: Though there is no evidence of slippage, there are omens, and our failure to attend to those omens, to permit the issue of Israel to chip away at our traditional perspectives and at our traditional alliances, will serve neither Israel nor our own best interests...
...in 1980, Ronald Reagan won 39 percent, and in 1984, he won 31 percent of the Jewish vote...
...For in order to survive, a people needs more than a strategy...
...This most American Jews (unlike some of their organizations) know and understand...
...Neo-conservatives tend to believe, with good reason, that it is important for the United States to be strong militarily and to be willing to "project" military force when needed to defend a friendly nation...
...In 1986 Jewish PACs supported Senator Robert Kastenmeier in Wisconsin...
...There are, it seems to me, two remedies for that distress...
...Neo-conservatives believe that the policies advocated by liberals are bad for blacks, bad for poor people, bad for Israel, bad for freedom and bad for peace...
...First, the proliferation of single-issue political action committees (PACs) that provide financial support for candidates whose only virtue is their record of support for Israel—candidates who are sometimes at fundamental odds with both the values and the interests of the Jews on virtually all other issues—introduces a distortion into our politics...
...In so saying, they are not merely sermonizing...
...They are, instead, a reversion to an earlier distribution...
...as a group, we are required to analyze our interests and to defend them...
...In congressional elections between 1960 and 1980, Jews voted Democratic about 24 percent more on the average than the rest of the country...
...In the following exchange, two distinguished commentators analyze the roots of Jewish choice—on a level deeper than on the basis of last night's television performance by the candidates...
...It was this apparent shift that permitted Anti-Defamation League's Nathan Perlmutter to echo the widespread view that "the 1970s ushered in a significant change in Jewish voting patterns...
...Is history inevitably our enemy or can we, by bringing our God to that history, make it our friend...
...Second, the energies of Jewish organizations are so invested in matters relating to Israel that they have inadequate resources to invest in other arenas of traditional Jewish concern...
...The persistent liberalism of American Jews reflects a highly sophisticated appreciation of the fact that our principal interest as a group is the promotion of the values we hold dear...
...We are a group, not a religious civilization...
...The difference is that Jewish liberals understand that question quite differently from the way it is understood by the neo-conservatives...
...They understand that without a purpose beyond its own defense, without moral and ethical ambition, the American Jewish community will not survive...
...It is a disagreement about what works...
...We are talking," Irving Kristol has said, "about the nature of reality, of human authenticity," and he is quite right...
...The Jewish imagination is as much a part of the Jewish reality as the Jewish belly is...
...This does have harmful effects on Jews who wish to enter "a neo-conservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality" suggests the general stereotype: liberals are soft and vague, conservatives are tough and precise...
...A people that is instructed to pursue justice cannot be indifferent to the claims of the downtrodden, not if it seeks to respond to its earliest mandate, long since become its raison d'etre...
...But also at risk is the survival of other democracies—and perhaps, in the long run, of American democracy itself...
...Fein, and many liberal non-Jews, might disagree...
...If the neo-conservatives are right, then all the liberal talk oitikkun olam, of repairing this fractured planet, is idle, bloated...
...The reports of a rightward turn among Jews began with the 1972 presidential election...
...If the left has been our home, we have lately felt that it is less welcoming a home than it used to be...
...And because the tomorrow we remember is a different and better tomorrow, it calls us back to a promise we made long before there was a political right or a political left...
...Fein's preferred tax program has been demonstrated to have the effect of making the poor pay a bigger share of the taxes— which of course is in Fein's personal interest, although no one is accusing him of being selfish or unJewish, just foolish...
...Neo-conservatives believe that America should be strong because we care about protecting peace, about protecting democracy, about protecting Israel...
...of the two, our memory is the larger, for it contains our history and our dreams...
...We are speaking, for the time being, of a distancing rather than of a divorce, and I deeply believe that the distancing we witness is amenable to repair...
...We have not only history but also memory...

Vol. 13 • October 1988 • No. 7


 
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