Why are so many Jewish U.S. voters liberal?

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I weep for these, my fellow Jews. They have not yet learned that no Good Deed goes Unpunished.

ruveyn

Recall seeing recently on Commentary about the GOP trying to win Jewish votes, after Obama's speech about Israel that I thought was interesting.

"GOP “Wedge” on Israel May Motivate Evangelicals More than Jews"

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/05/20/gop-“wedge”-on-israel-may-motivate-evangelicals-more-than-jews/

Clear thinking and a desire that all mankind understand we are animals with basic needs and not all that different from one another is always punished but millimeter by millimeter progress is being made. Some of us are tough enough to withstand the punishment and others squeak and run to hide in holes and growl at passersby. Stupidity and ignorance are formidable opponents and they never give up. Decent humanity requires equal resilience.

Don't hold your breath until "decent humanity" become dominant. Else you will turn blue and die.

ruveyn

Life is a battle never won. It's worth fighting.

Clear Thinking is important but one can think clearly wrong. Clarity allows you to see things as they are from your limited perspective. Identify the higher values that your clear thinking is in service to.

One parent, one humanity. Adam(earthling) and Eve(life) give us all a common ancestry.

Stupidity and Ignorance is a political substitute for your opponents lacking of objective thought, objectivity resting on the side of the one throwing those words around. They are not that big a deal at the end of the day... More important and perhaps the greatest obstacle to a decent humanity is our inability to fight evil on behalf of others. Humanity's track record of standing up for one another is abysmal at best. This was true of the Armenians, those in the Ukraine, the Jews, Gypsies, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Congolese, Ugandans, Rwandans, etc.

Progress is made but the human species has not progressed from our fallen ways one iota. We are essentially still the same creature the last 10,000 years, and progress has only been possible by passing on to our children those values that allowed us to thrive.

A decent humanity requires a right-giver. Whether it be in the form of God or the State, attaching endowed rights to each human being insures that anyone who tries to remove those rights are in the wrong, and societal institutions who upholds those values can punish them accordingly. But a Right-Giver is necessary. We do not come packaged from birth with rights unless one of the two above endows us with them.

When a population donates its welfare to any single authority it has always and repeatedly been disappointed and conned and abused. That is undeniable history. Things are still very bad but they are incrementally better than they have been in many ways. There is still hope, but it does not lay in trusting the future to corruptible power hungry masters. Distrust has been a valuable viable initiative in both science and politics.

I'd say US Jews vote Democrat not in spite of the alternative, but because of it. The Christian right has a great deal of influence in the Republican Party, which drives Jews away in droves.

But it looks to me there is a rightward shift, largely due to Israel. I wouldn't be surprised if Obama goes down to around 65% of the Jewish vote next time around if the GOP doesn't nominate some Tea Party/Christian right figure.

the orthodox are less Zionist than the secular Zionism is a secular movement sillypants. (the more religious the less Zionist)
You should put the Christians in with the Heretical without changing the description.
More Jews would be republicans but there are too many crazy yokels in the party.

Watch out. Ben Stein just took that as a compliment.

Before FDR more Jews were Republicans.

FDR (clever bastard) conned American Jews and they remain conned to this day.

ruveyn

Just as the current Republicans are finding huge support amongst the stupid and the ignorant for their base, so FDR also looked for a base for utilizing his intellect and found it amongst the Jews. It was hoped that the Democrats would retain their respect for intellect but it seems that stupidity is winning out for both parties.

Really? The Jews I know (and I attend a university with a very large Jewish population) are all politically very liberal. I can't think of any issues where they even sympathize with conservative ideas.

Talk with an Orthodox Jew on the matter of abortion some time.


ruveyn

At the University I went to, the leader of the Campus Conservative club was Jewish, supported pretty coercive IDF policies, and made stupid statements along the lines of "[poor] aboriginal people don't have to live in poor neighborhoods".

MP: There are a handful of very outspoken right-wing Jews, almost always based on the issue of Israel, but the overwhelming majority are extremely liberal.

There aren't a whole lot of Orthodox Jews running around. The Jews I know are quite secular. Compare this to, say, Islam, where a majority of the adherents are going to support conservative causes like anti-abortion, anti-gay, etc. Protestantism and Catholicism will also produce a more conservative outlook than Judaism, though some branches (especially Catholicism) have a selective liberalism when it comes to social welfare.

Anyways, aren't you a Jew who supports abortion rights? That seems a poor example to demonstrate social conservatism in the Jewish community, especially given that you are more right-wing than the average American Jew and still support abortion.