Perspective of
a Rabbi
Please take
a moment to digest this provocative article by a Rabbi from Teaneck, N.J.
It is far and away the most succinct and thoughtful explanation of how our
nation is changing. The article appeared in The Israel National News, and
is directed to Jewish readership. 70% of American Jews vote as Democrats.
The Rabbi has some interesting comments in that
regard.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is the spiritual leader
of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New
Jersey.
______________________________
The most charitable way of explaining the
election results of 2012 is
that
Americans voted for the status quo – for the incumbent
President
and for a
divided Congress. They must enjoy gridlock,
partisanship,
incompetence,
economic stagnation and avoidance of
responsibility.
And fewer
people voted.
But as we awake from the nightmare, it is
important to eschew the
facile
explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among
the
chattering
classes. Romney did not lose because of the effects
of
Hurricane Sandy
that devastated this area, nor did he lose because he ran a poor campaign,
nor did he lose because the Republicans could have chosen better
candidates, nor did he lose because Obama benefited from a slight uptick
in the economy due to the business
cycle.
Romney lost because he didn’t get enough votes
to win.
That might seem obvious, but not for the obvious
reasons. Romney lost because the conservative virtues – the traditional
American virtues – of liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private
initiative and aspirations to moral greatness – no longer inspire or
animate a majority of the
electorate.
The simplest reason why Romney lost was because it
is impossible to compete against free
stuff.
Every businessman knows this; that is why the
“loss leader” or the
giveaway is
such a powerful marketing tool. Obama’s America is one in which free stuff
is given away: the adults among the 47,000,000 on food stamps clearly
recognized for whom they should vote, and so they did, by the tens of
millions; those who – courtesy of Obama – receive two full years of
unemployment benefits (which, of course, both disincentivizes looking for
work and also motivates people to work off the books while collecting
their windfall) surely know for whom to vote. The lure of free stuff is
irresistible.
The defining moment of the whole campaign was
the revelation of the
secretly-recorded
video in which Romney acknowledged the difficulty of winning an election
in which “47% of the people” start off against him because they pay no
taxes and just receive money – “free stuff” – from the
government.
Almost half
of the population has no skin in the game – they don’t care about high
taxes, promoting business, or creating jobs, nor do they care that the money
for their free stuff is being borrowed from their children and from
the Chinese.
They just
want the free stuff that comes their way at someone else’s expense. In the
end, that 47% leaves very little margin for error for any Republican, and
does not bode well for the future.
It is impossible to imagine a conservative
candidate winning against such overwhelming odds. People do vote their
pocketbooks. In essence, the people vote for a Congress who will not raise
their taxes, and for a President who will give them free stuff, never mind
who has to pay for it.
That engenders the second reason why Romney
lost: the inescapable conclusion that the electorate is ignorant and
uninformed. Indeed, it does not pay to be an informed voter, because most
other voters – the clear majority – are unintelligent and easily swayed by
emotion and raw populism.
That is the
indelicate way of saying that too many people vote with their hearts and
not their heads. That is why Obama did not have to produce a second term
agenda, or even defend his first-term record. He needed only to portray
Mitt Romney as a rapacious capitalist who throws elderly women over a
cliff, when he is not just snatching away their cancer medication, while
starving the poor and cutting taxes for the
rich.
During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman
called out to Adlai Stevenson: “Senator, you have the vote of every
thinking person!”
Stevenson
called back: “That’s not enough, madam, we need a
majority!”
Truer words
were never spoken.
Obama could get away with saying that “Romney
wants the rich to play by a different set of rules” – without ever
defining what those different rules were; with saying that the “rich
should pay their fair share” – without ever defining what a “fair share”
is; with saying that Romney wants the poor, elderly and sick to “fend for
themselves” – without even acknowledging that all these government
programs are going bankrupt, their current insolvency only papered over by
deficit spending.
Similarly, Obama (or his surrogates) could hint
to blacks that a Romney victory would lead them back into chains and
proclaim to women that their abortions and birth control would be taken
away. He could appeal to Hispanics that Romney would have them all
arrested and shipped to Mexico and unabashedly state that he will not
enforce the current immigration laws.
He could
espouse the furtherance of the incestuous relationship between governments
and unions – in which politicians ply the unions with public money, in
exchange for which the unions provide the politicians with votes, in
exchange for which the politicians provide more money and the unions
provide more votes, etc., even though the money is
gone.
Obama also knows that the electorate has changed
– that whites will soon be a minority in America (they’re already a
minority in California) and that the new immigrants to the US are
primarily from the Third World and do not share the traditional American
values that attracted immigrants in the 19th and 20th
centuries.
It is a
different world, and a different America. Obama is part of that different
America, knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is why he
won.
Obama also proved again that negative advertising
works, invective
sells, and harsh
personal attacks succeed. That Romney never engaged in such diatribes
points to his essential goodness as a person; his “negative ads” were
simple facts, never personal abuse – facts about high unemployment, lower
take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige abroad, a lack of
leadership, etc.
As a
politician, though, Romney failed because he did not embrace the devil’s
bargain of making unsustainable promises. It turned out that it was not
possible for Romney and Ryan – people of substance, depth and ideas – to
compete with the shallow populism and platitudes of their
opponents.
Obama
mastered the politics of envy – of class warfare – never reaching out to
Americans as such but to individual groups, and cobbling together a
winning majority from these minority
groups.
If an Obama
could not be defeated – with his record and his vision of America, in
which free stuff seduces voters – it is hard to envision any change in the
future.
The road to
Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to a European-socialist economy – those very
economies that are collapsing today in Europe – is
paved.
For Jews, mostly assimilated anyway and staunch
Democrats, the results demonstrate again that liberalism is their Torah.
Almost 70% voted for a president widely perceived by Israelis and most
committed Jews as hostile to Israel. They voted to secure Obama’s future
at America’s expense and at Israel’s expense – in effect, preferring Obama
to Netanyahu by a wide margin.
A dangerous
time is ahead. Under present circumstances, it is inconceivable that the
US will take any aggressive action against Iran and will more likely
thwart any Israeli initiative. The US will preach the importance of
negotiations up until the production of the first Iranian nuclear weapon –
and then state that the world must learn to live with this new
reality.
But this election should be a wake-up call to
Jews. There is no permanent empire, nor is there an enduring haven for
Jews anywhere in the exile.
The
American empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has been
exacerbated in the last five years. This election only hastens that
decline. Society is permeated with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic
excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations. The takers
outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years to
come.
The
“Occupy” riots across this country in the last two years were mere dress
rehearsals for what lies ahead – years of unrest sparked by the increasing
discontent of the unsuccessful who want to seize the fruits and the bounty
of the successful, and do not appreciate the slow pace of
redistribution.
If this
election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone . And,
sad for the world, it is not coming back.
How passing info on to others
in America is having an effect...
PASS THIS ON TO
10
10 pass it on to their
10
100 then pass it on to their
10
1,000 then pass it on to their
10
10,000 then pass it on to
their 10
100,000 then pass it on to their
10
1,000,000 then pass it on to
their 10
10,000,000 then pass it on to their
10
100,000,000 then pass it on to
their 10
Yes, through the power of the
Internet America is becoming aware.
So, we realize this doesn't
seem like were doing much when we pass these on to our 10 . but take a
look at the polls.
Yes, we CAN help by getting the word
out. Media refuses to cover such issues.
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO YOUR
10!
