Sunday, July 29, 2018

Liberals Ain't What They Used to Be

Jeremy Corbyn
“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.” So said Conservative Republican, President Ronald Reagan when he was asked why he became a Republican. How right he was then. And how even more right he would be if he had said it now. In fact the very definition of liberal has changed.

Positions formerly held by the Democratic Party are now pretty much mainstream Republican positions. Just to take one example all we need do is look at one of Dr. Martin Luther King’s most famous statements from his “I have a dream’ speech:  ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.’

That used to be the position of liberal Democrats.  It is now the position of conservative Republicans. What has changed is that now liberal Democrats do look at the color of someone’s skin. It’s called ‘Affirmative Action’. The color of one’s skin carries weight in how universities evaluate applications for entry. In effect it is reverse discrimination. This is not what Dr. King said or meant. He wanted what conservative Republicans want: to judge people without reference to color at all. Skin color should never be a factor.

This is not to judge the value of Affirmative Action. It is to explain what has happened to both parties. They have both moved to the left. Liberal Democrats have moved well past the center to – in some cases – to the extreme left. And conservative Republicans have moved from an elitist exclusionary right to a more inclusive political center where liberal Democrats used to be.

While this is a bit oversimplified, I think it more or less describes the evolution of both parties. Which is why someone like me who is in the political center and used to think of himself more of a liberal Democrat now find himself more at home among political conservatives.

As if that isn’t bad enough, the liberal political parties are still moving to the left and have long ago abandoned any semblance of politically centrist values. That has been made obvious both here and in the UK (United Kingdom).  

The problem is that many Jews – even some Orthodox ones tend to be liberal Democrats – in spite of the fact that the party has become less tolerant of religious values – which are virtually always overridden by civil libertarian values. So that in a contest between religious rights and civil rights - Democrats will always favor ignore religious values in favor of secular ones. Republicans tend to favor and protect religious rights. Secular Jews have evolved right along with the liberal Democratic party as more of them continue to devaulate thir religious heritage. They too tend to favor civil rights over religious rights.

It was the Democrats that once championed the fight against antisemitism. Conservative Republicans were the ones that practiced  the soft bigotry of antisemitism of exclusion and quotas.  Jews were exteremly limted in their a variety of participation in American enterprises. Such as getting into top universities. Membership in exclusive country clubs, inabaity to buy homes in certain neighborhoods. Democreats championed the fight against all of that. They fought valiantly to give Jews and other minorities equal rights.  Republicans resisted.

Now the antisemitism is in the other foot. Especiialy as it relates to Israel. One will find a lot more criticism of Israel among Liberal Democrats than they will among conservative Republicans. As they will a legislative agenda that is not as friendly to religious values (as noted above) as  a Republian agenda..

The once bipartisan support Israel enjoyed is shrinking.  It is the conservative Republicans that are Israel’s champions now while liberal Democrats have become more critical of Israel.

But nowhere has this phenomenon been more represented than in the UK. The liberal Labour party is now been deemed antisemtic by the three major Jewish newspapers.  From  the World Jewish Daily
All three U.K. Jewish newspapers, normally fierce competitors, published the same front-page editorial on the danger posed by the antisemitic Labour party and its Jew-hating leader Jeremy Corbyn.
"We do so because of the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government," stated the editorial
"We do so because the party that was, until recently, the natural home for our community has seen its values and integrity eroded by Corbynite contempt for Jews and Israel," it continued.
"With the government in Brexit disarray," it added, "there is a clear and present danger that a man with a default blindness to the Jewish community’s fears, a man who has a problem seeing that hateful rhetoric aimed at Israel can easily step into anti-Semitism, could be our next prime minister." 
Not that I am all that surprised that a European country has revealed its core antisemitism by  chosing Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of one of their 2 major parties. He is an unapologetic antisemite who disguises it as anti Zionism.  He denies being an antisemite. But those 3 major newspapers see right through him.

That there are members of his party that are outraged by Corbyn does not change the fact that he was in fact chosen by that party to lead it. They may not have chosen him because he is an antisemite. But they clearly didn’t care if he was.

Corbyn could very well be the next Prime Minster of England. The current Prime mister, Teresa May’s tenure is on shaky ground right now. It remains to be seen who will lead the UK if elections are called. But it is not at all far fetched that the next Prime  Mister will be the most antisemtic leader of England since Menashe ben Israel prevailed upon Oliver  Cromwell to allow Jews back into their country in the 17th century.

It is unlikely that anything like this will happen in the US in the foreseeable future. I don’t see an angisemite like Corbyn getting any support to run for the Presidency in either of our 2 major parties. While it’s true that in the not so distant past there have been antiemsemties from the right that have held public office. Former KKK member David Duke having been elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives.  

But that was an anomaly that never went further than the Louisiana House. And aside from a fringe candidate for the Illinois house running as a Republican (and who doesn’t have the slightest chance of being elected) there are no antisemites like Corbyn who have risen to his level of prominence and power.

That’s the way things stand now as I see them.  Frankly, I don’t understand how anyone that cares about their Judaism could support the Labour party in the UK now.  And if things keep moving in the current direction here, I may have to ask that question later to Jewish Democrats.

I would have loved to see a bipartisan condemnation of the antisemitic violence in Europe. But at east one important Republican official has made the American position very clear. From the World Jewish Daily: 
Vice President Mike Pence condemned antisemitic violence in Europe, saying it "must end. 
Speaking at a State Department conference on religious freedom, Pence said, "The world has watched in horror as these attacks on Jewish people have taken place."
 "In France and Germany, things have gotten so bad that Jewish religious leaders have warned their followers not to wear kippahs in public for fear that they could be violently attacked, and in too many cases, that’s exactly what’s happened,” he added.
Drawing a comparison with the Holocaust, Pence stated, "It is remarkable to think that within the very lifetimes of some French Jews — the same French Jews that were forced by the Nazis to wear identifiable Jewish clothing — some of those same people are now being warned by their democratic leaders not to wear identifiable Jewish clothing."
"These acts of violence and hatred and anti-Semitism must end," he asserted.