DAMON LINKER SEPTEMBER 10, 2009
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So Norman Podhoretz has written a book, briefly excerpted in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, in which he poses the age-old question (in the book’s title) Why Are Jews Liberals? Good question. And a deeply personal one for Podhoretz. You see, as one of the original neoconservatives, he moved right four decades ago and has grown rather lonely during his time hanging out with Gentile Republicans. He’s been waiting for the company of his fellow Jews—for vindication of his rightward lurch, for a sign that he was ahead of his time rather than a quirky anomaly. Surely the rest of American Jewry would eventually come to the same conclusions he did and begin voting in the same way. But it hasn’t happened. Not with Reagan. Or Bush I. Or Dole. Or Bush II. Or McCain. Nope, Jews remain liberals, and Norman remains lonely, waiting, “hoping again hope” that despite having given Barack Obama 78 percent of their votes in 2008, American Jews will turn against him and “the political creed he so perfectly personifies and to which they have for so long been so misguidedly loyal.”
Maybe, but I wouldn’t bet on it. I mean, it’s not as if Podhoretz has presented a compelling case in favor of such a development. On the contrary, his argument (at least as summarized in the Journal) amounts to the claim that among Jews liberalism has “for all practical purposes superseded Judaism and become a religion in its own right.” But this is just lazily circular. Why are Jews liberals? Because they really, really believe in liberalism, you know, like people believe in religion. Okay, but why is that, exactly? Norman hasn’t a clue because he can’t manage to enter imaginatively into the mind of his fellow Jews. Liberalism, for him, can be reduced to hatred of the United States and hatred of Israel, and Jews should love America and love Israel. So how could Jews possibly be liberal? The only explanation is collective self-delusion. You know, like people who believe in religion. (What will Norman’s allies on the religious right say about this insinuation that religion is an unquestionable dogma that obscures our view of reality? But I digress. . . .)
Everything Podhoretz has written for the past two decades reeks of self-absorption and self-satisfied certainty, and that’s what this project smells like, too. His work is an abject lesson in what happens to a man’s mind when he values nothing so highly as self-confidence. The animating thought behind his writing has long been, “I know I’m right—about America, about liberalism, about the '60s, about Judaism, about the religious right, about how to fight ‘World War IV,’ about Bush, about the Republican Party, about Israel, about Iran, about Islam—so why the hell doesn’t everyone agree with me??!!” That’s the mystery that sets the man’s mental life in motion.
So by all means read Norman Podhoretz’s new book. Just don’t expect to learn about much of anything besides Norman Podhoretz.
2 comments
In 20th century America, conservative Jews were to liberal Jews what liberal evangelical Christians were to conservative evangelical Christians. They both swam against the tide of the particular historical and cultural moments in which they were born and raised. In other words, we are not exactly talking about separate and distinct genetic predispositions here. And yet it is nothing short of astounding how few people venture out into the deep end of the pool to probe relationships like this. Instead of trying to peel back the layers of the existential onion that is the ultimate mystery of human identity...instead of ever disassembling, assembling and reassembling all of the unique, personal, individual experiences and relationships that had nudged [or outright shoved] them into embracing one set of values rather than another another...they start at the shallowest end of the identity pool instead. Norman Podhoretz wasn't born a Jew in a sense that he was destined to BE a Jew....destined to think, feel and behave in a particular way because this is what being a Jew MEANS. No, he was raised in a particular family, in a particular community that came of age at a particular historical and cultural juncture. Had he been raised by a very different family, in a very different community at a very different historical and cultural juncture would he be the man he is today, sharing the same moral and political values, subscribing to the same sense of what it means to BE A JEW. What do you think? And part and parcel to this, of course, we must then ask: IS there a way to know what BEING A JEW MEANS? The Norman Podhoretzes of the world [of all moral, political and religious inclinations] come to an existential juncture [that others simply do not] where he has convinced himself that questions like this can be answered with a fierce certainty. Not only that, but with a certainty such that, if you can answer them, you have than answered in turn what one must think, believe and do as a Jew. Or as a Muslim, Hindu, Humanist, Marxist, Anarchist, Fascist. And on and on and on down the line until all The True Believers are present and accounted for. george walton
- iambiguous
September 14, 2009 at 5:16pm
Modern history in Europe and America has shown that liberalism is mostly good for the Jews. The American national government protected minority rights and fostered equality of economic opportunity. Big business and the States, much beloved by the conservatives, lagged behind the government. Furthermore, Jews, like other Americans, benefitted from Big Government. Medicare and Social Security carpeted south Florida with economically secure Jewish pensioners. Civil service jobs offered dignified employment to Jewish professionals and blue-collar workers alike where the doors of private industry were closed to them. Most Jews, unlike Podhoretz, Kristol, and their glassey-eyed little pods, remember that they were poor people from struggling immigrant families and that the government helped them.
- amidut
September 15, 2009 at 3:50pm