The Fiscal Cliff

Posted on November 26, 2012 | 13 comments

      The fiscal cliff looms over American politics like a menacing cloud, or so the political class would have us believe. If Republicans do not agree to raising taxes on “millionaires and billionaires,” curiously defined as people earning more than $250,000 per year, then automatic spending cuts will go into effect that will sharply diminish both defense and social spending. The numbers tells a different story.

     It is by now well known that President Obama has presided over the four largest annual deficits in American history, each totaling more than one trillion dollars. His remedy – to raise income tax rates on the rich so that they should pay the 39.6% top rate of the Clinton years – would generate approximately $80 billion in new revenue, which is about 2% of the annual budget, and around 7% of this year’s deficit. In other words, how does Obama’s plan even begin to address the budgetary crisis in America? It doesn’t, not in the least.

     In essence, it is government by non sequitur. Obama thinks the wealthy should be paying more in taxes simply because he believes the wealthy should pay more in taxes. He calls it “fairness,” even if it solves no discernible problem. Others might call by a different name the confiscation by government of well over one-half of one’s work product: slavery. The slave does not work for himself; he works primarily for others. So, too, the worker whose earnings mostly go to others and provides him no personal benefit does not really work for himself but for others – and strangers at that.

     The Wall Street Journal several weeks back (November 12, 2012) clearly illustrated the duplicity of the argument that the government requires more revenues. In 2007, the government took in $2.568 trillion and spent $2.729 trillion, a deficit of $161 billion. Call those the glory days. In 2008, during the financial crisis, revenues remained stable ($2.524 trillion) but outlays increased to $2.983 trillion – a deficit of $459 billion, horrific, but positively restrained by today’s standards.

      During the Obama years, America indeed jumped off the fiscal cliff, with epic mismanagement. In 2009, when the crisis devastated take-home pay, revenues dropped dramatically to $2.105 trillion, but expenses shot up to an astounding $3.518 trillion (a deficit of $1.413 trillion, the highest ever recorded). If that could be attributed to the bailouts necessitated (so they told us) by the financial crisis, then how does that explain the outlays that kept increasing even after the bailouts, to an all-time high of $3.599 trillion in 2011 (only slightly down this year to $3.538 trillion)? It is because the Democrats used the 2009 spending as the new baseline for future budgets, not as emergency spending to forestall the crisis. Thus, even though revenues have increased in the last few years, and now are only slightly ($75 billion) below the last Bush figure, government spending remains at least one trillion dollars over revenues, and that will continue for the foreseeable future.

     With all the talk of the “fiscal cliff,” the cliff is actually a forced reduction in government spending of a grand total of approximately $100 billion this year, less than 10% of the deficit and not even 3% of the projected budget. That is some “cliff.” That cliff would be perceived by an ordinary person as simple financial prudence – not spending money you don’t have on things that you don’t really need. But since government does not have any money of its own – it takes ours, borrows from other countries or prints more dollars – and politicians have big spending appetites with which they indulge the voters who keep them in power, the normal rules of spending do not apply to them.

     Hence, we are constantly barraged with fiscal legerdemain that fools the uninformed citizen. For example: Obama has been trumpeting his financial plan that “cuts” the federal budget by $4.4 trillion over ten years. That sounds great! But unaddressed is that his budget actually increases the federal deficit by almost $11 trillion. I.e., his “cuts” – should they ever be enacted, itself dubious – result in an additional deficit over that decade of about $11 trillion, rather than the $15 trillion deficit that would accrue without his cuts. Some sacrifice.

     Or, in a typical example that has been going on for years already in both parties, ”cuts” are deemed to be money that might have been spent but actually will not be spent because it is no longer needed. So, the fact that the US will not be fighting in Iraq from 2013-2016 or in Afghanistan from 2014-2020 is said to generate real “cuts” in spending each projected year that now can be used elsewhere. Really? Is money not budgeted and not spent really a “decrease” in spending? Not in the real world, but only in the politician’s alternate universe.

     Consider: my wife and I decided to buy a Jaguar XK. We really can’t afford it, but we figure that it is worth borrowing the money so that I can be the envy of all the other rabbis. After all, you only live once. But then, on second thought, we decided not to purchase that car, and – voila! – we just saved $81,000 that we don’t have that we can now spend elsewhere! Indeed, if we decide not to buy a Jaguar in each of the next five years, we will have saved over $400,000. Now we are talking about real money.

     It reminds me of the old joke about the kid who bursts into his house out of breath, and boasts to his father: “Dad, I just saved $2! I ran home from school behind a bus!” To which the father replies, dismissively, “You should have run home behind a taxi and saved twenty dollars!” That joke is now official government policy, and has been for some time.

     The sad truth is that government spending is almost never cut, because spending taxpayer money is the lifeblood of the politician. With it, he literally buys votes and assures his re-election. Every dollar spent by the government has an interest group lobbying for it, as if its life depends on it – and often it does. Thus, the president got a lot of traction out of Mitt Romney’s declaration that PBS federal funding would be cut – as if one network deserves special treatment in an era when television is glutted with privately owned networks. It became a rallying cry – Romney v. Big Bird. But if even those funds – basically, for entertainment purposes – cannot be cut, then nothing can be cut. Even the much celebrated “fraud and waste” in the federal budget have lobbyists. Every nickel goes somewhere – into someone’s job or someone’s pocket. And someone votes.

      Even the modest cut in the defense budget as a result of sequestration will restore Pentagon funding to the level of 2006, just a few years ago, and not at all dire. America will still spend on defense roughly the equivalent of the next ten nations combined. Somehow it will manage.

    So why the dreadful forecasts of cliffs and calamities? Because any “cut” drains the lifeblood from the politician. If these cuts become mandatory, then “someone” will lose something, and be unhappy as a result. But the current path is unsustainable. The American middle class who voted President Obama back into power want near-limitless benefits, as long as someone else pays for it. But there is no “someone else.” Not even the vaunted rich have the type of money that can underwrite the bloated budget, and they might as well sit on their money rather than see it taxed to oblivion.

     One rule of politics appears to be immutable: any increase in revenues will only lead to an increase in spending. Every dollar sunk into the federal treasury has some politician lusting after it. If spending decreased even to 2007 levels, the federal budget would be balanced in a year or two. So, let the Bush “tax cuts” expire. The very notion of a “tax cut” presupposes that government has some prior claim to our money, and only allows us to keep the remainder. Expose the rapacious government for what it is – a behemoth that can only subsist if it is constantly fed the red meat of the people’s hard-earned money. Let’s go over that cliff; we might enjoy the ride.

    Indeed, let the people be taxed enough so that the budget is actually balanced, without the gimmicks and duplicity to which we have become accustomed. It is probably the best way to revive and restore the ideal of limited government that was the original foundation of the American system.

 

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Cease Fire?

Posted on November 20, 2012 | 15 comments

Israel faces a momentous decision – whether or not to again launch a ground invasion of Gaza – most weighty because the lives and health of its soldiers and civilians are at stake. I number relatives and loved ones in both groups, so any decision is fraught with peril, uncertainty and the risk of catastrophe. The questions then become: what would be the strategic objectives of such an incursion, and how realistic is it – both in terms of present casualties and future political prospects – that those objectives can be achieved?

Since Biblical times, Gaza has been a source of vexation to the people of Israel. From there the Philistines harassed and occasionally dominated ancient Israel, and it was through the Philistines – by then an extinct people for centuries – which the 2nd century Roman Empire sought to erase any reference to the Jewish people by re-naming their conquest “Palestine.” For sure, Jews have resided in Gaza since ancient times, with thriving communities from the 16th century until the War of Independence in 1948, and after the Six-Day War for almost 40 years. More than twenty Jewish communities were destroyed by Israel in 2005 in a reckless and counterproductive act whose real legacy is once again on display this week. As predicted then, Gaza became a haven for terrorists, the source for the relentless harassment of Israelis through rockets and missiles fired at civilians, and the base for Hamas.

It is remarkable how few Israelis seek to recall the provenance of their current predicament, perhaps because so many of the politicians responsible for that debacle are still in positions of prominence and influence. Although missiles were shot sporadically from Gaza even when it was ruled by Israel, it was much more limited in scope and more readily halted. There would be no need now to debate the risks of a ground invasion – and since the Expulsion, for the second time – because the military bases would still be there. Soldiers would not have to navigate through minefields, booby-trapped homes and underground weapons caches. Aside from the devastating human cost of the Expulsion, the task of pacifying Gaza has become infinitely more difficult. We can lament the past, but it is more productive to learn from it.

What are the strategic objectives of Hamas in this conflict? Bear in mind something that is rarely referenced – that Hamas is sworn to Israel’s destruction. Its raison d’être according to its charter is the elimination of the Jewish state and it has pledged to wage eternal war until it achieves that goal. It has mortgaged the lives of its fighters, their families and now all Gazans for a successful realization of its vision. Thus, Hamas is Nazi-like in its inspiration, aspiration and policies.

Their short-term goals are several: to kill Jews; to sow terror among the Israeli people; to test its weapons capabilities for future conflicts; to deflect attention from Iran’s nuclear program; to test the reactions of the American administration which it perceives as weak and not fully supportive of Israel; and, especially, to acquire further ammunition for its war of delegitimization against Israel.

The latter demands special emphasis, because it explains the glee of the Palestinians at the death or injury of their own civilian population. They love nothing better than to trumpet the evils of the Israelis who kill innocent civilians – babies! Unsaid of course, but now recognized by all decent people who pay attention, Hamas deliberately places its weapons, rocket launchers and offensive capabilities in the very heart of its civilian population – right next to, and sometimes even inside its schools, day care centers, hospitals and mosques.

That is the height of evil cynicism. They deliberately shoot their missiles at Israeli civilian targets, and then squeal like mice when their civilians – ensconced in what are effectively military zones – are hit. Certainly they do not expect their use of their civilian population as human shields to gain them immunity from attack; what they do expect is that their civilians will be killed or injured, giving them a propaganda coup amongst the venal and the gullible across the world by their feigned, pained expressions of anguish. That is why they have adopted the macabre practice of staging scenes of the injured and dead – and then having those “victims” get up and walk away when the cameras are turned off; that is why they have already this week utilized graphic pictures of fathers holding their wounded children – even though the pictures are from Syria, and from last month. (Israel has done remarkably well this time around in responding almost instantly to every Arab fabrication.)

And that is how they are trying to rile up the Arab world and win sympathy and support for themselves, even though the 100 Arabs killed in the past week pale before the 40,000 (!) Arabs killed in Syrian fighting in the last year or so, without respite and without any desire of the Arab world to intervene to halt that bloodshed. Every time one thinks that the Arabs have reached a new low in raw hypocrisy, they dig a little deeper. Those who think that they somehow care about the lives and wellbeing of their people have probably never heard of the phenomenon known as the “suicide bomber.” They don’t care about human life the same way we do; to think otherwise is to project onto them Western values that they do not share and in fact ridicule. A Hamas spokesman years ago brazenly touted their “advantage” in these battles: “We love death like the Jews love life.” Add to that the simple fact that this civilian population voted for the racist, genocidal and suicidal policies of Hamas, then any sympathy for them is grossly misplaced. Those who really are innocent should leave, and quickly, because they have linked their destinies to those of the malevolent mass murderers who govern them. Facilitating that would be an honorable mission of the Arab world today.

From an Arab perspective, they have achieved most of their goals already. They have killed Jews, sown terror, challenged the Americans, garnered their propaganda photos and tested their weaponry. Their major “demand” now is that Israel end its embargo on Gaza, the better to allow Hamas to import more missiles and even heavier weapons. Heaven forbid if Hamas would acquire guidance systems for their missiles, which now have the capability of reaching Israel’s largest cities and population centers. Such an agreement would embolden Hamas, grant it a major victory, and make the next war even deadlier.

What are Israel’s strategic objectives in the current conflict? As always, those are more difficult to ascertain, because Israel once again was forced to respond. (From Bizarro World: Hamas claims that Israel is the aggressor here and must make concessions. Follow the logic: Hamas has been indiscriminately firing rockets at Israel for years, with an increase in the last month. Since Israel responded only last week, Israel changed the rules of the game – the passive acceptance of rockets on its civilians – and is therefore the aggressor.) Israel’s obsession with avoiding civilian casualties, even to the immoral extent of risking its own soldiers’ lives, and even though it is the only such army in the world held to such a standard, greatly limits its maneuverability. But what are its goals, ultimately?

The problem is that what those goals are and what they should be are not identical. Israel wants stability on its southern border, and an end to missile attacks on its civilian population. It wants Hamas isolated internationally. It wants the world to halt the Iranian nuclear program. It wants to avoid an escalation in the north, where Hezbollah sits atop Lebanon with even more advanced and deadly weaponry than Hamas has.  It wants to avoid a propaganda victory for Hamas that a large scale death of Arab civilians would engender. It wants to avoid casualties to and the capture of its own soldiers – anytime, but certainly in an election year.

Notice how none of Israel’s strategic objectives are solely or even primarily within its control. That is why it is consistently on the defensive, reacting to events but never taking the initiative to transform its strategic situation. One Israeli general this week described the current operation as “mowing the lawn.” Every few years, Israel has to “mow the lawn,” i.e., degrade the capabilities of the enemy and thereby buy a few years’ relative tranquility. Ultimately, that is a defeatist attitude, as the enemy’s capabilities only increase. It is certainly not worth the lives of Israeli soldiers to “mow the lawn.” The grass just grows back, higher and more unruly; on the other hand, dead is dead.

A ground invasion is only worthwhile if there are strategic objectives that are achievable and can be enduring. One typical calculation involves war game theory. A war today that costs 1X casualties might be more desirable than a war in 2-3 years that will cost 3X or 5X casualties. Israel has to project the future capabilities of its enemy, as well as the reliability of the future support of its own allies (i.e., ally). A definite war today might not be sensible if casualties in a potential future war are only 2X. A war might be more beneficial today if the Obama administration two years hence is projected to be less supportive of Israel. (President Obama is in a predicament. Certainly, he has endorsed Israel’s right of self-defense, a gesture that is perceived by his supporters as unusually magnanimous, instead of what it really is: obvious. But he has also insisted that Israel not invade Gaza, which means that he prefers the status quo. But the status quo harms Israel.)

What should be Israel’s strategic objectives in a ground invasion? Nothing less than the destruction of Hamas and an end to its genocidal ambitions. (Of course, those ambitions will remain, but operating from exile, Hamas, like the PLO before Oslo planted them in the heartland of Israel, will be much less effective and an annoyance more than a threat.) It certainly can be done – although to announce it in advance would essentially pre-empt its implementation – and it is better accomplished with aerial bombing that weakens their resistance and Special Forces to capture and kill the leadership, rather than a full scale ground invasion.

Israel must re-assert its control over Gaza; it is the only way in the real world in which we live to prevent the recurrence of the same (or deadlier) quandary in another few years. Clearly, the hostile elements among the civilian population must be encouraged to find their happiness and fortunes elsewhere, and a world genuinely interested in their plight should facilitate that. In fact, an uninhabited Sinai Peninsula begs for them, and they could even live there in greater comfort with limitless land at their disposal – an end to the densely-crowded conditions in which they live and in which their problems fester.

This requires Israel to acknowledge that Hamas is their enemy, dedicated to their extermination, and so must be eliminated. There can be no rapprochement with a genocidal foe.

The downside, of course, is that such might prompt a violent response from Hezbollah –and from those in the international community who are devoted to the establishment of Palestinian states that render Israel more and more vulnerable. The upside is that, if not done, Israel will come under increasing pressure to make additional concessions, both to Hamas and to the PA – including the destruction of more settlements in Judea and Samaria and the formal recognition of a Palestinian state. If that happens, of course, then the current situation in Gaza will be replicated in Israel’s heartland in a few years, and life will become unbearable.

That process can be forestalled and even reversed, but only if Israel’s takes the initiative to transform the strategic dynamic in which it has operated for decades, including abandoning the illusory pursuit of peace with enemies sworn to its destruction. Otherwise, it is not worth soldiers’ lives for another paper agreement, or to strengthen Hamas through more concessions, or simply to kick the can down the road.

Frankly, there is no alternative other than to change the dynamic, and revitalize Israel for the struggles ahead. It is not a simple decision by any means.

May G-d bless Israel, its leaders and soldiers, to make the decision that is right, proper, wise and just, and to carry it out with efficiency, alacrity, and success.

15 Comments

Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel, Jewish History

The Jewish Vote

Posted on November 14, 2012 | 35 comments

There was an extraordinary reaction to my previous piece on the election portents for the American empire. Tens of thousands of people responded, most positively. Apparently, it struck a chord with many who fear for the future of the United States which has been the major force for good in the world for much more than a century.

One discordant note was sounded by someone, unfamiliar to me, who calls himself the “failed Moshiach,” or something like that. He demanded my immediate firing, a classic reaction on the political left to anyone who publicly deviates from their world view. His demand is not only risible, but also counterproductive, as my dismissal would only add to Obama’s sorry record on unemployment. In any event, I would be more concerned if the real Moshiach was displeased with my writings than a self-styled “failed” one.

That does beg the question: why is it that Jews overwhelmingly support the Democratic candidate? This is not something new, but has been the pattern for almost 80 years. (Late 19th century Jews voted primarily for the Republican, being especially fond of the Republican President Abraham Lincoln.) It was the late sociologist Milton Himmelfarb who decades ago noted that “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans,” i.e., the richest vote like the poorest. What fascinates is that, like the lure of Pennsylvania to Republican presidential candidates (it seems like it should vote for the Republican but never does), the Jewish vote tantalizes Republicans but never seems to materialize. Based on our race, status, education, employment, etc., Jews should be voting for Republicans but rarely do in significant numbers. The Jewish vote remains the chimera of the political conservative. For more than eighty years, the Jewish vote has averaged 75% for the Democrat, rarely deviating more than 5% above or below that figure. Until Hoover’s election, the Jewish vote fluctuated and was relatively balanced. The focus is not on those who can choose a candidate in either party (as I have done on occasion), but those Jews who can never vote for a Republican and always will vote for the Democrat. It cannot be that the Democrat is always the superior candidate to the Republican.

Once again in this election, almost 70% of Jews voted for President Obama, slightly down from the last election (78%), but very much in line with other immigrant communities like Hispanics (71%) or Asians (73%). But Jews are no longer a predominantly immigrant community, so why do the voting patterns of newcomers, or outsiders to the political system, persist among the Jews who are in the mainstream of the establishment? And why are the Orthodox Jewish voting patterns almost the mirror opposite of the non-Orthodox, with more Orthodox Jews voting for Mitt Romney and, give or take a particular race, for Republicans generally?

Firstly, Democrats are widely perceived as the party of the poor, the downtrodden and the societal outcast, and Jews – persecuted for most of our existence – have a natural sympathy for the underdog. As charity is a great virtue (and a fundamental commandment) in Jewish life, Jews especially are drawn to a system that appears charitable on the surface – the redistribution of income from the wealthy to the poor – and government is seen as the vehicle of that charitable distribution.

The weakness in that argument, of course, is that Jews believe in charity, but primarily as a private endeavor. The tithing obligation, or the dispensing of gifts to the poor in Biblical times (maasrot, leket, shikcha, pe’ah – known collectively as matnot aniyim, gifts to the poor), are all private ventures, and are not publicly coerced. Notwithstanding that at different times in history the Jewish community itself intervened and assessed wealthy members a sum of money to care for society’s poor, that was always considered a last resort and not particularly efficient. The king never levied taxes to care for the poor, although the religious establishment might. Charity as a private act lends moral perfection to the donor; the same cannot be said for a coercive taxation system that distributes only a small sum of the monies collected to the poor.

Of course, it would unacceptable in a Jewish context to have a permanent impoverished class – multi-generational families of welfare recipients – as it should be in an American context. The trillions of dollars spent since the Great Society initiated the War on Poverty has in fact exacerbated poverty, not alleviated it, with more poor in both real and proportionate terms today than when the programs started. It should not be difficult to ascertain why. Handouts degrade the recipient and create a dependency – call it now an entitlement – that is not easy to terminate. We know as well that the greatest form of charity under Jewish law is finding a job for someone unemployed, or lending him money so he can start his own business. For the recipient, that is both dignified and effective in the long-term, but for some reason, Jews feel better giving someone a fish than teaching him how to fish; perhaps the latter would cut into the market share of the Jewish-owned fish companies, if there were Jewish-owned fish companies. But current policies are demeaning and debilitating to the recipient, even if they satisfy the compassionate emotions of their advocates.

Secondly, Jews have been enamored with the Democratic Party since the days of FDR, who nurtured the identity politics that Barack Obama has perfected – appealing to a variety of different groups rather than to Americans as a whole. FDR won a landslide second-term victory in 1936 even though the economy worsened on his watch (higher unemployment, steep drop in earnings) because he blamed Herbert Hoover for everything (familiar ring, that) and patched together a coalition of interest groups – farmers, labor unions, Jews and women – that would be sufficient for victory.

But it is not just that FDR created the modern welfare state but that he also cultivated Jewish support. For the first time in US history, an American president surrounded himself with Jews – Frankfurter, Rosenman, Baruch, et al. An unprecedented 15% of Roosevelt’s executive appointments were Jews. That shattered the brick wall that the WASP establishment had erected around the levers of power, and forever endeared him to Jews. Of course, none of that symbolism mattered when the Holocaust came, and FDR did little to help the Jews of Europe and much to thwart immigration, rescue and relief efforts. Indeed, FDR remained a hero to most Jews notwithstanding his pathetic record on Jewish issues – even famously refusing to meet a delegation of Rabbis who came to plead for assistance to the beleaguered European Jews being systematically exterminated by the Nazis.

That disconnect – between rhetoric and reality – has persisted until today. Truman was rightly lauded for recognizing the nascent State of Israel in 1948 – after much hesitation – but Thomas E. Dewey was on record even before as supportive of Jewish national rights. JFK openly threatened Israel over its Dimona reactor, LBJ pressured Israel not to open fire in 1967 despite the Arab provocations that led to the Six-Day War, and it is now crystal clear how Jimmy Carter felt about the Jews and about Israel. (Others too. Former Israeli diplomat Naphtali Lavie wrote in his memoirs of the stridency and harshness with which then-VP Walter Mondale – so-called “friend of Israel” – dealt with Israel before and during the Camp David summit, leading Israel’s FM Moshe Dayan to comment: “Isn’t he supposed to be a friend of Israel? With friends like him, who needs enemies.” Similar backstage accounts elsewhere expose the current VP Joe Biden as antagonistic to Israel during negotiations as well while he was a Senator.)

Conversely, presidents as diverse as Nixon, Reagan and Bush II were immensely supportive of Israel, and at critical times. That their records were not “perfect” – whose is, and how would we even define perfect? – and that we can quibble about a policy decision here and there is a cogent reminder to the American-Jewish community that these men were, after all, presidents of the United States, not prime ministers of Israel. At times, the interests of America and Israel will diverge; that is natural and understandable, and America will also produce presidents like Eisenhower or Bush I, or Obama, for that matter, who were less sympathetic to Israel, and a Clinton who tended to be more sympathetic despite some ugly moments. But Nixon made historically important decisions (e.g., the re-supply of Israel’s armaments during the worst period of the Yom Kippur War, and over Kissinger’s strong objections) and Reagan and Bush II were preternaturally well-disposed to Jews and Israel.

Nevertheless, the curious love affair between Jews and Democrats that began with FDR has not ended. Today, it is trapped in a time warp. Jews contort themselves like pretzels to try to pretend that today’s Democrat party is the same as the party of yesteryear. But today’s Democrats head governments in which funds are handed down not to assist people short-term but to sew up their votes long-term, in which the inclusion in the party platform of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and G-d Himself was roundly booed, and about which polls widely show that support for Israel among Democrats is well below 50% and among Republicans well over 70%. Facts are stubborn things.

That engenders the third reason why Jews remain tenacious Democratic voters. The dark secret is that few Jewish Democrats vote with Israel as their main concern, or even as a major interest. As long as the rhetoric is innocuous enough, the real policies do not matter. There is also a segment of the Jewish community that, by reasonable standards, can be construed as anti-Israel. They make common cause with Israel’s enemies, support boycott of and divestment from Israel, oppose Jewish settlement in the heartland of Israel and favor the establishment of another Palestinian state, and/or are openly hostile to Israel exercising its right of self-defense – ever, under any circumstances. Some Jews even oppose the Jewish national idea, and think Israel itself is illegitimate. The one common denominator is that all those Jews vote for the Democratic Party. They are not the only Jews who vote for the Democrat, but all those Jews do vote for the Democrat.

Thus, the fourth reason why most Jews are Democrats – since Israel’s fate is of tangential interest to many – is that they are more aroused by the social agenda than by any other concern, including Israel. Many Jews are obsessed with abortion rights, and see it as a sacrament. They are fanatics about individual rights and freedoms, and loathe any constraints on personal behavior (even the Torah’s!) Jews, in fact, seem uniquely intimidated by the contrived threats to these newfound freedoms.  And they are in the forefront of transforming traditional society – supporting same-sex marriage, alternative lifestyles, and the abolition of any notion of objective morality. Strange, one might think, because Jews introduced to the world the concept of objective moral norms transmitted to us by the Creator of the universe.

But most Jews are widely estranged from their faith – fifth reason – and do not perceive their Judaism as shaping or influencing their world view, except insofar as they distort the Torah’s values and ideas and assume they correspond to the NY Times editorial page. Most can speak of Jewish values only in the most amorphous terms – and perceive as uniquely Jewish the platitudes (“be a good person!”) that are common to every religion. Most have limited exposure to Torah. That is why the Orthodox voting patterns are almost the complete opposite of the non-Orthodox. The closer one is to tradition, the more one will gravitate to conservative ideals. That there are exceptions, of course, only proves the rule.

A sixth reason bores into the credibility of the statistics, and raises the great enigma of Jewish life today: how many Jews actually live in the United States? The survey questions are asked with trepidation, because a large percentage of American “Jews” are not Jews according to Jewish law. As we know, a Jew is defined according to tradition as a person born of a Jewish mother or converted according to halacha, Jewish law. (The definition remains the definition despite its unpopularity, indeed, its rejection, in the non-Orthodox world. It goes without saying – but I must – that “non-Orthodox Jews” who satisfy the two criteria are as Jewish as is any Jew.)

With intermarriage in the non-Orthodox world hovering around 70%, how many of the “Jews” counted in these surveys are in fact Jews? For example, the children of non-Jewish mothers are not Jews according to Jewish law, even if they feel Jewish and were bar-mitzvahed. Likewise, the children of Jewish mothers who intermarry are Jews – but are they really representative of Jews in terms of ascertaining a “Jewish” vote – especially since most intermarried children by far are not raised as Jews, or educated as Jews? It might very well be that if we exclude hundreds of thousands of halachic non-Jews from our count as Jews, then the differences in voting patterns between Jews and other mainstream groups as revealed by the polls might not be as dramatic. Since it is difficult to count Jews in America – many pollsters rely on a self-definition which could as ethnic as it is religious – the surveys themselves are suspect. It would explain, though, why support for Israel has dwindled as a major issue for Jewish Democrats.

Finally, and sad to say, most Jews today are committed secularists who are uncomfortable with any expression of faith in the public domain. The Democratic Party is therefore their natural home, even if American history and politics have been informed by faith from the very founding of the country. The Democrats have moved on from that premise, and in their desire to transform the United States, have disconnected it from those roots.

But those roots should be attracting Jews, if they truly understood their faith. The growing trend of Jews moving to conservative ideas is reflective both of the attractions of tradition and the ongoing disappearance of the secular Jew. As yet, it is not enough to counter the allure of nostalgia for an idyllic liberal past that really never was, and will not be seen again.

35 Comments

Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Machshava/Jewish Thought

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

Posted on November 7, 2012 | 333 comments

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. As I write, with almost all the votes counted, President Obama has won fewer votes than John McCain won in 2008, and more than ten million off his own 2008 total. (Note: this was written the day after the election. The final results indicate that Romney exceeded McCain’s total by less than one million votes, while Obama received almost four million votes fewer than he did in 2008 – the first time in history that a president won a second term with fewer votes than he scored in his first victory. RSP)

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 notion of the “Reagan Democrat” is one cliché that should be permanently retired.

Ronald Reagan himself could not win an election in today’s America.

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; so too those who anticipate “free” health care, who expect the government to pay their mortgages, who look for the government to give them jobs. The lure of free stuff is irresistible.

Imagine two restaurants side by side. One sells its customers fine cuisine at a reasonable price, and the other offers a free buffet, all-you-can-eat as long as supplies last. Few – including me – could resist the attraction of the free food. Now imagine that the second restaurant stays in business because the first restaurant is forced to provide it with the food for the free buffet, and we have the current economy, until, at least, the first restaurant decides to go out of business. (Then, the government takes over the provision of free food to its patrons.)

The defining moment of the whole campaign was the revelation (by the amoral Obama team) 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 suggests the second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable conclusion that, as Winston Churchill stated so tartly, “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Voters – a clear majority – are easily swayed by emotion and raw populism. Said another way, 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. 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. How could Obama get away with such rants to squealing sign-wavers? See Churchill, above.

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.

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 (even if they came from Cuba or Honduras), 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. How could he do and say all these things ? See Churchill, above.

One might reasonably object that not every Obama supporter could be unintelligent. But they must then rationally explain how the Obama agenda can be paid for, aside from racking up multi-trillion dollar deficits. “Taxing the rich” does not yield even 10% of what is required and does not solve any discernible problem – so what is the answer, i.e., an intelligent answer?

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, and by talking as the adult and not the adolescent. Obama has spent the last six years campaigning; even his governance has been focused on payoffs to his favored interest groups. The permanent campaign also won again, to the detriment of American life.

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. Conservative ideas failed to take root and states that seemed winnable, and amenable to traditional American values, have simply disappeared from the map. 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.

A second cliché that should be retired is that America is a center-right country. It clearly is not. It is a divided country with peculiar voting patterns, and an appetite for free stuff. Studies will invariably show that Republicans in Congress received more total votes than Democrats in Congress, but that means little. The House of Representatives is not truly representative of the country. That people would vote for a Republican Congressmen or Senator and then Obama for President would tend to reinforce point two above: the empty-headedness of the electorate. Americans revile Congress but love their individual Congressmen. Go figure.

The mass media’s complicity in Obama’s re-election cannot be denied. One example suffices. In 2004, CBS News forged a letter in order to imply that President Bush did not fulfill his Air National Guard service during the Vietnam War, all to impugn Bush and impair his re-election prospects. In 2012, President Obama insisted – famously – during the second debate that he had stated all along that the Arab attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi was “terror” (a lie that Romney fumbled and failed to exploit). Yet, CBS News sat on a tape of an interview with Obama in which Obama specifically avoided and rejected the claim of terrorism – on the day after the attack – clinging to the canard about the video. (This snippet of a “60 Minutes” interview was not revealed  – until two days ago!) In effect, CBS News fabricated evidence in order to harm a Republican president, and suppressed evidence in order to help a Democratic president. Simply shameful, as was the media’s disregard of any scandal or story that could have jeopardized the Obama re-election.

One of the more irritating aspects of this campaign was its limited focus, odd in light of the billions of dollars spent. Only a few states were contested, a strategy that Romney adopted, and that clearly failed. The Democrat begins any race with a substantial advantage. The liberal states – like the bankrupt California and Illinois – and other states with large concentrations of minority voters as well as an extensive welfare apparatus, like New York, New Jersey and others – give any Democratic candidate an almost insurmountable edge in electoral votes. In New Jersey, for example, it literally does not pay for a conservative to vote. It is not worth the fuel expended driving to the polls. As some economists have pointed generally, and it resonates here even more, the odds are greater that a voter will be killed in a traffic accident on his way to the polls than that his vote will make a difference in the election. It is an irrational act. That most states are uncompetitive means that people are not amenable to new ideas, or new thinking, or even having an open mind. If that does not change, and it is hard to see how it can change, then the die is cast. America is not what it was, and will never be again.

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. That Obama’s top aide Valerie Jarrett (i.e., Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett) spent last week in Teheran is not a good sign. 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. As Obama has committed himself to abolishing America’s nuclear arsenal, it is more likely that that unfortunate circumstance will occur than that he will succeed in obstructing Iran’s plans.

Obama’s victory could weaken Netanyahu’s re-election prospects, because Israelis live with an unreasonable – and somewhat pathetic – fear of American opinion and realize that Obama despises Netanyahu. A Likud defeat – or a diminution of its margin of victory – is more probable now than yesterday. That would not be the worst thing. Netanyahu, in fact, has never distinguished himself by having a strong political or moral backbone, and would be the first to cave to the American pressure to surrender more territory to the enemy and acquiesce to a second (or third, if you count Jordan) Palestinian state. A new US Secretary of State named John Kerry, for example (he of the Jewish father) would not augur well. Netanyahu remains the best of markedly poor alternatives. Thus, the likeliest outcome of the upcoming Israeli elections is a center-left government that will force itself to make more concessions and weaken Israel – an Oslo III.

But this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. There is no permanent empire, nor is there is an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the exile. The most powerful empires in history all crumbled – from the Greeks and the Romans to the British and the Soviets. None of the collapses were easily foreseen, and yet they were predictable in retrospect.

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. Across the world, America under Bush was feared but not respected. Under Obama, America is neither feared nor respected. Radical Islam has had a banner four years under Obama, and its prospects for future growth look excellent. 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.

Two bright sides: Notwithstanding the election results, I arose this morning, went to shul, davened and learned Torah afterwards. That is our reality, and that trumps all other events. Our relationship with G-d matters more than our relationship with any politician, R or D. And, notwithstanding the problems in Israel, it is time for Jews to go home, to Israel. We have about a decade, perhaps 15 years, to leave with dignity and without stress. Thinking that it will always be because it always was has been a repetitive and deadly Jewish mistake. America was always the land from which “positive” aliya came – Jews leaving on their own, and not fleeing a dire situation. But that can also change. The increased aliya in the last few years is partly attributable to young people fleeing the high cost of Jewish living in America. Those costs will only increase in the coming years. We should draw the appropriate conclusions.

If this election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone. And, sad for the world, it is not coming back.

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