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This is a profound article about
the reality of where we are today. Take a few minutes to read and digest what
the rabbi is saying.
We Are Not Coming Back
Please take a moment to digest
this provocative article by a Jewish 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 disincentives 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 that 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”.
The problems we face today are there because the people who work for
a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living.
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