Republican Jewish Coalition

A coalition for Republican Jews seems like a good idea. I hope they are accomplishing something.

I recently read Steve Sailer's article on why Jews are liberal, and I’m not sure it’s the whole picture, but a big part Jews voting Democratic is because the Republican Party has become the Christian party and Jews don’t identify with Christianity.

I will have to write more about this topic in the future.

Comments

[Dov]

"but a big part Jews voting Democratic is because the Republican Party has become the Christian party and Jews don’t identify with Christianity."

As Steve notes in the article, Jewish support for the Dems was as high in 1928 as it is today.

The Democratic Party of 1928 was arguably more Christian than any party is today.

[The Engineer]

I don't agree. It is only recently that Republicans and Christians have become synonymous. Jews have NEVER been Republicans.

More likely, there are psychological factors at work. The need to fill a religious void with a pseudo-religion would be an excellent explanation for liberalism amongst atheist and reform Jews.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

Jews are not liberal because of racial hostility towards whites. We are liberal because we are secular. The most clannish Jews, the Orthodox, are the most religious and the most conservative.

I'm going to repost what I wrote at Audacious Epigone:

The Undiscovered Jew said...
I'm going to add one other thing,

Jewish political leanings aren't explained by "clannishness."

Jewish politics correlates with how religious or secular we are.

This is because the persecution of Jews was not based on race until the 1930's. Historically the persecution of Jews was based on our failure to convert to Christianity in Europe or Islam in the Middle East.

In fact, before Jewish proselytism was outlawed by Muslim and Christian authorities who viewed Judaism as religious competition, Jews actively sought converts to Judaism, especially during the Hellenic age. If Jews sought out converts when it was legal to do so, it's clear that Judaism cannot possibly be a "group evolutionary strategy." Our European DNA doesn't come from intermarriage, it comes from European converts to Judaism.

But none of this is going to make any sense to the WNs who think every human activity is explainable by one race trying to genocide another:

http://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/half-sigma-vs-kevin-macdonald/

Half Sigma vs Kevin MacDonald

Posted by teageegeepea

UPDATE: Half Sigma has a response here, though not much new content.
More GSS fun! In response to something Whiskey said, I have updated my post on women & immigration. I got home today planning on doing a different GSS post. There had been two recent posts at the Hoover Hog on anti-semites, and a theme that stuck with me is the theory that Jews are pursuing a group evolutionary strategy against the white race. This is used by the racial right (although some deny being rightists) to explain Jewish liberalism. Half Sigma, in contrast, explains Jewish liberalism as being motivated to keep school prayer away from their kids, as Christianity with all its fun holidays and lack of dietary restrictions is just too much of a temptation for a Jewish mother to hazard. I’m going to look at questions that are racially vs religiously charged and compare the responses of Jews vs whites generally to see where the gap is larger.

snip

I’m going to post this and then calculate the results. Are Jews laicites or multicultists? See if you can beat me to it! Yeah, I know I have a head start since you didn’t instantly start reading this as soon as I posted it. You just have to be both lucky and fast.

UPDATE: Finished. Half Sigma wins hands down. Granted, there was subjectivity in what questions I chose to analyze. Think you can do a better job? Get to it! So why did the racialists get it wrong? My guess is that race is simply more salient to them and because they consider it a major motivating factor they assume it must also be for Jews. Because they do not lump Jews in with whites and are themselves concerned with promoting the interests of whites, they think Jews must also contrast themselves with whites (though as Half Sigma has noted, Jews think of themselves as whites) and the status of whites must be their target.

10/26/09 7:30 AM

The Undiscovered Jew said...
Btw, Harpending and Cochran also believe the European-Jewish admixture occured during Roman times when Judaism sought converts and that there has been little admixture since:

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/01/how_ashkenazi_jewish_are_you.php

How Ashkenazi Jewish are you?

Joshua Zelinsky points out that the paper contradicts the idea that a bottleneck or several bottlenecks contributed to Ashkenazi genetics. There never was a shred of evidence for any bottleneck at all--the idea gained currency as an explanation for the funny disease picture. This paper, along with several others like the Olshen et al. paper, ought finally to rid us that idea.

My take on the uniqueness of the pure Ashkenazi sample is that admixture with Europeans happened early on, in Roman times or shortly after, and that since then there has been hardly any.

Interesting that they essentially replicated and found the same thing that Greg and I did in our Ashkenazi paper, only with a thousand times as many loci.

Posted by: henry harpending | January 22, 2009 9:48 PM

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/09/ashkenazi_jews_are_more_europe.php

Ashkenazi Jews are more European in ancestry

STRUCTURE results show that the Jewish Diaspora groups all demonstrated Middle Eastern ancestry, but varied significantly in the extent of European admixture. There is almost no European ancestry in Iranian and Iraqi Jews, whereas Syrian, Sephardic, and Ashkenazi Jews have European admixture ranging from 30%~60%. Analysis of identity-by-descent provides further insight on recent and distinct history of such populations. These results demonstrate the shared and distinctive genetic heritage of Jewish Diaspora groups.

snip

I'd guess that the European admixture among the Ashkenazi Jews is more Italian than anything else: but we'll see soon.

For Syrian Jews, Greek?

Posted by: gcochran | September 5, 2009 3:39 AM

I would be curious to see if there is a high Jewish genetic profile among Greeks. Historical evidence seems to indicate that when Christianity spread out of the Levant it was mostly to Hellenized Jews and then to Greeks who joined them. Since these Jews were effectively cut off from their ethnic brothers, I would suspect that they passed into the Greek whole.

Posted by: ElamBend | September 7, 2009 8:01 PM

10/26/09 7:39 AM

The Undiscovered Jew said...
"Huh? These aren't mutually exclusive. It does come from intermarriage, which was usually preceded by conversion."

If the only way European DNA entered the Jewish gene pool was through Jewish women having bastard children with European men, then that means the Jews always closed themselves off from the surrounding European population ethnically.

But if Jews actively sought European (and Middle Eastern) converts for many, many centuries during the Greco-Roman era before Muslim and Christian nations banned Jews from seeking converts (which is what actually happened) then it is completely impossible for Judaism to be an ethnic strategy:

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2009/08/refinement-of-ancestry-informative.html

Refinement of ancestry informative markers in Europeans (Tian et al. 2009)

Also of interest is the proximity of Ashkenazi Jews to Greeks and Italians which are about twice closer to them than Bedouins, Palestinians, or Druze from the Near East. As I have argued before, a major component in the ancestry of Jews was picked up in Hellenistic-Roman times; most published models of Ashkenazi Jewish origins have only considered admixture between a Near Eastern component with a northern European (German-Slavic) component. Indeed, Ashkenazi Jews are closer to several European populations than they are to Middle Eastern ones

However, as the PCA analysis shows, Ashkenazi Jews are distinct from both Europeans and non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations and cannot be viewed as a simple mix of the two; their distinctiveness must be -in part- due to the specific features of the small founder population of that community after it became effectively reproductively semi-isolated from gentiles after Roman times. It would be interesting to see different Jewish communities studied in the context of a broad variety of European and Middle Eastern populations, to determine whether Ashkenazi distinctiveness is specifically Ashkenazi or more generally Jewish distinctiveness; I would bet on a combination of the two.

10/26/09 2:50 PM

[Park Slope Pubby]

I think it's all about power. Why would Jews be different from any other group? By teaming up w/ blacks and Hispanics in the Democratic Party, neither of whom are as smart as the Jews, the Jews guarantee themselves a powerful position. This is exemplified by Obama, Axelrod and Emanuel. If the Jews were to identify w/ the Republicans, they would be competing for powerful positions with white Christians. We may not be as smart as Jews, but we'll give them a run for their money. It is so clear to me.

[APH]

The biggest reason is abortion (especially for women).

[Peter A]

Until fairly recently, and to some extent even today, the Republican party was the bastion of the WASP elite. High IQ Catholics and Jews naturally gravitated to the Democratic party to use it as a fulcrum to grab some power and privilege away from the WASPS. The labels "liberal" and "conservative" are even now almost meaningless at the higher levels of both parties. The Dem vs. Repub struggle is better understood as the battle between wanna be elites vs. elites, each with their own specific prole allies. To anyone who has grown up in Boston this is almost self evident. It is interesting that as Jews become entrenched as the new American mandarin class and the old Episcopalian families find themselves pushed down a notch you are starting to see a political realignment. Hence a larger number of Jewish and Catholic elites in the Republican establishment and the switch of New England Yankees to the Democrats. But you're right, HS, the religious barrier makes it psychologically much harder for Jewish elites to vote Republican than for Catholics to vote Republican. Seems to me though that a Republican party supporting a Jewish elite is inherently unstable. The old coalition of white Chrisitan proles and white Christian elites at least made superficial sense and nominally those people share the same basic values. Jewish conservative elites still tend to have a more literate, irony laden and pessmistic outlook on life that doesn't fit well with the moralistic and optimistic outlook of mainstream Christian conservatives.

[Larry, San Francisco]

I think an interesting contrast is liberal Jews in the US with Jews in Great Britain who were descended from the same people. Jews in both countries were equally liberal 80 years ago but the British Jews have become more conservative. I think the only explanation is that Jews are scared of the Christian right. I have been in long arguments with my mom on whether the Christian right is good for Jews (my position) or are bad for the Jews. I bring up the fact that most evangelicals I know actually respect Jews a lot (although they would like to convert me), are reliable supporters of Israel and historically have been friendlier to Jews (it was Cromwell who let Jews back into England). Also given the times we live in Jews shouldn't shun supporters there are not too many of us. However, as soon as I start to make any progress some idiot like Mel Gibson puts me back at square one.
The HBD anti-semitism always made little sense to me. A lot of Jews are just obnoxious and like to put down the power structure. Look at the revisionists in Israel. Are they promoting any possible jewist interest.

One last word, I think Jews can compete pretty well in conservative circles and are not just mainly democrats because they think the democrates will be easier to dominate. Conservative jewish thinkers include Leo Strauss, Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Richard Posner, Milton Friedman etc. I think they can hold their own.

[not too late]

"The biggest reason is abortion (especially for women).

Posted by: APH | October 27, 2009 at 05:42 PM"

Huh? Do Jewish women have a lot of abortions?
That would really surprise me. Jews are pretty smart and well educated. Contraceptive failure and abortion are highest among the least intelligent and least educated.

Blacks abort about 50% of pregnancies, Hispanics 30%, whites 15%.

Following that trend, I would figure Jews to be even lower than the overall white group.

27% of Jews under age 18 are Orthodox according to the Jewish population survey. Maybe conservatism will rise among Jews as the percent of Orthodox rises if, as some seem to think, that Orthodox are more likely to vote republican.

[Dov]

"But if Jews actively sought European (and Middle Eastern) converts for many, many centuries during the Greco-Roman era before Muslim and Christian nations banned Jews from seeking converts (which is what actually happened) then it is completely impossible for Judaism to be an ethnic strategy:"

This makes no sense. Just because Jews actively sought converts hundreds of years ago doesn't mean that it couldn't have become a kind of "ethnic strategy" once we stopped seeking converts and became fairly endogamous to varying degrees. "Completely impossible" is way too strong, and misguided.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Just because Jews actively sought converts hundreds of years ago doesn't mean that it couldn't have become a kind of "ethnic strategy" once we stopped seeking converts and became fairly endogamous to varying degrees."

That makes no sense at all.

Why would Judaism start out as a religion which aggresively sought out different ethnic groups as converts and then later morph into an ethnic weapon against outsiders?

Additonally, antisemites claim Judaism was *Always* a vehicle for ethnic aggression, a theory which is bogus if the original Jews sought out different ethnicities as converts.

And if 60% of our DNA is European, why would we be psychologically programmed to destroy other Europeans?

The argument is pseudoscientific bullshit.

[John]

"Do Jewish women have a lot of abortions?"

No, but many strongly believe they have a right to that option.

[Dov]

"Why would Judaism start out as a religion which aggresively sought out different ethnic groups as converts and then later morph into an ethnic weapon against outsiders?"

Good question. BTW, "ethnic weapon" is not the same thing as "ethnic strategy" or simply "ethnic group."

There are other universalistic religions that have sought converts in the past and still do, yet also have sub-groups that are like and operate as ethnic groups. In Christianity for example, you have groups like the Amish.

"Additonally, antisemites claim Judaism was *Always* a vehicle for ethnic aggression, a theory which is bogus if the original Jews sought out different ethnicities as converts."

I don't know what all the antisemite nuts claim about Judaism.

The fact that "the original Jews sought out different ethnicities as converts" doesn't prove or disprove anything. Just like the fact that our ancestors warred against and wiped out other tribes and peoples thousands of years ago (read the Old Testament) doesn't mean that we're genocidal murderers.

"And if 60% of our DNA is European, why would we be psychologically programmed to destroy other Europeans?"

When did I say that we're "psychologically programmed to destroy other Europeans?"

[TGGP]

For what it's worth, Penelope Trunk said having an abortion was surprisingly common among her circle of big-city liberal Jewish women:
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/06/17/whats-the-connection-between-abortions-and-careers/

[Richard Hoste www.hbdbooks.com]

Let me guess. Pro-Israel and anti-borders. Please tell me I'm wrong.

[Audacious Epigone]

TUJ,

Thanks for beating me to the punch and then some. Jews overwhelmingly vote Democrat because they are, as a whole (including the self-described Jewish moderates and conservatives) further to the left that white Democrats are.