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I’d be willing to bet that I am probably the most left-wing/radical/liberal person on this forum (assuming my meager amount of time and posting spent here qualifies me to be “on this forum”)
It was conservatives in the USA who wanted to keep Blacks and Jews from voting. Who fought civil rights for all people. Who loved have areas where Jews could not buy homes, who inflicted Xtian prayer on Jews in the public schools…………………….
That’s why I’m socially Liberal and Fiscally Conservative. I believe in the same rights for all people. I just don’t believe in spending huge amounts of tax dollars on all kinds of programs and entitlements.
It was the Democrat Party that tried to stop blacks from voting, disenfranchising blacks, creating Jim Crow in the South.
The Republican Party, which never hurt Jews, is the party that fought hard to enfranchise blacks and strongly fought against the Democrat Party politicians who tried to stop blacks from voting.
Just as the Democrats considered the blacks to be their slaves in the South, the Democrats today consider themselves owners of the blacks and their vote.
Neither political party has a Torah perspective, and to try and wedge the Torah into the Republican or Democratic platform is wrong and dangerous.
This.
@Joseph
Not one word of my posts in this thread ever mentioned parties. There were/are conservatives and liberals in both major parties. The Henry Wallace Dixiecrats of the deep south were conservative at the same time as the liberal Dems of the northeast were fighting for equal rights for all.
The Nelson Rockefeller wing of the Republican party was liberal at the same time the Barry Goldwater faction was conservative.
It is not true that the Republican Party never hurt Jews. Here in CT, Jews were kept from buying homes in Republican run suburbs from Greenwich to Northford until the 1970s.@Avram,
“Neither political party has a Torah perspective, and to try and wedge the Torah into the Republican or Democratic platform is wrong and dangerous.”Of course neither party is Al Pi Torah, but as an frum Yid, one must seek out the party that is closest. It’s not wedging Torah inot the platform, it’s simply voting for the party that most resembles Torah values.
If one believes that Democrats uphold the Torah more than Republicans, by all means, vote for them.
Except that to the honest and knowledgeable Jew, that idea is unfathomable, as Democrats are largely secular athiestic people, who are strongly against religion. They love religion as a cultural practice, but not because that’s the word of Hashem. And when religion conflicts with current popular opinion, religion gets thrown under the bus.
This reminds me of the idea that really, the Yevanim didn’t have a problem with Yidden keeping Mitzvos and learning Torah, rather, they said go ahead, just learn for the academic pursuit, and do Mitzvos for the “cultural beauty” of them.
This is what destroys Yiddishkait, and it must be fought.
If I recall, it was a Republican in the WH who iitially defended as “some fine people”, the anti-semiitic/nazi sympathizers in Charlottsville who marched across the campus with vile chants about jewish scum etc. Even a troll needs to address reality just to maintain credibility as a troll.
GHD: Donald Trump has been an Oheiv Yisroel long before he entered politics, long before his daughter married a Yid and purports to bring up his grandchildren as Yidden; and he remains so today. His father Fred was an Oheiv Yisroel too, who aside from building homes for frum Yidden, also donated from his own pocket to build shuls.
“Neither political party has a Torah perspective, and to try and wedge the Torah into the Republican or Democratic platform is wrong and dangerous.”
“This.”
+1
I guess we have fundamentally .different views on what/who constitutes an “ohev yisroel”…perhaps it contemplates someone who is “soneh everyone else”….some of .the right wing evangelical Christians are also “ohevei yisroel”, at least as long as we are necessary to assure their nuclear Armageddon
This thread started as liberal versus conservative but as would be expected, became Red versus Blue as a surrogate like everything else in the country today.
“This.”
+1
Farshteit zich that we have to choose the one that is closer to our ideals, from the poor choices we’re offered.
That would be conservatives and the Republican Party, the vast majority of the time.
Why do we have to choose a party which is “closer to our ideals”? Both are too far from our ideals for that to even be a consideration. We need to vote for candidates who we think will make the best officials – all the while realizing that lev m’lochim v’sarim b’yad Hashem, but we still need to go through the motions.
CTL,
1. I take it that your BA is not in American History. Henry Wallace was the leader of the left wing of the Democratic Party and candidate of the pink American Labor Party in 1948 (he broke with Truman over the Cold War). Strom Thurmond ran on the Dixiecrat ticket. This, IMHO, was great for the Jews as Truman’s precarious position in an election year (besides the double split he was a back-door President and jeered as a failed haberdasher and machine politician).
2. It is utter nonsense that conservatives wanted to keep Jews and blacks from voting. Moreoevr, as I previously noted, the biggest fighter against antisemitism in modern America was William Buckley (and BTW, the liberal avoda zara FDR was an antisemite who failed to lift a finger to help Jews until it was almost too late).
3. Rav Soloveichik also decried the expulsion of religion from the public schools and blamed it for crime in the streets. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has also decried the “wall of separation”. So instead America now has a quasi-religion of liberalism complete with the burning (so dar at least not literal) of heretics at the stake (ask Aaron and Melissa Klein, former owners of Sweet Cakes By Melissa).
4. How did the Republicans prevent Jews from buying homes? In any case, it was better for the Jews when people lived in ethnic neighborhoods. Even those who stopped observing most mitzvot remained culturally Jewish and did not intermarry.
Anyone with a brain who does not fall for populist rhetoric is called a left-winger on this forum…or a self-hating Jew.
“It was the Democrat Party that tried to stop blacks from voting, disenfranchising blacks, creating Jim Crow in the South.
The Republican Party, which never hurt Jews, is the party that fought hard to enfranchise blacks and strongly fought against the Democrat Party politicians who tried to stop blacks from voting.
Just as the Democrats considered the blacks to be their slaves in the South, the Democrats today consider themselves owners of the blacks and their vote.”
That was true during the slavery and reconstruction eras. Afterwards, as the democrats in the north became more and more liberal, the southern democrats shifted into the republican party – the biggest turning point was probably during the presidency of LBJ.
In short, it has more to do with the republican party being originally made of what we would nowadays think of as liberals, who then shifted to the democrat party and vice versa.
Yanky, populist rhetoric is used by any cynical politician thinks it will improve his position (@my LBJ was also a cynical politician – he used the “n” word saying that the Civil Rights Act would have blacks voting Democrat for 200 years). Thus, there is left-wing populism (e.g. Black Lives Matter) and right-wing populism.
Why do we have to choose a party which is “closer to our ideals”? Both are too far from our ideals for that to even be a consideration. We need to vote for candidates who we think will make the best officials – all the while realizing that lev m’lochim v’sarim b’yad Hashem, but we still need to go through the motions.
This.
We don’t vote for “parties”, we vote for candidates. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are my “team.” My team is klal Yisroel, and our mission is to serve Hashem, not score political points on the backs of perceived opponents.
Joseph,
Farshteit zich that we have to choose the one that is closer to our ideals, from the poor choices we’re offered.
Explain how the Republicans are a “poor choice” in your mind, because from your posts here it seems you are in complete lockstep with the party.
Sechel HaYashar,
I agree with you that religion in general, and Yiddishkeit in particular, are endangered by the political climate. And you have articulately expressed the dangers presented by recent trends among secular Democrats. I think it’s unwise, however, to turn a blind eye to the dangers coming from Republican politics, however, which are co-opting religion for political purposes. Even if the Republican platform was closer to representing Jewish values than the Democratic platform, which I don’t believe, closer is not necessarily better. Open Orthodoxy is closer to Judaism than Reform, but presents a greater danger to the frum world.
Avram, a couple examples of why the Republicans are a poor choice is that they don’t advocate banning avoda zora (Christianity et al) with it carrying capital punishment; they don’t advocate banning the act of toeiva (let alone with capital punishment); they don’t insist on enacting into law the Sheva Mitzvos; etc.
“Open Orthodoxy is closer to Judaism than Reform, but presents a greater danger to the frum world.”
That’s probably true. Which is why for the same reason, in a sense, MO is a greater danger than the Conservatives.
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