Why Jews Should Not Be Liberals Read online

  Thomas Sowell in The Vision of the Anointed points out another argument used by liberals to emphasize class differences. There is a class of people, the "benighted," that require the superior wisdom of the "anointed" to carry on with their lives. Whatever their problems may be-poverty, irresponsible sex, crime, inability to rise above their inborn status-are all caused by society and therefore must be remedied by society, and not through individual efforts. There is increasing recognition among thinking and perceptive black Americans, such as Sowell, that one of the results of all of the myriad of welfare programs has been to create a "dependent class" that is easy prey for those politicians regarded as the benevolent grantors of government's largess.

  Judge Robert Bork writes that modern liberals think in terms of groups, not individuals. A free society such as America will always produce disparities in success and achievement, but liberals appeal more to class envy, rather than truly encouraging individual effort. Yet the "chattering classes," as Bork calls them, the intellectuals who dominate the media, always deny that as a group they are liberals, but 91cIc. of reporters acknowledged recently that they voted Democrat in a recent national election.

  In making their case, liberals, either purposely or not, attempt with some success to pit class against class in this country. By grouping people into classes, such as black, Hispanic, gay, poor, or females, liberals seek to create an antagonism for one group against all others who seem to be doing better than they are. Bork writes that envy shapes our political culture, and the thrust of the liberals is to bring down the more fortunate instead of encouraging those below to rise to higher levels.

  Liberals, who on the one hand are great defenders of individual liberty when it comes to satisfying any personal desires, seem to forget that we as individuals are members of a group only by someone's definition. There are good and bad within any group. One of the big mistakes in trying to solve problems through government action is that people are not treated as individuals, but rather, are included as members of a group whether they like it or not. The result is that because there are such great differences between people, one cannot apply the same remedy to all and expect successful outcomes.

  Judaism recognizes that there are differences in people, in their status in life and their incomes, but stresses that they all must be treated with equal justice. "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment; thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor favour the person of the mighty; but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor." (Leviticus 19:15) The notes to Soncino Pentateuch make the point that even though Judaism gives great consideration to the poor, who when in need is to he helped ungrudgingly, still justice requires he be given no special favors when he is in the wrong. By the same token, the rich shall not be given special favors. "Judge every man in the scale of merit; refuse to condemn by appearances, but put the best construction on the deeds of your fellowmen." I(Talmud) As quoted in Soncino's notes to Leviticus 19:15]

  Certainly the implication of this is that each case must be considered on its own merits, each person as an individual, regardless of his status in life. Justice requires no less than this. No mention is made of classifying people in groups, other than to describe them in general, but there is to be no special treatment for them because of their being so described. The notion that members of one class owe something to those of another class is so contrary to Judaism that it is amazing that the idea has not been more strongly challenged by our Jewish leaders.

  Although Judaism is described frequently as a "community" religion-that is, we are each of us responsible for our brother-there exists a plethora of laws that command treatment be administered to Jews as individuals. "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers; every man shall be put to death for his own sin." (Deuteronomy 24:16) The Ten Commandments are directed to us as individuals, not as classes or groups. Class envy can grow into coveting your neighbor's possessions, which is expressly forbidden by the Tenth Commandment. We are to adhere to these Commandments on our own, regardless of what others may do.

  Moses' final peroration in Deuteronomy 30:19-20, "(T)hat I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore, choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed; to love the Lord thy God, to hearken to His voice, and to cleave unto Him; for that is thy life, and the length of thy days," seems to sum it all up. We are each responsible for our individual actions, and we prosper or despair accordingly.

  To pit one class or group against another is contrary to Jewish law and should be strongly condemned by our Jewish leaders. When Hitler selected Jews as the supreme evil that must be destroyed, he did not evaluate each Jew as an individual, but instead, he took anyone who had the least amount of Jewish blood to be his victim. Jews as a group had to be extinguished. He succeeded with terminating the lives of two-thirds of European Jews, and if he had won the war, would probably have reached his goal. Of all people, Jews should reject any hint of judging individuals according to their class, whether it is economic, racial, religious, color, or any other type of grouping. At the same time, trying to pit one class against another is to violate the concept of loving one's neighbor as thyself that is stressed throughout Judaism.

  The complaint by the liberals that the "rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer" should be answered by Jews, not with a nodding head, but with some affirmative statements. We should be replying that to solve this problem, if indeed it is a problem, we need to improve our educational system by giving parents choice of schools; expand our system of trade schools; improve our family structure; improve the ease of starting a business of your own; and remove those governmental restrictions that inhibit the formation and expansion of new businesses. These are the types of positive changes that are needed to solve the income disparity issues. In the end, each of us must fight his own battles. It would be hoped that those who are burdened from birth with handicaps would receive help from charitable institutions and from individuals, with very limited support from governmental agencies. Such help must always be granted on an individual basis and not by any group or class status.

  The very call to action by class, as used by liberals, should be an affront to Jews. As a group that has been so abused throughout history because we were classified as members of an undesirable group, our hair should stand on end and our skin should tingle when such actions are advocated. Judaism preaches unity, brotherhood of all men, and waits for the day when all peoples will accept and worship the one God. The notes to Deuteronomy of the Soncino Pentateuch emphasize this. "The belief in the unity of the Human Race is the natural corollary of the Unity of God, since the One God must be the God of the whole of humanity ... Through Hebrew monotheism alone was it possible to teach the Brotherhood of Man; and it was Hebrew monotheism which first declared, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The very words of the Shema, "Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One," in addition to being the central principle of Jewish religious thought, is a call for the unity of all mankind. To divide people on the basis of their individual differences for political gain to achieve political power is simply not in keeping with our Jewish traditions and should be soundly rejected by American Jews.

  The latest example of using class warfare for attempted political gain was most graphically demonstrated by the 2000 presidential campaign's Democrat candidate for president, Al Gore. Mr. Gore, apparently shedding his cloak of being a "New Democrat," openly appealed to the voters' class envy instincts by proclaiming himself as the champion of "working families" against the "powerful." While not completely defining who qualified as a "working family," he made it clear whom the "powerful" were: Big Oil, Big Drug Companies, and apparently any "Big" enterprise that he could identify. Whether that appeal for votes on this basis attracted or repelled voters is questionable. The fact is, however, that the common sense of American voters apparently rejected this unwholesome appeal to the lowest c
ommon denominator among us, as the Gore/Lieberman ticket lost by a whisker.

  Thomas Cahill, an Irish author, in his book, Gift Of The Jews, claimed that the Jews gave two gifts to mankind. The Jews were the first in human history to claim individual freedom, that human beings are not destined to stay in their same class forever, and that they could make the future better than the past. Cahill also wrote, "There is a direct link between the ancient Jews and the American Declaration of Independence." It is that Declaration of course, which proclaims our individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not as any form of class or group, but as individuals. Judaism has always stressed the importance of the individual, and we should lead the way in rejecting any form of class warfare.

  LIBERALS AND

  UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE

  Shortly after William Clinton was elected President of the United States in 1992, along with his "co-president," Hillary Clinton, both embarked on an ambitious program to reform our healthcare system. Clinton declared that one of his first major projects was to "fix" our healthcare system, because it was badly broken. His wife, Hillary, although not an elected official in her own right, was given the power to assemble a mighty task force to construct a new policy. Some critics charged this assignment was payback for Hillary's standing by Bill amidst all of his amorous wanderings and scandals. In any event, Mrs. Clinton, along with her chief aid, Mr. Ira Magaziner, a Jew, proceeded to work with that task force to produce a new healthcare system.

  What resulted from months of effort with meetings held for the most part in secrecy, and the spending of several million dollars, was a mindnumbing 1,342-page report on how we should change our existing health system into one that would provide wonderful healthcare for all, at a minimum cost, with a benevolent government watching over all.

  This report recommended a system where 14% of our American economy, which represents the healthcare industry, would have come under the power and control of federal bureaucrats. In its effort to create security for the American public, their system would have controlled the activities of the medical profession to a degree that could have been duplicated only by that of the most dictatorial nation. Doctors would have been jailed if they did not adhere to certain rules about how many patients they should treat and how they should treat them. Charges for services would have been strictly controlled and our citizens would have been forced to choose services that fit closely into proscribed formulas. Choice of doctors would be denied and certain wise men, appointed to their positions by the president, would rule over the entire system with few avenues open for appeal of their decisions. It was the old story of "we know what's best for the people."

  In spite of 60% initial public support for a new plan, of nonstop campaigning by Hillary Clinton, and of a Democrat-controlled Congress, once enough details of the plan were given, people figured out that our current system was not that bad in comparison. Hillary's project came crashing down to ignominious defeat. Even many of her fellow Democrats ran away screaming from the proposal. After being promised a simple plan, this one turned out to be a disaster in the making. The major mistake made by Hillary and Ira was to continue to believe in the old "command and control" way of accomplishing things. If only enough brilliant people could be gathered together-and there were at one time over 500 of them working on this project-then certainly a correspondingly brilliant plan could be devised. It almost reminds one of the jest that if you assemble enough monkeys, laboring for a long enough time, and give them enough typewriters, they would eventually produce the Declaration of Independence.

  Instead of concentrating their extensive efforts in the direction of freeing up the medical system to permit more individual freedom of choice, while still maintaining some security for the poor, and insuring against major medical expenses, the task force tried to impose its will from the top through its 1,342-page plan. Studies have shown that 80% of Americans spend less than $1,000 per year for medical services. It is really those major medical problems that require insuring against. Instead Hillary and her group refused to consider any approach other than one that involved government as the ultimate controlling authority, rather than the patient.

  I personally wrote a letter to Mrs. Clinton in February 1993, in which I urged her to enlarge the workings of the free market to help solve the problems in our healthcare system. In particular, I recommended that we expand the use of medical savings accounts via an IRA-type of savings account to pay for minor expenses, in addition to establishing catastrophic insurance coverage for those serious illnesses costing more than a certain amount. I wanted to have the FDA encourage the use of vitamins and herbs instead of placing roadblocks in their use. I suggested that wherever possible, the FDA should reduce the time needed for approving new drugs for public use, and even to consider permitting doctors and their patients to try new drugs without FDA approval. I never did receive a reply.

  There are problems with our current healthcare system. The main one is that we as the patients are not directly responsible for paying our own bills, or even caring much about how much the services cost, because they are being paid by third parties, either insurance companies or in the case of Medicare and Medicaid, the government. A Rand Corporation study in the early 1990s showed that people who paid for their own healthcare spend 33% less than those who have the so-called "free care." The "fix" for this problem, as such astute observers as Michael Rothschild, president of the Bionomics Institute of San Francisco, and author of Bionomics, has written, is to introduce that old liberal bugaboo--competition-into the fray.

  Rothschild wrote in the magazine Upside, that if we had allowed Darwinian innovation (another term for competition) over the past thirty years, medical costs would be one-third less than what they are now, and would thus be much more available to the masses. The alternatives now to our current third party insurance system include such ideas as medical savings plans to permit people to monitor and pay the smaller medical expenses, while still providing insurance to pay for the major medical bills, along with some type of subsidized vouchers for the poor. These changes would stimulate more creative capitalism, but this would also allow more freedom of choice, which the liberals, as exemplified by Hillary and Ira, are dead set against. So we are still saddled with our third party system, still in need of constructive changes, and still fighting the liberal drive to socialize the entire system.

  One may now ask, how does this particular subject relate to Judaism? When I look up the word "health" in the index in the Soncino Pentateuch, I am directed to Leviticus 11, which describes the dietary laws that Jews are to observe. Only those beasts that parteth the hoof, who are wholly cloven-footed, and cheweth the cud, may we eat. Only those creatures of the seas that hath fins and scales are eligible for our consumption. Only those winged swarming things that go upon all fours, which have jointed legs above their feet, pass the test, which includes locusts, crickets, and grasshoppers. Chickens, turkeys, and the like seem to be permitted by omitting their description from all those fowls that are described as forbidden to eat, such as the vulture, the falcon, the eagle, the ostrich, etc. Thus we are given strong commands as to what to eat and what not to eat, which if closely followed will surely guide us to maintaining good health, and in today's vernacular, avoid those high medical costs and even alleviate the need for costly medical insurance.

  But this is not where I believe the real conflict is between the liberal position on the control over medical practice and Jewish tradition and laws. It again revolves around the Jewish call for individual responsibility, as contrasted with the liberal's view that we must look elsewhere for our cover, and that we should not be held responsible for our own lives. Even in a matter so vital as creating the most responsive health system for Americans, liberals prefer to resort to government rules, regulations, penalties, and complicated administration rather than relying upon the common sense of our citizens to choose wisely among the alternatives offered.

  In the Soncino notes to
Ezekiel 37, in describing Ezekiel, as at "once priest and prophet, preacher and writer, inspirer of the nation and pastor of individual souls," it adds "a characteristic feature of his teaching is his insistence on individual responsibility." Ezekiel preached that no matter how wicked one becomes, when he turns away from that wickedness, and does what is right and lawful, that he can save his soul. Again the message of Judaism is that we must be responsible for our own actions, to cleanse our own souls of wickedness, so as to be able to live a just and rewarding life. I fail to find that message extant in any liberal position, even when it pertains to a subject as apparently neutral as healthcare.

  Even though our health system is in need of change, it is still here that people from other countries in need of the finest care come with their ailments. The frequently touted healthcare system of Canada, with its cheaper drug prices, also has huge waiting lists for patients that need certain medical care. The reason their drug prices are cheaper is that Canada simply takes the drugs created and produced in America and sells them for less because their Canadian companies have not had to spend the billions in research and development that the United States companies have spent.

  One reason our drug prices are so high is that it takes up to fifteen years for a new drug to go through all of the testing that our Food and Drug Administration requires. If we would simplify that process and give doctors and their patients the freedom to try for themselves new, experimental drugs at their own risk, we would see a faster time to market for many life-saving drugs, and also lower the cost of them once they came to market. The FDA is another example of the "government knows best" mentality that liberals have succeeded in establishing as the gospel in this country, which frequently works to the disadvantage of our citizens.