Pardon me if I rant for a moment, but I stumbled across another antisemitic rant, and it got me more worked up than usual. It was the normal line pushed by the American Nazi party and others, that leftists Jews made blacks militant as a tool to destroy Christian white America. It is nonsense, of course, but it is sad that so many spouting such nonsense call themselves conservative and give the left fodder for their arguments that racism and fascism are part of the right wing.

Let us address the fundamental question here before I progress to the rest of my post. Are Jews liberal? Well some are, perhaps more than in many other faiths. But certainly not all. Many orthodox Jews are quite conservative. And Jews are certainly less liberal than say Quakers or Unitarians, yet no one postulates a massive Unitarian liberal conspiracy. Like most groups that were outside the Republican mainstream of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Catholics, Irish, Italians, Slavs and so on, the Jews were embraced by the Democrats and remained largely in the Democrat party until recent times. However, unlike the Italians, Catholics and others, this has somehow been held to mean the Jews are fundamentally liberal. And it just isn't so, or is no more so about Jews than about the Irish or Catholics.

So, why do the Jews get blamed? Well, for one, they are different. This was also held against the Catholics for a long time, but int he 60's it was dropped and Catholics were once again considered "Christian" by those who oppose all who differ. Jews are still obviously not Christian, and so to the xenophobic are still suspect. Likewise, Jews are identifiable. Even when not observant, names tend to distinguish Jews relatively well, at least well enough for those who wish to see a conspiracy. Finally, because Jews, support Israel, though those on the left have largely stopped, there is always the charge that Jews have split loyalty. (Though, somehow this is never applied to those Irish who dutifully pass a can for widows and orphans in Ulster... though why widows and orphans want to buy guns and bombs is beyond me -- Sorry any Irish readers, but you know the money in that can isn't going to poor relief, I have some Irish relatives too, and spent a lot of time in Irish bars, and we all know it isn't buying milk and diapers. At least it wasn't during the 80's and 90's. Who knows where it goes today.)

Well, whatever the cause of this suspicion of Jews, it is not doing the right any favors to allow these antisemites, even those who claim to just be "anti-Zionists" to seek a home on the right. As I have argued before about Pat Buchanan, we have spent far too much energy debunking that old saw that the Nazis are on the right of the political spectrum, that somehow conservative thought leads to fascism, to just throw it all away to let our big tent hold some antisemite nutjobs. Think about it this way, had we kept to our old anti-Catholic biases, we would have never had a William F. Buckley. Do we so badly want the support of a few anti-Semite nuts that we are willing to turn away the many conservative Jews who think the Republican party and the conservative movement in general have no place for them?

The left is already busy painting us as racism, xenophobic demons, should we help them along? Conservatism is not about being a Christian any more than it is about being white. And being a Jew is not an instant initiation into the ranks of the left. However, if we do not denounce those who make such allegations against Jews we continue to let the left perpetuate both of those rumors. It is unfair that we have to be twice as careful to avoid giving such impressions, but it is the reality. The left and the media has successfully smeared the right, it is up to us, whether fair or not, to make sure this rumor is proved false.

POSTSCRIPT

For the sake of anyone who is not a regular reader, I am a Jew, so I do have a personal stake in this. Then again, I have also argued for treating Moslems fairly, not cherry picking seemingly damning passages from the Koran in the same way atheists cherry pick passages from the bible. I do personally want to see an end to acceptance of antisemitic individuals on the right, but I also think it is good politics. There are many conservatives among the more orthodox Jews who are only Democrats by default. Just as we have made inroads among the Catholics and very strong inroads in the south, orthodox Jews are a good future source of votes for the Republican party, and it would be absurd for those of us on the right to turn them away for the sake of a few on the lunatic fringe.

POSTSCRIPT II

I suppose the Jewish cause has been hurt by one geographical accident. Jews largely settled in northeast and west coast cities, where liberalism is the guiding philosophy. So any Jews who entered politics, of necessity were those on the left, as those on the right would not be elected. So we need up with left wing politicians representing all of the Jews. So, when one tries to think of a Jewish political figure, of necessity one imagines almost all liberals. Another example can be found in academia. Jews in academia are on the left, but so are gentiles in academia. However, as there is a disparate number of Jews in academic professions, it is taken as a sign that Jews lean to the left.

Let us look at a different group. The Irish. The Irish also settled int eh same cities, and their political representative were all on the left as well. In fact, many political machines of the left were Irish. The Irish also tended to favor the humanities in academic disciplines and writing in artistic endeavors, and in both their representatives were almost all on the left. Yet, somehow, the image never developed of the "liberal Irishman". Most likely as the Irish were familiar enough to most through personal contact that no one would imagine them as uniformly left wing, while Jews were generally somewhat alien to those who created these caricatures, allowing them to imagine whatever they wished.