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Culture of Critique Cliff's Notes

Thread ID: 11927 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2004-01-16

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weisbrot [OP]

2004-01-16 20:57 | User Profile

This reads like the "Cliffs Notes" to MacDonald's book...

[url]http://www.thejewishweek.com/bottom/specialcontent.php3?artid=663[/url]

Lobbying for Influence (01/06/2004) Other ethnic groups have picked up and run with the Jewish model for leveraging political power. James D. Besser - Washington Correspondent

Fifteen years ago, when Arab-American groups were trying to make their mark on both foreign and domestic policy, some top leaders turned to what seemed like the obvious model for minority-group political influence: the Jewish community.

It was no accident that Arab-Americans even created organizations with names that mimicked the names of their Jewish counterparts. Other ethnic groups today are carefully studying the Jewish example and trying to emulate it, including Americans with Islamic, Indian and Armenian backgrounds.

In the past year, lobbyists for India have worked closely with pro-Israel groups, seeking support for their battle against Islamic groups but also getting educated about power politics in Washington. “The Indians have very carefully studied what the pro-Israel lobby does,” said John Hopkins University political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg. “They have been the most successful the kind of politics pro-Israel groups use because they are also an affluent lobby.” The Armenian community, he said, has also “studied and copied the Jews and they’ve mobilized the language of the Holocaust, and with good reason. They understand the political power of symbolism.”

These and other groups understand this key fact: Jews have created institutions and political values that have magnified their political power far out of proportion to their numerical place in American society. Jews have helped give texture to the American political landscape in countless ways, perhaps none more important than the fact that they have provided a model for citizen involvement that combines narrow community interests and expansive social justice concerns.

“In the broadest sense, Jews have been the primary defenders of American political values — liberty, equality and democracy,” said Ginsberg. “They’ve done so out of both belief and self-interest. Jews, being a beleaguered minority, saw in American political values a source of deliverance.”

Jew fought ferociously against the once-pervasive anti-Semitism in America and for Israel, but also for the rights of others here and abroad. Jews honed the modern sense that justice for all is good for individual minorities to a sharp new edge, an idea that gave shape to some of the great movements of the past century. But that orientation is under attack in this new, more conservative era — and Jews are part of that movement, as well.

But it would be naïve to say that those Jewish contributions have been universally appreciated. Jews perfected many of the mechanisms of campaign finance that have helped other minorities and interest groups to maximize their power, but which are also reviled by many as a corruption of the democratic system. American political life reflects the Jewish impact, but Jewish life, too, has been indelibly imprinted with the demands of this complex democracy.

The great movements of the past century were all influenced by a Jewish community that understood early on that involvement was the key to protecting its own interests and living out the moral commandments of Jewish life.

Part of that power involves the simplest act of democratic participation: voting. Jews have always voted in much higher proportions than other groups in American society. When African-American politicians seek to tap that community’s underused political muscle, they frequently cite the high turnout rates of the Jewish community. They also have emulated the way Jews sought allies to multiply the impact of their activism.

“One of the things the Jews learned early in the 20th century is that they can, as a small minority, affect policy if they can appeal to American values, and can create coalitions,” said Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University.

That lesson was apparent as early as the first years of the last century, when an aroused Jewish community worked to abrogate a trade agreement with Russia to punish the Czar’s government for its mistreatment of Jews — one of the community’s first real victories.

But Jews were also forced to incorporate a hard-headed pragmatism that has lived in constant tension with the community’s idealism. “They learned there are some issues where the country is so fixated on going in a certain direction that there’s nothing the Jewish community can do about it,” Sarna said.

But it wasn’t just narrow self-interest; the Jewish community provided a model for how a minority could serve its own interests and bolster its own security by working for the benefit of all.

“Jews believed that they would be better off if they lived in a country that fought racism, that supported social justice,” Sarna said. “It was self-interest, but self-interest defined in a much broader way. I’ve heard many politicians talk about the fact that the only groups coming to them, arguing for the rights of others, are the Jews.”

That broad perspective propelled Jews into the front ranks of those who remade American politics through the New Deal of the 1930s. It set the stage for Jewish involvement in the great civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, and for the significant Jewish role in the Great Society.

One of the community’s great contributions “was the idea that you have to make coalitions, and sometimes coalitions with groups that you don’t like very much,” Sarna said.

That was true when Jews were working with the bluebloods of the FDR era, and it’s true today when many are working with Evangelical Christians on support for Israel.

Jews, with the remarkable upward mobility that characterized the community, also learned to use their financial resources in myriad ways. Communally, Jews supported the creation and operation of a host of organizations that served the needs of the community’s poor and infirm. The United Jewish Communities and the network of local Jewish federations provide a wealth of on-the-ground services, and in recent years pioneered the blending of government and philanthropic funding.

Jews have pumped money into “defense” organizations dedicated to protecting Jewish interests, and insisted that those groups also fight for the rights of others.

And Jews have extended that practical giving into the political realm. Jews became pioneers in modern campaign finance, and in using the system as a complement to lobbying to affect American Mideast policy, said political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg — a lesson that hasn’t been lost on other groups.

Jewish pro-Israel activists were also pioneers in the use of “bundling” — gathering individual donations and giving them to candidates, wrapped in the pro-Israel message.

That has been a mixed blessing. Incontestably, the creative use of campaign finance strengthened and safeguarded the U.S.-Israel relationship. It is a key reason Capitol Hill is now a fortress of support for the Jewish state.

That success has led other interest groups to follow the campaign finance path blazed by the Jewish community. In recent years it has been Indian-Americans and Armenian-Americans; other “diaspora” populations look at the development of pro-Israel clout as a veritable textbook on modern politics.

But it has also contributed to the rise of special-interest, big-money politics in America.

That has produced one of many paradoxes in Jewish political life: the community is in the forefront of “good government” efforts, but also is a leader in campaign finance methods whose impact, in the view of many, has been less salutary.

But it’s not just money: it’s also the pinpoint focus and the aggressive lobbying that, together with campaign finance, have helped create a new paradigm of politics in America.

That same multitrack mode of influence helped shape other movements prominent in American life today. It doesn’t take a big stretch of imagination to say that today’s anti-abortion movement, among others, learned some important lessons from the Jews, including the amazing power of a combination of lobbying, campaign finance, grassroots activism and sheer passion.

That’s the hard edge of Jewish political life, part of the nation’s political culture now. Pro-Israel activists still talk about the defeat of Sen. Chuck Percy (R-Ill.) in 1984 as the ultimate object lesson in the power of hardball politics on behalf of Israel, and that lesson hasn’t been lost on other groups seeking influence.

In the past few years, several pro-Israel solidarity resolutions have passed Congress with almost no dissent. Israel’s foreign aid, once controversial, now faces only token opposition, if that. Another measure of the broad political appeal of the pro-Israel movement was a rally in the spring of 2002 that drew top administration officials, members of Congress and politicians. The annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby, has become a must stop for aspiring politicians in both parties.

But Jews also created a pioneering network of community relations agencies that work in cities and towns across the country to promote better relations between groups while protecting Jewish interests — a system that remains a positive model for an increasingly polarized nation.

The history books tell the story of how Jews helped forge liberal policies and stood at the forefront of progressive causes in the 20th century, but the same also holds true for the conservative tide of recent years. That new political expression — conservative on domestic and fiscal matters, decidedly interventionist in foreign policy — owes much of its character to the Jewish neo-conservatives who broke from the community’s liberal orthodoxy in the wake of the great social and political upheavals of the 1960s.

Jewish liberals might cringe to hear it, but “I don’t think George Bush would be president today without Jewish neo-conservatism,” said Akiba Covitz, a political scientist at the University of Richmond.

But just as the Jewish community has changed American political culture, that culture has changed Jewish politics. “Jews in the 20th century had a strong interest in the long view of society — how to improve it over the long term,” Brandeis’ Sarna said. “Increasingly in America, politics and business are becoming something in which one pays attention not to the long view, but to the immediate art of the possible. We see that influencing the Jewish community, as well.”

Ed Toner

2004-01-20 22:04 | User Profile

I think Jews have ONE goal in mind - Rule The World!

Everything points to this.