The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Something Unseemly’

Posted on | May 7, 2010 | 41 Comments

Matthew Yglesias:

There’s something unseemly about seeing fellow Jews turn into rightwingers.

The mind boggles at this kind of statement. How do you even begin to address the universe of idiocy crammed into those 10 words, with infinite density like the pre-Big Bang singularity? After being spanked by National Review‘s Kevin Williamson, Yglesias . . . uh, clarifies:

The problem with being a conservative isn’t that it contradicts Jewish precepts. The problem with being a conservative is that conservative ideology is mistaken and the conservative movement is pernicious. . . . Separately from that, I’m also Jewish. And as a Jew, I’m not immune to a bit of communal pride in the fact that Jews are overwhelmingly progressive and that very few Jews choose to sign up for the wrongheaded and pernicious conservative movement in the United States. But some Jews buck the trend and undermine my effort at communal pride, which I find annoying over-and-above the fact that conservatives are just wrong generally.

Would it be unfair to suggest that subjectivity blinds Yglesias to the true relationship between his Jewishness and his ideology? That is to say, any member of a particular identity group where a certain political orientation prevails will quite normally share the political beliefs of his group, and most American Jews are liberal, a fact examined by the late Norman Podhoretz in his final book. And Yglesias is a graduate of Harvard, where liberalism is a far more prevalent and influential religion than Judaism. 

Yglesias undoubtedly considers himself a bold independent thinker, but it is just as plausible to explain him as a mere conformist.

Political Tribalism

Ethnic loyalty is a political phenomenon I’ve contemplated quite often over the years, since it had such a profound influence in my own life. Remember, I was raised as a yellow-dog Democrat. I never even met a Republican until I was in college. I voted for Walter Mondale in 1984 and had a Clinton-Gore bumper sticker on my car in 1992. So it was quite a struggle when, in my mid-30s, I began to disabuse myself of the erroneous ideas that I had absorbed through my lifelong loyalty to the Democratic Party. (Among other things, I spent a lot of time reading de Tocqueville, the Federalists, Burke, Hayek, Mises, and Bill Buckley.)

It was David Horowitz, I believe, who best explained why Jews are often so intensely absorbed with the kind of “progressive” ideology that defined his upbringing as a “Red Diaper baby,” the son of Communist Party members. Rather than attempt to locate and quote the passage in Horowitz’s memoir Radical Son, I will gloss it from an admittedly vague memory and expand on the theme based on other readings (e.g., . Stuart Svonkin’s Jews Against Prejudice.)

In the 19th century, the rabbinic tradition of tikkun olam (“to heal the world”) became secularized and politicized as a pseudo-religious obligation to pursue “reform.” A quite similar historical tendency was evident in the Christian world, where Catholics adopted the “social justice” dogma of Rerum Novarum and Protestants promulgated what was known as the “Social Gospel.”

The identification between American Jews and this conception of a “reform” mission — the root of progressivism — was far more intense, however, primarily because of their experience of anti-Semitic prejudice, but also because of other socio-economic conditions.

Urban Jews and Southern Rednecks

Most Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were recent immigrants to the U.S. and residents of large Northern cities, employed in factory jobs.  These urban working-class Jews were active in labor unions, and participated in the kind of coalition politics at which the Democratic Party excelled. This had an enduring legacy. For decades, political demographers generally lumped Jews into the category of “ethnics,” along with the Irish, Poles, Italians and other non-Protestant whites. In 1972, for example, Edmund Muskie believed his Polish ancestry would help him win the Wisconsin Democratic primary. Furthermore, Jewish leaders were instrumental to the success of the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s (until they were purged by Stokely Carmichael and other “Black Power” radicals), and many Jews still believe the Democratic Party propaganda line that the GOP was and is hostile to minority interests.

The allegiance of American Jews to progressive politics and the Democratic Party is no less a product of historical and cultural circumstance than were the similar allegiances of my own parents, who grew up in poverty in rural Alabama. My father remained a loyal Democrat to his dying day, and many of my aunts, uncles and cousins are still Democrats. The facts of Southern political history have been distorted by Democratic “backlash” propaganda claiming that white Southerners began to vote Republican as an expression of racism. Yet the switch of partisan loyalty didn’t occur in the 1960s — i.e., it wasn’t due to Nixon’s “Southern strategy” — but decades later. Democrats were a majority in my native Georgia’s congressional delegation until 1995, the GOP didn’t capture the Georgia legislature until 2002, and the state legislature in my parents’ native Alabama is still controlled by Democrats. In truth, it is only as the old prejudiced white folks have died off that the the South has become more bipartisan, and the GOP’s most solid constituency in the South — as elsewhere — is among small business owners and the college-educated middle class, rather than among illiterate bigots.

Excuse me if that corrective paragraph was a bit longish, but the Democratic propaganda strategy of portraying the GOP as beholden to hateful bigots is intimately connected to the continuing prevalence of “progressivism” among American Jews.

The Anointed Elite

If it were true — as Democrats would have you believe — that every Republican voter is a closet Klansman, then certainly tikkun olam would impose an obligation for Jews to vote Democrat. And when you add in the Democratic propaganda claim that the GOP is “the party of the rich,” controlled by eeeee-vil greedy Corporate Amerikkka, then surely you must admire the courage of Yglesias in opposing “the wrongheaded and pernicious conservative movement.”

Yet the facts do not comport with the Democratic Party’s propaganda claims, as witness the degree to which Goldman Sachs owns the Obama administration. If Yglesias didn’t have a direct professional duty to disseminate the party line — he’s on the payroll of John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, after all — he might pause to examine the facts that contradict his own rhetoric. His viciousness in lashing out at Jonah Golberg and Eric Cantor betrays the extraordinary mental effort required for Yglesia to cope with the cognitive dissonance inherent to his task.

Like other progressives, Yglesias spends most of his day publicizing his own progressive courage — “How bold I am! How perceptive and intelligent I am! Admire me!” — and when conservatives refuse to tug the forelock in obeisance, he quite naturally attributes this either to their ignorance or their malevolence or, quite possibly, both.

Yglesias thinks of himself as independent and unique, but he is in fact a cartoon stereotype of the liberal elitists whose worldview was brilliantly limned by Thomas Sowell in The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.

That Yglesias has utterly beclowned himself . . . Well, it’s unseemly.

A shanda fur die goyim, you might say.

Category: History, Progressivism

Comments

41 Responses to “‘Something Unseemly’”

  1. Joe Marier
    May 7th, 2010 @ 2:03 pm

    Norman Podhoretz wrote that book, not Irving.

  2. Joe Marier
    May 7th, 2010 @ 9:03 am

    Norman Podhoretz wrote that book, not Irving.

  3. Robert Stacy McCain
    May 7th, 2010 @ 2:17 pm

    Fixed, Joe. Thanks. How typical of me to make a stupid glitch like that while taking a Harvardian to the woodshed. Back in the old days, somebody on the copy desk would have caught that. Commenters are the fact-checkers of the blogosphere.

  4. Robert Stacy McCain
    May 7th, 2010 @ 9:17 am

    Fixed, Joe. Thanks. How typical of me to make a stupid glitch like that while taking a Harvardian to the woodshed. Back in the old days, somebody on the copy desk would have caught that. Commenters are the fact-checkers of the blogosphere.

  5. Joe
    May 7th, 2010 @ 2:47 pm

    Yglesias is a book smart bright 29 year old kid with no experience. I occasionally read his stuff, and while he is talented person, his work is mostly narrow and parochial. That Andrew Sullivan named his Yglesias Award for speaking truth to your own side is some sort of funny joke.

    These comments you reference highlight that fact. I hope he is actually struggling with these issues and these writings are just signs of that struggle.

  6. Joe
    May 7th, 2010 @ 9:47 am

    Yglesias is a book smart bright 29 year old kid with no experience. I occasionally read his stuff, and while he is talented person, his work is mostly narrow and parochial. That Andrew Sullivan named his Yglesias Award for speaking truth to your own side is some sort of funny joke.

    These comments you reference highlight that fact. I hope he is actually struggling with these issues and these writings are just signs of that struggle.

  7. Roxeanne de Luca
    May 7th, 2010 @ 2:50 pm

    It seems obvious to me, but maybe Yglesias doesn’t get it: these days, Democrats are wholeheartedly against Israel, the professional class (e.g. doctors, lawyers, small business owners), and social justice. Their agenda doesn’t have much to do with actually helping people or preserving the legal and social systems which enabled the Jewish community to thrive in America. After another decade or so of bowing down to the Middle East, thumbing our noses at Israel, and taxing the upwardly mobile professionals into oblivion (as it becomes increasingly difficult for them to buy homes, send their kids to college, pay off their student loans, etc.), the bulk of the thinking Jewish population will be voting Republican.

    I also can’t help but idly wonder how long it will take the “cultural tolerance” police to start in on Judiasm the same way that they attack Christianity. Once wearing the flag of Israel to school results in suspension because it’ll hurt someone’s feelings, it’ll be all over.

  8. Roxeanne de Luca
    May 7th, 2010 @ 9:50 am

    It seems obvious to me, but maybe Yglesias doesn’t get it: these days, Democrats are wholeheartedly against Israel, the professional class (e.g. doctors, lawyers, small business owners), and social justice. Their agenda doesn’t have much to do with actually helping people or preserving the legal and social systems which enabled the Jewish community to thrive in America. After another decade or so of bowing down to the Middle East, thumbing our noses at Israel, and taxing the upwardly mobile professionals into oblivion (as it becomes increasingly difficult for them to buy homes, send their kids to college, pay off their student loans, etc.), the bulk of the thinking Jewish population will be voting Republican.

    I also can’t help but idly wonder how long it will take the “cultural tolerance” police to start in on Judiasm the same way that they attack Christianity. Once wearing the flag of Israel to school results in suspension because it’ll hurt someone’s feelings, it’ll be all over.

  9. molonlabe28
    May 7th, 2010 @ 2:57 pm

    This kind of sophistry by American Jews is the precise reason that I no longer worry about Israel to the extent I used to do so.

    When 80%+ of American Jews don’t even care about Israel enough to vote for US politicians who will support Israel’s right to exist, I no longer worry about Israel.

    In other words, when we have to oppose American Jews to support Israel’s right to exist, I give up.

    It’s too bad, because Israel is a shining star of democracy in a region of thugocracies.

  10. molonlabe28
    May 7th, 2010 @ 9:57 am

    This kind of sophistry by American Jews is the precise reason that I no longer worry about Israel to the extent I used to do so.

    When 80%+ of American Jews don’t even care about Israel enough to vote for US politicians who will support Israel’s right to exist, I no longer worry about Israel.

    In other words, when we have to oppose American Jews to support Israel’s right to exist, I give up.

    It’s too bad, because Israel is a shining star of democracy in a region of thugocracies.

  11. Slartibartfast
    May 7th, 2010 @ 2:59 pm

    I think what Yglesias means is that conservatives are pernicious. Just reading between the lines, here.

    Quick, someone get the manboy a thesaurus.

    Oh, there’s more. A lot more.

    One of the funniest aspects of conservative thinking on issues of racial and ethnic justice is that they appear to actually not know what racism or bigotry actually are.

    I read somewhere that actually can actually be removed from any given sentence without actually changing the meaning. But what do I know? No one’s paying me to write.

    So to clarify what I was actually saying, it was just this.

    He just can’t stop himself. And it looks as if he’s colostomized himself.

    Plus a whole lot of logical problems: as a Jew, because I think that conservatives are wrong as a matter of opinion, I think that other Jews should agree with me. Because they’re Jewish, and presumably smart like me.

    But not as smart, obviously, because some of them are conservative.

    Really, that Yglesias bit in thinkprogress is one of the more amateurish bits of writing I’ve ever seen exhibited by someone who is generally (if not widely) regarded as being worthy of reading. It reads like something written by a stoned high school student who is in a hurry to complete an essay the day the assignment is due.

  12. Slartibartfast
    May 7th, 2010 @ 9:59 am

    I think what Yglesias means is that conservatives are pernicious. Just reading between the lines, here.

    Quick, someone get the manboy a thesaurus.

    Oh, there’s more. A lot more.

    One of the funniest aspects of conservative thinking on issues of racial and ethnic justice is that they appear to actually not know what racism or bigotry actually are.

    I read somewhere that actually can actually be removed from any given sentence without actually changing the meaning. But what do I know? No one’s paying me to write.

    So to clarify what I was actually saying, it was just this.

    He just can’t stop himself. And it looks as if he’s colostomized himself.

    Plus a whole lot of logical problems: as a Jew, because I think that conservatives are wrong as a matter of opinion, I think that other Jews should agree with me. Because they’re Jewish, and presumably smart like me.

    But not as smart, obviously, because some of them are conservative.

    Really, that Yglesias bit in thinkprogress is one of the more amateurish bits of writing I’ve ever seen exhibited by someone who is generally (if not widely) regarded as being worthy of reading. It reads like something written by a stoned high school student who is in a hurry to complete an essay the day the assignment is due.

  13. Slartibartfast
    May 7th, 2010 @ 3:02 pm

    Stoned to the bejesus, to swipe a phrase from Carl Spackler.

  14. Slartibartfast
    May 7th, 2010 @ 10:02 am

    Stoned to the bejesus, to swipe a phrase from Carl Spackler.

  15. wombat-socho
    May 7th, 2010 @ 3:25 pm

    More nonsense from a member of the Juice Box Mafia. Quelle surprise.

  16. wombat-socho
    May 7th, 2010 @ 10:25 am

    More nonsense from a member of the Juice Box Mafia. Quelle surprise.

  17. Robert Stacy McCain
    May 7th, 2010 @ 4:10 pm

    In other words, when we have to oppose American Jews to support Israel’s right to exist, I give up.

    Good point. Maybe somebody can revisit the question of why Pat Buchanan had to be purged from the ranks of “respectable” conservatives. I mean, Buchanan never hated Israel so thoroughly as do some liberals nowadays. Hell’s bells, most American progressives are more anti-Israel than Hamas.

  18. Robert Stacy McCain
    May 7th, 2010 @ 11:10 am

    In other words, when we have to oppose American Jews to support Israel’s right to exist, I give up.

    Good point. Maybe somebody can revisit the question of why Pat Buchanan had to be purged from the ranks of “respectable” conservatives. I mean, Buchanan never hated Israel so thoroughly as do some liberals nowadays. Hell’s bells, most American progressives are more anti-Israel than Hamas.

  19. Your Marxist Moron of the DAy « The Daley Gator
    May 7th, 2010 @ 11:15 am

    […] May Is Matthew Yglesias, the reason he is being “honored” is found at The Other McCain where Stacy McCain delivers a much-desrrved beat down. Matthew Yglesias: There’s something […]

  20. Lazarus Long
    May 7th, 2010 @ 4:34 pm

    Another case of conformo-radicalism, part of the thundering herd of independent minds.

  21. Lazarus Long
    May 7th, 2010 @ 11:34 am

    Another case of conformo-radicalism, part of the thundering herd of independent minds.

  22. McGehee
    May 7th, 2010 @ 6:50 pm

    One of the funniest aspects of conservative thinking on issues of racial and ethnic justice is that they appear to actually not know what racism or bigotry actually are.

    Evidently, Yggy doesn’t realize that adding qualifiers like “social” to a word like justice is the linguistic equivalent of dividing by zero.

  23. McGehee
    May 7th, 2010 @ 1:50 pm

    One of the funniest aspects of conservative thinking on issues of racial and ethnic justice is that they appear to actually not know what racism or bigotry actually are.

    Evidently, Yggy doesn’t realize that adding qualifiers like “social” to a word like justice is the linguistic equivalent of dividing by zero.

  24. Mikey NTH
    May 7th, 2010 @ 7:16 pm

    What distresses him most is how conservative Jews upset his communal pride.

    “But some Jews buck the trend and undermine my effort at communal pride, which I find annoying over-and-above the fact that conservatives are just wrong generally.”

    And that says it all – it is all about him and how he views the world, and those who don’t act their proper role in his little drama upset him. Please Lord – keep this clown as far away from real power as possible.

  25. Mikey NTH
    May 7th, 2010 @ 2:16 pm

    What distresses him most is how conservative Jews upset his communal pride.

    “But some Jews buck the trend and undermine my effort at communal pride, which I find annoying over-and-above the fact that conservatives are just wrong generally.”

    And that says it all – it is all about him and how he views the world, and those who don’t act their proper role in his little drama upset him. Please Lord – keep this clown as far away from real power as possible.

  26. Wondering Jew
    May 7th, 2010 @ 7:40 pm

    Right on target Stacy.

    Sadly, most of my fellow Jews are politically deluded in the extreme. Even more sadly, I expect it will take a real nasty experience with left-wing Antisemitism for that to change.

  27. Wondering Jew
    May 7th, 2010 @ 2:40 pm

    Right on target Stacy.

    Sadly, most of my fellow Jews are politically deluded in the extreme. Even more sadly, I expect it will take a real nasty experience with left-wing Antisemitism for that to change.

  28. Robert Stacy McCain
    May 7th, 2010 @ 8:15 pm

    Even more sadly, I expect it will take a real nasty experience with left-wing Antisemitism for that to change.

    Not necessarily, WJ. Based on my own experience, I believe that most young Democrats have a rather fragile worldview. That is to say, once any intelligent person begins to question the True Faith of Liberalism, the whole damned edifice collapses pretty rapidly. You can take as an example Ronald Reagan, who went from being such a liberal in the early 1940s that he (unwittingly) joined two CPUSA “front” groups to being an all-out anti-Communist by the end of the decade.

    And, as I pointed out, Yglesias currently has a professional career interest in being a loyal liberal. If he ever gets screwed over in his career by some backstabber — and D.C. is a magnet for ambitious two-faced backstabbers — he may have cause to reconsider his ideological and partisan commitments.

  29. Robert Stacy McCain
    May 7th, 2010 @ 3:15 pm

    Even more sadly, I expect it will take a real nasty experience with left-wing Antisemitism for that to change.

    Not necessarily, WJ. Based on my own experience, I believe that most young Democrats have a rather fragile worldview. That is to say, once any intelligent person begins to question the True Faith of Liberalism, the whole damned edifice collapses pretty rapidly. You can take as an example Ronald Reagan, who went from being such a liberal in the early 1940s that he (unwittingly) joined two CPUSA “front” groups to being an all-out anti-Communist by the end of the decade.

    And, as I pointed out, Yglesias currently has a professional career interest in being a loyal liberal. If he ever gets screwed over in his career by some backstabber — and D.C. is a magnet for ambitious two-faced backstabbers — he may have cause to reconsider his ideological and partisan commitments.

  30. PCP Smoker
    May 7th, 2010 @ 10:45 pm

    What happens to his dreadlocks? What’s with the jewish (liberal) intellectual look? Did he grow tired of being in solidarity with the ‘hood and da homies? Or did the white gansta’ look get played out?

  31. PCP Smoker
    May 7th, 2010 @ 5:45 pm

    What happens to his dreadlocks? What’s with the jewish (liberal) intellectual look? Did he grow tired of being in solidarity with the ‘hood and da homies? Or did the white gansta’ look get played out?

  32. Randy Rager
    May 8th, 2010 @ 2:38 am

    Little Matty may be one of the most eminently forgettable cretins every produced by Hahvuhd. The sooner he’s drubbed from polite society, the better.

  33. Randy Rager
    May 7th, 2010 @ 9:38 pm

    Little Matty may be one of the most eminently forgettable cretins every produced by Hahvuhd. The sooner he’s drubbed from polite society, the better.

  34. Estragon
    May 8th, 2010 @ 7:28 am

    I blame the Short Pants Brigade at The Corner.

    Just like with Andrew Sullivan a few years before, the Kidz over there sooo wanted to have a “dialogue” with some [fill in the blank, “group member”] that they shamelessly promoted him into thinking he was significant. Also like Andrew, he never was and never will be.

    They also retain to this day a strange loyalty to David Frum, who has done everything in his power to offend conservatives.

    Which goes to prove the old adage, “Never trust a man until he’s old enough to shave with a blade in the razor.”

  35. Estragon
    May 8th, 2010 @ 2:28 am

    I blame the Short Pants Brigade at The Corner.

    Just like with Andrew Sullivan a few years before, the Kidz over there sooo wanted to have a “dialogue” with some [fill in the blank, “group member”] that they shamelessly promoted him into thinking he was significant. Also like Andrew, he never was and never will be.

    They also retain to this day a strange loyalty to David Frum, who has done everything in his power to offend conservatives.

    Which goes to prove the old adage, “Never trust a man until he’s old enough to shave with a blade in the razor.”

  36. The Mexican
    May 8th, 2010 @ 12:54 pm

    Karl Marx was a Jew, what can you say. He’s right that Jews are overwhelmingly Marxists. They push Marxism ideologically in the educational institutions and fund Marxist promoting foundation. His description of his tribe is correct. Progressivism/Marxism is a Jewish creation.

    Of course it’s politically incorrect to say so.

  37. The Mexican
    May 8th, 2010 @ 7:54 am

    Karl Marx was a Jew, what can you say. He’s right that Jews are overwhelmingly Marxists. They push Marxism ideologically in the educational institutions and fund Marxist promoting foundation. His description of his tribe is correct. Progressivism/Marxism is a Jewish creation.

    Of course it’s politically incorrect to say so.

  38. The Mexican
    May 8th, 2010 @ 12:57 pm

    I wanted to add, thank God for Mark Levin and Jonah Goldberg. With minds like those, maybe someday that progressive mindset will be broken withing the Jewish community.

  39. The Mexican
    May 8th, 2010 @ 7:57 am

    I wanted to add, thank God for Mark Levin and Jonah Goldberg. With minds like those, maybe someday that progressive mindset will be broken withing the Jewish community.

  40. Moshe Ben Avram
    May 9th, 2010 @ 12:20 am

    Unfortunately Yglesias is a member of a bankrupt ideology. What one must remember is that most of the mispochah have been brainwashed into liberalism and as one individual said, it’s going to take a strong anti-semitic slap in the face to make them see the light. Thank G-d I’am a constitutionalist, because if I was a liberal, I’d have to shoot myself.

  41. Moshe Ben Avram
    May 8th, 2010 @ 7:20 pm

    Unfortunately Yglesias is a member of a bankrupt ideology. What one must remember is that most of the mispochah have been brainwashed into liberalism and as one individual said, it’s going to take a strong anti-semitic slap in the face to make them see the light. Thank G-d I’am a constitutionalist, because if I was a liberal, I’d have to shoot myself.