Subj: We Are Not Coming Back
A Rabbi tells us why America will never come
back. It's very well thought out and easy to read. It's
also very scary and what we deserve; I.e. Because we allowed this to
happen.
We will never see America as the way we were
raised...."we" being those of us older than 75.
Subject: FW:
We Are Not Coming Back
Please
take a moment to digest this provocative article by a Jewish
Rabbifrom Teaneck , N.J.
It is far and away the most succinct and thoughtful
explanation of how our nation is changing. The article appeared
in The Israel National News, and is directed to Jewish readership.
70% of American Jews vote as Democrats. The Rabbi has some
interesting comments in that regard.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is the spiritual leader of Congregation
Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The most charitable way of explaining the election results of
2012 is that Americans voted for the status quo - for the incumbent
President and for a divided Congress. They must enjoy gridlock,
partisanship, incompetence, economic stagnation and avoidance of
responsibility. And fewer people voted.
But as we awake from the nightmare, it is important to eschew the
facile explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among
the chattering classes. Romney did not lose because of the effects
of Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor did he lose
because he ran a poor campaign, nor did he lose because the
Republicans could have chosen better candidates, nor did he lose
because Obama benefited from a slight uptick in the economy due to
the business cycle.
Romney lost because he didn't get enough votes to win.
That might seem obvious, but not for the obvious reasons. Romney
lost because the conservative virtues - the traditional American
virtues – of
Liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private initiative and
aspirations to moral greatness - no longer inspire or animate a
majority of the electorate.
The simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is impossible to
compete against free stuff.
Every businessman knows this; that is why the "loss
leader" or the giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool.
Obama's America is one in which free stuff is given away: the
adults among the 47,000,000 on
food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so
they did, by the tens of millions; those who - courtesy of Obama -
receive two full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course,
both disincentivizes looking for work and also motivates people to
work off the books while collecting their windfall) surely know for
whom to vote. The lure of free
stuff is irresistible.
The defining moment of the whole campaign was the revelation of the
secretly-recorded video in which Romney acknowledged the difficulty
of winning an election in which "47% of the people" start
off against him because they pay no taxes and just receive money -
"free stuff" - from the government.
Almost half of the population has no skin in the
game - they don't care about high taxes, promoting
business, or creating jobs, nor do they care that the money for
their free stuff is being borrowed from their children
And from the Chinese.
They
just want the free stuff that comes their way at someone else's expense.
In the end, that 47% leaves very little margin for error for any
Republican, and does not bode well for the future.
It is impossible to imagine a
conservative candidate winning against such overwhelming odds.
People do vote their pocketbooks. In essence, the people vote for a
Congress who will not raise their taxes, and for a President who
will give them free stuff, never mind who has to pay for it.
That engenders the second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable
conclusion that the electorate
is ignorant and uninformed.
Indeed, it does not pay to be an informed voter, because most other
voters - the clear majority – are unintelligent and easily swayed
by emotion and raw populism. That is the indelicate way of saying
that too many people vote with their hearts and not their heads.
That is why Obama did not have to produce a second term agenda, or
even defend his first-term record. He needed only to portray Mitt
Romney as a rapacious capitalist who throws elderly women over a
cliff, when he is not just snatching away their cancer medication,
while starving the poor and cutting taxes for the rich.
During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai
Stevenson: "Senator, you have the vote of every thinking
person!" Stevenson called back: "That's not enough,
madam, we need a majority!"
Truer words were never spoken.
Obama could get away with saying that "Romney wants the rich
to play by a different set of rules" - without ever defining
what those different rules were; with saying that the "rich
should pay their fair share" - without ever defining what a
"fair share" is; with saying that Romney wants the poor,
elderly and sick to "fend for themselves" - without even
acknowledging that all these government programs are going
bankrupt, their current insolvency only papered over by deficit
spending.
Similarly, Obama (or his surrogates) could hint to blacks that a
Romney victory would lead them back into chains and proclaim to
women that their abortions and birth control would be taken away.
He could appeal to Hispanics that Romney would have them all
arrested and shipped to Mexico and unabashedly state that he will
not enforce the current immigration laws. He could espouse the
furtherance of the incestuous relationship between governments and
unions - in which politicians ply the unions with public money, in
exchange for which the unions provide the politicians with votes,
in exchange for which the politicians provide more money and the
unions provide more votes, etc., even though the money is gone.
Obama also knows that the electorate has changed - that whites will soon be a minority in
America (they're already a minority in California) and
that the new immigrants to the US are primarily from the Third
World and do not share the traditional American values that
attracted immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a
different world, and a different America . Obama is part of that
different America , knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is
why he won.
Obama also proved again that negative advertising works, invective
sells, and harsh personal attacks succeed. That Romney never
engaged in such diatribes points to his essential goodness as a
person; his "negative ads" were simple facts, never
personal abuse - facts about high unemployment,
lower take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige abroad,
a lack of leadership, etc. As a politician, though, Romney failed
because he did not embrace the devil's bargain of making
unsustainable promises.
It turned out that it was not possible for Romney and Ryan - people
of substance, depth and ideas - to compete with the shallow
populism and platitudes of their opponents. Obama mastered the
politics of envy – of class warfare - never reaching out to
Americans as such but to individual groups, and cobbling together a
winning majority from these minority groups. If an Obama could not
be defeated - with his record and his vision of America , in which
free stuff seduces voters - it is hard to envision any change in
the future.
The
road to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to a European-socialist economy
- those very economies that are collapsing today in Europe - is
paved.
For Jews, mostly assimilated anyway and staunch Democrats, the
results demonstrate again that liberalism is their Torah. Almost 70%
voted for a
president widely perceived by Israelis and most committed Jews as
hostile to Israel . They voted to secure Obama's future at America
's expense and at Israel 's expense - in effect, preferring Obama
to Netanyahu by a wide margin.
A dangerous
time is ahead. Under present circumstances, it is inconceivable
that the US will take any aggressive action against Iran and will
more
likely thwart any Israeli initiative. The US will preach the
importance of negotiations up until the production of the first
Iranian nuclear weapon - and then state that the world must learn
to live with this new reality.
But this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. There is no
permanent empire, nor is there an enduring haven for Jews anywhere
in the exile. The American empire began to decline in 2007, and the
deterioration has been exacerbated in the last five years. This
election only hastens that decline.
Society is permeated with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic
excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations.. The
takers outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years
to come.
The
"Occupy" riots across this country in the last two years
were mere dress rehearsals for what lies ahead - years of unrest
sparked by the increasing discontent of the unsuccessful who want
to seize the fruits and the bounty of the successful, and do not
appreciate the slow pace of redistribution.
If this election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone. And, sad for
the world, it is not coming back."
--
The problems
we face today are there because the people who work for a
living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living.
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