Is America Changing? AreTraditional American Virtues No Longer Inspiring to Our Citizens?

(The following was sent to me by our local 9-12 Group. Rabbi
Pruzansky hits the nail on the head, over and over. It is well worth
the read.)

 

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is the spiritual leader of Congregation
Bnai Yeshurunin Teaneck, New Jersey.

 Please take a moment to digest his provocative article. 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. "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 virtuesof 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 pocket
books. 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 AdlaiStevenson: "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 ofsubstance, depth and ideas - to compete with the
shallow populism andplatitudes of their opponents. Obama
mastered the politics of envy - ofclass 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, 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."