The Conservative Double Standard for Collective Responsibility

In a withering condemnation titled “Gaza Gets Who It Voted For,” American Spectator Editor Paul Kengor passes judgment on the voters in Gaza City:

These Palestinians have gotten who they voted for. Sure, Gazans didn’t vote for this hell, but they did vote for Hamas. And this is what Hamas is.

Although I don’t disagree with Kengor about the bad political choices of Gaza City Palestinians, I have to wonder why he and other conservatives don’t apply the same standard of responsibility to America’s urban minorities, who have empowered Democrats to turn our metropolitan areas into true hellholes. Without plentiful votes from minorities living in left-wing urban areas, irresponsible politicians who habitually play the race card would not be in their offices.

While Kengor condemns the Palestinians for their votes, he absolves Democrat-voting American Jews and blacks for theirs. For example, Kengor wrote a glowing review of Mark Levin’s The Democrat Party Hates America, in which he agreed entirely with Levin’s assertions that the Democratic Party is anti-Semitic and antiblack. Assuming that’s the case, why doesn’t Kengor wonder why blacks and Jews vote with large majorities for a party that supposedly hates them?

Behind this entirely arbitrary standard for who is to be castigated for irresponsible voting or for betraying voters is the unwarranted assumption that certain groups are not to blame for their irresponsible conduct. Inner city blacks are supposedly without agency and nothing more than the perpetual victims of scheming Democratic operators. Leftist Jewish professionals also get sympathy from the conservative press when they’re “betrayed” by Democrats, ostensibly in an effort to grab Jewish voters from the Democrats. But if we are giving out generous excuses to foolish voters in this country then should we not do the same for voters in Gaza City?

As I noted in a commentary for Intellectual Takeout, Fox News personalities like Sean Hannity and Steve Hilton are perpetually predicting a mass black influx into the GOP; and when it fails to materialize, they blame the Democratic Party for oppressing their faithful black electorate. Even a piece at the American Mind accuses the Democrats of practicing “institutional racism” against blacks; while Republican journalists continue to insist that blacks fare badly under Democratic rule, as if Democratic policies are a surprise to them. Although Democrats may in fact take black voters for granted, that hardly explains why more than 90 percent of black voters continue to give mostly unquestioning support to a party that supposedly oppresses them.

Why are those black voters who endorsed Brandon Johnson as mayor of Chicago, Alvin Bragg, and Larry Krasner as district attorneys in Manhattan and Philadelphia, respectively, and hundreds of other pro-criminal public officials designated by Republican commentators as victims of the Democratic Party? Why do black voters who elect Democrats who then close down charter schools—used disproportionately by blacks—the victims of anyone other than their own voting choices? At the very least we can agree that these voters are behaving stupidly and irresponsibly.

What about those Jewish liberals who vote for the left and who are now complaining about anti-Semitism, but have yet to admit that much of this threat is coming from the terrorists waved across this country’s borders by Biden’s handlers and administration? These political fools remind me of the Central Committee for Jews in Germany, which is currently shrieking against Die Alternative für Deutschland, the country’s only non-woke national party. This party’s sin, it seems, is warning against admitting more Muslim migrants into Germany. Although the AfD specifically cites Muslim attacks on elderly Jews on the streets of Berlin and other German cities as a reason for its stand, the blindly anti-German Central Committee expresses solidarity with Muslim communities against the AfD, which is trying to protect them. Should the members of the Central Committee be viewed as victims of “German anti-Semitism” if Muslim toughs waylay them on some German street corner? These leftists, who are driven by delusional hate of the right, deserve our contempt for raging against their countrymen while coddling foreign enemies.

Almost equally outrageous is a recent editorial comment in the Oct. 21 New York Post,  “Schumer Failed the Jews,” blaming Chuck Schumer for betraying his Jewish voters. It seems that Chuck has cozied up to anti-Israeli Democratic politicians and did very little to push back against Biden’s dealmaking with the terrorist Iranian regime. But it seems utterly unreasonable to blame Schumer for being what he has been throughout his career—a willing instrument of the political and cultural left.

Jews living in New York state typically vote for Sen. Schumer with large pluralities, and it is foolish to imagine that they have been unaware of their senator’s ideological orientation and friendship with anti-Jewish nonwhite leftists. Jewish newspapers boasted in 2021 that Schumer was  “the highest-ranking Jewish official ever.” Seeing that American Jews score off the charts on IQ tests and are heavily represented in the professions, presumably they can reflect on the reasonableness of their electoral choices. In any case Schumer’s Jewish voters have not been “betrayed” at the highest levels of government. They are getting exactly what they voted for, even if they are now temporarily suffering buyer’s remorse.

The Palestinians in Gaza City who gave their votes to an actual terrorist organization at least have the defense that they, in all probability, were not participating in free elections. We may rightly suspect that those elections were even more dishonest than those passing for “democratic” elections in our inner cities. We may also assume that elections in Gaza City took place under Hamas control and coercion. Moreover, most of the Palestinian voters live in grinding poverty, which they are told is the fault of the Israelis. If conservatives like Kengor are assigning collective blame to the Palestinians, they may also find even more deserving targets at home.


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