Jewish opposition to vouchers

National Review, Feb 24, 1997 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

NEW YORK, JANUARY 17

The question before the house was: Account for the opposition by Jewish American voters to school vouchers and prayer in the public schools.

Well, one respondent proffered, why should there be any surprise about that? The Jewish vote is preponderantly liberal and Democratic and has been since the New Deal and the interventionist foreign policy of FDR. The liberal position on public policy is, so to speak, a syndrome: liberals believe in a cluster of things --government action, the right to abort, redistribution of income, separation of church and state. Why should there be any surprise?

The generality tends to be correct, but the extreme position on church/state provokes curiosity as to its origin. It is not associated with any policies bequeathed us by FDR. The strict construction of the First Amendment was a creature of the Supreme Court beginning with its decision, in 1948, that release time in public schools for religious education violates the First Amendment's establishment clause. The questioner asked: Is the Jewish population genuinely afraid that a relaxation of the iron wall of separation might produce a theocratic Christian society? Or is it a form of rebuke, aimed at historical memories of persecution? Another point: Inasmuch as evidence abounds that the public schools in such places as New York City, urban New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., are producing a generation of illiterates, isn't the Jewish community's traditional championship of educational ideals in apparent contradiction with its position on vouchers? No ethnic group was ever more certain than the Jews that education is the key to advancement. Why then do they tend to discourage efforts against illiteracy, simply because those efforts mean that some black students will be sent by their parents to Catholic schools?

One voice was to the effect that among elderly Jews -- "over 50, 55" -- there is an old hostility to Catholicism. "They don't worry about the Protestants, since most of them are wimpy about religion." Another said that the fight particularly in New York is led by the teachers' unions, "which are predominantly Jewish" and are said to fear any reallocation of resources that might undermine the emphasis on the public schools. Another pointed to the highly successful exurban schools. "People who live in Greenwich are not enthusiastic about a break-up of a system that would dilute the excellence of the free education their children are getting in their public schools."

Two polls done during the election season catch the eye. The first surveys Jewish sentiment in Minneapolis and St. Paul, whose 45,000 Jews constitute 90 per cent of the Jewish population of Minnesota. There, 80 per cent believe that anti-Semitism is still a major problem and continue, in the language of the Star Tribune, "to strongly support public schools and oppose the use of school vouchers."

The other poll was done in Indianapolis and is especially surprising given that the language of the polling organization, the Indianapolis Jewish Community Relations Council, was very clearly tilted to evoke liberal responses to the questions asked. Even so, according to the Indianapolis Star, only 29 per cent of respondents described themselves as "liberal." Less than one-half (42 per cent) called themselves Democrats. The paper comments, "That more than two-thirds of the Indianapolis Jewish community no longer feel comfortable identifying themselves with the political tradition that has defined American Jewish life since the New Deal can only be called a dramatic shift."

Most surprising, in the Indianapolis poll, more than one-half (52 per cent) of respondents said they do not object to public religious displays. One-third support "moment of silence" legislation for public schools, and one-third support private-school vouchers.

It is odd to think of Indianapolis as a trendsetter. But the only other way to think of it is as so reactionary as not yet to have caught up with FDR and the Warren Court. Such a charge is not convincingly leveled. It has to be that there is movement, and curiosity asks: Why? What are its causes? And why is not the movement greater, given the Jewish acuity on the matter of educational advantage, and Jewish precision in weighing failed experiments? To which, of course, one adds the obvious, namely that affirmative-action programs, which are associated with liberal policies, tend to victimize young men and women who include Jewish candidates for higher education. Meanwhile, it's nice to think of Indiana as an avant-garde state.