Posted on 01/30/2014 7:15:41 AM PST by Alex Murphy
Norman Podhortez just came out with a book, Why Are Jews Liberals?. It seems that this as intellectually interesting as writing a book, “Why are blacks Democrats?”, would be. You can tick off specific reasons, but in ethnic terms American liberalism and the Democratic party is a minoritarian coalition. To some extent it has been true since the recruitment of the Irish in the urban North in the early 19th century as allies with the outnumbered partisans of slave power. In fact The American Jewish Identity Survey tells us that once Jews become Christian, they aren’t so liberal. Here are the percentage of Republicans by Jewish subgroup:
Jews by ethnic origin & religion – 13%
Jews by ethnic origin, irreligious – 13%
Jewish by ethnic origin, “Other religion,” which is mostly Christian – 40%
Jews of other religion are also less intelligent than the other two groups, 36% college graduates vs. 57% for Jews who are religious and irreligious.
In any case, if Norman Podhoretz wants Jews to become Republican, he should encourage conversion to Christianity. Specifically, Protestant Christianity. Look what rock-ribbed Republicans Jim Talent and Marvin Olasky became. And don’t even talk about Howard Phillips, he wants to bring back to the inquisition for idolaters and pagans!
But I come not to talk of Jews, but of Catholics. As I said, the rise of the Democratic party as we know it was to a great extent concomitant with the first waves of Irish Catholic immigrants to Northern cities. The historical details of this are well known, so I won’t go into it, but to some extent the ties still are operative. According to the exit polls, last fall Barack Obama won 47% of white Catholics. He only won 34% of white Protestants! This is still a large difference.
Some of this might be accounted for my region and ethnicity (e.g., Italians and Northeasterners are more likely to be Catholic). So I looked in the GSS. There’s a variable “ETHNIC,” which asks where one’s ancestors came from. I wanted to look at a few groups, especially ones where the sample size wasn’t too small, and where there were likely to be Catholics and Protestants. So
1) French, who are those whose ancestors come from French Canada or France
2) German, whose ancestors come from German or Austria
3) British, whose ancestors are from England, Wales or Scotland
4) Mexican, whose ancestors come from Mexico
5) American Indian, whose ancestors come from Mother Earth’s union with Coyote
Some of these groups, such as Germans, had Protestant and Catholic cohorts from the beginning. By contrast, Mexican Americans have a large Protestant contingent through conversion (though some indigenous immigrants from Chiapas were converted in Mexico). American Indians were targeted by both Protestants and Catholics. Finally, though Huguenots have been prominent in the American aristocracy (Franklin Delano Roosvelt’s mother was a Huguenot, as were the ancestors of many Southern low country planters), I assume most Protestant French Americans arrived at their religion through conversion on these shores.
I also limited the sample to 1992 and later to have some contemporary relevance.
Then I compared these classes to two categories, political ideology and political party. I created an “index” of liberalism and Democratic orientation, so that I simply multiplied the frequency in each class by an integer. Ergo:
Index of liberalism = (% liberal) X 2 + (% moderate) X 1 + (% conservative) X 0
Index of Demo orientation = (% Democrat) X 2 + (% Independent) X 1 + (% Republican) X 0
So an index of liberalism of 1 means perfect balance, while below 1 means somewhat conservative, and above 1 means somewhat liberal (2 being all liberal). The same for Democrats. Then I took the ratio of Catholics to Protestants by their indices.
| Liberalism Index |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
French | German | Mexican | British | American Indian |
| Protestant | 0.88 | 0.73 | 0.85 | 0.68 | 0.83 |
| Catholic | 0.86 | 0.8 | 0.96 | 0.93 | 0.85 |
| Catholic/Protestant Ratio | 0.97 | 1.1 | 1.13 | 1.37 | 1.02 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Democratic Index |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
French | German | Mexican | British | American Indian |
| Protestant | 0.9 | 0.77 | 1.06 | 0.77 | 1.08 |
| Catholic | 1.07 | 0.88 | 1.32 | 0.95 | 1.37 |
| Catholic/Protestant Ratio | 1.19 | 1.13 | 1.24 | 1.24 | 1.26 |
What you see here is clear: Catholics remain more Democratic than their Protestant brethren. Some of this might be regional, but the effect seems to still show up if I constrain by region (though in some cases it does dampen a fair amount). The sample sizes for American Indians was small, but the party identification difference is outside of 95% confidence intervals.
Specific hypotheses? For Mexican Americans there are many reasons that Catholics are more likely to be Democrats. They’re probably a higher proportion of immigrants, and less assimilated and integrated into American society than Protestants. Protestants are mostly converts, and conversion will presumably be more likely for those who engage and interface with the majority Protestant society more often. The other groups are a bit more confused. The people of British origin are ancestrally mostly Protestant. Those who are Catholic today, whether through intermarriage or conversion, are different politically from those who remain Protestant. I suspect it has to do with a bias in terms of the type of person who would convert to a minority religion, or marry into a minority religion (Orestes Brownson was a nut). In regards to the Germans, only a minority of Protestant Germans are Lutheran (though some German immigrants were likely of Reformed persuasion, these would be a minority), rather, they’re well distributed across Protestant denominations. This suggests to me a high degree of assimilation and integration. By contrast, the Roman Catholic German population was an organized redoubt of anti-assimilationist fervor down to World War I, a fact which drove Irish American Roman Catholic clerics such as John Ireland crazy. As for the French Americans, I suspect that a more thorough process occurred with them that is occurring with Mexican Americans. I have read that the minority of Japanese Americans who adhere to the Buddhist Church in America are somewhat more ostentatious in maintaining their Japanese cultural traditions (e.g., language) than their co-ethnics who have converted to Christianity. I see no reason why this wouldn’t be true of Catholics (the majority of people of Irish descent today in the United States are Protestant, but I suspect they’re less obviously “Irish” in their cultural markers in part because of their religious break from tradition). Despite modern America’s Protestantization of Catholicism, just a few generations ago being of a non-Protestant faith was profoundly alienating from the mainstream (see Catholicism and American Freedom: A History).
I’m not presenting this to suggest that Catholics are inherently liberal or Democratic. The differences are not that extreme, though they seem robust and significant. But it is somewhat ironic in light of the role of Roman Catholic intellectuals at the highest reaches of the conservative movement, particularly at publications such as National Review. No, as I said, I suspect that Catholic adherence to the Left party out of the expected range of their demographic otherwise is a function of their minority status. Similarly, the small number of French Protestants who remained after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes were suspiciously well represented among French radicals involved in the Revolution which overthrew the ancien regime which had oppressed and marginalized them so. Obviously there’s nothing necessarily revolutionary about French Protestantism, rather, Catholicism was the customary and traditional religion of the French nation, and so it bespoke a streak of nonconformity to remain true to the Calvinist faith in France after the cessation of toleration for said faith.
Catholics who came to this country were generally ethnic minorities at the time they arrived (first Irish, later Poles, Italians, etc.) As such they usually ended up as manual labor on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. Often they were looked down upon and not treated particularly well by their WASPish bettors. In such an environment, appeals to class warfare resonated heavily, ultimately resulting in strong Catholic support for FDR, Unions, Father Coughlin, and other avenues of “getting even” with the power elites.
Since most Catholics settled in northern industrial cities, they also embedded themselves in machine politics, and took full advantage of the patronage system.
What amazed me is how stubbornly persistent these attitudes have been. My Irish family has been in the country for over 130 years. Many went on to great professional success as lawyers, etc. Yet they still retain the old Democrat voting patterns. When pressed they will generally answer “Because my grandparents did. Because they’re for the WORKIN’ MAN!” Whether that is in any way true or not.
As a child I was stunned to hear older Irish Catholic relatives gathered around the kitchen table, bashing Andrew Carnegie with blunt and profane language. Nearly fifty years after he had died, mind you. Despite his libraries and all his contributions to Pittsburgh. They just dwelt upon old family tales about what a blood-sucking Scrooge he was as a boss.
It is only with my generation that at least some of us have seen the folly of all that, become Conservatives, and left the Democrat Party. But they still have more than enough straight-party voters.
I have no reason to believe that if they get amnesty, the new wave of Hispanic Catholics will be any different.
Catholic charities promote government dependency programs even more so than in the past as Bush II made it the law that faith based charities could be eligible to receive government grants and support.
Catholic charities are quick to jump on republicans like Romney who whispered an idea that perhaps people would need to show some work seek effort to qualify for EBT food stamps.
Catholics are also long established in inner cities where handouts are long entrenched.
I am for social safety nets as a trampoline but not as a hammock. Catholics don’t think that far. They think day by day. Whatever works ***today*** is what they stand behind. To them it doesn’t matter how today affects tomorrow.
it hasn’t changed very much has it...
when there is Republican Mayor, you get either a worse liberal like Lindsay....
.....or you get a “Rudy” out of fear of another Crown Heights Riot.....
we moved to Suffolk Cnty in ‘64 when I was 15 and I never looked back. Now Suffolk a republican bastion in the state is now a Dhimmicrat county thanks to folks like myself leaving the state and leaving the libs in place.....I wish I was in a situation to do the same....
Because I kept the information on my home page from the results of the last election.
8 out of 10 white Protestants voted for Romney...95% of black Protestants voted for Obama...
6 out of 10 White Catholics voted for Romney...75% of Mexican Catholics voted for Obama...
People get the kind of government they deserve.
8 out of 10 white Protestants voted for Romney...95% of black Protestants voted for Obama...
What you posted was interesting, but it didn't answer the question. I'll repeat the question: Why do you say they are Protestants?
Catholic charities tend to be run and heavily influenced by nuns.
And for whatever reason, anyone who is a nun today appears to be out on the far-left fringes of Catholic thought.
(my mom has floated a theory that a lifetime of celibacy is actually quite unhealthy for the female brain)
Interesting theory.
You don't have to have an abortion but you do have to have a job. Harder to get if you don't belong to the Masons.
A: Because their grandparents were.
They vote Democrat in larger numbers because they are more likely to be unionized or raised and educated in northeastern states.
Their Catholicism is irrelevant.
no Masons in my neighborhood....Knights of Columbus perhaps, but no Masons...
Obviously not a rich neighborhood so it votes Democrat.
no....Catholic, you cannot be a Mason if your are Catholic.
of course their are plenty of stealth Catholic Masons....but not suppose to be....
My dad came from southwest Missouri, growing up on a farm that harvested more rocks than any other crop. Along comes the Depression, and with the CCC camps and WPA, you would have thought that they would have become die-hard Dems. Not so. The family had been forced to leave the county they lived in at the beginning of the Civil War because of attacks by southern sympathizers. However they had voted in the past, the family was against session and therefore became hard core Republicans. Absolutely detested FDR and all Dems that followed him.
Why are Catholics Democrats?
BECAUSE.... not all catholics are catholics?...
“Catholic” is just a word.. sometimes a mask..
other times a disguise.. or even camouflage...
Example: Ted Kennedy was a catholic... othodox religion is conserned with paying customers... a veneer..
It’s a business.. often a club... a social network...
with a sprinkling of true believers like sparkles..
Why?
Tradition
Training
My mom had tried to befriend a number of nuns, only to come away fairly shocked and horrified by some of the stuff they believed.
Because they THINK democrats help the poor.
Pittsburgh is pretty conservative culturally speaking. Very Pro-Life. Not terribly gay friendly (though they are pounding on that door really hard). Yet those same people will vote 80+% Democrat because, rightly or wrongly, they feel it is in everyone’s best economic interests.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.