How SoCons Can Win the Culture Wars - Lessons from Ultra-Orthodox Judaism

[Kitteh]

A couple things:

1) Not clear how what works for a tiny minority group will translate to a many orders of magnitude larger section of American/Western society.

2) The political goals of the ultra-orthodox are different from the goals of conservative Christianity and the social conservative movement as a whole. The Hasidim are mainly trying to preserve their own religious and cultural traditions in their enclaves free from outside influence. They're not trying to influence society and politics at large, or to win converts. See for example how much of an effect extreme opposition from hasidic groups to marriage equality in NY had. Segregating off from society seems like it's much more effective for achieving the Hasidims' goals than for achieving mainstream conservative christian goals.

3) It's not clear that where the ultra-orthodox have waded into politics they've been successful. The growth of places like Kiryas Joel (not too far away from me, actually) has upset quite a few people in the surrounding areas. While these groups may be culturally homogenous enough and maintain enough of a voting bloc to keep from being overpowered, they've probably made a lot of enemies in the process from people who might otherwise be sympathetic or at least neutral (i.e. Rockland County non-hasidic Jews). Israeli politics might be an example of how this can backfire; while the situation in Israel is extremely different and unique, the debate over the ultra-orthodox draft exemption seems like it has a lot of parallels here.

tl;dr interesting idea, but not at all clear it would work and could backfire