The French political philosopher Raymond Aron (1905–1983) was born into a Jewish family, although I don’t know to what extent Judaism or Jewishness shaped his ideas. Recently published in English, his final lecture, Liberty and Equality, expresses both his belief in liberal democracy and his understanding of its flaws. In their review, Paul Wilford and Ethan Cutler argue that his teachings on the subject have much to offer America today:
When liberal democracies are at their best, Aron observes, personal, political, and social liberties counterbalance rather than subsume one another. Liberal regimes flourish, he maintains, when personal, social, and political liberties check and balance one another; they decay when just one form of liberty is considered the true end of political life, rendering the others mere means. . . .
To flourish, liberal democracies require a dynamic interrelation between city and soul, wherein the rationality that justifies the constitutional order and the rational action of the individual both find expression in the free subordination of particular desires and interests to the law.
Aron aspired to bolster our commitment to liberal democracy by clarifying the meaning of our liberties and the value of the legal order that enables them.
While I can’t say if Aron thought about things this way, I’m fairly certain that, as a general rule, Jews have faired best under the kind of political order he favored.
Read more on City Journal: https://www.city-journal.org/article/review-of-liberty-and-equality-by-raymond-aron