Obama Addicts: Will They Ever Learn?

Years ago I worked at a methadone maintenance program in New York City. My job was to counsel heroin addicts as they sought to overcome their addictions. Yet as hard as I tried, I could not reach some clients who stubbornly refused to do what was needed to remain clean.
As might be imagined, this was terribly frustrating. Eventually I reached the conclusion that the best I could do was hold out a hand to those willing to take it. Clients who weren’t, I left to bang their heads against the dependency wall until they hurt so badly they were ready to accept assistance.
Something similar is happening in our current political impasse. Dyed-in-the-wool liberals (as my sister who lives in New Jersey assures me) continue to support Barack Obama and his policies. Moreover, they continue to blame George W. Bush and Republicans for all that goes wrong—including the gulf oil spill.
In this, they too are banging their heads against a wall. They continue to ignore reality and trust to shop-worn platitudes to save the nation. No matter how often their predictions are disconfirmed, they are certain a little more of the same will eventually succeed.
The trouble is that it is not only their own heads that they are banging against the wall. They are also battering those of people who disagree with them. In other words, they insist on giving the rest of us a headache rather than acknowledge their own habit.
We saw this when Obama gave his televised pep talk on the oil spill. Many of us listened with the sickening feeling that we had heard this before. It was simply a rerun of his health care tactics—and as such was both disappointing and boring.
By now many dozens of commentators have noted that this is one more example of taking advantage of a crisis in order to promote an unrelated agenda. In this case, the goal is to resurrect cap-and trade energy policies. In the past, of course, it was the stimulus bill and health care.
Obama and company are also addicted to blaming others for their own shortcomings. In the past it was Bush who bore the brunt of their excuses, whereas today it is still Bush, as augmented by British Petroleum and the state of Arizona.
As should be obvious, no matter what BP does it will be insufficient as compared with the current administration’s brilliant performance from “day one.” Nor can Arizonan’s get off the hook by pointing out that their immigration laws are more protective of immigrant rights than those of the federal government.
To the contrary, both BP and Arizona can expect lawsuits. They must be punished in order to prove that Obama was correct in every detail. They need to be singled out as the “enemy” so that the president’s allies can rally to his defense.
Sadly, many liberals are indeed flocking to the cause. They are ready to provide rationalizations for the administration’s policies, whether these concern oil, the economy, or Israel and Iran.
The problem is that they are harming others in order to palliate their own distress. Spending and taxing more, as the plan to do, will only increase the federal deficit. Likewise, regulating and scapegoating, whether of BP or Wall Street, will not fix what is broken.
Yet liberals are not paying attention. They are too transfixed by their own addictions. In so doing, however, they demonstrate that smart people can do dumb things. As addicts, they literally fail to use their brains when these reveal unwelcome truths.
President Obama himself is currently on another political campaign to divert attention from his inadequacies. He is hoping that he can hide his own botched tactics. This must not be allowed to succeed. Those of us who are not blinded by a pseudo-chemical desire to defend him must remember what needs to be done next November.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University

The New Mandarins on College Campuses

There was a time when Chinese bureaucrats were chosen by examination. Theoretically this would allow the nation to be governed by “the best and brightest.” Unfortunately these examinations only tested proficiency in the Chinese classics. In other words, those who passed were scholars conversant in the conventional wisdom.
Something similar—and equally stultifying—is currently taking place in the United States. Our institutions of higher learning have also taken to specializing in the transmission of standardized ways of thinking.
Although ours is a center-right country, the overwhelming majority of universities have drifted to the far left. Despite claims of teaching students to engage in critical thinking, they do anything but. To the contrary, they have become indoctrination centers run by neo-Marxist academics.
In my own field of sociology, the ratio of folks on the left compared to those on the right is thirty-to-one. As a consequence, anyone who attends a sociological conference will be hard pressed to find any presenters who are not committed to the Democratic or more socialist parties.
Mind you, I am lucky. My department at Kennesaw State University is among the most reasonable sociology departments to be found anywhere. I am not only allowed to have conservative thoughts, but have the support and respect of my colleagues when doing so.
Students at many institutions, however, are not as fortunate. They find that if they do not feed their professors exactly what they expect to hear, they will be penalized in terms of their grades. Thus, one professor at a local University (who has since departed) made a specialty of humiliating students who disagreed with him. He routinely cross-examined white undergraduates until they said something that allowed him to brand them as racists.
Moreover, here at Kennesaw State (although it is much more reasonable than comparable schools) I have had colleagues who confided their conservative leanings to me in private. This was often accompanied by a plea that I not make their political inclinations public. They feared that if these were known, it might injure their academic careers.
But how can this be? How can institutions of higher learning—locations that are supposed to be marketplaces for cutting edge ideas—have become so hostile to unconventional opinions? Isn’t this inimical to learning? Isn’t this the opposite of genuine scholarship?
Worse still, isn’t our nation in danger when our colleges have been converted into havens of liberal conservatism? When politically correct ideas cannot be openly questioned, how can new knowledge develop? As importantly, when academic gatekeepers prevent opposing ideas from being expressed, how can mistakes be corrected?
Ancient China went downhill when its leaders assumed that they already knew everything that needed to be known. The question is: Are we following the same path toward destruction? Are we too encouraging our younger generation to parrot the favorite shibboleths of a portion of the older generation?
As dire as this possibility is, at least three factors militate against it. First, college students graduate. When they get into the real world many of them realize that the idealistic ramblings of their professors were misguided.
Second, upcoming scholars have an interest in developing new ideas. Moving ahead in their careers depends on their being innovative. This, however, often entails contradicting the work of their teachers.
Third, the current presidential administration has gone too far. In fostering a host of far left programs it has incited a political reaction. Thus, conservatism is once again becoming more fashionable and assertive. It may not be too long before parents and politicians alike demand more balance from our universities.
Let’s hope so.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University