The Myth of Liberal Niceness

Should I be fired from my job at Kennesaw State University? Some readers of the Marietta Daily Journal seem to think so. They complain that my columns are too conservative and therefore provide evidence that I am too stupid to be a college professor.
Indeed, some of my colleagues and students at KSU have felt the same way. They too have been offended by my political convictions and recommended my termination. Mind you, my job is safe because I am a tenured full professor; nevertheless their sentiment is telling.
Liberals think of themselves as especially nice people. They believe that they are uniquely tolerant and kind. This attitude, however, does not extend to those with whom they disagree. Just ask the tea party activists. Far from being commended for their political activism, they are castigated as stupid, violent, and racist.
Liberal activists, in contrast, are uniformly applauded for their patriotism. However violent or obscene their conduct, they are praised as fighting for justice. The result is that they are allowed to break windows, spit on police officers or steal conservative newspapers with impunity.
Nor, from the liberal perspective, should their lack of niceness necessarily be ruled out of bounds. If I, or my conservative peers, are as threatening to the public well being as alleged, there is no reason they should be extremely polite to us. We should, in fact, be called out and asked to reform our errant ways.
It is just that liberals are hypocritical in their public posture. They proclaim that they are more tolerant than others, whereas the truth is that they are merely selective in their benevolence. Thus, there are very few traditionalists, entrepreneurs, or Republicans they like, while there are even fewer criminals, Arab terrorists, or Black Panther hooligans they seem to dislike.
This imbalance might be dismissed as an innocent matter of style, except that a pretence of universal amiability can have devastating consequences. One of the best examples of this was provided by the Amadou Diallo scandal.
It has been more than a decade since then mayor Rudy Giuliani was castigated by the New York Times for allowing the city’s police department to run wild. For month after month, the paper accused Giuliani of condoning police brutality by tolerating the shooting of an innocent citizen.
The fact that Diallo was killed by officers who mistakenly fired over forty shots at him was taken as irrefutable evidence of recklessness. Although the officers responsible were subsequently acquitted of wrongdoing, they remained guilty in the eye’s of one of the nations’ most liberal journals.
Why does this matter? Why is this ancient history relevant today? It is because the Times stance was not without consequences. The papers editors were convinced that the police were not sufficiently nice to minorities and therefore demanded repentance. They insisted that the authorities back off so that similar mistakes never recur.
But what was the actual outcome? When the police did back off, the crime rate shot up in the affected neighborhoods. More innocent people were killed, robbed, and raped thanks to their increased caution.
To be blunt, niceness that results in increased violence is not necessarily nice. Truly nice people worry about the implications of their compassion. They do not abstain from harsh actions for fear of being perceived as mean-spirited, but neither are they gratuitously nasty.
This outlook not only applies to petty criminals, but to large-scale malefactors such as Iran. Being too nice to Mahmoud Achmedinejad today may result in his being incredibly nasty to many millions of others a few years hence.
The same applies to Republicans being too nice to the Democratic legislators who passed Obamacare. Civility yes, but allowing them to win uncontested re-election—no. Niceness is not absolute, but relative. Sometimes it is essential, whereas reflexive, misplaced, or sham niceness can have dire consequences.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University