The subject is a delicate one—which is why I brought it up very cautiously during my discussion with two Jehovah’s Witnesses several weeks ago. This pair of middle-aged gentlemen had come to my door and, as is my custom, I engaged them in conversation.
For the most part, we reviewed the perilous state of moral values in the United States today. In fact, even though they were coming from a religious perspective and I from a secular one, we agreed on almost every issue. This is what gave me the courage to bring up the question of premarital sex.
I began by explaining that the average age at which women now marry is twenty-six, while that for men is currently twenty-eight. Then I suggested that since this is more than a decade past puberty, it is foolish to expect people to remain virgins until they marry.
My assumption was that my guests would disagree. I expected them to tell me that premarital sex was a sin and must therefore be forbidden. But no, both of them agreed with me. They too recognized that physiologically mature individuals are likely to experiment with sex, given how long they remain unwed.
Indeed, statistically speaking, there is a lot of experimentation going on. Males have their first sexual encounter, on average, at sixteen. Meanwhile, the age at which females first engage in intercourse is also sixteen. For many years, it had been nineteen, but things have apparently speeded up.
The reason we must now examine what is taking place is that concurrent with these developments there has been an explosion of out-of-wedlock births. Fully forty percent of American children are presently being born to unmarried parents. What is more, most of these parents are poor.
There has been a lot of talk in recent days about trying to even the economic playing field by transferring tax money from the rich to the poor. Whatever the merits of this policy, it is doomed to fail poor children who are raised by single parents. As sociologists know, such children are frequently ill-prepared to achieve success in a society such as ours.
So what to do? If more unmarried people are having sex, and more of these are parenting children who suffer from being raised without both a mother and a father, how should we deal with pre-marital sex?
Here, it turns out, is another area in which my Jehovah’s Witnesses guests and I agreed. Pre-marital sexual encounters may be impossible to eradicate, but they do not have to be indiscriminant. Both men and women are going to test the sexual waters, yet they need not be promiscuous.
In fact, most are not—especially women. These latter know that if they are too easily available sexually, they will get a reputation for being “sluts.” This is not a nice word, but neither is being regarded as sexually uninhibited. For rather obvious reasons, most men are wary of marrying a woman they fear might cheat.
No doubt, this is unfair—yet it is the way things are. So what to do? If young people have sex, and most do so carefully, what should our collective attitude be? Shouldn’t we recognize the current state of affairs and try to control it with reasonable restrictions?
Let me be clear. I am suggesting that we stop being hypocritical. Let us not condemn people for simply having sex before they marry. But let us also make it plain that promiscuity is frowned upon. Too often, in the media, we see wanton sexuality portrayed as if it were penalty-free fun. This is troubling.
No society has ever sanctioned haphazard sex. The consequences, most notably for the young, are too dangerous. Our society is not exempt. We too must draw the line regarding what is acceptable. I am therefore suggesting that it is promiscuity, not sex per se, that should be vigorously discouraged.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Remembering History
George Santayana’s observation that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is widely known. Yet sadly, this dictum is widely ignored in the political arena. In politics, ideology seems to trump history almost every time.
I encountered this phenomenon last year in debating representatives of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Thus, when I cited the impact of raising taxes during the Great Depression, the response was that this did not matter. The times, my opponents declared, were different back then. No evidence as to why this was so was adduced—they just were.
Indeed, I routinely confront a comparable lack of historical consciousness in my classes at Kennesaw State University. Many of the students neither know, nor care, about what happened before they were born. They deem this irrelevant to their current circumstances.
The same mindset recently came up with respect to inflation. I began by observing that with the federal government spending far more than it takes in from taxes, elementary economics tells us that something has to give. The Federal Reserve cannot keep printing money without making each dollar less valuable.
When I said this, however, a sea of blank eyes starred up at me. Most of the students had no idea of what an inflation was or how it felt. They had not lived through the Carter administration, when I, for instance, paid sixteen percent interest to obtain a mortgage. Nor had they read about Germany’s Weimar Republic where it took trillions of Marks to buy a loaf of bread.
For similar reasons, when Bill Clinton assured voters that Barack Obama had dealt with the present economic downturn as well as anyone could, they did not possess the data with which to dispute him. They, for example, had no idea that the reviled Warren Harding got us out a nasty recession following World War I, and did so much more quickly than Obama.
Nor were they aware that Ronald Reagan also hastened us out of a recession more speedily than our present chief executive. Reagan could even claim that it was “morning in America” during his run for a second term. Had Obama attempted something similar, he would have been laughed out of town.
Amazingly even George W. Bush got better results. The downturn that followed 9/11 was brief, in large part, because of the tax cuts he championed. Nonetheless, when it comes to partisan politics memories can be very short. They are especially short when historical lessons do not fit contemporary objectives.
The upshot is that we are about to experience unnecessarily hard times. Because many Americans refused—and continue to refuse—to learn from the past, they are blandly accepting of budgetary madness. Instead, they allow themselves to be diverted by comparatively inconsequential concerns about gun control.
Barack Obama has no plans to cut government spending—but hey, there is nothing to worry about. Didn’t Mary Landrieu just get up in the Senate to assure us there is no discretionary spending problem? Besides, I’m okay Jack, so let the next guy take care of himself.
Furthermore, even if the economy did go into reverse the last quarter, this was a minor glitch that will go away once the government revises its statistics. After all, didn’t Scott Pelley of CBS tell us so? And he is a journalist so he should know.
Todays’ non-history minded Americans, particularly its mis-educated young, swallow disinformation as if it were popcorn. Because, in their ignorance, they cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not, they treat the two as if they were the same.
The trouble is, they are not. Lies, however artfully told or universally retold, contain little nutritive value. They may taste good going down, but a steady diet of them results in starvation. Unhappily, a childish desire to gulp down budgetary junk food will eventually hurt us all.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
I encountered this phenomenon last year in debating representatives of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Thus, when I cited the impact of raising taxes during the Great Depression, the response was that this did not matter. The times, my opponents declared, were different back then. No evidence as to why this was so was adduced—they just were.
Indeed, I routinely confront a comparable lack of historical consciousness in my classes at Kennesaw State University. Many of the students neither know, nor care, about what happened before they were born. They deem this irrelevant to their current circumstances.
The same mindset recently came up with respect to inflation. I began by observing that with the federal government spending far more than it takes in from taxes, elementary economics tells us that something has to give. The Federal Reserve cannot keep printing money without making each dollar less valuable.
When I said this, however, a sea of blank eyes starred up at me. Most of the students had no idea of what an inflation was or how it felt. They had not lived through the Carter administration, when I, for instance, paid sixteen percent interest to obtain a mortgage. Nor had they read about Germany’s Weimar Republic where it took trillions of Marks to buy a loaf of bread.
For similar reasons, when Bill Clinton assured voters that Barack Obama had dealt with the present economic downturn as well as anyone could, they did not possess the data with which to dispute him. They, for example, had no idea that the reviled Warren Harding got us out a nasty recession following World War I, and did so much more quickly than Obama.
Nor were they aware that Ronald Reagan also hastened us out of a recession more speedily than our present chief executive. Reagan could even claim that it was “morning in America” during his run for a second term. Had Obama attempted something similar, he would have been laughed out of town.
Amazingly even George W. Bush got better results. The downturn that followed 9/11 was brief, in large part, because of the tax cuts he championed. Nonetheless, when it comes to partisan politics memories can be very short. They are especially short when historical lessons do not fit contemporary objectives.
The upshot is that we are about to experience unnecessarily hard times. Because many Americans refused—and continue to refuse—to learn from the past, they are blandly accepting of budgetary madness. Instead, they allow themselves to be diverted by comparatively inconsequential concerns about gun control.
Barack Obama has no plans to cut government spending—but hey, there is nothing to worry about. Didn’t Mary Landrieu just get up in the Senate to assure us there is no discretionary spending problem? Besides, I’m okay Jack, so let the next guy take care of himself.
Furthermore, even if the economy did go into reverse the last quarter, this was a minor glitch that will go away once the government revises its statistics. After all, didn’t Scott Pelley of CBS tell us so? And he is a journalist so he should know.
Todays’ non-history minded Americans, particularly its mis-educated young, swallow disinformation as if it were popcorn. Because, in their ignorance, they cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not, they treat the two as if they were the same.
The trouble is, they are not. Lies, however artfully told or universally retold, contain little nutritive value. They may taste good going down, but a steady diet of them results in starvation. Unhappily, a childish desire to gulp down budgetary junk food will eventually hurt us all.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
Saturday, February 9, 2013
A National Death Wish?
The story came and went with nary a ripple. The Obama administration announced that it would be allowing women to serve in front-line combat operations and almost no one objected. Left, right and center, the public seemed resigned to the idea.
On the left, there was a sigh of relief. Why, it was wondered, shouldn’t women be allowed to function in any job that men could? The military was no exception. Women too were able to shoot a gun or drive a tank; there was no reason to treat them as if they could not.
On the libertarian right, there was likewise pleasure. These folks believe that everyone should be treated the same way irrespective of gender. Since the identical rules are supposed to apply to all, consistency demanded that this be the case within the military too.
As to moderates, some of them were not sure that all women had the capacity perform every military task, but if the army was careful and allowed only those women who were qualified for combat to participate in it, they were okay with this.
The feminists, of course, were overjoyed. They insisted that physical strength was no longer needed in combat thanks to modern weaponry. Power steering and push-bottom missiles made it possible for women to do what only men had once done. -So let them!
To be sure, some military men argued that upper-body strength retains its importance out in the feile. Others, however, maintained that since women are already being exposed to enemy action, it is reasonable to make their new roles official.
So what are we to make of this? Are women just as capable as men when it comes to war? Let us begin with upper body strength. Historically soldiers had to carry about sixty pounds of equipment into combat. This was why when I was in the military so much training went into physical conditioning. To this day, I remember all those push-ups.
But can’t women do push-ups? The answer is that many can. Some women are as strong as men. Nevertheless most are not. The solution, say some, is to make sure that the standards demanded of males and females are the same. The trouble is that the contemporary Army has lowered these so that women can meet them.
What then of the other disparities between the genders. For years, feminists tried to prove there were none. Yet there are, in fact, average differences in levels of aggressiveness. Still, does aggressiveness matter in modern combat? No one is talking about this at the moment.
But there is a far larger issue. Allowing women in combat is being treated as a matter of individual rights. Military operations, however, are a team activity. They depend on groups of individuals coordinating their actions so that they can defeat other groups of individuals.
This means that group cohesion is essential during warfare. When morale is low; when there are frictions between fighters, there is a danger that solders will work at cross-purposes. Worse still, if they lose their élan, they may break and run in the face of the enemy.
Will women on the front lines cause men to loose their sense of comradeship? This is no idle question. One of the problems encountered in Viet Nam was that men were rotated as individuals, rather than as units, and hence they lost the required cohesion. Are we now asking for a replay of this tragedy?
The United States has not felt in mortal danger since World War II. People therefore feel safe using the military for social experiments. But the military exists to protect us from external threats. It was never designed to be a laboratory for social justice.
Will we one day wake up to find that our lack of concern for sustaining a vigorous military has made us vulnerable to a less finicky opponent? Few people are even conjuring with this question; never mind answering it honestly.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
On the left, there was a sigh of relief. Why, it was wondered, shouldn’t women be allowed to function in any job that men could? The military was no exception. Women too were able to shoot a gun or drive a tank; there was no reason to treat them as if they could not.
On the libertarian right, there was likewise pleasure. These folks believe that everyone should be treated the same way irrespective of gender. Since the identical rules are supposed to apply to all, consistency demanded that this be the case within the military too.
As to moderates, some of them were not sure that all women had the capacity perform every military task, but if the army was careful and allowed only those women who were qualified for combat to participate in it, they were okay with this.
The feminists, of course, were overjoyed. They insisted that physical strength was no longer needed in combat thanks to modern weaponry. Power steering and push-bottom missiles made it possible for women to do what only men had once done. -So let them!
To be sure, some military men argued that upper-body strength retains its importance out in the feile. Others, however, maintained that since women are already being exposed to enemy action, it is reasonable to make their new roles official.
So what are we to make of this? Are women just as capable as men when it comes to war? Let us begin with upper body strength. Historically soldiers had to carry about sixty pounds of equipment into combat. This was why when I was in the military so much training went into physical conditioning. To this day, I remember all those push-ups.
But can’t women do push-ups? The answer is that many can. Some women are as strong as men. Nevertheless most are not. The solution, say some, is to make sure that the standards demanded of males and females are the same. The trouble is that the contemporary Army has lowered these so that women can meet them.
What then of the other disparities between the genders. For years, feminists tried to prove there were none. Yet there are, in fact, average differences in levels of aggressiveness. Still, does aggressiveness matter in modern combat? No one is talking about this at the moment.
But there is a far larger issue. Allowing women in combat is being treated as a matter of individual rights. Military operations, however, are a team activity. They depend on groups of individuals coordinating their actions so that they can defeat other groups of individuals.
This means that group cohesion is essential during warfare. When morale is low; when there are frictions between fighters, there is a danger that solders will work at cross-purposes. Worse still, if they lose their élan, they may break and run in the face of the enemy.
Will women on the front lines cause men to loose their sense of comradeship? This is no idle question. One of the problems encountered in Viet Nam was that men were rotated as individuals, rather than as units, and hence they lost the required cohesion. Are we now asking for a replay of this tragedy?
The United States has not felt in mortal danger since World War II. People therefore feel safe using the military for social experiments. But the military exists to protect us from external threats. It was never designed to be a laboratory for social justice.
Will we one day wake up to find that our lack of concern for sustaining a vigorous military has made us vulnerable to a less finicky opponent? Few people are even conjuring with this question; never mind answering it honestly.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
Friday, February 1, 2013
Noble Lies
Themistocles had a problem. The Athenians had beaten the Persians at Marathon and were feeling pretty good about themselves. So far as they were concerned, if their archenemies reappeared, they would lick them just as handily.
But Themistocles feared the worst. He suspected that when—not if—the Persians returned, it would be with a more massive army and navy. Thus, for Athens to survive, it too would need a much larger navy. The city would have to build many more triremes if it were to match its foe’s fleet.
Yet the Athenians were in no mood to spend money. So Themistocles resorted to subterfuge. He lied. He told his fellow citizens that a small nearby island posed an immediate threat. For this, they were willing to open their purses—and the ships were built.
The result was that when the Persians returned, Themistocles was able to defeat them at the battle of Salamis. By most accounts, this, and the courageous Spartan stand at Thermopylae, saved Greece, and Western civilization, from falling under an Asian yoke.
Why am I telling you this story? It is because many people—including myself—have been mystified by Barack Obama’s ability to get away with an unending series of lies. How could the American people have reelected him, or continue to hold him in high regard, when he is so challenged by the truth?
The answer, I believe, is that Obama’s lies are also regarded as justified by many people. These too are thought of as noble, and therefore as are needed to save us from a dreadful fate. Most liberals, in particular, assume they have a duty to protect us from ourselves. Because like the Athenians, we do not know what is good for us, they must lead the way.
Sometimes lies can help, but Barack Obama is not Themistocles. Contemporary liberals do not know what is best for us. They think they do, but their misplaced faith in large government is creating far more problems than it solves. The fact is that they, and specifically Obama, are making things worse, and in many cases, much worse.
Let us take an example. In attempting to pass ObamaCare, our president assured us that costs would go down and that people could keep their own doctors. Now, of course, as this program is being implemented, we are learning that these pledges were false.
But anyone who was paying attention back then was aware of this. So why did so many liberals suspend disbelief? The reason is simple. It was because they were committed to government provided health care. For them, this was an article of faith and therefore any tactic employed to bring it about was acceptable—including lies.
The same scenario is again unfolding with regard to the budget deficit. Where months ago Obama agreed that spending would have to come under control lest an ever-expanding deficit sabotage our economy, now he tells us that spending is not a problem.
He also tells us that he has met the Republicans halfway even though he as not proposed any significant spending cuts. Instead, a man, who boasted that he had not raised taxes, continues to seek new ways to increase government revenues. This, he says, will reduce the deficit, even though the numbers tell us it will not.
Why then the drama and the deceit? And why are the president’s supporters so ready to believe? The answer again is that they too have faith in a much larger government. They thus forgive what they could easily detect as lies because they regard these as noble lies.
I say “forgive,” but I actually mean “embrace.” These lies are believed necessary and therefore are not considered “lies,” but good strategy. As a consequence, the opinions of these true believers will only change when a disaster forces them to do so. –As, unfortunately, it soon may.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Pro9fessor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
But Themistocles feared the worst. He suspected that when—not if—the Persians returned, it would be with a more massive army and navy. Thus, for Athens to survive, it too would need a much larger navy. The city would have to build many more triremes if it were to match its foe’s fleet.
Yet the Athenians were in no mood to spend money. So Themistocles resorted to subterfuge. He lied. He told his fellow citizens that a small nearby island posed an immediate threat. For this, they were willing to open their purses—and the ships were built.
The result was that when the Persians returned, Themistocles was able to defeat them at the battle of Salamis. By most accounts, this, and the courageous Spartan stand at Thermopylae, saved Greece, and Western civilization, from falling under an Asian yoke.
Why am I telling you this story? It is because many people—including myself—have been mystified by Barack Obama’s ability to get away with an unending series of lies. How could the American people have reelected him, or continue to hold him in high regard, when he is so challenged by the truth?
The answer, I believe, is that Obama’s lies are also regarded as justified by many people. These too are thought of as noble, and therefore as are needed to save us from a dreadful fate. Most liberals, in particular, assume they have a duty to protect us from ourselves. Because like the Athenians, we do not know what is good for us, they must lead the way.
Sometimes lies can help, but Barack Obama is not Themistocles. Contemporary liberals do not know what is best for us. They think they do, but their misplaced faith in large government is creating far more problems than it solves. The fact is that they, and specifically Obama, are making things worse, and in many cases, much worse.
Let us take an example. In attempting to pass ObamaCare, our president assured us that costs would go down and that people could keep their own doctors. Now, of course, as this program is being implemented, we are learning that these pledges were false.
But anyone who was paying attention back then was aware of this. So why did so many liberals suspend disbelief? The reason is simple. It was because they were committed to government provided health care. For them, this was an article of faith and therefore any tactic employed to bring it about was acceptable—including lies.
The same scenario is again unfolding with regard to the budget deficit. Where months ago Obama agreed that spending would have to come under control lest an ever-expanding deficit sabotage our economy, now he tells us that spending is not a problem.
He also tells us that he has met the Republicans halfway even though he as not proposed any significant spending cuts. Instead, a man, who boasted that he had not raised taxes, continues to seek new ways to increase government revenues. This, he says, will reduce the deficit, even though the numbers tell us it will not.
Why then the drama and the deceit? And why are the president’s supporters so ready to believe? The answer again is that they too have faith in a much larger government. They thus forgive what they could easily detect as lies because they regard these as noble lies.
I say “forgive,” but I actually mean “embrace.” These lies are believed necessary and therefore are not considered “lies,” but good strategy. As a consequence, the opinions of these true believers will only change when a disaster forces them to do so. –As, unfortunately, it soon may.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Pro9fessor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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