Push-Button Democracy

Two years ago when the Arab Spring was at its height, I warned of an excess of optimism.  I wrote that euphoric observers who expected Jeffersonian democracy to break out in the Middle East were liable to be disappointed.  Events have surely borne this out.

Now I must caution against an excess of hubris.  Once more politicians and expert consultants are suggesting that they know how to bring democratic governance to places like Egypt.  They view the toppling of the Morsi regime with disdain, but claim to know how progress can be salvaged.

The trick, we are told, is to refrain from alienating the Muslim Brotherhood.  Its members are so well organized and so deeply committed that we cannot afford to ignore them.  Instead, they must be welcomed into an administration that respects the differences between religious and secular factions.

Only a large tent, it is argued, can achieve the reconciliation necessary to avoid an Egyptian civil war.  Only when people sit down and work through their disagreements can they come up with policies that satisfy their respective interests.  Doing less is merely a formula for frustration and on-going grievances.

As with so much political rhetoric, this sounds sensible.  People, it is said, need to be grown-ups who are willing to set their political commitments aside so as to figure out what is best for all.  Yet how well does this work in practice?  The evidence suggests, not well at all.

Consider the current impasse in Washington.  How well have Republicans and Democrats been able to resolve their policy differences?  Or if we zoom out a bit, how well have liberals and conservatives been able to achieve reconciliation?  Clearly, their disagreements have lasted for decades.

Nevertheless while these folks are at each other’s throats, they have not literally gone to war.  They have been able to coexist, albeit uncomfortably.  The slave versus free issue, however, produced more violence.  It precipitated a war between the states that killed more Americans than any other of our conflicts.

Even so, the bone of contention out-lived the bloodshed.  Indeed, we are still dealing with black and white disputes as witnessed by the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin affair.  Passions continue to run high and not everyone is satisfied after centuries of strife.

Why then should the Arab world be different?  Why should we expect that democracy, which took hundreds of years to evolve in the West, will suddenly arise in the unfertile soil of the Middle East just because we wish it to?  In reality, its peoples, who have never experienced self-governance, do not have the culture to make it happen.

Look at what is actually taking place.  Sunnis and Shias continue to blow each other up in Iraq.  The Taliban and the central government remain at war in Afghanistan.  The Alawites have resorted to poison gas and mass bombings to cling to power in Syria.  And Libya has become the new home for a displaced Al Qaida.

Even Turkey, nearly a century after Ataturk instituted a policy of westernization, has seen an upsurge of Islamist versus secular violence.  The sad fact is that intractable differences do not dissipate merely by installing the trappings of democracy.  True democracy cannot be achieved by pushing a button!

Lyndon Johnson used to urge his opponents to sit down and reason with him.  In truth, he was more apt to twist arms than engage in logical discussion.  LBJ was a master at coercing the recalcitrant into accepting his vision.  He was not nice, but rather muscularly persuasive.

Niceness and reasonableness are not the seedbeds of democracy.  Unhappily violence, warfare, and contention are.  We had a revolution and a civil war, the English had a civil war and a glorious revolution, the French had a revolution and numerous coups, and the Germans lost two world wars before democracy prevailed.

Why should we expect the Arabs to be different?  Why do we believe they should learn from our experience, when we didn’t learn from the experience of others?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Radium Salesman

I am an academic.  Even when I am on vacation, I remain an academic.  I love to learn and so when the cruise ship upon which my wife and I were sailing the Greek Isles offered classes on the history of medicine, I made sure to attend.

Medicine is not one of my specialties; hence when the physician providing these lectures spoke about the impact of the discovery of radioactive elements on Western medical practice, this was unknown territory for me.  Happily, his observations were both fascinating and disturbing.  Better still, they provided food for thought.

One of the things I learned was that after Pierre and Marie Curie discovered radium, this substance was considered to have almost magical properties.  Found to be continuously giving out invisible rays, the substance seemed like an eerie messenger from another realm.

Soon, just had earlier been the case with electricity, the assumption was made that these emissions could be medically beneficial.  Obviously they could pass through human flesh and in the process they were probably benefiting the recipient.

Not long thereafter, some doctors and a host of medical wannabes decided to profit from this supposition.  They began to market pills, salves, and gamma ray emitters that promised to cure whatever ailed the customer.  Were you feeling sluggish, radium could help.  Was your sex life suffering, radium would reinvigorate it.

Then, just as now, testimonials began to appear.  Sports figures, society types, and ordinary Joes swore that they never felt healthier.  As for the marketers, they offered money-back guarantees.  If this new wonder substance did not deliver the promised miracles, there would be no cost to the consumer.

As it happened, these promoters never had to make good on their promises.  When a dissatisfied customer demanded his or her money back, their response was that the user had not taken enough of the product.  Larger doses consumed over longer periods of time would surely do the trick.

Except, of course, that radium is a deadly poison.  In the end, it killed Marie Curie and would do the same to anyone else who followed the required regimen.  They too would long be in the grave before they could collect a dime.

All this put me in mind of Barack Obama.  He too is a sort of radium salesman, albeit with a different product and an updated line of patter.  He is not selling physical health, but social health.  Yet he too is seeking to persuade us to take larger doses of an untested remedy.

Consider global warming.  This latest scientific craze is fading fast as evidence accumulates that the supposed warming is not occurring at the predicted rate.  But that does not prevent our president from forecasting doom and gloom unless we do as he recommends.

And what does he recommend?  Why nothing less than destroying the coal industry and crippling the oil and gas industries.  Despite touting an all-of-the-above strategy with respect to energy, it is plain that he is playing favorites.

Notwithstanding years of study that have demonstrated the Keystone pipeline will cause little, if any, environmental damage, Obama is nevertheless dithering about whether to approve it.  On the other hand, despite the failure of Solyndra and related solar companies, he wants to invest additional billions in such speculative ventures.

Or what about ObamaCare?  It is circling the drain even as I compose this.  Yet will Obama consider writing it off?  No, he merely seeks to postpone its implementation.  The program may ultimately fail, and like green energy, cause the country trillions in economic damage, but he is not worried.

Why is he not worried?  Because he will be gone when the worst of the mischief hits.  His presidency will be over and thus he will be able to blame his successor.  We, however, although not literally dead, will be suffering from the pseudo-scientific policies of an intelligent, but ill-informed leader.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Profiling Revisited

The George Zimmerman trial has revealed many things about the state of race relations in the United States.  It has demonstrated, in particular, that we still do not treat blacks and whites the same.  The rules we apply to one group remain different from those employed with the other.

Trayvon Martin’s parents tell us that they do not wish to make race an issue in trying the man who shot their son—but it already is.  They know, as should we all, that were this a black-on-black shooting, or a white-on-white one, or even a black-on-white one, this would not be national news.

And so we proceed as if we were walking on eggshells with far too many of us unwilling to be candid about what we are witnessing.  Consider the issue of profiling.  The prosecution wished to be able to impute Zimmerman’s motivation to racial profiling, and thus to demonstrate that the shooter was a racist.

The judge, however, would not allow this.  She has permitted the district attorney to use the term “profiling,” but not to link it inextricably with race.  This, however, is turning out to be a distinction without a difference because the prosecution is doing all it can to plant the idea of racism with the jury.

Nevertheless, was Zimmerman profiling—and was this a moral transgression?  It seems to me that the defendant was indeed profiling, yet this was the sensible thing to do.  Under the circumstances it was something other whites would have done.  It is also something a neighborhood-watch black would have done.

Let us remember that Zimmerman was on the outlook for potential criminals in a neighborhood that had been victimized by crime.  Let us also understand that young black men are disproportionately responsible for crime.  I am not talking about six or seven percent more, but six, seven or eight hundred percent more.

Most blacks, to be sure, are not criminals; still when we are seeking to identify dangerous individuals, we must be on the alert to indicators of what we are trying to determine.  Youth and race are such indicators.  Whites know this, and so do blacks.

By now it is also common knowledge that blacks frequently use the N-word among themselves.  Having worked with many black colleagues in Harlem and the South Bronx, I, in fact, witnessed this first hand.  As a consequence, I learned that the term is often used to designate someone as low-class, dangerous and/or vulgar.

Blacks do this because it is important for them to know whom they can trust and whom they cannot.  With so many of them living in neighborhoods where crime is rampant, were they to refrain from making distinctions they would find themselves unnecessarily vulnerable.

Nonetheless, whites are asked not to note such differences.  It is almost as if in having ancestors who victimized blacks, they are being asked to allow themselves to be victimized so as to compensate for those misdeeds.

The irony of this policy is that it runs counter to the goal of reducing discrimination.  Discrimination occurs when we treat people differently because they belong to a particular social category.  As such, solely handicapping whites contradicts our goal of universalization, i.e., of applying the same standards to all.

Indeed, if whites are required to abstain from profiling where blacks are concerned, they are being required to discriminate.  Because they must treat blacks differently, they must make certain to notice differences in skin color.  They cannot simply regard all of us as equally human.

And so when a young black man in a hoody is seen walking where no one should be walking, are we to demand that a white observer be artificially stupid?  Is he not to notice what anyone who was merely being fair would notice?  Must we then castigate him as a bigot and insist that he be punished?

How does this advance the cause of improved race relations?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Glory That Was Greece

My wife Linda and I recently returned from a magnificent cruise through the Greek isles.  This was one of the most enjoyable vacations we have experienced, as well as one of the most enlightening.

Few people—least of all the Greeks—are unaware of the economic and political crisis gripping their nation.  With unemployment at record levels and chaos periodically clogging their streets, it would be difficult to overlook the fact that something is wrong.

Nonetheless, from a tourist’s point of view, much remains business as usual.  The Parthenon still stands there in all of its tumbledown glory, while the merchants in the Plaka continue to be as aggressive in marketing their baubles.

Yet for those who look, there is ample evidence of why Greece is no longer the cutting-edge force it was.  This came to my attention during a long conversation with owner of a jewelry story chain.  Upon learning that I was an American college professor, he was eager put his country’s plight in perspective.

Soon our tête-à-tête ranged candidly across the historical and the contemporary landscape.  Thus, we agreed that the ancient Athenians had laid the foundation for modern Western civilization, whereas today’s Greeks have accomplished little of which to boast.

The question was why?  The Greeks are surely as intelligent and vibrant as ever.  They are also as desirous of success.  The problem is that many are not as entrepreneurial as their forebears.  Oh yes, the shopkeepers in the market remain assertive, but where (save for a few shipping magnates) are the large-scale operators?  They are largely absent.  

Where then are today’s Greek men (and some women) to be found.  By late morning it is plain that they are sipping coffee at street side cafes and arguing about everything—especially politics.  Their ancestors, to be sure, were likewise a talkative bunch—think of Socrates or Plato—but they were also out scouring the Mediterranean seeking their main chance.

Nowadays many Greeks must leave home to improve their lot.  Vassili Economopoulos, a buddy of mine at Kennesaw State University (sadly no longer with us) epitomized this dilemma.  He migrated to the United States to obtain his Ph.D., then stayed because this is where the opportunities were.

As Vassili explained, Greece is a poor country, more mountain and rock than arable land.  With a topography good for growing olive trees, grape vines and little else, its people long ago learned to convert these into oil and wine.  Next they went into the business of selling these to all and sundry.

The difference between then and now is that the ancients thought big and exploited trade however they could.  Indeed, it was their commercial dynamism that produced the glories of the Hellenic city states.  Their fleets of hard-hitting merchants financed the arts and architecture we still admire; their agoras teaming with innovative artisans created the democratic politics we continue to venerate.

The direction of causality has not changed.  Free and dynamic citizens individually in pursuit of economic success are the ones who generate governments “of, by, and for the people.”  It is not governments that create their wealth, sophistication, or freedom, but the other way around.

The Greek merchant with whom I discussed these matters understood this.  As a result, he and I were distressed that many of his countrymen do not.  We also agreed that many Americans are oblivious of this nexus.  They too appear to be looking to politicians, not businesspersons, for salvation.

Lest we forget: Greece fell when its people could not unite to defend their institutions.  Its glory did not last forever.  Yet neither may the eminence of United States if its people cannot coalesce to defend the free marketplace and decentralized politics that made it great.

Glory and freedom go only to those who possess the confidence to protect their traditions.  So we must ask: Do we have this spirit?   Do we have what the Greeks lacked?  Time will tell.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University