Coal in Our Stockings

Every year the return of Christmas puts me in mind of my Brooklyn childhood.   I recall the mountains of toys Santa always brought and the stockings we hung on the living room bookcases because we had no chimney.

And when I think about these things, a smile comes to my face.  Christmas was a happy time.  It was a time when Saint Nick always came through.  Like most (even Jewish) parents, mine warned my sister and me that if we were not good, there would be no toys on the floor or goodies in our stockings.

Yet there always were.  Mind you, the stocking stuffers were never awe-inspiring.  They were usually oranges, walnuts, and tiny toy cars.  Still, they were not the lumps of coal we were assured was the fate of the naughty.

Nowadays our president, Barack Obama, likes to portray himself as a sort of universal Santa Claus.  He is forever bragging about the gifts he has bestowed on everyone—with the possible exception of the rich. 

As he sees it, he is bringing social justice to the poor, prosperity to the middle classes, and peace to all humankind.  And the most wondrous gift of all—why it is Obamacare.  It is touted as a magical elixir that will cure all of our health woes forever and ever.

Only, as luck would have it, this has been the year of coal in our collective stockings.  Thus, we have been provided with an international agreement that allows Iran to continue moving toward nuclear armament.  In return for lots of money, it is not even required to stop enriching uranium.

Then here at home we have been blessed with a budget deal that does not reduce spending, but instead increases the deficit.  Meanwhile millions of Americans have had their medical insurance canceled, at the same time that an incompetently designed website prevents them from purchasing ridiculously expensive substitutes.

Nor, of course, has the economy taken a decisive turn upward.  It remains stuck in neutral with little to show for years of Keynesian-style pump-priming.

So why is this so?  Have we been bad little boys and girls?  If we listen carefully to our president, the answer seems to be yes.  For instance, in his view, we deserve to have our international pretentions clipped because we have been insufferably arrogant.  As a consequence, we must now stand aside to allow nations like Iran to have their day in the sun.

Likewise on the home front, we have been equally egotistical.  We have denied the poor social justice and trampled on the dignity of minorities, women, and the sexually dispossessed.  We have even forced undocumented immigrants to suffer the humiliation of sitting in line to wait for health care at hospital emergency rooms.

According to Obama, however, our fundamental sin seems to be overweening pride in our successes.  Many of us apparently think we built this nation.  Others are falsely convinced we used our superior power to protect the world from tyranny.  But no—this is our selfishness speaking.

I, on the other hand, believe our transgressions lie elsewhere.  I would describe our greatest sin as political negligence.  We, at least a lot of us, believed our president when he told us we could keep our insurance plans and our doctors.  He got away with these lies because so many Americans refused to verify his words.

Think also of the young women who naively believed there was a conservative war against them that would be remedied by free birth control.  Or what about those Jews who trusted Obama when he declared himself a faithful friend of Israel.  Or how about those insurance companies that assumed Obamacare would make them rich.

A year ago, we might collectively have stopped the Obama sleigh from delivering today’s lumps of coal, but too many voters childishly chose to believe what they heard without doing due political diligence.  Sadly, we got what even they did not want.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Is Barack Obama a Socialist?

Is Barack Obama a socialist?  And does it matter?  Certainly the president’s most ardent supporters publicly bridle at the suggestion.  They consider it an insult hurled at them for partisan purposes.  So far as they are concerned, he, and they, are merely compassionate progressives seeking to move the nation into the 21^st century.

Sometimes the president and his allies characterize themselves as Social Democrats.  They compare their policies with the left-of-center parties that regularly preside over European welfare states.  As they see it, it is long past due that we catch up with the government-based programs pioneered by their heroes.

While it is true that some European countries have nationalized economic interests in the name of fairness, their American admirers do not propose emulating Britain’s Labor party by taking over our steel or coal industries.  These, they say, are free to remain in the hands of their current owners.

Generally speaking, American leftists seem to believe that as long as the government does not literally confiscate private property and as long as its machinery remains officially democratic, the term socialist does not apply.

So let us take a look at history.  Surely Karl Marx qualifies as a socialist.  He obviously thought of himself that way.  Indeed, he described himself as a “scientific socialist.”  According to him, it was inevitable that a proletarian revolution would one day confiscate capitalist holdings, then operate these for the benefit of all.

Still, we must dig deeper into Marx’s thinking to evaluate how he understood socialism.  Central to his theory was the belief that at nearly every stage of history two social classes contended for control over the means of economic production.  Then the victors used their superior power to exploit the losers.

Thus, during the Middle Ages the nobility, who owned the land, suppressed the peasants and bourgeoisie for their own benefit.  Next, after the Industrial Revolution, it was the capitalists, who owned the factories, who did the same vis-à-vis the proletarians.

Obama and his allies are quick to point out that they, unlike previous ruling classes, have appropriated no private property.  They may tax the rich so as to assist the poor, but this is not the same as seizing the means of production.

What we must remember, however, is that Marx spoke of “controlling” the means of production—which does not require ownership.  He who determines what is done with property, irrespective of its legal possession, has it within his power.  He is in control despite what a certificate of ownership might say.

And isn’t this what Obama and his co-conspirators have done with respect to health care?  They make no pretense to owning this one-sixth of our economy, yet they insist on calling nearly all of the shots.  Ergo, they get to say what insurance policies must cover.  And they get to impose what they call the “best practices.”

Or how about what the Obama administration is doing by way of the Environmental Protection Agency.  Thanks to idiosyncratic interpretations of the clean air and water statues, this outfit is in the process of running coalmines out of business and will soon be dictating what private citizens can do in their backyards.

Nor is that all.  These acts of economic aggression have often been perpetrated in the dead of night.  Contrary to promises of total transparency, bribery, intimidation and subterfuge have been the tactics of choice in implementing what are frequently unpopular policies.

In other words, just like many socialist regimes, Obama’s is sliding toward totalitarianism.  He and his fellow travelers intend to have things their way no matter what Congress or the American people may think.

This is not democracy, as we have known it.  Nor is it the free market, as we have known it.   The Obama administration and its friends in the media may use every propaganda trick at their disposal to convince us they are not heavy-handed socialists, but if it walks like a duck, and quacks like duck….

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Crying Wolf About Race

As certain as it is that the sun comes up in the east, it is equally certain that whenever president Barack Obama gets into trouble some of his most ardent admirers will accuse his detractors of being racist.  These friends of his will insist that their idol is being bad-mouthed only because he is African-American.

Zealous Obama partisans require no evidence to make this claim.  Those they accuse of bias need not have besmirched the president’s lineage.  Nor need they question his intellectual capacities.  It is enough that they are white and that he is black for the charge to be brought forth.

Nor does it matter that the American people have twice elected Obama to the nation’s highest office.  Their history of racism, especially in the South, is deemed sufficient to prove their current prejudice.

What the president’s defenders fail to take into account is a bit of wisdom that was once widely acknowledged.  As a child, I, along with millions of other American children, was admonished not to cry wolf.  We were told the tale of the shepherd boy who falsely called for help and so did not receive it when it was really needed.

The moral of this story is that when we repeatedly proclaim an untruth, it eventually loses its ability to persuade.  Thus, if we wish to influence people, we must be careful not to make claims that are easily refuted.

The racism charge is one such claim!  Oh, I do not mean to assert that there are no vestiges of racism abroad in our land.  Nor do I maintain that there are no longer any blatant racists among us.  That would be going too far in the other direction.

What I mean is that African-Americans are no longer oppressed to the degree that was once the norm.  I also insist that blacks now possess opportunities formerly closed to them.   Clearly the presidency is one of these.

Something equally important has been transformed in the nation’s psyche; something the race merchants rely upon.  White guilt has become a pervasive feature of the landscape.  Merely to be called a racist is a fate most Caucasians dread.  It is the equivalent of being labeled a mass-murderer.  (Just ask Mark Fuhrman.)

What I am about to say is totally impolitic, but I believe it is true.  In many ways, Barack Obama deserves to be called our “white guilt president.”  Remember how he came to national prominence.  It was with a single speech delivered at the national convention that nominated John Kerry.

Obama then declared that we were neither black nor white, but Americans first.  He thereby proclaimed himself a uniter and not a divider.  His message was that it was long past due that we put our racial divisions behind us and that we work together for our mutual good.

This was a message a huge proportion of voters welcomed.  They too were tired of the racial tensions.  Moreover, they had come to regard black persons as human beings who deserve the same rights as others.  Obama gave them the opportunity to put these beliefs into practice.  By later voting for him, they could demonstrate their allegiance to social justice.

Countless Americans anticipated that this decision would help heal the wounds inflicted during the preceding centuries.  This, however, has been a vain hope.  As the Paula Deen affair, the Trayvon Martin case, and the recent knock-out games have demonstrated, tensions remain high.

Worse still, they are exacerbated when fervent partisans refuse to recognize that disagreeing with a person who is black does not always imply that it is because he is black.  In fact, to assume it is, is to demand that African-Americans never be criticized.

The problem for those who hold this reverse racist view is that the more often they express it, the less believable it becomes.  They are in essence crying wolf and will reap the traditional rewards for doing so.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Liberal Integrity?

Once liberals stood proud and tall.  They were confident in their abilities and convinced they knew how to reform the world.  Under their guidance, ordinary people would move forward into the sunny uplands of which Winston Churchill spoke.

For one thing, liberals were certain that they were more intelligent than others.  They were also positive they were nicer.  As such, they believed it imperative that they lead the way toward a brighter future.

But oh my, how the mighty have fallen!  These would-be philosopher kings have been discovered to have feet of clay.  The recent debacles of the Obama administration have put their self-assured assertions in doubt.  Worse still, it has left their integrity in tatters.

Barack Obama lied.  He lied many, many times.  He lied when he told people could keep their health plans.  He lied when he said they could retain their doctors.  He lied when he said our ambassador in Bengasi had been killed by a flash mob incited by an offensive video.

Now Obama has compounded this mendacity by violating his previous declaration that the senate’s filibuster rule was sacred.  It has not been many years since he vehemently maintained that this practice was essential to protecting minority rights.  Suddenly, however, this analysis is non-operative.

What is worse is that many partisan liberals have gone along with his malfeasance.  They have defended their president and voted to eliminate a legislative procedure they too once endorsed.  Abruptly, power has become more important to them than honest dealing.

Anyone, but the most zealous liberals, must acknowledge that Obamacare is a cancer metastasizing into on the body politic.  Anyone, not blinded by ambition, must realize that manipulating the American people with false promises and ignoring constitutional safeguards puts our democracy in danger.

Unhappily, too many liberals have sacrificed their integrity for a mess of stinking pottage.  They have excused their president’s lies by claiming that he merely misspoke and/or was not sufficiently clear in his language.  They have likewise joined in trashing centuries of Senate precedent for a temporary political advantage.

Even as recently as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration, senate Democrats bridled at packing the Supreme Court.  They understood that the court was obstructing their president’s policies, but they valued the nation’s traditions even more.  Evidently such patriotism is no longer part of the liberal creed.

So why is this so?  Why have so many liberals become blatant shills for deceit and demagoguery?  Part of the answer can be found in a psychological insight enunciated a half-century ago.  It was then that Leon Festinger alerted us to the potency of cognitive dissonance.

Festinger noted that when people are confronted with information that contradicts strongly held beliefs, they are apt to deny the obvious.  In an effort to defend their self-images, they repudiate reality.  They simply cannot bring themselves to acknowledge their personal limitations.

But isn’t this what is happing to liberals?  Aren’t they being confronted with shortcomings they are loath to admit?  Obamacare has clearly been a case of over-reaching.  It and its rollout have been both inept and injurious.  The website has plainly been a technical humiliation, while the program’s irrational demands have placed millions of people in jeopardy of losing their health insurance.

How then is this smart?  And how is it compassionate?  Could people who fancy themselves to be among the best and brightest have perpetrated this abomination upon the fellow citizens who trusted their words?  This could not possibly be true—and so it must not be.

Accordingly, with this bit of mental gymnastics, liberal integrity is tossed out the window.  Facts no longer matter.  Human decency no longer matters.  Promises cease to count.  And as for tradition, it is a millstone to be hastily discarded.

The only thing that does seem to matter is self-preservation.  Liberals have thus become parodies of the virtuous saviors they long portrayed themselves to be.  Having descended into the gutter, they wallow there before our eyes.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University