Thugocracy

Like many other Americans, I assumed that electing an African-American president would improve race relations.  Sadly, it has not worked out that way.  Worse yet, our president’s behavior has contributed to widening the racial divide.

After violence erupted in Ferguson, Missouri in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting, Barack Obama did little to calm the waters.  Oh yes, he made the mandatory pronouncement about how rioting and attacking the police were not acceptable, but there was little passion in his words.

Then he compounded the problem by attempting to be even-handed.  He opined how the police were required to respect peaceful protests and not over-react.  They ought not have brought out the riot gear or armored personal carriers to confront what was basically a civil rights demonstration.

But this was no civil rights march.  This was a full-blown rampage.  The pictures of people gleefully pillaging retail outlets looked very much like a mini-Watts.  Added to this, shots were fired and Molotov cocktails thrown.

It has been argued that some people—some outsiders—got out of control and therefore the peaceable residents of Ferguson should not be punished.  But that is like saying most Moslems are pacific and therefore we should never have sought to punish Al Qaida for 9/11.

Law and order is not just a phrase.  If it is to exist, it must be upheld.  Allowing the thugs to run rampant essentially gives them permission to be as vicious as they want to be.  Fear of hurting their feelings is tantamount to applauding their hooliganism.

As for the alleged over-reaction of the police in attempting to restore order, that is a canard.  No civilian heads were broken; no rioters shot; none of the perpetrators injured.  It was the cops, thanks to their restraint, who were harmed.

Regarding that riot gear, were the police not supposed to protect themselves?  Were they to stand there essentially naked and allow themselves to be pelted with stones?  Years ago, when I was in the Army Reserve, we were trained in crowd control and I can assure you that the police, who are as human as anyone else, bleed when they are assaulted.

 Now as to the causes of this nonsense: Why did the demonstrators in Ferguson go wild?  Much of the blame can laid at the door of our president.  Contrary to what he keeps saying, the economy is on life-support.  Six years into his administration, good jobs have not come back.

That matters because the African-American community has been among the hardest hit.  More Blacks are out of work and/or underpaid than others.  Naturally they are hurting.  In other words, their grievance is not altogether about police brutality, but a society that has deprived them of opportunity.

So whose fault is that?  How about Barack Obama?  His misguided policies have encouraged dependency rather than personal responsibility.  In the name of making everyone equal, he has expanded the underclass.  No wonder that those deprived of a chance to move up resent the authorities.

Then our president added to the difficulty by excusing the inexcusable.  Michael Brown was a thug.  He might not have been stopped for robbing the store he was caught on videotape raiding, yet his repugnant character was clearly revealed.  He was not a nice “child.”

When we forget that, when we pretend this was irrelevant, we are complicit in the shooting.  The police officer who fired that shot might not have had just cause, yet in immediately assuming a Black teen was without culpability we indirectly abet future tragedies.

African-Americans have been badly treated in this country.  Many still are.  Nonetheless, in ignoring the role people play in their own degradation, we reinforce behavior that should not be tolerated.

Those who are not sanctioned for their thugery will continue in their self-defeating practices.  By the same token, those who are indulgent of such conduct are asking for chaos and depravity.  What sense does that make—for anyone?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Change versus Reform

Barack Obama promised us hope and change.  He certainly gave us change.  Under his administration we have had more debt, more dishonesty, more regulations, less competence, less transparency, and less bipartisanship than at any time in living memory.

Obama told us that he would clean up the mess in Washington, but he has presided over more waste and corruption than Richard Nixon or Warren Harding.  The feckless arrogance of the IRS, the VA, and the ObamaCare managers has been exceeded only by the president’s egotism.

What we need now is genuine hope.  There is a mess in Washington and it does have to be cleaned up.  A nest of bumbling bureaucrats answerable to no one, but on the same wavelength as our imperial chief executive, has decided that they know best how to run our lives.

Yet real hope cannot come from the government.  It is the epicenter of the problem.  Worse still, those who control it are using its power to entrench their immoral hegemony.

When private enterprises go astray, the marketplace disciplines them.  Pricy and/or shoddy merchandise is undersold and out-competed.  Customers go elsewhere until the bungling company is driven out of business.

With the government, however, there is no recourse save the ballot box.  The problem is that when demagogues take over the government, they also acquire the tools to fool voters into thinking they are being helped.  If nothing else, they bribe them into complacency.

The only way out is a reform movement.  When things get sufficiently bad, the public must coalesce under the banner of good government.  The object must not be to eliminate the government, but restructure it.  That which is not working must be excised so that it can be replaced by something better.

During the history of the United States, we have witnessed many such crusades.  At one point, the spoils system put in place by Andrew Jackson was dismantled by creating the civil service.  At another, women were given the vote they had been denied for centuries.

Even progressivism, the tattered streamer around which Liberals rally, began as an effort to gain control over rapacious businessmen.  Robber Barons, such as John D. Rockefeller, had their wings clipped once it became apparent that they possessed the power to defy the best interests of the American people.

Now it is the government that is defying the best interests of the American people.  It has grown so haughty that it intrudes its overbearing nose into everyone’s business.  Today it enforces imbecilic regulations for everything—including the mud puddles on family farms.

Self-appointed busybodies, such as Lois Lerner, are convinced they understand what is in our interest based solely upon their own biases.  Not knowledge, but personal prejudices motivate their sallies into areas where they don’t belong.

During the nineteenth century Lord Acton warned that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  He could not have been more correct.  We saw this in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and now on the banks of the Potomac.

It is long past time for Americans, who want to save their country from condescending politicians, to demand that the miscreants mend their ways.  Conservatives have sought to do this by defending the constitution and fighting for liberty.  Sadly many voters interpret this as trying to revive the past.

Fighting for reform, however, is forward looking.  It does not seek to replace autocratic government with anarchy.  The goal is not to undo what works, but to improve what can be improved.

Reform must be intelligent.  It should consolidate what needs to be consolidated, prune what needs to be pruned, and uproot what needs to be deracinated.  But it should also introduce programs that enhance our collective well-being.

To this end, it should encourage personal responsibility and interpersonal cooperation.  It should also seek to make America strong again.  Our best days are not behind us—unless we allow them to be!

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Immigration and Al Capone

Do you remember prohibition?  Probably not.  There are few alive today who can recall those riotous days first hand.  Yet we all know about the roaring twenties.  The movies and TV continue to remind of a time when speakeasies and gangsters competed for national attention.

High on the list of celebrities was Al Capone.  The Chicago mobster who grew rich on imported booze and over the dead bodies of brash rivals, epitomized the lack of respect into which the law had fallen.  Ordinary Americans, whose thirst turned them into Scarface’s dedicated customers, were only too happy to applaud his bloodstained exploits.

Prohibition encouraged people to violate the law.  In denying them a much desired product, it induced them to condone criminal activity.  Are we today witnessing a revival of this attitude?  Have disputes over immigration persuaded millions of people that the law does not matter?

Democrats act that way.  They do not even want to call illegal aliens illegal.  They prefer to label them undocumented immigrants.  That would be like referring to big Al as an undocumented liqueur salesman.

Liberals, in the name of humanitarianism, argue against closing our southern border.  They tell us that the children crossing the Rio Grande are escaping from untold horrors in their homelands and therefore it is up to us to save them.  Sending them back would be a violation of their human rights.

No doubt the attraction of being granted amnesty by a president who is hoping to attract millions of Hispanic voters is potent.  Just as potent as alcohol was to the flappers.  But does that mean we should solve this problem the same way we handled Prohibition?

Prohibition was, of course, repealed.  It was removed from the law books and in the process legitimated strong drink.  Should we therefore open the borders and allow all comers unrestricted entrance?  Were we to do so, today’s illegals would thus cease being illegal.

Some liberals propose exactly this.  They insist that human decency requires us to rescue any self-proclaimed refugee who asks our help.  No matter what their circumstances or land of origin, simple morality demands that we do no less.

Now the conservative columnist George Will has gone on record as recommending something similar.  He tells us that there are so relatively few undocumented children that the nation can easily absorb them.  According to him, all this would require is that each of the country’s thousands of counties accept a mere twenty.

Can he be serious?  Doesn’t he realize that these migrants will not wind up spread evenly across the states?  They will be concentrated in a few places—probably several disorganized inner cities.

Why does that matter?  It matters because this would interfere with their assimilation.  Immigrants have been good for the U.S., but only because they subsequently became Americanized.  They fit in and contributed to our welfare once they adopted our democratic customs.  Only then could their cultures enhance our own.

High concentrations interfere with this transition.  Individuals who are fleeing the violence and corruption of their native lands bring the attitudes that fostered this wantonness with them.  Unaccustomed to freedom, they have not learned how to support the institutions that protect our freedoms.

This is not their fault—but it is a danger to our way of life.  The irony is that if we seek to salvage too many of the downtrodden, they very qualities that enable us to do so are apt to be undermined.   So would our economy and the conditions of our daily existence.

To repeat, immigration is good.  Yet it must be legal immigration.  We need to welcome the oppressed, but only in numbers we can assimilate.  It takes time and resources to convert illiterate peasants into upstanding Americans.  We must allow ourselves, and them, this leeway.

Let us therefore not go back to the days of tommy guns and bathtub gin!  Who would this help?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Counterfeit Compassion

Liberals are convinced that they are particularly nice.  They are certain that they are more compassionate than others.  Nice to women, blacks, gays, foreigners, and the poor, they sympathize with everyone—save perhaps conservatives.

The problem is that this compassion is largely counterfeit.  It sounds like the real thing when liberals pontificate about how dedicated they are to improving the lot of the downtrodden, but it vanishes when they are put to the test.

Nancy Pelosi provides a wonderful example.  When the news channels were full of pictures of young children languishing in holding facilities on our southern border, she gushed about how concerned she was for their welfare.  With her arms spread apart, she declared that she wished she could take them all home with her.

Of course, she knew she could not.  She was aware that many thousands of Central Americans were streaming into the country, and she bemoaned their plight.  Yet she was not prepared to do anything about it except prattle on about how worried she was.

Nancy might tell us that at least her heart was in the right place, whereas conservatives are heartless.  Nonetheless, if your head is not also in the right place, neither is your heart.  If you are not ready to do something that genuinely helps, you are all talk and no real kindness.

I am reminded of the years I spent working in a psychiatric hospital.  It was grueling, discouraging work because so many of the patients were terribly ill.  They suffered from schizophrenia, affective disorders, and manic-depression.  Of these, the schizophrenics were worst off, trapped in their agony and delusions.

 More painful still, the vast majority of the psychotics were not going to get better.  They might be medicated to control their symptoms, but they were never going to approach normality.

For those of us who genuinely cared, this broke our hearts.  We were fond of our charges and wished them the best.  Nonetheless, we knew that the big dreams of their childhoods would never be realized.  Even so, we worked with them to make their lives as comfortable as possible.

There were others, however, who were transient workers.  Almost always sweet young things, they arrived at the hospital full of hope.  Because they possessed boundless compassion, their love was sure to rescue those with whom they came into contact.

Then, thanks to their magical kindness, the patients they saved would be eternally grateful.  Except this never happened.  The fairy-tale cures never materialized and even when patients improved, few were appreciative.  They took this help as their due.

So how did the sweet young things react?  Well, they disappeared.  Crushed by an empathetic overload, they saved themselves by changing jobs.  Only the tough souls, the ones prepared to handle agonizing frustrations, remained behind to continue ministering to the patients.  They were the ones who actually cared.

Liberals are like those sweet young things.  They are all aflutter about how they are going to remake the world, but when the going gets tough, they hide behind a screen of words.  Better yet, they blame others for exacerbating the problems they were not equipped to solve.

We see this in Texas, where the liberals declare the breakdown of border security a humanitarian crisis.  Their hearts go out to the huddled masses yearning to breath free.  But do they acknowledge their role in creating this emergency?  Do they rush to change the laws that set it in motion?  No, they just kvetch!

We see this in Gaza, where the liberals rush to send millions in relief to Hamas, but then sidetrack moneys intended to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome.  They also propose a ceasefire that will allow the Islamists to regroup and start again.  No thought is given to those who may perish in the renewed fighting two years from now.

Is this compassion?  Is this genuine help—or a pretense of concern?  I, for one, am no longer fooled by the crocodile tears.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Profession of Sociology

Kennesaw State University