Not On My Watch

In recent weeks, Barack Obama has tipped his hand regarding his goals in negotiating with Iran.  For years, he asserted, with categorical finality, that Iran would never get a nuclear bomb.  But those days are gone forever.

Now the objective is merely to postpone the acquisition of a weapon that could destroy Israel and ravage our homeland.  With stopping the mullahs from constructing intercontinental ballistic missiles also off the table, an avowed American enemy will likewise possess the means to deliver these warheads.

The way our president broached his change of heart was to assure an interviewer that Iran would not obtain this deadly capability “on my watch.”  Uttered with complete insouciance, the implications of this assertion almost went unrecognized.

What Obama was essentially saying was that Iran would obtain atomic weapons—only after he left office.  He would not be responsible for the ensuing perils because he would no longer be the person in charge.

That Obama’s deal with Iran paves the way for this denouement was waved off as irrelevant.  That he also acknowledged they, in little over a decade, would have ample fissile materials need not trouble a reasonable observer.

Our president has demonstrated the identical attitude any number of times.  The economists tell us that unless something is changed the national debt will rise so high that nearly ever tax dollar will go to paying the interest.  But hey, we need not worry: that day is not this.

Simple arithmetic also tells us that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, not to mention ObamaCare, will, within decades, run out of money to pay their bills.  But why should we care; this will not happen until our children and grandchildren need medical care.  Its their problem, not ours.

Obama is well practiced in kicking the can down the road.  He has basically been voting “present” ever since he was in the Illinois legislature.  Unwilling to get his fingerprints on any policy that might go awry, he always finds a way to justify his inaction.

Our president leads everything from behind.  He does only what circumstances force him to do—everything, that is, except spending money or violating the constitution.  Determined, as he is, to break the back of our democratic institutions, his aim, whether foreign or domestic, is to bring us to the brink of disaster.

So how does he get away with this?  Our president’s one noteworthy skill is an ability to deploy language to obscure his deeds.  He is a man of false promises—remember, “you can keep you doctor”—and soothing reassurances.  Like any good snake oil salesman, he always finds the words to keep the rubes happy.

Recall what he did to get his trillion-dollar stimulus passed.  The money was to kick start the economy by getting dollars into the hands of taxpayers who would then spend them.  This would inspire employers to manufacture more products and hire more workers.  In the end, we would all benefit from a rebirth of wealth.

Only, as the critics pointed out, the stimulus money would first have to get into the hands of the consumers.  This required that the government funds immediately be spent.  But not to worry, these were “shovel ready” projects.  They were set to go.

When a year and a half later most had still not been built, Obama acknowledged that shovel-ready might not really have been shovel ready.  And then he laughed.

Now we are being assured that if the Iranians cheat on their agreement, the sanctions we lift today will “snap- back” tomorrow.  No damage will have been done because we can always return to a punitive regime.

So what will Barack Obama say when this does not happen?  Will he laugh about this as well?  And how about the American people?  Will they laugh when bombs begin going off in Tel Aviv?  Or New York?  Will they agree with their former president that this was a slight miscalculation?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Legacy or Betrayal

I don’t get it.  I read in newspaper columns and hear from television pundits that Barack Obama is negotiating with the Iranians because he wants to leave a legacy.  But how is making dangerous concessions to an avowed enemy supposed to create a legacy?

Did Neville Chamberlain leave a legacy when he sold out Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler?  Was that piece of paper he waved in the air, the one that was supposed to guarantee “peace in our time,” a legacy?  And when Vidkun Quisling paved the way for the Nazis to take over Norway, was this too a legacy?

Legacies are marvelous deeds that improve the lives of many people.  They are therefore celebrated in song and story.  Children whisper about how once upon a time a hero led his nation out of the wilderness.  Is this what Obama is doing?

George Washington left a legacy.  So did Abraham Lincoln.  For that matter so did Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and John Kennedy.  Each of these is identified with significant accomplishments that deserve to be remembered?

Yet does anyone recall Obama’s position on nuclear proliferation before the recent Iranian debacle?  When our president first came into office he promised to rid the world of such weapons in their entirety.  He was going to negotiate a treaty with the Russians that essentially brought our stockpiles down to zero.  This was to be a success the world would emulate.

So what kind of example has he actually set?  Does being pusillanimous and gullible count as evidence of greatness?  Does making so feeble a deal to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions that it encourages its neighbors to seek nuclear weapons warrant being acclaimed?

Whatever Obama is doing, he is not reducing nuclear proliferation.  He is certainly not making the world a safer place or defending us, or our allies, from a potential enemy.  So what is he doing?

One theory has it that Barack is seeking the same sort of opening with Iran as Nixon managed with China.  He is alleged to be converting an enemy into an ally.  Yet does this make sense?  Is Iran looking for support from us in a way that China was?

In fact, the conditions are utterly different.  China wanted a counterweight to Russia.  So what does Iran want?  Actually, we know.  It wants hegemony over the Middle East, the ascendancy of Shia Islam, and the destruction of the United States—i.e., the Big Satan.   Where, in this, is an opening for us?  What are we to get from making ourselves more vulnerable?

Some commentators tell us that if we are nice to the Iranians this will soften their hearts and make them nice to us.  Do these people understand that the Mullahs who run Iran are deeply committed to their faith?  Do they realize that these clerics would welcome an Armageddon that brings the end of time?

Naiveté and ignorance are not the stuff of which legacies are made.  To the contrary, they lay the groundwork for betrayal.  Obama is in the process of selling us out—although, to be generous, he may not realize this.

On the other hand, he may realize it full well.  To judge from his actions, he has more sympathy for our adversaries than for us.  Time and again he gives them what they want, while recurrently weakening our strength.

Churchill purportedly said that Chamberlain had chosen peace over honor, but in the end would have neither peace nor honor.  This seems to be the fate Barack Obama has elected.

What will he say when Iran gets the bomb?  What will his fellow Democrats say if such a bomb goes off in Israel or the United States?  Will they plead ignorance?  Will they claim they were never warned?

Barack Obama may indeed being leaving us a legacy.  But if it is one of tears and death, he will be remembered the way Quisling was.  He may become our new Benedict Arnold!

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Liberal Tolerance

Some weeks ago I was invited to give a talk at the Aeropagus, a devout Christian organization.  The organizer, Dr. Jefrey Breshears, and the discussant, Dr. Richard Howe, could not have been more gracious.  Intelligent, open-minded, and decent, they treated me with unfailing respect.

The same could be said of the audience.  All present knew that I am an agnostic and hence disagreed with my convictions, yet no one was discourteous.  Indeed, people were warm and supportive even when attempting to explain why I was wrong.

I bring this up because it contrasts so markedly with the reception I received at a Regional Sociological Association's recent annual meeting.  This liberal organization could scarcely have less gracious or more intolerant.

Many readers have inquired about how I, a conservative, can survive in so liberal a discipline as sociology.  Part of the reason is that my colleagues at Kennesaw State University are fair and congenial, even when our perspectives diverge.

With unfamiliar sociologists, however, it is often a different matter.  Once they learn where I stand, I get treated like the skunk at the garden party.  I am either told to shut up or coldly ignored.  This is what occurred at the afore mentioned conference.

A hint at what I was to experience could have been gleaned from the title of the event.  Called “The Stalled Revolution: Gender Inequality in the 21^st Century,” the goal was to promote “social justice”—especially for women.

The opening plenary speaker set the tone by explaining how cutting edge couples were creating the intimate relationships of the future.  While her research demonstrated how unhappy these people often were, and how frequently they divorced or remained single, they were presented as positive models of what is to come.

Many years ago, I began my career as a philosophy major.  At the time, one of my goals was to learn about life.  Nonetheless, I left the discipline when I ascertained that there was no objective way to settle differences of opinion.  I balked when persuasiveness and power reigned as the arbiters of acceptability.

Sociology was supposed to be different.  As a social science, its disputes would presumably be decided by appealing to empirical data.  Not moral commitments, but first-hand observations would determine the facts.

Not any more.  Too many sociologists have become inflexible moralists.  They are not trying to learn about the world, but to promote their causes.  Because they are convinced they know the truth, they are confident there is nothing to learn from dissenters.

Just how left wing sociology has become was evident at the conference’s book display.  Virtually all the featured works highlighted what is wrong with contemporary America.  To judge from their content, we are residing what amounts to one huge concentration camp.

Why is this so?  Why are sociological liberals so intolerant?  Once, a mere few hundred years ago, Christians were as fanatical.  Back then dissenters were not only disparaged, they were killed.  So what changed?

After many bruising wars, during which no side definitively prevailed, the participants realized that tolerance made more sense.   Their doctrinal differences remained, yet people discovered they could accept these without insisting on rote compliance.

Liberals, including most sociologists, have yet to learn this lesson.  They are so dedicated to their ideology that they cannot stomach opposition, especially from those presumed to be on their side.  This makes outliers, like me, particularly objectionable.

Something similar prevails in the political arena.  Liberals are so firm in their moral convictions that community members who differ are considered either stupid or evil.  Why then would a virtuous person put up with such villains?

Liberals still believe they can win the culture wars.  Even when the facts go against them, they are not discouraged.  One day, equality and androgyny will surely prevail.  All that is needed is for the good guys to stick together and beat the bad ones (e.g., me) into submission.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

A Fortress of Myths

Although Liberals have been compelled to protect their outdated beliefs with a bodyguard of lies, this has proved insufficient.  Their ideology is so worm-eaten that they have had to erect a fortress of myths to defend it.  Fantasies based on wishful thinking are required to do the job.

Not long ago I spent some time with my siblings.  Given the present controversy over Israel and Iran, the question of president Obama’s motives arose.  Why, it was asked, do so many Jews continue to support our president when he is apparently so hostile to Israel?

My brother—who, before I go further, is one of the most decent people I know—rushed to Barack’s defense.  Our Middle East problems, he informed me, are of our own making.  If Muslims are antagonistic toward us, or Israel, it is because they were provoked.

The story goes this way.  The United States is rapaciously selfish.  Americans are so convinced that they deserve to live in luxury that decades ago they squandered their oil resources.  This forced them to appropriate stocks of other countries—most notably in the Persian Gulf.

“We stole their oil!”  Naturally they are displeased.  As thieves and bullies, we should not be surprised when our victims get angry at us and our allies.  Clearly, we deserve their animosity!

When I responded that we did not steal Arab oil—that we paid for it, this justification fell on deaf ears.  Instead the response was “We stole their oil!”—only issued more emphatically.

No further progress was made in resolving our differences because the notion that we are villainous thugs was deemed self-evident.  I had, in fact, run into a stonewall of liberal myths.  These sorts of narrative are impervious to facts.  They, therefore, serve as formidable redoubts against unwelcome views.

Indeed, liberal myths abound.  One of the more recent is “Hands up, don’t shoot.”  That Officer Wilson shot an unarmed black teenager because he was a racist has become an article of faith.  Even a report to the contrary by Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, changed few minds.

Yet contemplate the many other liberal myths—and they go way back.  To begin with, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not save us from the Great Depression.  If anything, he prolonged it.  Nor did Calvin Coolidge provoke this downturn.  In reality, his policies produced a period of enormous economic growth.

As for the War on Poverty, it was not responsible for lifting the downtrodden out of misery.  The truth is that minorities were making faster progress before it was enacted than after.

Meanwhile it was not Republicans who denied African Americans civil rights.  For over a century, it was Democrats who did so.  As recently as the 1950’s, a large proportion of them stood in the schoolhouse door blocking the entrance of blacks.  Amazingly, it was Richard Nixon who gave us affirmative action.

Or how about Global Warming?  Had enough snow yet this winter?  If we have much more due to carbon emissions creating a greenhouse effect, we are liable to freeze to death.  No doubt this is why Obama assured us the Keystone pipeline is more dangerous than ISIS.

During my family’s discussions I also heard the old chestnut about how Bush lied and people died.  But funny how many liberals also believed the CIA’s warnings about weapons of mass destruction and hence voted for the Iraq War.

The thing about myths is that they are extremely enduring and can be shaped to rationalize any policy.  I find it particularly amusing that progressives style themselves intellectuals.  This too, of course, is a myth—as is the fiction of their exceptional compassion.

When I responded to my brother by elaborating upon the history of Islamic aggression, he waved my explanations aside.  As far as he was concerned, anyone can cherry pick the facts to prove anything.  But isn’t this what liberals do when they engage in mythmaking?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University