A Failure of Courage

During the 1930’s, Winston Churchill wandered the political wilderness.  Untrusted by every political party, his warnings about Nazism went unheeded.  Dismissed as a radical warmonger, most onlookers were convinced that his electoral future was bleak.

Then came WWII.  Called upon to save his nation, he vowed to fight the enemy on the beaches—and everywhere else.  But many still considered him a dangerous fanatic.  After all, the war was already lost; hence the sensible course was to make peace with Herr Hitler.

Ronald Reagan too spent years as an outcast.  His defense of conservatism was ridiculed as years out-of-date.  However eloquent he might sound, as a has-been actor, he was merely a ventriloquist’s dummy.

Then, once Reagan became president and continued to warn about the evil empire, his irrationality was confirmed.  After he doubled-down on a missile defense against a nuclear attack, he was roundly derided for adopting his farcical “star wars.”

Each of these leaders was out of step.  Both sought to protect their nations from real dangers, but were scorned for their troubles.  Yet both survived their ostracism and made a huge difference.

Why don’t contemporary conservatives demonstrate comparable courage?  Why are they so afraid of offending the electorate that they capitulate the moment the polls turn against them?  Don’t principles count?

If, as I have earlier argued, we are in the midst of an ideological crisis, then this condition afflicts conservatives as much as it does liberals.  The liberal predicament has been revealed by persistent incompetence and dishonesty.  The conservative dilemma, in contrast, has been exposed by a failure of nerve.

Although many conservatives believe what they say, they are not prepared to risk their careers over it.  Merely hint that they will be blamed for shutting down the government and they fold their tents.  God forbid they should lose an election and be cast into the same netherworld as Churchill or Reagan.

So why are conservatives such cowards?  Sadly, it is for the same reason that liberals are so treacherous.  They too are victimized by an out-of-date idea system.  But whereas liberals defend theirs with a bodyguard of lies, conservatives abandon theirs to lip service and empty gestures.

Neither religious nor free-market conservatives truly trust the causes they espouse.  Thus the best they can manage against impending bankruptcy and/or nuclear annihilation are rear guard actions.

Most conservative Americans are religious, but in a half-hearted secular way.  They do not believe with the passion their ancestors mustered.  And thank goodness.  The Puritans who settled New England were an intolerant lot.  If a person disagreed with their code, he or she risked banishment to a real wilderness.

Remember, it was a mere three hundred years ago that Europeans and their American cousins were executing each other over theological issues.   As a consequence, had we not moved on and disestablished our churches, we too might be as bloodthirsty as ISIS.

Nor has an unfettered economic marketplace remained an unambiguous ideal.  We learned from the robber barons that unregulated capitalism could be corrupt and cruel.  Although the libertarians insist that totally free enterprise can solve virtually every problem, even they know it is not a sovereign remedy for loneliness or demagoguery.

And so conservatives dither.  They correctly diagnose the perfidy and hypocrisy of liberals, but do not possess an alternative to which they are sincerely dedicated.  In this sense, they really have been the party of No.

What is therefore needed is a new vision of who we are and where we are headed.  We must understand our world in terms that suit our challenges.  Yes, progressive centralization has demonstrated a frightening grandiosity.  But No, reanimating Adam Smith or John Calvin will not rescue us from it.

Our mass techno-commercial society demands individual responsibility.  Decentralization and personal liberty are indeed vital to its survival.  Nonetheless, these must be fashioned to meet our needs—not those of our great-great-grandparents.  And we must have the courage to defend them!

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Pinocchio's On Parade

Winston Churchill famously said, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”  To judge by this standard, liberals, such as Barack Obama, must be guarding extraordinarily valuable truths.

The opposite, however, is the case.  The center they are protecting is hollow.  Liberalism has long since rotted out at the core.  As an ideology in crisis, it no longer provides valid answers to the problems we face.

Think about it!  What, if anything, are Obama and his entourage reluctant to lie about?  Is there any policy, foreign or domestic, that has escaped the stultifying hand of deceit?  So common has dishonesty become that it is no longer worthy of outraged notice.

Why is this so?  When public policies miscarry, those promoting them have two choices.  They can either admit their failures or lie about them.  Nevertheless, as ideologues, who believe they are infallible, liberals, in fact, have but one choice.  They can only lie.  The result: Pinocchio’s on parade.

What have liberals been wrong about?  Where can we begin?  Did they improve the economy as promised?  Six years have gone by and trillions of dollars were spent, but we still have the slowest recovery since the Great Depression.

As importantly, the administration routinely vows to grow the economy from the middle out.  In reality, the rich have done well and the poor receive larger transfer payments than ever, whereas it is middle class jobs and salaries that have gone on permanent hiatus.

Or how about education?  If we are no longer engaged in a race to the bottom, someone forgot to tell American students.  Despite the money expended trying to finance a college education for everyone, our young continue to lag behind the rest of the world.

Or what about race relations?  Do blacks and whites trust each other more now that we have an African-American president?  Actually, our president cannot even bring himself to admit that “hands up, don’t shoot” was based on a lie.

As for foreign policy, are we safer?  Claims that we are, are obviously absurd.  And why trash Netanyahu?  Or cozy up to the Iranians?  Or kowtow to Vladimir Putin?  Or allow the Chinese to hack into our secrets?  Such gross neglect can only be excused by lying.

Barack Obama is surely incompetent.  But the problem goes deeper.  He is the symbol of liberal ineptitude.  He has messed up ObamaCare, Benghazi, immigration, and the IRS not merely because he is a poor administrator, but because liberal prescriptions cannot work.  They are grounded in ignorance and wishful thinking.

And so not only does the president lie; so do those who work for him—whether they are in the State Department, the Department of Justice, or the EPA.  All, including Hillary, must participate in the cover-ups if they are to prevent their doctrinal bankruptcy from being revealed.

Nor is this all.  The liberal media are complicit in the lies.  As card caring liberals, reporters and editors conspire to keep the public misinformed.  They routinely reinterpret failure as success and refuse to report disconcerting news. 

Thus, rather than embarrass the president, they will not cover stories such as Jonathan Gruber’s admission that the public was intentionally deceived about ObamaCare.

Nor indeed is that all.  Ordinary Democrats, what were once called “knee-jerk liberals, do not want to know the truth.  Whatever the scandal rocking the capital, they prefer to discount it.  Hence they look away.  Far from demanding the facts, they cease paying attention to uncomfortable details.

And so lying has become the new norm!  It does not shock because the alternative would be to admit that liberalism is a god that has failed.  People high and low might have to recognize that their political shield is a moth eaten sieve.  As a result, they turn to transparent fabrications to do the job.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Profession of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

An Ideological Crisis

Why are we at a political impasse?  Why has it proven so difficult for politicians to arrive at a viable consensus?  Part of the reason, I submit, is that we are in the midst of an ideological crisis.  Our ideas about where society is headed are seriously out of whack.

Think about it.  All of the theories guiding our political decisions were created centuries ago.  None of our current ways of understanding our problems were developed in our times, for our times.

Liberalism is at least two hundred years old.  Even in its Marxist formulation, it is one hundred and fifty years old.  Developed in opposition to the Industrial Revolution, it aims to return us to the rural villages in which our medieval ancestors once lived.

Thus liberals expect us to know and care about each other as if we were intimately acquainted.  Unfortunately we are not.  Because our society numbers in the hundreds of millions, most of us are, and will remain, strangers to one another.

Meanwhile conservatism is about as old.  In its economic guise it celebrates the advent of capitalism.  Conservatives want to promote economic progress, but often in a manor that was appropriate when most businesses were small.

Actually, in its religious guise, conservatism is far older.  In this, it asks us to return to a social condition that is millennia old.  We are essentially being requested to join a single family of humankind, despite the fact that families are emotionally close, whereas strangers are not.

Even the libertarians have a hoary lineage.  Their idea of freedom is grounded in a marketplace composed of independent competitors.  Massive corporations and representative democracy are therefore not part of their calculations.

But we are not returning to village life, or Mom and Pop storefronts, or an old-time religion.  These are nostalgic fantasies that have nothing to do with how we live or are going to live.  They cannot guide us in making political choices because the problems we face are very different from the ones they address.

And so we are adrift.  Cast at sea, unsure of what is happening, we cling to that which is familiar.  Although we are secular, not religious; urban, not rural; and specialists, not generalists, we pretend that we are simple folk, who, if we only make the right choices, will return to a virtual Garden of Eden.

But guess what, complete equality is not in the cards.  Nor is complete liberty.  Our mass techno-commercial society demands much more of us than that we hold hands and sing Kumbaya.  At the very least, we must be honest about our situation.

Here, however, is the tricky part.  A new, more appropriate, ideology will not be found in a box of Cracker-Jacks.  Social ideas do not appear fully formed as enunciated by a charismatic leader.  They evolve.  They emerge slowly from our combined social experience.

In this regard, our current gridlock is part of the learning curve.  Sometimes people have to experience discomfort before they are motivated to seek an alternative.  Sometimes things must go seriously wrong before they are prepared to contemplate a novel answer.

What that answer is, is a good question.  While I suspect that we are on course to become a more professionalized society, I do not control events any more than does anyone else.  This no doubt is scary, but then again life is scary.  There are risks we must take merely because we are human.

I know, however, where we must begin.  We must start with courage.  We must first admit that we are confused about our situation.  Instead of following ideologues who insist that they know the answers, we must accept reality for what it is.  We have to be candid about our problems.

Then we must accept the fact that no solutions will be perfect.  We are human and human societies are always fraught with complications.  To imagine otherwise only confuses an already difficult task.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Fire with Fire

Can the Republican congress defund Obama’s immigration initiative?  Can the bill financing the Department of Homeland Security be so crafted that it includes all of the department’s programs—except those enabling the president to implement the equivalent of amnesty for illegal aliens?

The Democrats insist on a “clean” bill.  By this they mean one that allows Obama to provide illegals with the trappings of citizenship.  They say that unless this is done, they will not allow any bill to escape the senate.  They will filibuster whatever they find unsatisfactory to death.

But the Democrats go farther.  They insist that if this occurs the Republicans will have shut down the Department of Homeland Security.  Republicans, they argue, will have denuded the nation of its protection—all to gain a partisan advantage.  Clearly this is an irresponsible act.

Many allies of the Republicans are now advising the House of Representatives to comply with Democratic demands.  The Democrats, they say, have set a trap and the only way to avoid it is to give them the bill that they want.  Otherwise it will be the Republicans who are accused of malfeasance.

Thus, capitulation is described as moderation and firmness as intransigence.  How strange?  Congress is said to have the power of the purse, but if anytime it threatens to use it, it is successfully intimidated into not doing so it does not have it!

Counsels of moderation are right about one thing.  Republicans will be accused of shutting the government down.  The Democrats have already begun doing so and the media, as usual, seconds this motion.

 History, we are told, ensures that Republicans are always blamed for shutting down the government.  This is what happened when Newt Gingrich tried to rein in Bill Clinton.  It is what took place when Ted Cruz tried to stop ObamaCare.  Therefore it is certain to happen again.

It will, however, only if Republicans allow it to.  Oh yes, the Democrats will make the same tired accusations and their media allies will double down on them.  The question is, will this tactic work?  Can it be stopped?

The answer is yes, but this entails fighting fire with fire.  Clearly it is Democrats who are threatening to shut down the Department of Homeland Security.  They are the ones who will not allow any funding to pass if it does not include moneys for the president’s immigration policy.

Why are they doing this?  Obviously, they want to protect their president and a program they believe will win them votes down the line.  They care not a whit about what is constitutional.  They are concerned not a jot about the security of the nation.

So why don’t Republicans say so.  Why don’t they shout it from the rooftops?  It is the truth.  Even Democrats and media types know it.  So why doesn’t the public?  Why don’t ordinary Americans realize they are being bamboozled?

It is because they have repeatedly been told otherwise.  Most don’t pay attention to political details; hence when a sound bite is repeated often enough, it is perceived as factual.  The trick to counteracting this ploy is to engage in sound bite warfare.  Democrats too must be accused of shutting down the government.

Not only must they be accused, they must be accused every day.  And not only every day, but every week and every month.  This was how the Democrats got their absurd accusations accepted in the first place.  Now the moment has come to repay them in kind.

And if the media refuse to cover these charges, Republicans should go around them.  They should do what the oil companies do.  They should buy ads on television.  And not just a few ads, but media wallpaper.  When people don’t listen, you must sometimes shake them by the lapels.

The truth is the truth only if people are aware of it.  Why then aren’t conservatives more vigorous in its defense?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University