Political Balance: Liberal-Style

For many years, I routinely attended sociology conferences.  I went to the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, the Southern Sociological Society, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the Sociological Practice Association. 

When I was a novice, I found these gatherings interesting and informative.  But then as the years rolled by, my grievances accumulated.  Instead of being exposed to uncontaminated sociology, many presentations were accompanied by growing doses of political correctness.

Ever since my graduate student days, I was aware that a majority of my colleagues tilted left.  This was a fact to which I grew inured.  Nonetheless, I expected a fair hearing for my dissenting outlook.  Eventually, however, it sank in that this was never destined to happen.

At first, the jokes about how Ronald Reagan was a dumb actor struck me as shallow, but harmless.  Then, when I was castigated for suggesting that Karl Marx might be out of date, I was offended.  Nonetheless, the last straw was being told to shut up when I offered a non-liberal perspective.

You may thus understand why I have been reluctant to attend such meetings.  Yet last week I did.  I went to the Association of Applied and Clinical Sociology conference in Denver.  This was because I wanted to promote my book “Unlocking Your Inner Courage” and thought this would prove a suitable venue.

For the most part, nothing untoward occurred.  But then I attended a plenary presented by a local newspaper reporter.  She was actually rather entertaining.  Even though she began her career working for National Public Radio, her stories were largely straightforward.

Not unreasonably, she encouraged this room full of sociologists to provide social science data to support her journalistic impressions.  If they could supply facts to put her pieces in context, this would surely help her readers.

This, however, provided an opening for one of the other attendees.  Why, the speaker was asked, did so many reporters strive to provide balance in their accounts?  Didn’t they realize that they should be writing about the truth and not what right-wing partisans believe?

From the follow-up, it became evident that the questioner assumed that the liberal point of view is consistently true.  Whereas it is based upon science, conservative assertions are unenlightened opinion.

In recent years, I have heard many liberals quote Daniel Patrick Moynihan to the effect that although everyone is entitled to his of her own opinion, no one is entitled to his or her own facts.  Liberals, because they assume they have a monopoly on facts, use this as a way of putting conservatives in their place.

Still, at no point during this discussion did anyone suggest that there was such a thing as liberal bias.  The word was never mentioned.  The current political campaign may have brought forth a raging torrent of left-wing prejudices, but this is not how these sociologists saw the matter.

They assumed they were objective.  All they wanted to do was to protect the public from conservative misinformation.  This was part of their responsibility as scientists and concerned citizens.

It never occurred to them that they were asking for censorship.  Had someone suggested that liberal arguments be left out of journalistic accounts because they are slanted, they would have been outraged.  This would have been regarded as tyrannical.

The point is that liberals are so arrogant that they are unaware of their biases.  From their perspective, they are only good people who are trying to reveal social realities.  If others come to different conclusions, it is either because they are malevolent or dim-witted.

It was easy to see from whence liberal preconceptions derive.  These folks are always surrounded by like-minded associates.  They never hear a nonconforming voice and so they assume there is no such thing as legitimate disagreement.

Perhaps I should have said something.  Perhaps I should have pointed out that they were endorsing dishonesty.  I did not.  Maybe this was cowardice on my part.  Or it could have been a realization that nothing I said would have made any difference.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University