Monday, April 23, 2018

Looking for a Way to Speak Out


I began writing columns for the Cherokee Tribune about two years. For almost a decade before this I produced weekly pieces for the Marietta Daily Journal.  These ventures started almost by accident, but have been a wonderful outlet for an opinionated person such as myself.
My Tribune pieces ought actually be attributed to my wife Linda. She was the one who suggested that I do them.  Since people in Cobb County (where we work) had begun noticing me on the street, she wondered why our neighbors in Cherokee county should not do the same.
As for me, I questioned whether I could compose two columns per week.  I remembered Charles Krauthammer writing that when he began his column he insisted it be once a week lest he run out of things to say.  I also recalled a KSU colleague who marveled that I had enough material for as many essays as I already did.
Well, by now the count is well over five hundred—and I keep chugging along.  Every week I begin by speculating about the source of my next columns and every week I sit down in front of my computer and the words flow.  Here’s hoping they continue to do so.
This last week I told my MDJ readers about my adventures publishing a paperback on Amazon.com.  Today, I am doing the same for Tribune readers.  Perhaps this is narcissistic, but that goes with the territory of being a writer.
In any event, my new book (my seventeenth) Forward-Looking Conservatism: A Renegade Sociologist Speaks Outwas published a month ago as an e-book.  Converting this into a paperback was time consuming and entailed exasperating formatting problems.
The work is a compendium of my columns from both the MDJ and the Tribune. It attempts to forge a coherent whole out of what had been independent pieces.  The goal is to demonstrate that there is a viable conservative alternative to Neo-Marxist liberalism.
My subtitle reflects the fact that I use my sociological background in an unorthodox way.  Almost all of my colleagues are liberal; hence they regard me as an apostate. They disapprove of using our disciple to support opinions they consider vile.
And so I am a renegade in quest of a platform.  Today, as during every period in history, only a few ideologies command our attention.  These embody the conventional wisdom.  They are the viewpoints with which we grew up.  As such, they appear to be the only ways to understand our universe.
So what happens when a person has a different way of looking at things?  What if it is unlike liberalism or traditional conservatism?  Is it possible to be heard?  Will people listen to an unfamiliar perspective?
As a student of social change, I am acutely aware that new ideas take time to take root.  I think of Oliver Cromwell beseeching parliamentarians to be tolerant of one another. His appeals were in vain.  Only after another hundred years of bloodshed were people willing to listen.
I know this must sound arrogant.  After all, who am I to imply that I am in the same league as Cromwell? But then again, doesn’t everyone with novel ideas assume they are correct?  Don’t we all have big dreams about influencing the world?
The trouble is that it is hard to tell the difference between idiosyncratic musings and beneficial novelties.  Our limited outlooks always distort our personal perspectives.  Nonetheless, if people don’t promote their contributions, the good would get just as lost as the bad.
In the end, we winnow the truth from falsehood by testing it in the court of public opinion.  This cannot happen, however, if ideas never make it into the social arena.  If they are not heard, they cannot stoke anyone’s imagination or stimulate counter ideas.
So this is where I am.  Whether or not I am right, I believe I have insights that are worthy of examination. Over two centuries ago, the philosopher David Hume wrote that publishing a book was like dropping it down a well. He initially bemoaned the fact that his major tome fell stillborn from the press.  Eventually, however, it became a classic.
What will happen to my books?  This is in the lap of the Gods.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University

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