For years I was perplexed over how to teach social change. My students at Kennesaw State University—like young people almost everywhere—were hopelessly idealistic. They held simplistic ideas about what is wrong with our country and even more simplistic ideas about how to remedy it.
Then, almost by accident, I blurted out that we were dealing with complicated questions. Ever since then, I have been using this as a mantra. Time and again, I remind a class that things are complicated. Societies have so many interacting parts that it is difficult to keep track of changes—never mind control them.
I encountered a similar problem when I assembling my book Forward-Looking Conservatism: A Renegade Sociologist Speaks Out. This compilation of MDJ and Cherokee Tribune columns (which is now out on Amazon) required me to select from over five hundred columns to create a unified whole. This was not easy.
The task was like putting the pieces of an intricate puzzle together. Somehow essays that were independently composed needed to fit into a coherent picture. They had to tell a consistent story or there was little point of combining them under a single cover.
Whether I succeeded will be up to others to judge, but my strategy was to start by documenting our current political crisis. After this I recommended principled realism as an alternative to the mess we inherited in the wake of Liberal failures.
A Neo-Marxist perspective is, in fact, a student favorite. Its utopian projections and Manichean interpretation of social events suits their desire for stark villains and happy endings. They want to know whom to blame so that eternal happiness will burst forth like cherry blossoms in spring.
The young do not realize that they are assaulting our social integrity. They do not understand that in bashing traditional values they are endorsing anarchy. While progress is a good thing, today’s youth have been so mis-educated that they do not recognize our need for core principles.
This is where forward-looking conservatism comes in. It provides an alternative that builds on a foundation of time-honored standards. These tenets must be updated to address contemporary challenges, but they provide the adhesive to keep our diverse and techno-commercial society from fragmenting.
Regular readers will know that I have been recommending honesty, personal responsibility, fairness (defined as the same rules for all), liberty and family stability. These may be difficult to implement, but they enable us to cooperate on ventures that are widely beneficial.
This (I hope) coherent story emerged from decades of focusing on independent aspects of a kaleidoscopic social universe. Part of what is driving contemporary Americans to distraction is our inability to clarify what feels wrong. Folks on a left and the right are distressed by unforeseen developments; unsure of what these mean.
If I am correct, forward-looking conservatism brings intelligibility out of darkness. While it does not eliminate the complications, it puts them into perspective. At least it enabled me to do this while I was struggling to coordinate disparate essays.
Another aspect of this project, which is less relevant to readers than me, was puzzling out how to convert a manuscript into a published book. Times have changed and Amazon.com is on the leading edge of a revolution in social communications. It not only sells books, it prints them on order.
Donald Trump may have issues with this commercial giant, but I appreciate its innovations. First these helped me buy books conveniently and now they are helping me publish them conveniently—well, perhaps not all that easily.
I am no computer maven. Although I am habitually at my keyboard typing out books and columns, the intricacies of programming leave me cold. This is a complication I would rather skip.
Unfortunately I could not avoid it in preparing my manuscript for publication. I am sure that if I had much hair left, I would have pulled out every strand. Each time I turned around there seemed to be an obstacle I could not master.
In the end, enough came together so that I now have an actual paperback in my hands. The margins are not what I wanted and my original cover had to be scrapped, but the tome is now tangible. Next time I will do better.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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