In recent times, I have not been kind to liberals. Over the last several years, I have written many columns excoriating their lack of honesty and common sense. As often as not, this malice has been retuned in equal measure. I have thus been accused of stupidity and an absence of compassion.
Believe it or not, I was once a deeply committed liberal. As a young man, I fought vociferously for the rights of the downtrodden. Indeed, it took more than a decade for me to make the transition to the dark side. All the while, I feared that I was betraying my family heritage.
Nonetheless, my initial confrontations with my former allies were friendly. Liberalism a half century ago was more tolerant than today. The kindness of those on the left was genuine. When we disagreed, they did not try to destroy me. They lived by the code of decency they believed inherent in their philosophy.
As I reflected back on those gentler times, I felt a need to honor several of the people with whom I contested political issues. They were good folks. They were righteous in a way many contemporary partisans are not. Three, in particular, command my respect.
One was my uncle Milton Tarriff; another was my counseling colleague Noel Martlock; the third was my fellow professor at Kennesaw State University, Vasilli Economopoulos. Each of them was an exemplary human being.
Let me begin with Milton in this column. (The others will follow.) He was my mother’s younger brother and the supposed dummy of the family. Few expected him to have a brilliant career. Moreover, as a teenager growing up during the Great Depression, he was attracted to leftist causes. This included attending meetings of the communist party.
Shortly thereafter, he went to war. In this capacity, he served as an artilleryman under General George Patton. Although exposed to enemy shelling, he emerged from this trial unscathed.
Once back home there was the problem of getting a job. He explored the possibility of entering the needle trades, but found this uncongenial. Instead he applied to be a bus driver. Because this was at the height of the McCarthy era, he feared that he would be blackballed because of his flirtation with communism.
Happily he got and retained the job. This enabled him to support a family, first by living in public housing, but ultimately by buying his own home. Always the faithful husband and doting father, he was deeply loved. His kindness was not an affectation. It shone forth in his every action.
But now to politics. Milton believed in big government. He was convinced that this was required to defend the weak and provide for their well-being. Always suspicious of businesspeople, he was certain that selfishness required constraint. The Depression had proved this to him.
Eventually he was in for a shock. His younger son, my cousin Michael, became a conservative. This led to endless discussions about the competing virtues of the right and left. Ours was a Jewish family, so you can be sure these debates were contentious.
By this time I too was a conservative, so I joined the festivities. At no point, however, were they mean-spirited. For the most part, we smiled and laughed as we sought to undermine each other’s arguments. Milton, in fact, set the tone. Never—not once—did he get angry when contradicted.
Then, after our disputes wound down, Milton would signal their conclusion the same way. He would look toward the heavens, lift his arms skyward and give out a hearty chuckle. “Where,” he would say, “did I go wrong?” How could a son and a nephew he intensely loved have deserted the path of truth and justice?
You see, even though Milton knew we disagreed, he continued to respect our motives. We were not bad people because differed with him. We were not lacking in compassion or intelligence. While he hoped to persuade us of the error of our ways, he never intended to tear us down.
How different the tenor of our national dialogue has become. Nowadays, there is little empathy for those who oppose us. Milton would not have understood. He could separate political dispositions from human benevolence. His kindness was person-to-person, not theory-to-theory.
Am I misguided when I look back longingly on those days? Can a society be genuinely benevolent if individuals are not personally benevolent? What do you think?
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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