Why Young Women Vote Democratic

By almost universal consent—except on the extreme liberal left and among Democratic Party operatives—the War on Women is acknowledged to be as phony as a four-dollar bill.  So why do young women continue to buy it?

An answer can be found in a long-standing piece of social research.  Contrary to what the radical feminists say, there are differences between men and women.  While we are, of course, the same species, there are consistent disparities in how the genders address problems.

In general, men tend to be more instrumental than women, whereas women tend to be more expressive than men.  While these orientations overlap, there are observable discrepancies in how they are distributed.

What then is the difference?  An instrumental approach is primarily concerned with getting a job done.  The goal of an activity is kept firmly in mind and pursued with single-minded determination.

Conversely, an expressive approach is more concerned with keeping the peace.  The objective is to prevent relationships from becoming too contentious.  In order to achieve this, women are sensitive to the emotional ambience in a group and notice when it becomes antagonistic.

Thus, while men are apt to plow ahead and seek to defeat a foe, women are likely to placate potential adversaries.  As a result, women may be hostile to those perceived as disturbing the tranquility of a group.

Research also shows that men are more likely to think in a linear manner, arriving at a conclusion step by step.  Meanwhile women are more caring in their attitude.  They don’t want people to get hurt and so they embrace solutions that seem to do the least harm.

As a result, young women are attracted to liberal rather than conservative causes.   Because they want to be nice, they take seriously political claims about being compassionate.  And since these are the bread and butter of Democratic politicians, they are apt to vote for them.

Men, in contrast, are more interested in results.  They want to know if a policy works.  If it does not, they are likely to reject it.  Nor are they deterred if this requires them to be harsh in opposing those who support a losing strategy.  They do not mind the confrontation and therefore fight back.

So when men look at the ObamaCare muddle, they protest the incompetence.  Young women, however, hear the good intensions and want the program to succeed.  With their eyes are fixed on who might be helped, they become its cheerleaders.  Besides, they don’t want to be unkind to the president.

Notice that I have suggested these attitudes apply mostly to young women.  They, after all, are the ones inclined to vote liberal.  Older women, on the other hand, have doubts about Democratic programs and therefore trend Republican.  But why is this the case?

Here the answer lies in their life circumstances.   Older women are apt to be married and have children.  Hence they care about their families.  They don’t want them injured and are alert to when they are.  While they too don’t appreciate controversy, they are prepared to defend their own.

Young women, however, are apt to have no such attachments.  Absent these responsibilities, they can thus afford to be idealistic.  With no one around them being hurt and intent on doing good, they are vulnerable to siren songs seriously detached from reality.

Consequently, young women, when allowed to make political decisions, often steer the ship of state onto rocky shoals.  They don’t mean to hurt anybody, but in their obliviousness to what works, mistake bald-faced lies for compassion.  Then they blame those who warned them of the danger for being cruel.

The answer to this dilemma?  Everyone, including young women, must be alerted to what works and what hurts.  Phony calls to fantasy solutions must be called out and identified for what they are.  Lies, no matter how attractive, cannot go unchallenged—even if this entails contention.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Winners and Losers

Winners, in order to be winners, must win.  They must defeat their opponents.  If they do, they gain a reputation for being winners.  This then gets translated into respect and deference.  On the other hand, if they lose, they are disrespected and forced to be submissive.

Mind you, winners do not have to win all of the time.   Simply winning more than their fair share is sufficient.  Nor do winners have to win in every area where they compete.  Winning important tests is satisfactory.  Nor do they have to destroy the losers.  Merely getting them to back down will do.

This may sound obvious.  It is what the New York Yankees have done.  It is what the Atlanta Braves aspire to do.  Until recently, it is what the United States of America specialized in doing.

We Americans helped win World War I.  We played an even bigger part in achieving victory in World War II.  Then we won the Cold War.  True, we only tied in Korea and Viet Nam, but this helped seal the defeat of international communism.  We even won the Gulf War and the initial phase of the Iraq War.

So why does Barack Obama not understand this?  He knows about winning when it comes to himself.  As a politician, he focuses like a laser on overwhelming his adversaries.  He gives them no quarter and spares no expense to come out on top.

With respect to elections, he will tell any lie, vilify any rival, and break any law in order to gain an advantage.  With respect to day-to-day politics, he will distort any truth, sacrifice any constituency, and violate any tradition in order to make sure Republicans do not get what they want.

So what happens when Obama climbs onto the international stage?  Why has he been content to lead from behind?   No, that is too charitable.  Why has he been content to withdraw from the game and allow others to work their will?

The only thing that makes sense is that he does not want to win.  Or more precisely, he does not want to see the United States of America win.  Barack believes we have been too arrogant.  He fears that in assuming we are special, we will trample on the rights of others.

In short, Obama wants us to lose.  The alternative to winning, it must be understood, is losing.  Those who decline to win because they do not want to hurt the feelings of their adversaries are choosing the only other alternative.  They are embracing defeat.

The Arabs understand this.  Once Obama signaled that he was not even trying to win by going on an apology tour, they realized the way was open to become aggressive.  Islamists could run riot in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan without fear of serious consequences.

Putin understands this.  He saw Barack abandon his red line in Syria and knew the president would not challenge him if he embarked on adventurism.  Hence he did in the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.  Moreover, just as expected the U.S. did nothing, save for a few empty gestures.

The Latin Americans understand this.  The Mexicans can, with impunity, jail an American Marine for taking a wrong turn into their country.  The Central Americans can send their children across our southern border without fretting about retaliation.

So why does Obama do this?  The answer is not reassuring.  Nor is it polite.  Barack Obama is not a patriot!  When pressed, he says he is, but his actions say otherwise.  Like most committed Liberals, (as verified in a recent poll) he is not proud of our country.  He doesn’t want us to be winners because he believes we don’t deserve it.

For years, Democrats have railed at Republicans for questioning their patriotism.  As a result, conservatives held back.  But they shouldn’t.  They do not need to allow those who want us to be losers to get off so easily.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Real War on Women

The ink was not dry on the Supreme Court decision upholding the Hobby Lobby’s right not to have to purchase day-after birth control for its employees before liberals began to cry foul.  This was obviously an attack on women they would not tolerate.

From every corner of the left-wing establishment came accusations that Republicans had reopened their War Against Women.  They clearly wished to deny women access to birth control and no doubt wanted them “barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.”

Hillary Clinton went so far as to declare that conservatives sought to treat women the same way as they are in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.  Republicans evidently wanted to deprive women of all rights and make them completely subservient to men.

This was total nonsense but it did not stop the mainstream media from characterizing the Supreme Court as having outlawed birth control.  Even though they knew that Hobby Lobby only objected to four out of twenty forms of birth control and that women were still free to obtain what they wished on the market, this was described as a complete ban.

So why did they do this?  Why did the left so unanimously tell such a whopping lie?  Media commentators had a ready answer.  Liberals were ginning up their base.  They were intent on getting young women so excited that they would go to the polls in November to vote Democratic despite the president’s many blunders.

I am pretty sure this is true.  But what does it imply.  First it assumes that young women are so dim—or at least so gullible—that they can be taken in by a transparent lie.  All that liberals have to do is say that Republicans hate you, and they will reflexively turn to Democrats for protection.

Obama does the same with Blacks.  He tell audiences that Republicans will not give him what he wants because they hate him for being African-American.  This resonates because Blacks were for centuries a despised minority.  They know what it feels like to be detested for no other reason than one’s skin color.

Yet what of young women?  Do conservatives really hate them?  Don’t even they have wives and daughters?  Do they actually want to harm their own kin?

In fact, if anyone is oblivious of the needs of young women, it is liberals.  They know that many of these women have kind hearts and hence they take advantage of their youth and generosity.  Even if they have to deceive and injure them to solicit their support, they do so readily.

 And make no mistake; Democrats are injuring women.  Theirs is the real war against them.  For a few dollars worth of government subsidies, they try to induce them to abandon their own interests.  Like Tokyo Rose they attempt seduce them to surrender for the sake of bogus benefits.

Think about this.  When the economy goes sour, who gets hurt?  Who cannot get a job and after graduation must go home to live with their parents?  Young women; that’s who!

And who is going to have a harder time finding a suitable mate?  With young men also having difficulty finding full time work, they are not prepared to shoulder the burden of a family.  The best they offer is cohabitation.

But here is the biggest irony.  With marriage more difficult, many more women are apt to become unwed mothers.  Despite the free birth control, accidents will happen and mistakes will be made.  And who will bear the load?  Young women!

Yet I forget myself.  The feminist core of the Democratic Party does not favor marriage.  Men are brutes; hence it is best to stand clear of them.  It is much better for women to wed the government.  The federal bureaucracy is surely a more reliable provider than rascally males.  Just ask Julia.

Oh, but isn’t this a war on families?  Then again, who needs families with Obama to protect us?  After all, he cares so much!

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Progressives Live in the Past

John Maynard Keyes, a liberal in good standing, described many of his colleagues as “slaves to some defunct economist.”  He was too kind.  Many of today’s liberals are bound hand and foot in the service of long dead thinkers.  Worse still, most don’t know it.

Liberals assume they are progressive.  They believe that they are forward-looking pioneers who are on a mission to save humanity from itself.  In fact, they are always looking in a rearview mirror intent on resurrecting old ideas that have proven their inadequacy.

Consider ObamaCare.  Democrats did not enact it because they found that the British state run health care system was superior to our own.  No, they did so because Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman promised to nationalize health care decades ago.  They were merely fulfilling a long-standing pledge.

Or think about Iraq.  Everyone acknowledges that the situation is falling apart.  But what do Liberals do?  Do they come up with a plan for saving our bacon?  No, their first impulse is to resurrect old charges against Bush.  He was a fault so they don’t have to figure out something now.

Or what about Harry Reid and the nuclear option?  He eliminated two centuries of tradition just so his president could appoint the officials he desired.  Somehow Reid couldn’t look far enough ahead to realize that Republicans might use this same device when they return to office.

And how about the IRS scandal?  Obama says there was not a smidgeon of corruption, but even a blind sheik can see that there was.  With conservatives unfairly targeted and hard drives destroyed, there was almost certainly a cover-up.  Polls clearly show that the American people think so.

Still the progressives are not worried.  They have Obama and Eric Holder to protect them.  They know investigations will not be pursued, citations for contempt of congress will not be enforced, and criminal accusations will not be filed in court.  All is therefore well.

But if they thought ahead, they would realize that they may lose the Senate in November and the presidency in 2016.  Should this happen, Republicans will be primed fo payback.  Having essentially been kicked in the groin, they will be eager to return the favor.

As for the mainstream media, these enablers have already sullied their reputation for honest journalism.  Do they think they will recover it while unreported scandals continue to fester?  Do they imagine that when Republicans come back in power, they will be treated as long lost relatives?

Progressives believe in equality.  They believe in it with every fiber of their being.  But they only believe in it for themselves and their clients.  Their enemies do not have to be treated fairly.  They do not have to be accorded any respect whatsoever.

Where did this attitude come from?  Why it is hundreds of years old.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau planted the seeds two hundred and fifty years ago and Karl Marx tilled the field a hundred years later.  These gentlemen are regarded as prophets, but their predictions have been getting a bit moth-eaten.

The experience of the Soviet Union and of the European social democracies should have sent up a flare.  But progressives did not see it.  They were too busy looking back to hoary utopian visions to be bothered by limitations discovered in the here and now.

Keynesianism is dead.  FDR’s economic programs were a failure.  But no, progressives have to try them again.  And after six years of stumbling recovery, the best they can proclaim is that the recession has not returned.   We have had a quarter of negative growth, but at least we have not yet had two.

Progressives are not progressive.  Liberals have no new ideas.  Democrats only know how to create government programs and added regulations.  They are corrupt, they are old-fashioned, and they are incompetent.  They don’t think so, but it is time the rest of us caught on.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University