Social Individualism: Texas Style

When Texas was first being settled by Anglos, they had a problem.  There was plenty of free land available on the frontier, but the Comanches were contesting it.  What is more, this tribe had a fearsome reputation.  Its warriors were rightly regarded as the scourge of the southern plains.

Families that ventured out to lonely homesteads were essentially on their own.  Raiding parties could attack them at any time to steal their horses and collect their scalps.  It took extreme courage—and tenacity—to take such a chance.  Nonetheless, the original Texans prided themselves on their rugged individualism.

One of the things that social scientists have learned is that cultural adaptations tend to persist.  The same willingness to take risks, without complaining about setbacks, that characterized their state’s pioneers was still visible in the reaction of Texans to the devastation wrought by hurricane Harvey.

Instead of crying about how cruel nature had been, they immediately got out and started helping their neighbors.  Rather than sit on their hands and wait to be rescued, they did the rescuing.  Many of these folks placed their lives in jeopardy, despite the destruction done to their own homes.

It has become customary for millions of Americans to scream out for government assistance whenever they encounter a difficulty.  Uncle Sam is supposed to provide the money and the expertise to extract them from whatever situation makes them unhappy.

While it is true that the Trump administration has effectively organized federal support, FEMA and the National Guard found enthusiastic partners already on the ground.  Ordinary citizens had taken the initiative to climb into their boats and trucks to brave the elements.  Mere floods were not going to stop them.

The rest of the nation looked upon this bravado with awe.  It clearly took courage to defy the unknown.  It also took pluck to begin the process of rebuilding before the waters receded.  There was no complaining.  There was just good old-fashioned hard work and cooperative effort.

Texan individualism demonstrated something else.  People who take personal responsibility are better able to utilize assistance from others.  They can join forces with, let us say the police, because they are standing on their own two feet.

Responsible individuals think for themselves.  This makes it easier to figure out how best to collaborate with officials.  Responsible individuals can also make adjustments.  They are able to modify their responses because they are not terrified by the unexpected.

Most importantly, people who are individualists have a strong sense of self.  They are comfortable with who they are and consequently are comfortable with people who differ from themselves.  Individualism does not equal selfishness.  Indeed, it frequently signifies the reverse.

I have recently been arguing that our post-industrial society requires a new ideal.  The squishy calls for social justice coming from the left are insufficient.  So are the demands for liberty emanating from the right.  These are all well and good, yet they are not enough.

What we need now is social individualism.  We need more people who are willing to be themselves and to save themselves, while at the same time collaborating with their neighbors.  In other words, more of us must both be for ourselves and for others.

The Texans has shown us how this can be achieved.  There is no contradiction between being personally strong and concerned with the welfare of our fellow citizens.  People can make independent choices that benefit themselves, while pulling up their sleeves to help the guy next door.

Social individualism is the opposite of collective dependence.  Instead of abdicating what we can do for ourselves, it takes satisfaction in personal achievement.  Instead of clamoring for a bigger piece of the federal pie, it seeks to bake it’s own pie.

Social individualism is aware of the limitations placed upon us by inhabiting a mass society, but it is also aware of the opportunities made available when strong people team up with other strong people.  They do not whine.  They do not point fingers as supposedly oppressive enemies.  They just get down to business!

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Liberals Are Biting Their Lower Lips

Bill Clinton made it famous.  Whenever he wanted to demonstrate to the public that he felt our pain, he would bite his trembling lower lip.  He would next look directly at us through the television lense and emote like a champion.  Here was a person who cared.  Here was a president who could be trusted.

Journalists at the time reported on how seamlessly Clinton could go from political chatter to on-stage empathy.  They said it was like turning on a light switch.  All of a sudden, his eyes went teary and his voice began to quiver.  The question then and now is was this real? 

To judge from his subsequent behavior, one of Clinton’s overriding motives was to get rich.  He has also apparently maintained an interest in power and pulchritudinous women.  How much he genuinely cares for the interests of the little guy is therefore up in the air.

I wonder about these things because many decades ago my naïve idealism was challenged by harsh realities.  One of my first jobs was working in Harlem for the New York City Department of Welfare.  I was a caseworker responsible for seeing to it that eligible clients got their checks.

My goals at the time were many—and probably inconsistent—but one was to help poor people in need.  I was appalled by poverty and wanted to do the best I could to alleviate it.

But then came a moment of disillusionment.  My fellow caseworkers began talking about going on strike.  The union reps were everywhere, stirring up enthusiasm for a walkout.  Their objective was unmistakable.  They intended to get us more money.

Our salaries were modest; hence I could not object.  Nonetheless, their tactics left me cold.  Rather than sound mercenary, the strike leaders argued that they were just trying to help our clients.  If caseworkers got additional funds, they would obviously provide better services.

This was nonsense!  What was said for the benefit of voters was merely public relations.  The real goal was to look sympathetic.  If we could convince folks that we cared about the discomfort of people in poverty, they might care about us as well.

This was hypocrisy—pure and simple.  Perhaps some of the more ardent unionists believed it, but the rest of us knew better.  What most caseworkers cared about was getting a larger paycheck.

Now we hear from liberals that President Trump was not sufficiently empathetic in his initial response to hurricane Harvey.  He should have reached out more directly to those who had been devastated.  In other words, he should have been more like Clinton.

Liberals seem to have developed eternally quivering lower lips.  They are forever biting these to demonstrate how compassionate they are.  It does not matter to them whether Obamacare was successful.  They are indifferent about declining school achievement scores or rising crime rates.

What liberals care about is appearing to be benevolent.  It matters little to them whether Trump actually helps flood victims.  If he doesn’t say the right words with the proper tone of voice, then anything he achieves is irrelevant.  If his wife doesn’t wear the right shoes, nothing else counts.

Were liberals actually empathetic, they would be concerned about the beatings dealt out by Antifa.  They would decry the methods of these hooligans and sympathize with the victims.  Instead they too engage in public relations.  Their chief concern is that they not be identified with these thugs.

To be blunt, liberals are also hypocrites.  They are gold plated hypocrites!  However much they gnash their teeth and accuse others of not being kindhearted, they care more about appearances than results.  In my book, this makes them less moral than they are forever claiming.

Genuine concern for others is not about emotional outbursts.  It isn’t about giving hugs or crying at a moments notice.  Genuine concern is confirmed by what people do.  If they hang in there and provide actual relief, they are establishing their bona fides.

Hypocrisy has, unfortunately, become the currency of the realm.  Nowadays it is scarcely noticed—especially by those immersed in it.  My hope is that lip biting goes out of style.  Let it be replaced by doing good, as opposed to posturing as good.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Terrified of the Future

When I was a baby, my father beat me.  Not once, but consistently.  From my second week of life onwards, he spanked, struck, and terrorized me.  The echoes of those thrashings remain.  They have formed the subtext of my existence, periodically emerging in the form of anxiety attacks.

My father, however, was not a bad man.  He was actually a very moral man, who loved me deeply.  Never did he intend to hurt me; nonetheless, almost daily, that is exactly what he did.

As an adult, I have marveled at how small and defenseless neonates are.  Their sins are at worst nominal, while their ability to protect themselves is nil.  How then could a decent human being have visited so much pain on my infant self?  Why didn’t my Dad see what he was doing?

The answer—and it took me nearly a lifetime to realize it—was that he was terrified.  He career had not gone as he hoped.  Neither had his marriage.  Now, in me, his eldest child, he had a responsibility that he was not sure he was prepared to handle.  On top of this, World War II had begun and he did not know how it would affect him.

Why do I bring this up?  Because only now do I realize the degree to which terror can interfere with our rationality.  Terrified people often do things that they would never contemplate were they in control of themselves.  Their heads are so filled with fear that there is room for little else.

I was reminded of this when my sister, who lives in New Jersey, informed me of the political attitudes of her liberal friends.  They are all Jews who somehow believe that Donald Trump is about to start a pogrom.  They are firmly convinced he is a dedicated anti-Semite.

Mind you, Trump surrounds himself with Jewish advisors.  More tellingly, his beloved daughter married a Jew and converted to her husband’s religion.  For heaven’s sake, Trump has Jewish grandchildren whom he also loves dearly.  He is even friends with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister.

How does this make him anti-Jewish?  What has he done to make people believe he would attack them?  The answer is that they are liberal and he is now perceived as a conservative fiend.

Liberals are horrified by Trump.  They suffer from what has been called the “Trump derangement syndrome.”   They, therefore, on little or no evidence, accuse him of colluding with the Russians, obstructing justice, and engaging in racism.  He is supposedly a fascist—and, oh yes, crazy.

None of this makes sense, especially the ferocity and constancy of the assault.  But then I remembered my father and the cause of their belligerence became obvious.  Liberals too are terrified.  They too are so frightened that they cannot think clearly.  As a result, they do not realize the implications of their out-of-control hostility.

What are liberals afraid of?  This may sound peculiar, but they are petrified by the future.  Until recently, progressives were convinced they had a corner on the prediction business.  They absolutely knew that a quasi-communist society, in which the government ensured that everyone was equal, was inevitable.

But then the Obama administration ended in disarray and Hillary lost the election to a dimwitted clown.  This was not supposed to happen.  Liberalism was destined to march triumphantly to eternal glory.

Liberals will not admit it, but Obamacare did not work.  Nor did their stimulus plan rescue our economy or strategic patience bring peace to a troubled planet.  Hope and change thus failed to deliver on its lofty ambitions.

After this came Hillary’s lack of an agenda.  She was not inspirational—partly because of her character flaws, but partly because her ideas were warmed over platitudes.  The fact is that liberals have not had a new idea in over a century.

Liberals have plainly lost their way.  They haven’t brought forth stimulating counter-proposals to Trump’s because they don’t have any.  Where they once assumed they had a monopoly on the future, because their predictions egregiously failed, so has their confidence.

In their state of panic, liberals are now flailing about.  They are attacking in every direction in order to hide their distress.  Unsure of what is to come, they blame everyone else—particularly conservatives.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Peas in a Deplorable Pod

Donald Trump is supposedly unfit for office.  He allegedly has neither the brains, nor the moral stature to be president.  Totally out of control, and bereft of any semblance of human decency, he has no right to occupy the White House.

Sentiments of this sort have become conventional in the mainstream media.  The national press corps is constantly instructing us on the inadequacies of our chief executive.  Meanwhile, not just liberal politicians, but many conservatives, have taken to lecturing Trump on his moral shortcomings.

What has brought forth this flood of vituperation and moralistic posturing?  Our president’s single most egregious deficiency was purportedly his recent failure to distinguish between white supremacists and peace activists.

When, in the aftermath of the Charlottesville riots, he stated that there were good people on both sides of the melee that was too much.  Too suggest that neo-Nazis and Black protesters were equivalent was the height of insensitivity.  It bespoke an inner racism.

But guess what, there is a moral equivalence between the neo-Nazis and the Antifas.  They are peas in the same deplorable pod.  The extremists on both sides of the recent Confederate monuments controversy have more in common than liberals would have us believe.

Trump was not “unhinged” to say what he did.  There are good people on either side of the political divide.  Pointing this out was his way of saying that we should not confuse the KKK, and other bigots, with those who hold right wing opinions.

But let us look a bit more closely at what happened in Virginia.  To begin with, the white supremacists did not initiate the squabble.  Those on the left cast the first stone.  They, out of nowhere, demanded that venerable memorials be torn down.  Poor Robert E. Lee had done nothing, recently, to merit their opprobrium.

Despite accusations that confederate statues were rallying points for bigots, there was no evidence to that effect.  Nor did the theoretically anti-bigotry protestors need to confront the demonstrators who, in fact, had a valid permit to march.  They could have held a counter-event the next day.

The neo-Nazis are not a savory group.  Their opinions are odious.  That they chose to piggyback on the grievances of defenders of Southern traditions was unfortunate, but to depict this as an assault on democracy was ridiculous.  Despite the torchlight processions and vile slogans, they are the fringe of a fringe.

As a Jew, I do not condone anti-Semitism or racism.  Nonetheless, these neo-Nazis were not actual Nazis.  They are home grown fanatics.  There is no Hitler for them to rally around.  Nor will there be concentration camps or a crystal nacht.  They are merely malcontents using a hated symbol in order to be provocative.

But the same can be said about the other side.  The Antifa and Black Lives Matter crowd are equally provocative.  They too are a small band of malcontents who latched on to a larger controversy to gain attention and suppress free speech.  To portray them as injured innocents is absurd.

Those who watched the Charlottesville disturbances on TV would have been hard put to distinguish the combatants.  They wore similar protective gear and wielded comparable weapons.  The only difference was the flags they flew.

So I say, they were undoubtedly morally equivalent.  Both sides are loathsome.  To convert one into heroes for protecting American values, while condemning the other as attacking them is fatuous.  Both sides were assaulting our nation’s traditions.  They both deserve our disgust.

The Culture Wars have grown so vicious that the participants have lost sight of elementary moral truths.  In order to win victories over their foes, they portray complex social questions as black and white.  For these combatants, there are no subtleties or clemency.  They refuse to take any prisoners.

We are, however, living through perilous times.  If we are together to solve the problems we confront, we must exercise good will.  To dismiss those with whom we disagree as unrepentant bullyboys—on either side—is a grievous mistake.

Mean-spirited extremists are callous, wherever they are found.  Let us thus not confuse them with well-intentioned folks, wherever the latter stand in the political landscape.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University