Self-Discipline

Gesellschaft.  It’s an unusual word; a word of German origin.  It is a word that I did not learn until I took the Graduate Record Exam in Sociology.  Nonetheless it is an important word.  It is a term that all of us who live in the United States should know.

A Gesellschaft society is a mass society.  It is a society that is made up of many thousands, and often millions, of participants.  There are so many that most are strangers to one another.

And yet it is also a society in which these strangers are dependent upon one another.  Most do not grow their own food, or sew their own clothing, or construct their own homes.  They depend upon others to provide these services in exchange for the services they provide.

Members of Gesellschaft communities must therefore be able to count on the reliability of these strangers.  They must be confident that these others will furnish what is required.  They have to be sure that their food is not tainted and that their automobiles will not fall apart the moment they are driven out of the showroom.

Above all, they must be certain that they can walk down the street without being molested and that unknown drivers will not suddenly swerve out of their lane on the highway.

This requires that such strangers exercise restraint.  They must be so reliably self-disciplined that they do what is expected of them.  If they cannot control themselves—without external constraints—the world becomes a dangerous place, with interpersonal cooperation almost impossible.

The consequences for a Gesellschaft community when a significant number of its members do not exhibit self-discipline were in display in Baltimore several weeks ago.  There, hundreds, if not thousands, of young men lost control and vandalized their city.

Once the police were withdrawn from the streets, chaos broke out.  Without someone to stop them, the rioters could not stop themselves from heaving stones, setting fires, or looting stores.  They did not possess the personal controls to keep their anger in check.

Most young people learn these controls in their families of origin.  Nonetheless many inner-city young people do not come from traditional two parent homes.  They are raised by single mothers who do not have the time, or the physical strength, to keep adolescent males within bounds.

Self-discipline, however, is inculcated by reliable external controls.  Children are taught to say please and thank you, and to refrain from stealing their friend’s toys, by parents who will not let them get away with such transgressions.

But what happens when unassisted mother’s are unable to do this?  What are we—as a society—to do when thousands, and perhaps millions, of our children never learn self-discipline?

A Gesellschaft society must impose social order if it is to survive.  It cannot allow its members to do whatever they want.  The results would be disastrous.  Over the long haul such a society would disintegrate into anarchy.

And so we enforce order.  That’s why we have police forces.  They are asked to impose external discipline on persons who do not possess the internal resources to do so.  A cop’s job is to make sure that the rules are followed by individuals who may not be inclined to honor them.

But what happens when the police become the enemy?  If the constituents of the thin blue line are punished for imposing restraints, where will the requisite discipline come from?  Probably nowhere.

Young people who do not do what they ought to do must sometimes be forced to.  If we assume that everyone in our society possesses the same self-discipline as members of the middle class, all is lost.  Our fall will be more precipitous than that of the Roman Empire.

We cannot abandon external controls where self-discipline is absent.  Doing so would be a form of social suicide.  Sacrificing our police on the alter of a liberal fantasy is a prescription for fatal disarray.

Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Provocateur

Is Pamela Geller a hero or a villain?  Is she a moral crusader or a crass provocateur?  Opinions are sharply divided.  Many decry arranging a contest to select the best carton depiction of Mohammed as a vile insult.  Others praise the organizer’s courage.

First, let it be stipulated that the contest was intended to be provocative.  Second, let it be agreed that the materials on display offended many Muslims.  Third, let it also be understood that Geller was aware Islamists might resort to violence to suppress her program.

The question is: Was she wrong?  Should she have found another way to make her point?  Geller, of course, insists that she is fighting for free speech.  She argues that no one should be able to censor public expression merely because they are offended.

Meanwhile her critics respond that she was unnecessarily odious.  They say that given the religious convictions of Muslims, representations of the prophet amount to hate speech and therefore should be prohibited.  Some even allege that it is illegal.

Others, such as Bill O’Reilly, claim that it is bad tactics.  They argue that religious insults are bound to alienate people we should be cultivating as allies.  Why gratuitously offend people who have done nothing to harm us?  After all, religious freedom applies to them too.

I would respond with a line of reasoning recently put forward by Alan Dershowitz.  He compared Geller with Martin Luther King.  Both intentionally provoked a hostile reaction in order to promote a moral agenda.  Both likewise sought publicity to disseminate their message.

When King organized protest marches in Birmingham Alabama he was aware that Bull Connor, the city’s commissioner of public safety, had vowed to stop him.  He also knew that Connor was a belligerent man who was prepared to use force to impose his mandate.

Yet King went ahead anyway.  Weeks earlier he had led demonstrations in Albany Georgia, but these did not produce the confrontation for which he had hoped.  The city’s officials were so accommodating that there was no violence and therefore no sensational pictures for the press.

Birmingham would be different—and sure enough Connor obliged.  Television coverage of water cannons and vicious German Shepherds outraged the nation.  This was obviously unfair to peaceful protesters and should not be tolerated.  Hence, just as King hoped, the civil rights movement got a boost.

So why didn’t Geller’s free speech crusade get a similar boost?  Why didn’t efforts to kill her and her colleagues spark widespread indignation?  The answer lies in what she is advocating.  Free speech is not at the top of the list of liberal causes, that is, as long as it is not their speech.

Geller’s mistake was trying to make Muslims look bad.  For those on the Left, these folks are a protected constituency.  Other religions can be mocked with impunity, but because Islamists are regarded as underdogs they must be defended—even when they attack us.

Thus, Barack Obama will not admit that we are at war with radical Islam.  Nor will feminists condemn the subjugation of Middle Eastern women.  By the same token, the media seldom draw attention to the excesses of Sharia law—such as putting apostates to death.  All this is overlooked rather than discomfort people who are perceived as weak.

This, however, is not compassion.  Rather, it is empty-headed arrogance masquerading as moral enlightenment.  Free speech is not a given.  It must be defended.  Once we cast it aside in the name of protecting those who revile it, we many never get it back.

Nonetheless, liberals do not care.  They have promoted political correctness for years.  If you doubt this, try using the N-word in public.  That someone like O’Reilly also puts political considerations above defense of our freedoms is truly frightening.

Edmund Burke warned us that when good people do not defend what is right, evil is bound to triumph.  Have we now grown so complacent that we spurn those who stand up for liberty?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

No Justice

By 1990, the conventional wisdom had it that big cities were ungovernable.  Places like New York City were regarded as sinkholes of despair.  Festooned in graffiti, and plagued by crime, their mayors and police departments had lost control.

Two decades earlier, while a student at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, I watched my professors struggle with the task of rehabilitating Times Square.  Unfortunately, their social engineering did not help.

Then came Rudi Giuliani.  He decided to fight crime instead of surrendering to it.  The police were told to arrest people even for small infractions—such as turnstile jumping.  They were also unleashed to engage in pro-active interventions in violent neighborhoods.

The results were dramatic.  Crime plummeted.  The murder rate, for instance, fell by almost three quarters.  People again felt safe.  They even returned to the newly cleaned up Times Square to celebrate their liberation from squalor.

But this did not satisfy the liberal pundits who ran the New York Times.  They regarded Giuliani as the enemy.  He was perceived as a monster who was oppressing the poor.  Instead of being nice to the downtrodden, he insisted that they follow the law—or pay a penalty.

And so the Times fought back.  It ran hundreds of articles about police brutality.  Despite statistical evidence that police abuses had been reduced, aberrant cases, such at that of Amadou Diallo, were highlighted to demonstrate just how vicious the authorities were.

Today the clock has been turned back and Freddie Gray is the new poster boy for police cruelty.  Without knowing the facts, cries for revenge rose from Baltimore’s mean streets.  Worse still, the city’s elected officials echoed these calls.  They agreed that without justice there would be no peace.

And so the police were scapegoated.  Instead of putting down the rioters, they were asked to expose themselves to the brickbats of an unruly mob.  Meanwhile the officers suspected of injuring Gray were indicted for second-degree murder on the theory that they intentionally killed their prisoner.

The upshot: back on the streets there were celebrations.  Vengeance, disguised as justice, had won the day.  Now the Crips and Bloods were hailed as heroes for maintaining the peace.  It did not matter that they directed vandals to loot Asian businesses.  Hadn’t they, after all, protected their own?

This, however, was not justice.  It was a return to a State of Nature in which it is every person for him/herself.  Millennia have gone into developing the institutions that shield ordinary citizens from chaos.  Yet these were brushed aside as if they were the problem.

With the Al Sharpton’s of the world now dictating the terms of surrender, the worst is yet to arrive.  Baltimore is about to become Detroit East.  Legitimate businesses will flee the city, as will its respectable residents.  Nor will the cops do their job.  Why should they risk being sent to jail for apprehending evildoers?

So who is responsible?  It is none other than the liberal champion of justice in the White House.  Intent on vindicating his ideological convictions, Obama is determined to do what the New York Times could not.  He aims to dismantle law and order in favor of a squishy niceness.

Baltimore’s mayor decided to provide the looters space to foul their own nest.  This could only be achieved by disarming the police.  Yet this policy was well under way.  From Cambridge Massachusetts to Ferguson Missouri, our president had already condemned law enforcement agents for having gone wild.

Nevertheless, Obama and his allies do not know what a lack of control portends.  With the gangs and incompetent public officials in charge, there will be blood on the streets.  Once the law is fully dismantled, no one will be safe.

This is not justice.  It is insanity.  Ordinary police officers are not perfect.  They make mistakes.  Moreover, they should be punished when they do.  But destroying law and order is a far greater mistake—with more serious consequences.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Perfect Democratic Candidate

Some terrible things are being said about Hillary Clinton.  The atmospherics have become so acidic that many Democrats are worried about whether the former first lady is their best candidate for president.  They fear she may have too much baggage.

But how can this be?  Hillary is the perfect person to represent liberal aspirations.  She is a fitting symbol for everything that progressives epitomize.  Dishonest and incompetent, with a smug sense of entitlement, she incorporates the Democratic spirit in a single package.

Secretary Clinton tells us that she aims to be a champion for the middle class—or it is the working class—or perhaps the poor and disinherited.  One way or another, she will rebuild the economy and distribute social assets such that justice is retuned to our benighted land. 

So where has she been for the last seven years?  Why wasn’t she a champion while Barack Obama was president?  After all, for four of those years, she was part of his administration.  Did the vast right wing conspiracy perhaps hold her back?  If so, why wouldn’t it keep doing so with her in the White House?

Ms. Clinton tells us that the current charges against her are a “distraction.”  These accusations of cupidity have all been addressed; so let’s move on.  She is obviously forthright and candid; hence her detractors ought to allow her to get on with the business of saving the nation?

In truth, the only persons Hillary is saving are herself and her family.  If she is anyone’s champion, she is theirs.  The evidence?  Although she regularly rails against the one per cent, she is a charter member of the crony capitalist contingent.  

Back in Arkansas, she magically converted a thousand dollar investment into a hundred thousand.   Nowadays, of course, she has participated in converting an ostensible charity into a billion dollar slush fund.

Yet all of this was legal and transparent.  Despite the critics, those deleted e-mails would not have shed light on any inappropriate extra-curricula activities.  They could not have helped us understand how she and Bill—or their friends—raked in millions.

Yet Hillary was only doing what Democrats have always done.  After all, didn’t Harry Reid and Barack Obama also grow rich in public service?  That pesky man behind the curtain, the one saying there were quid-pro-quos and maybe bribery, is an enemy agent.  He is not to be believed.

Remember, however, Democrats are adept at shooting the messenger.  They always find enemies who are responsible for their distress—or ours.  As they see it, they—and she—are perpetually helping others.

Have we forgotten HillaryCare?   Or those peripatetic travels intended to bring world peace?  While people are now asking embarrassing questions about what Hillary accomplished, this is preposterous. 

Nonetheless, can’t this also be asked of Democrats in general?  Despite their grand promises about producing social justice and prosperity, what have they actually done to improve education, eliminate poverty, reduce crime, end the recession, deal with immigration, or balance the budget?

Democrats are clearly phony’s.  But who is phonier than Hillary Clinton?  Does anyone believe her painted on smile?  Who, likewise is a more worthy successor to Obama’s mendacities.  While she is not as smooth, she is every bit as deceitful.

Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash is merely the opening salvo of what should be a long campaign to remind people of Hillary’s history.  Standing by a husband who had sex with an intern in the Oval office is not the best qualification for chief executive.

Democrats may be having doubts about Secretary Clinton, but they have no alternative.  Between them, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton took the air out of their party.  Its presidential bench is consequently so bare that there seems to be no alternative to a coronation.

All the same, Democrats should be of good cheer.  Their political program is so faulty that they have become well-practiced hypocrites.  And nobody is a more accomplished hypocrite than Hillary.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University