Niceness, Liberal Style

Liberals are nice.  Don’t they keep telling us as much?  They have compassion, whereas those mean-spirited conservatives do not.  Liberals are tolerant of differences, while their adversaries are singularly intolerant.

Just how nice liberals can be was plainly on display when a crowd of demonstrators roughed up folks coming from a Trump rally in California.  Accordingly, when they threw eggs at a young woman they had trapped outside a hotel, they were merely instructing her on the error of her ways.

As a college professor, I am routinely exposed to liberal arrogance.  As a sociologist, I am doubly and triply subjected to it.  Not long ago, I was interviewed for a book entitled Passing on the Right.  It chillingly documents the tribulations of conservative academics in our universities.

Of the more than one hundred and fifty scholars who were interviewed for the book, a grand total of nine were sociologists.  This is not surprising in light of the fact that no more than three percent of sociologists identify as conservative.  Fully one third actually profess Marxism.

I get to see this bias at sociological conventions where I have literally been told to shut up when I say something out of the radical left mainstream.  I have similarly witnessed it in sociological organizations that have refused to publish my articles in their newsletters because the editors disagreed with my opinions.

But the problem is not confined to sociology.  When I started teaching at Kennesaw State University, a colleague from a different discipline advised me that I was in for a bumpy ride in Georgia.  The state was then voting Democratic and she assured me that it always would.

Well, the world turns and the solid south has become the conservative south.  Nonetheless, southern colleges have remained dependably liberal.  At least in the humanities and social sciences, their faculties are overwhelmingly left-wing.  These folks consider anything that is not “progressive” to be hard-hearted.

A few weeks ago, the liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about this attitude in the New York Times.  In his piece, he bemoaned liberal intolerance.  Describing it as a blind spot, he cited a quote attributed to Voltaire to wit: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Yet liberals not only refuse to defend opposition to their orthodoxies, they will not hire colleagues who do not heave to the party line.  The reason, they say, is that conservatives are just not smart enough.  They are not academically-minded and hence are unfit to teach the young.

This was why my wife, not long ago, compared liberals to raccoons.  As an Ohio farm girl, she had, in fact, raised some of these creatures from infancy.  The experience taught her to be careful about feeding them.  “Give them an inch and they will take a mile,” she warned.

Liberals too are insatiable.  They are never satisfied no matter how much they get.  Differ with their positions too vociferously and they attempt to silence you.  Fail to agree with their social prescriptions and they will seek to penalize you.

Regardless of how they slice it, this propensity is not nice.  Nowadays, many Georgians insist on an independence of spirit and personal responsibility.  Unfortunately, this perspective has gone out of fashion in other sections of our country.  Genuine niceness, however, requires nothing less.

If we are to rescue our nation from the current doldrums, we must thus understand that niceness is not only about tolerance.  It is also concerned with the consequences of its policies.  If, in advocating for the underdog, it imposes a totalitarian grip on society, this ought to be shunned.

Colleges, for instance, should be marketplaces of ideas, not one-size-fits-all indoctrination centers.  Political rallies should likewise be violence free zones.  Yes, Trump goes over the line with his boastful tirades.  But so do those who object to his jingoism.  Genuine niceness demands tolerance and good sense from all sides.  Even Liberals!

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University