Am I Smart Enough for College?

When I was a teenager, well more than half a century ago, I wondered whether I was smart enough for college.  My parents expected me to get a higher education, but I was unsure of my ability to cope with extremely demanding studies.

In fact, during my freshman year, when I took courses in calculus and mechanics, I did not do well.  I still remember, with trepidation, the nine books I was assigned to read for a course in political science.  Where was I going to find the time to complete so many tomes?

Nowadays, of course, few professors would dare require this sort of workload. They know that if they did, few of their students would peruse these books.  Actually, in a growing number of instances, learners don’t deign to buy them. They expect to get by with what they hear in the classes they attend.

The fact is that a college education is currently regarded as an entitlement.  Prospective students don’t ask if they are smart enough for college; they assume everyone is.  To even contemplate excluding them is regarded as a violation of social justice.  (And, oh by the way, they want their education to be free.)

Nonetheless, the only way to accommodate everyone in our universities is to dumb down the curriculum.  Standards must be lowered if less gifted scholars are to to pass required courses. The tendency is therefore toward mediocrity.  Fewer books are obligatory, most course papers are shortened, and challenging materials are eliminated.

Just how far the dumbing down process has proceeded is on display at Kennesaw State University.  It now boasts what is called an Academy of Inclusive Learning and Social Growth.  The idea is to stretch the boundaries of advanced learning as far as possible.

Believe it or not, this includes people with IQ’s significantly lower than normal.  Obviously, demanding good high school grades or high scores on college entrance exams would not achieve this.  These barriers would keep far too many people out.

The Academy of Inclusiveness therefore asks that applicants have a third grade reading level.  It doesn’t require this but describes it as “preferred.”  In other words, individuals with less than borderline IQ’s can qualify for admission.

There is a caveat however.  Should these students succeed in their studies, they will not obtain a Bachelor’s degree.  They will only be awarded a “certificate” attesting to the successful completion of a limited curriculum.  Still, they can boast of having a college credential.

Where this gets tricky is in the classroom.  You see, the aim is not merely to provide a program that suits the intellectually disabled, but to incorporate them into classes where they sit side by side with smarter students.  To do anything other than this is considered stigmatizing.  It would underline that they are not as talented as their peers.

So here is the rub—which I learned from a colleague who teaches these non-traditional pupils.  These folks don’t absorb materials at the same rate as others.  They are slower and thus require more time for detailed explanations.  Even so, what is taught must be abridged.

Where, accordingly, does this leave the higher functioning students? They are perforce provided an inferior education.  Not only must their professors reduce the quality of what is taught, but the classroom is likely to be a more boring place.  How could it be otherwise when simplifications abound?

The reality is that we have gone beyond another tipping point.  Instead of aspiring to mediocrity, we are aiming at something lower.  The objective is merely to get by.  As long as enough students graduate with what purports to be college degree, the target of our new morality will have been achieved.

Is this where we want to go?  Does “social justice,” where everyone is totally equal, entail society-wide incompetence?  If we keep on inventing programs that discourage challenging studies, will we be left with insufficient numbers of technical experts?

I submit that in a mass techno-commercial society, such as our own, this would prove fatal.  Doctors would not know how to provide quality care, engineers could not design safe bridges, and police officers could not distinguish lawful from unlawful arrests.

Worse yet, our democracy would crumble.  With hundreds of millions of voters too dim to select their leaders wisely, demagoguery would follow.  Come to think of it, we have already moved a long way in this direction.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

When Are Protestors Not Protestors?

Our nation is awash in protests.  Scarcely a day goes by when some group isn’t out on the streets screaming about something or other.  The overwhelming majority of these folks are liberals who are convinced that our nation is in deep trouble.

Nonetheless, a majority of them are not protestors.  They are agitators, or subversives, or revolutionaries. Mostly, however, they are emotional children throwing temper tantrums.  They are essentially doing the equivalent of holding their breath or pounding their fists on the floor.

Although, most of these activists think of themselves as patriotic, they are not.  They mistakenly believe that the American constitution confers the right, as well as the duty, to vent their frustrations on the public.  As they misleadingly see it, they are saving the country by opposing tyranny.

As to their genuine rights, they are only partially correct.  The Bill of Rights does cloak them with free speech.  Meanwhile, the first amendment also encourages a “redress of grievances.”  Even so, they are not engaged in the latter.

A genuine grievance is accompanied by a demand to correct a specific issue.  Something is deemed unfair and/or broken and the protest is a petition designed to trigger remedial action.  This complaint can take many forms, including verbal ultimatums and symbolic marches.

Whatever the shape, however, those at whom the protest is aimed are believed to be capable of resolving the problem.  It is just a matter of convincing them to behave, as they ought. Once they understand what is necessary, they must take the required steps.

An ability to protest was built into our formative document because the founders had recently gone to war to uphold it.  Before the Revolution began, they unsuccessfully petitioned King George and his minsters to fully rescind measures such as the Stamp Act or the Intolerable Acts.  

One of their mantras was consequently “no taxation without representation.”  Irrespective of the validity of this mandate, they identified what they hated and made plain that which would assuage their wrath. Only when this were not forthcoming did they escalate measures.

Other Americans have also engaged in genuine protests.  The suffragettes come to mind.  They were convinced that withholding the vote from women was unfair.  Hence, they insisted upon a constitutional amendment to empower them and eventually got it.

So what do the current batch of “protestors” want?  They have been asked this many times without providing a consistent response.  The answer seems to depend on who is queried and at which venue.

In reality, for many of the protestors, going out into the streets and chanting appears to be an end in itself.  Thus some find that shaking their fists at the sky enables them to release pent up anger.  For others, these events are social gatherings during which they express solidarity with like-minded persons.

The unifying characteristic of these activists is nonetheless a conjoint hatred of Donald Trump.  They despise his person and wish he had never been elected president.  This, however, is not a protest; it is a visceral reaction. It is an emotive expression that lacks an action focus.

Were they to demand that the electoral process be amended in a particular direction; this might qualify as a protest.  Or if they insisted upon specific legislation to undo something Trump did as president; this too might count.  Yet that is not what they do.

While it sometimes appears that they support explicit goals, their subsequent behavior usually demonstrates otherwise.  A case in point occurred when they demanded that Trump roll back the policy separating illegal migrant parents from their children.  The fact that they were not satisfied after he did so revealed this was not their true objective.

No.  They wanted to shut the president up.  They intended to prevent him from taking any executive action whatsoever.  Actually, they admit as much when they describe theirs as a “resistance” movement.  The question is thus not what they want, but what they aim to stop—which is everything inconsistent with the liberal agenda.

Actually, they would like to hurt Trump and anyone associated with him. Indeed, they would love to inflict terrible pain; the more agony the better.  But this is not a protest.  Nor is it patriotic.  To the contrary, it is a not very attractive personal vendetta.  What is more, it endangers our democratic traditions.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Tyranny of Too Many Choices

The United States is the richest and freest large nation in the history of the world.  This is not a close call.  We obviously live much more comfortably than our ancestors.  Still, there is a downside to this luxury.  It has exposed us to the tyranny of too many choices.

Whether we are talking about the foods we eat, the clothes wear, or the vacations we take, our options are almost unlimited.  We must therefore be able to select those that are best for us. In other words, we need to become experts in making choices.

This also applies to politics.  Despite the congenital naysayers, we reside in a democracy.  Our votes count, that is, if we are wise enough to make them count.  The trouble is that too many Americans have abdicated their responsibility to examine the criteria they use when making important decisions.

Key to understanding this failing is a recommendation often made by diehard liberals.  They tell us we are supposed to be non-judgmental.  We are not meant to make distinctions between individuals, but to accept everyone exactly as they are.  This is, in fact, insane.

To make no distinctions between persons is to treat villains and heroes as identical.  This is a sure prescription for trusting folks who mean us no good.  In order to survive in a world filled with disparate personalities, we obviously require tools for separating the sheep from the goats.

Most liberals know this.  Whatever their words, they have no compunctions about judging Donald Trump harshly.  The trap they fall into is that they make their selections based on words, rather than deeds.  For them, flowery phrases and eloquent language substitute for levelheaded judgments.

This has occurred precisely because of our unprecedented wealth and liberties.  We have grown so rich and powerful that people assume we can recover from any sort of nonsense into which we wander.  There might be temporary discomforts, but these will disappear after we pay for superior replacements.

Exhibit number one is the current craze for socialism.  Only the most well-off peoples would assume that by throwing off the democratic and economic institutions that created their prosperity, they would be better off.  A century of affluence has convinced them that a cornucopia of goods and services will continue no matter what.

Yet all they have to do is examine the history of socialism to discover this is unlikely.  Socialism has never worked anywhere.  In places, such as the USSR and China, it was responsible for tens of millions of deaths. That may sound like a statistic, but those were real people.

The odd thing about this inability to identify the shortcomings of actual socialism is that those who miss them are proud of their scientific credentials.  Many are well schooled and therefore assume they are intellectually gifted.

Nonetheless, science and intellectual rigor depend on empiricism. When we make crucial choices, we must do so on the basis of real world observations.  This has to be the preeminent criterion for determining what works and what does not.  Hence, if you want to know whether a streak is tasty, it makes sense to taste it.

Yet liberals don’t.  They weave elaborate scenarios in which whatever they desire is free.  Although they have heard that there is no such thing as a free lunch, they do not believe it.  In their fantasy universe, everyone gets what they want.  Decision-making skills are unnecessary.

As for my conservative self, I am extremely judgmental.  I am not so foolish as to assume everyone is a friend. Some describe this as a character flaw, but I account it a strength.  Having made many imprudent choices during my lifetime, I am eager to avoid new ones.

And so I believe in learning.  Indeed, I am dedicated to never stop learning.  When I make a mistake, I am especially determined to figure out why.  Too many Americans, however, have ceased paying attention.  They are certain that everything will turn out okay in the end.

This is a prescription for disaster.  While I understand why the young have an imperfect picture of reality, I am less tolerant of adults in the grip of self-deception.  They do not seem to realize that the alternative to wise choices is unwise ones.

This sadly is the fate of those who favor style over substance.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Are Leftists "Stupid"?

I have been reluctant to describe folks on the political left as “stupid.”  Although many of them use this term to characterize those on my side, it strikes me as an overused epithet.  We live in a world in which there has been so much name-calling that I am hesitant to add to it.

Plainly, liberals are not stupid in a biological sense.  Many of them boast higher than average IQ’s.  Nor are they all ignorant.  They include many of the best-educated people in the nation. A large number are likewise articulate, assertive, and perceptive.

So why are millions of these uber-partisans behaving as if they were stupid? This is, in fact, not a mystery. We humans are not just intellectual creatures; we are also emotional beings.  This means that we get very angry when frustrated.  And isn’t this where many liberals are?  Didn’t the election of Donald Trump thwart their fondest ambitions?

There is another piece of information that goes into explaining the frenzied behavior on the left.  It has to do with the nature of anger.  As I noted I my book I.A.M.(Integrated Anger Management), when our passions become extremely intense they often become primitive.  They cease being well regulated and erupt as an infant’s might.

Intense anger has been compared to a blow on the head.  It drives every rational thought out of our noggins and renders us as if we were dumb.  Another way to portray this phenomenon is to say that we go into a “blind rage.”  We become so obsessed with getting even that we no longer calculate what we are doing.

People in a blind rage rush headlong into machine gun nests.  They also kill their spouses without worrying about getting caught or spending the rest of their days in jail.  The only thing on their minds is inflicting injury of those in their way.

Isn’t this the mindset of contemporary liberals?  Every time they turn around there is that repugnant creature, Donald Trump, standing astride their path.  He got the tax cut passed, Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, and is making progress on North Korea.  All of this is showing them up!  How dreadful!

And so they resist.  It doesn’t matter what they oppose as long as Trump is for it.  Nor do they do so quietly.  They throw tantrums.  They spout vile accusations at the top of their lungs.  They also dig deep into their gunnysack of expletives to call him much worse than “stupid.”

Furthermore, in doing so, they forget about the consequences.  They don’t contemplate the reaction to their outbursts, but plunge ahead.  This goes for normally intelligent souls, such as Chuck Schumer, who are more concerned with appeasing their base than helping the nation.

Do you remember the brouhaha about rescuing the DACA kids?  Quite unexpectedly Trump put a reasonable proposal on the table.  Nevertheless it was rejected out of hand.  This required Democrats to oppose ideas they had previously embraced—such as the border wall—yet they were up to the challenge.

Then they placed their money on the hope that the public would blame the president for a government shutdown.  This did not occur because it was obvious Schumer precipitated the standoff. As a result, he and his party lost face.

The same thing seems to be happening with the Brett Cavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court.  The liberals have made so many egregiously absurd accusations that few are believed. Instead of analyzing which might work, they unthinkingly derided him for using credit to buy sports tickets.

Worst of all, however, have been the tantrums in favor of Peter Strzok. When congressional Democrats depicted this patently biased FBI investigator as a hero, they lost credibility. When they similarly mischaracterized the IG report as exonerating him, this was also a bridge too far.

Any impartial person who watched the Strzok hearings had to be impressed with the frenzied way Democrats sought to impede the proceedings.  They interrupted; they raised spurious points of order; they repeatedly asked the same irrelevant questions.

This was dumb.  Furthermore, it was publically dumb.  Like it or not, they have now been recorded in all their obtuse glory for voters to see whenever their political opponents need a negative advertisement. 

One of the Dems cited his grandmother as advising him never to get in the middle of a circus or he would look like a clown.  He ignored her wise council.  Indignantly determined to wound those idiotic Republicans, he joined the chorus of imprudently disgruntled colleagues.

That was not smart!  It only impressed those who are equally enraged.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

No Longer the Home of the Brave

Unlike most college professors, I have been in the military. This was during the Viet Nam War and although I did not serve in combat, I met many brave people who did.  I thus know first hand that they had strong backbones. While they did not want to die, they were prepared to put their lives on the line to protect our country.

I am also aware of the many heroic deeds of our first responders.  We saw this during 9/11.  We likewise see it in the news when the police rush toward the sound of gunfire.  Despite the many insults they endure, they continue to function with honor.

Meanwhile, as a college professor, I witness the opposite.  Many of my students do not want to be confronted with opinions they find loathsome.  Instead they demand safe places from which to hide from what are now called micro-aggressions. 

Lots of my colleagues are also reluctant to deal with uncongenial arguments.  Hence, in the over a quarter of a century in which I have offered to publically debate political issues, only once have I been accommodated.  Even then, there was no rematch.

Nevertheless, it is in politics that we find the most faintheartedness.  Time and again we see politicians sidestepping difficult issues.  They instead discover excuses for why they should do nothing rather than offend their constituents.  Very few provide what president John Kennedy described as “profiles in courage.”

The immigration issue is a case in point.  Despite the pressing nature of the problem and the many reasonable proposals on the table, a huge number of legislators prefer to blame their opponents rather than support bills some find objectionable.

Ronald Reagan, however, was a great president because he was prepared to take the heat.  To wit, he brought a roaring inflation under control by being willing to raise interest rates.  While others feared that voters would hate the short-term pain, he persisted in doing the right thing.

Reagan also had the mettle to stick to Star Wars even though he was subjected to withering ridicule.  As it happened, he was correct about the fragility of the Soviet Union, whereas his critics were not.  The Cold War was won because he had the courage of his convictions.

Today we again see a president with personal fortitude.  Donald Trump has been depicted as a fool and a nitwit, but seldom has he been congratulated on his bravery.  We all know that he has a thin skin.  We see it in the provocative tweets directed against his critics.

What has been less remarked at is that he keeps going in the face of the most contemptuous derision any American president has ever received. Other chief executives, in contrast, have been so wary of reproach they caved even before a policy was set in motion.

Let us consider the latest kerfuffle over trade.  Trump has accurately identified the imbalance in international commerce.  Notwithstanding their many peons to free trade, foreign nations have erected numerous barriers to our goods.

The question is what to do about it.  Trump has seized the nearest weapon at hand.  He has not only threatened, but imposed higher tariffs on the worst offenders.  They, in turn, have raised theirs.  While the president describes this as the opening salvo of a serious negotiation, his detractors fear a disastrous trade war.

Whenever a new levy is put in place, politicians race to a microphone to complain that this hurts their voters.  They instead demand immediate results.  Having no will to endure the displeasure of the home folks, they recommend instantaneous capitulation.

Unlike Trump, they do not understand that negotiations take courage. Of course the other side does not want to give in.  Those of us who have ever purchased a new vehicle realize that this does not call for raising the white flag.  Sometimes we have to stand our ground, irrespective of our trepidations.

The mainstream journalists, no doubt, are the worst offenders.  They scream to the heavens any time Trump does something that contains a risk.  Like any college snowflake, they want a universe entirely free of peril.

What of the rest of us?  Have we forgotten that we are supposed to live in the home of the brave?  Will we run to the air raid shelters whenever we suspect that we might experience pain?  If so, I guarantee that in the long run we will undergo a lot of it.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Talk Is Cheap

There are some life lessons one never forgets—or never should.  Thus, as a teenager I learned that talk is cheap. It is easy to say things that are not true, yet make them sound compelling.  Adolescents, who are prey to numerous insecurities, encounter this on both ends.  They tell boastful stories and are on the receiving end of many.

They must therefore discover how to separate the wheat from the chafe. If they cannot, even their best buddies will make them feel inferior.  Indeed, this is a universal experience.  Hence, my wife’s friends in rural Ohio used to tell each other to put their money where their mouths were.  Braggarts were told to back up their pretensions.

Yet somehow we have come to disregard this axiom in the public arena. Contemporary politicians are now prone to telling non-stop whoppers.  Worse still, their partisans are disposed to believe them.  The party line, however absurd, is treated as gospel.

Although both major parties are inclined to deception, liberals are vying for the record in gullibility.  They angrily assert ridiculous nonsense as if it were fact.  Nor do they feel a need to defend their fabrications.  It is enough that they are the good guys and deserve to be believed.

Accordingly, the conventional wisdom among conservatives is that progressives are talkers, whereas they are doers.  Those on the left are accurately accused of making overstated promises, while those on the right boast of keeping theirs.

The poster-boys for these two approaches are, of course, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.  Obama was undoubtedly one of our most articulate presidents.  A master of the English language, his soothing cadences made his words sound like poetry.  His listeners thus wanted to believe, irrespective of what he said.

Meanwhile Donald Trump sounds like the rude New Yorker he is. When off-script he tends to be repetitive, hyperbolic, and impolite.  Nonetheless, he is also extremely direct.  He tells us what he thinks—even if he knows that people will disagree.

In any event, when it comes to transacting the nation’s business, Trump is head and shoulders above Obama.  Our current president is a pragmatist.  As a lifelong builder, he found it essential to get things done. He has, as a result, accomplished more in a year and a half than Obama did in eight. 

Consider how little Obama achieved.  He got a stimulus package enacted, but it didn’t get the economy going because so much of it went to his cronies.  He also passed ObamaCare, but it was a dud even before it was fully in place. Costs went up and people could not keep their plans or doctors—as verbally pledged.

Likewise, despite all the bold talk, Barack did not bring the nation together.  In fact, he set race relations back at least a generation.  Nor did he raise America’s standing in the world.  Instead he sold us out to the Russians, the Iranians, and the Syrians.

Trump, on the other hand, rolled back taxes, slashed federal regulations, and appointed conservatives to the judiciary—just as he said he would.  As for the world stage, he solidified our relationship with Israel, improved our standing with the Arabs, pushed back against North Korea, provided lethal help to Ukraine, and signaled the Chinese that commercial cheating will not be tolerated.

To be sure, Trump often did this in an awkward and sometimes contradictory manner.  But he was not seeking style points.  He wanted to make things happen, and did.  The liberals and the media may not have noticed; then again they failed to recognize Obama’s faults.

Those on the left are so enthralled by language that they are convinced socialism is in our future.  They are thrilled by talk of social justice, but oblivious to the totalitarian tactics and economic blunders of socialist regimes.  They even applauded a young congressional candidate who wants to guarantee jobs for everyone, regardless of the cost. 

As amazingly, they cling to the idea that Trump colluded with the Russians in order to get elected.  After almost two years of searching for phantom conspiracies, they remain persuaded by the unsubstantiated accusations of fellow liberals.

This is very sad.  Bad guys always seek to lead us astray with honeyed words.  The Russians do it, the Iranians do it, and the Nazis once did it. If we are to avoid these verbal traps, we must recognize them for what they are.  We must look past the veil of language to see how people actually behave.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Saving the Constitution Is Not Enough

The integrity of the U.S. Constitution must be protected; there can be no doubt of that.  Without it as the bedrock of our democracy, political vicissitudes would have torn our nation apart long ago.  We would never have survived as the world’s oldest continuous democracy if it did not provide the checks and balances needed to suppress violent conflicts.

Many liberals have forgotten this.  In their quest for political dominance, they want to interpret our founding charter any way that benefits their agenda.  This is why they call it a living document.  It is why they favor Supreme Court justices with this philosophy.

It is also why it is essential that conservatives and fair-minded liberals support Brett Cavanaugh’s nomination to the court.  His sterling record of interpreting the law, rather than making it, bodes well for defending our birthright.  The delaying tactics of congressional Democrats are, for that reason, scandalous.

Nevertheless, safeguarding the constitution is not enough.  Some conservatives believe that doing so will, in itself, make our nation great.  This is wishful thinking, not confirmed by history.  The document may be critical in maintaining our liberties, yet it says little about what we should do with our freedom.

I have been calling for “forward-looking conservatism” to fill the gap in our ideological heritage.  Progressives assume that Marxist prescriptions will enhance our future. They are tragically wrong.  The emergence of a popular socialist movement is a terrifying development.

Socialism, as informed persons know, has never worked.  Despite its promises of self-determination and prosperity, by concentrating power in the hands of the state, it accomplishes the opposite.  An equally attractive program must therefore oppose and defeat it.

The key to understanding what must be done can be found in the successes of our democracy and market economy.  Although many folks complain about the lack of justice in our society, a more grievous problem has been the proliferation of choice.  We have become so rich and free that we have more options than our ancestors.

This has produced indecision and lassitude.  Instead of knowing where to turn, people seek diversions.  Rather than make mistakes, they postpone having to decide.  By burying themselves in the Internet or second-rate amusements, they are able to convince themselves they are living the good life.

Nonetheless, Sigmund Freud was right.  The secret to being sane and happy is to find love and satisfying work. Only these provide the emotional support and self-respect to feel complete.  They also furnish a sense of direction, without which we are rudderless.

Many religious persons praise the purpose-drivenlife.  They too are correct.  We all need goals to make our way through a frequently trackless universe.  These supply a map that enables us to select the appropriate turns at moments of confusion.

Unfortunately many secular folks have not learned this lesson.  They assume that dedicated purposes can only come from the spiritual sources—which they reject.  This is wrong.  Committed love and nourishing work are open to all of us.  As such, they can make life worthwhile.

Thus, without love most of us are adrift.  Unbridled egotism is essentially empty.  It is in caring about others that we learn to care about ourselves. Meanwhile, it is in their cherishing us that we discover our worth.  This is of no small value.

Similarly, without gratifying work, we lose our personal dignity.  We become useless drones who flit from one meaningless pastime to another.  In fact, our world is sustained by the dependable contributions we make.  Accordingly, it is essential that we do our best and take pride in our accomplishments.

Promoting these objectives must rise to the top of the conservative agenda.  While they are not conservative per se, they provide the stability traditionalists have long sought.

The question is how to achieve them.  Simply repeating the conventional answers will not do.  Our world is not the same as that of our forebears.  The challenges we face are different from theirs. Hence we must be “principled realists” who maintain our moral balance, while pursuing practical solutions.

I know this is a generalized answer.  Indeed, it is impossible to say much more within the confines of a short column.  Nonetheless, we must understand the nature of where we are going.  The constitution helps.  But it is a starting point rather than a detailed plan of action.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Fox New Always Lies

My sister lives in northern New Jersey.  As I may previously have mentioned, she was a lifelong Democrat until the last several years.  She changed and became a conservative once she realized how frequently Barack Obama lied.

We, as a family, have a deep aversion to lies.  By the same token, we have a deep commitment to telling the truth. This often gets us into trouble in that there are lots of times people do not want to hear the truth.

In any event, this has caused my sister untold grief.  Because liberal friends and relatives surround her, she must nowadays hold her tongue.  If she does not, she is either rejected out of hand or exposed to withering criticism.

Despite this, she recently asked some friends about their attitude toward Fox News.  The response was scathing.  She was told that the folks at Fox always lie.  When she followed up by asking is they ever watch Fox News, the answer was: Never.  Why would they?  Fox lies.

None of this surprised me.  I too have encountered this phenomenon.  Rabid liberals constantly dismiss the station as unreliable.  For them, the channel’s slogan of “fair and balanced” is a joke.  It is spurious propaganda that they will not deign to dignify.

Nonetheless, the question must be asked about how they come to this conclusion.  Since they do not watch Fox, it cannot be from personal experience.  And indeed it is not.  They believe in the outlet’s dishonesty because everyone they know believes in it.  Hermetically sealed in a liberal bubble, the left wing’s conventional wisdom is all they hear.

The irony is that those on the left take pride in being intellectuals. They regard themselves as scientific, whereas their adversaries are dismissed as religious fanatics who know only what the Bible tells them.  Clearly, they look at facts, while conservatives live in a fairy world.

One of the ways leftists assert their alleged superiority is by quoting the sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  He once said that everyone is entitled their own opinion, whereas no one is entitled to their own facts.  Since liberals have a monopoly on the facts, their opponents are obviously liars.

Except that we determine facts by observing reality.  Liberals obviously do not do this with respect to Fox. Their knowledge is almost exclusively second-hand.  Moreover, were they to peruse this despised outlet, they would discover that it often relates details the mainstream media leave out.

Were liberals as honest as they claim, they would realize that their favorite sources of information routinely lie by omission.  Embarrassing specifics never make it into their stories. Furthermore, those that do are clothed in tendentious language.  The very words used to describe objectionable foes imply that they are horrible people.

When I was a teenager, my liberal teachers taught me that liberalism was rational, unlike the ideas of those who opposed it.  The alleged good guys produced all of the decent research and theorizing.  At the time, this meant that John Maynard Keyes was a God.

Only decades later did I learn of the existence of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.  These were left out of my education precisely because they might have been persuasive. It is the same with omitting Fox from the awareness of card-carrying progressives.  

And so liberals are exposed to a truncated and prejudiced version of reality.  Far from being scientific, it encourages selective perception.  People on the left see what they want to see and no more. They do not even realize how narrow their vision is because they seldom look beyond it.

Hence, why don’t liberals realize that FBI agent Peter Strzok was guilty of gross discrimination?  Because they focus on the sins of those who denounce him.  Similarly, why don’t they credit president Trump with reviving the economy?  Because he is a villain who does nothing right.

Liberals not only believe they are intellectuals; they are convinced that they are uniquely intelligent.  They presumably see facts that conservatives don’t because they are mentally equipped to detect them.  What they fail to take into account is that intelligence is not enough.

If we are to ascertain how the world operates we must keep our eyes open. We must be honest with ourselves and open to unwelcome data.  Obviously the Fox haters do not heed this advice.  It is therefore they who are burying themselves in an airtight box that does not have an exit.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University