Reasonable versus Unreasonable

Many years ago, when my younger sister and I fought, my mother would ask me to allow Carol to have her way.  Someone, she said, has to be the reasonable one and since you are older that is your responsibility.  You must understand her even if she cannot understand you.

The result was that Carol tended to get what she wanted more frequently than I did.  No doubt she would disagree.  Nevertheless I was the one regularly lectured on being reasonable.  Now, as an adult, I discover that not much has changed.  There are still times when I am required to be reasonable because others are not.

Congressional Republicans must currently deal with a quandary not unlike the one I first faced when I was four.  They too find themselves confronting an adversary that will not give an inch.  Consequently, they too are told to be reasonable; “You know you can’t win, so give up!”

No doubt Democrats also believe they are being reasonable in their budgetary intransigence.  As they see it, they are on the side of the angels in both the Obamacare funding and debt ceiling battles.  Because victory in each of these is deemed absolutely necessary, they bridle at Republican resistance.

Yet which side is it that has insisted there can be no negotiations?  And which side is it that has said No to virtually every compromise sent from the House to the Senate?  And which side is it that daily hammers its opponents with epithets indicating that they are vicious and uncaring?

Oh, I know that the on-going political battle is generally depicted as a childish food fight in which both sides are equally responsible.  I also know that the Republicans are charged with initiating the fracas because they attached a rider to the budget bill defunding Obamacare.

But if you observe what has happened, you find a decided lack of symmetry.  Both the president and congressional Democrats have called Republicans terrorists, arsonists, anarchists, extremists, extortionists and jihadists.  Yet in return, the Republicans have usually limited themselves to decrying Obama’s lack of leadership and depicting Obamacare as a train wreck in the making.

By the same token, Democrats routinely charge Republicans with being reckless and needlessly shutting down the government.  Republicans are also said to be placing the entire global economy at risk.  Why is it, however, that if things are this bad, Democrats have refused to offer counter-proposals—except do things entirely their way?

Ever since the time of Alexis de Tocqueville, the genius of the American democratic system has been that opposed parties are willing to compromise.  The one glaring exception, of course, concerned slavery and it resulted in a civil war during which more Americans lost their lives than in any other of our wars.

Obama and his allies, unfortunately, spurn compromise.  They even reject budgetary stopgaps as “piecemeal” and thus unacceptable.  As one of the president’s own advisors recently divulged, their goal is to utterly destroy the Republicans.  They want a complete victory whatever the collateral damage.

For my own part, I consider this attitude absolutely unreasonable.  Some Republicans may have overshot the mark.  The Democrats, however, refuse even to enter a conversation.  This approach, though they pose otherwise, is immature and out of keeping with our nation’s traditions.

If the American people do not realize this, and if the media chorus continues to distort realities, they too are complicit in undermining a political practice that has made America great.  The notions that “we won the election” and that Obamacare is “the law of the land”, and that therefore the other side must shut up and be satisfied with nothing is profoundly anti-democratic.

So what should Republicans do?  The lesson I learned as a child was that being reasonable can make you vulnerable to unreasonable people.  What I also learned is that the best response is to continue being reasonable.  In the long run, descending to the level of a childish foe is dangerous for all concerned.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Standing Back While the Nation Burns

Ted Cruz’s dilemma put me in mind of a predicament I too have faced.  Mind you, my quandaries have been on a smaller scale, but the ways I solved them have much in common with how Cruz has fought the ObamaCare wars.

Cruz was told that he couldn’t defund, or delay, the president’s signature legislation because he could never get the votes in the senate—and that even if he did, the president’s veto would nullify whatever he accomplished.

The recommended alternative was simply to go with the flow and not make too many waves.  Because this is said to be an unwinnable battle that might get the Republicans blamed for a government shutdown, even some Republicans asked him to delay his crusade until the next congressional election during which they could even the odds.

Needless to say, my difficulties have been over nothing as consequential.  Still I too have essentially been advised “to go along, to get along.”   The reason is that as a conservative in a liberal institution (Kennesaw State University) I do not always see things the way my colleagues do.  The question is then whether I should speak up at all.

More than once, my peers have sought to introduce a policy to our school or to my department that I was convinced would not work.  Also, more than once, as the years rolled by my fears were vindicated.

Nevertheless, at the point of decision it was not clear to others that I might be right.  From their perspective, I was an annoying Cassandra who would do everyone a favor by keeping his opinions to himself.  After all, I was not going to win (and didn’t), so why put people through this pain?

No doubt, what was perceived as my intransigence cost me friends.  But I had to ask myself, what was the proper course of action?  Was it to stand back and let events unfold as they would?  Or was it to speak up and warn people that what they were about to do might have unfortunate consequences?

Time and again, I decided that the moral course was to issue a warning.  It might not be heeded; nevertheless to do nothing when I had reason to believe people could be injured struck me as cowardly.  People might not want to hear the worst, but didn’t they deserve to be alerted to the danger anyway?

Isn’t this what Cruz has been doing.  ObamaCare is bound to be a train wreck.  Even many Democrats fear that it will.  Jobs will be lost.  People will die.  And the United States will be put on the path toward impotence, all in order to help people with a program that will not help them.

The president of our country is obstinate.  The Democrats in the senate are obstinate.  They will not negotiate; they will not modify; they will not delay the impending destruction.  Moreover, they tell us the law is the law and therefore it cannot be revised.

But many laws have been reversed in the past.  For goodness sake, prohibition was enshrined in the Constitution; nonetheless it was overturned once the American people realized how ruinous its implementation had become.

ObamaCare is apt to be no different.  So why shouldn’t Ted Cruz fight for it to be suspended?  He may not win the current battle, but this is a war.  The opening skirmish may go badly, yet didn’t the North prevail in the Civil War after suffering a terrible defeat at Bull Run?

Should Lincoln have called the whole thing off because, as many people assured him, there was no way to defeat the Confederacy?  Should he have stood back because the rebels were obstinately determined to preserve slavery?

Today we know how things turned out, with even most southerners honoring Abraham Lincoln.  And while I doubt that Cruz is a Lincoln, I applaud his efforts to protect our nation from harm.  He deserves our support, not our calumny!

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

ObamaCare Defunding Follies

“The government will shut down!  The government will shut down!”  Such has been the Chicken Little mantra emanating from Washington DC in the last several weeks.  What is more, we are repeatedly told that if this does happen, it will be the Republicans fault.

For a while, I too took this warning seriously.  When as wise a head as Charles Krauthammer advises conservatives against shooting themselves in the foot, it makes sense to listen.  Likewise, when as experienced a politician as Karl Rove tells us it makes sense first to win the 2014 election and then to tackle ObamaCare, prudent people should take notice.

Then I got to thinking.  The Tea Party partisans are urging Republicans to be more aggressive.  They are essentially saying, if the Democrats want a fight “Bring it on!”  I, on the other hand, would frame the appropriate strategy as a need to be less defensive.

Too often when liberals accuse conservatives of dire deeds the response has been to deny the accusation.  Ergo, in this case, when Republicans are charged with wanting to shut down the government, they simply insist this is not true.

But why not hurl counter-charges?  What about accusing Democrats of analogous misdeeds?  Thus, when liberals claim conservatives want to shut the government just so they can end ObamaCare, why not respond that liberals want to risk shutting the government just to save ObamaCare?

And what about the business of the Republicans holding the government “hostage”?  Why not accuse the Democrats of doing that.  After all, they are saying they would rather see everything come to a halt rather than postpone ObamaCare for even a year.

The situation is comparable to this.  A crook is holding a gun to the head of a woman and he tells her husband that it will be his fault if she is shoot.  In essence the bad guy asserts, “If you don’t do as I say, I will pull the trigger and it will be on your head.”

This is like Obama and the senate Democrats saying, if you attach a defunding rider to the continuing resolution, when we veto it, it will be your responsibility.  You know you can’t win, so put down your threat and do things our way.

When Republicans subsequently demur, they are then accused of being stubborn.  But are there any more stubborn than Democrats when it comes to preserving this hated legislation?  Similarly, Republicans are branded as obstructionists, but aren’t Democrats obstructing attempts to reverse ObamaCare?

If the fear is that efforts to end Obamacare will not play well during the next election cycle, Republicans are not thinking ahead.  Don’t they realize they can always contend that they tried to protect the American people, but the Obama administration stymied their efforts for political purposes?

And as for the notion that Republicans will be blamed for shutting the government down just as they were during the Clinton administration, it must be realized that circumstances have changed.

Back then Newt Gingrich boasted about how a shutdown would bring Clinton to his knees.  He clearly instigated the confrontation.  Now anyone paying attention knows the Democrats are salivating over the opportunity to blame their foes.  In this sense, they are more in favor of a shutdown than the Republicans.

The fly in the ointment, of course, is the media.  Mainstream reporters and editors fully understand the game being played, but despite their current disenchantment with the president can be counted upon to defend him.  Whatever happens, they will blame his detractors.

So what to do?  My answer: Be aggressive, but don’t defund the government.  Put up a good fight, but in the end vote for the stripped-down continuing resolution likely to come from the senate.  A temporary reversal is not fatal as long as it is clear the war is not over and Republicans mean what they say when they insist ObamaCare must go.

First and foremost, do what is right!

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Retention Rate Madness

Karl Marx, if you can believe it, told us that “History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second as farce.”  I would like to share two stories with you and ask you to judge whether these are tragedies or farces.

Back in the 1980’s, I worked at a psychiatric hospital in Rochester, New York during the height of the deinstitutionalization movement.  People had long concluded that the places originally known as “asylums” had mutated into “snake pits.”  Most observers were therefore overjoyed when it seemed that psychotropic drugs could allow patients to function normally outside their gates.

Hence a move began to discharge all but the most severe cases into the community.  The difficulty was that there were few good places to send these people.  Many of their families were as damaged as they, and because group homes were in short supply the only available alternatives were often rooming houses run by mercenary tyrants.

As a consequence, the psychologists and social workers assigned to facilitate these transitions acted slowly and cautiously.  But this was not good enough for the politicians in Albany.  They demanded that the hospitals be emptied—and emptied immediately.  If not, heads would roll.

And so the patients were discharged under circumstances that those who put these plans together were confident would not work.  Indeed, within weeks the Rochester papers reported an upsurge in indigents living under the bridges over the Genesee River.

This, at least in upstate New York, was the primary source of the “homelessness” crisis.  More than anything else this fiasco was caused by overeager politicians determined to make naïve voters happy.

Fast forward to contemporary Georgia.  Now people are complaining that our colleges and universities are failing in their mission to educate that state’s young people.  Not only do these schools cost too much, but too many of their students take more than the traditional four years to graduate.

Enter the state legislature.  Its sincerely concerned members came up with an elegant solution.  They decided to change the formula whereby they funded state schools.  Institutions of higher education would now be allocated dollars on the basis their graduation rates as opposed to their enrollment numbers.

In schools like Kennesaw State University, where many students are low on funds and/or high in family obligations, they must take one or more jobs to make ends meet.  This necessitates that they not carry full college loads and consequently that they take longer to complete their studies.

Nevertheless KSU, like Rochester’s psychiatric hospital, must find ways to hurry these folks along lest it be underfunded.  And so its faculty and administrators are forced to devise plans that give the appearance of improving quality while shrinking the time needed to obtain a degree.

The fact is there is only one way to achieve this—and that is by lowering academic standards.  Sadly, the credentials students ultimately receive are thereby cheapened, with the consequence that they will have greater difficulty getting good jobs.  But hey, the numbers will look first-rate.

Isn’t this ironic?  In an effort to reform higher education, alleged legislative correctives are guaranteed to harm the very students who are most in need of a solid college education.  The fact is that KSU is not the University of Georgia.  Many of its students simply require more time than traditional college students.

But no, in the name of helping these learners, their opportunity for social mobility is to be torn from their grasp.  A “one size fits all” mentality instead dictates that they be pushed out into the cold cruel world before they are ready.  Where is the sense in this?

Isn’t it time that politicians who don’t understand higher education meddle a bit less?  Do we really want an academic version of the deinstitutionalization scandal?  Perhaps those responsible for this dilemma should take a second look at the absurdity they have wrought.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University