Ancient and Modern Sociologies

My esteemed readers might be scratching their heads regarding the title of this piece. “There is no such thing as ancient sociology.” You might fume. But, dear reader, let’s not overlook the obvious: There was an ancient sociology. It was the sociology given to Moses at Mt. Sinai 34 centuries ago, while Rameses II was erecting great monuments to himself in Egypt. The Dedication of Bye-Bye Sweet Liberty is as follows:

this book [is dedicated] to those who, in my opinion, are the greatest sociologists of all time: The ancient sages from the area of the globe presently called the Middle-East who held their societies together in good times and bad, and who etched out the moral codes that have made our modern, marvelous world possible.

In short this book is dedicated to the cultural ancestors of the founding fathers of this nation.

After the Dedication, the following “Note” is appended:

Surely, the elders observed that those communities that abided by the Commandments had much less strife and unhappiness, and were more reliable in battle, than were those communities that did not. Surely, the elders noted too that communities of the former were cleaner and more prosperous than those that did not abide by the Commandments. The elders noted too that the leaders with the finest minds and greatest initiative were from the communities that abided. The individuals fighting under those leaders were more easily inspired, and more invigorated. The free men and women that abided by the Commandments seemed to be autonomous and could perform without constant supervision. In short they were competent and reliable Would this not be taken as proof that the Commandments were of great benefit for those who abided by them?
Thus the elders came to support the Commandments, and caused all communities to abide by the Commandments. This was the greatest step ever taken for the promotion of individual freedom ever seen on this planet. Those who had been held in bondage in Babylon and Egypt were free individuals who could live in peace with each other and be the staunchest opponents to others seeking to deprive them of their freedom. Perhaps by following the Commandments, the following thought gets lodged in our minds:”If you cannot refrain from harming a neighbor, you are not worthy of self government. You shall not live free.”

It was these elders, both men and women, of ancient times who set the entire human race on the road to individual freedom. It is to these people that this book is dedicated.

Lies, lies, more lies, plus ignorance on steroids

[To make an omelet, you have to break some eggs]-- V.I. Lenin

Instead of being an honest, forthright science, modern sociology has become the great weapon of the people who seek to reinvent our nation, even the entire world. These people are all collectivists, most with an international world view rather than a national world view. Their plan is simple: define sociology in terms that support their goals, teach this phony sociology to teachers and administrators of the education establishment, indoctrinate today’s children with this world view. In years ahead these children will be obedient, collectivists. Today we can see many adults who were put through this regimen in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. Vladimir Lenin, who understood this sort of thing very well. Was said to have referred to these people as “useful idiots.”

Here is another way of saying what I just said: the socialization of children is to be removed from the family and is instead to be handled by authorized parties. Here we see why there seems to be an effort afoot to destroy the family and nullify religion. Socialization of children is the most important task of any society – perhaps even the most important task.

Here we see the common thread again: Weaken the individual; empower the collective.

The traditional socialization of children valued self-reliance. The new socialization values reliance on authority. The following table lists this and a few other contrasts between traditional values and new values.

Out with the Old. In with the New.
Old and New Sociologies Compared

Traditional	New
Self reliant	Defers to authority
Knowledgeable, competent, skilled	Ignorant, unskilled
Driven: questioning, inventive	Relaxed: takes things for granted
Competitive, even aggressive	Dislikes Competition
Seeking respect & recognition	Misplaced self esteem
Civil, well dressed, neat	Vulgar; do your own thing

When I was in college I took the introductory course to sociology. At the time, I thought it was a poorly developed subject, taught by quirky idealists. I sort of hoped that their fraud would be uncovered and that they would fade away. It seemed as though they relied heavily on opinion and played fast and loose with flimsy data. Since then, I have come to see modern-day sociology, as it is taught in the USA, as the greatest threat to Western Civilization.

I say this in all seriousness. It is this modern sociology that is responsible for the idea that a union of homosexuals is just as valuable to a society as is the heterosexual union of one man and one woman. It is this modern sociology that postulates men and women to be the same in all respects. It is this sociology that threatens the moral foundation of our world: that is: at the center of the attack on religion. They seek to replace our traditional moral foundation with a moral foundation provided by them, with them as arbiters of right and wrong. Their version of right and wrong, incidentally, can be revised from one day to the next.

This isn’t only my opinion. Irving Horowitz* tells us of a revolutionary wing of sociology in America that advocates, not remedial efforts, but insurgency to implant their social vision in the USA. He states that this movement is anti-American and anti-Western.[*Irving Lewis Horowitz is a renown sociologist. At the time he wrote Decomposition of Sociology he was Hanah Arendt Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Political Science at Rutgers University.] In Horowitz’ words:

"Sociology courses and texts have become repositories of urgings for revolution – celebrations of disparities rather than serious efforts to remove them. Every indicator of race, class, and gender differences is used to prompt the subtle or overt conclusion that American society is not only incapable of solving its own problems, but that it is the problem."

In Bye-Bye Sweet Liberty, it is this modern, and wholly corrupt, version of sociology that is addressed. Sociology as an honest field of study is worthy of respect. Here and other places in the book, I often take a disrespectful tone toward sociology, but this does not mean I disregard its importance. It is the phony version of sociology to which I direct disrespect, without losing view of its importance.

Sociology calls itself a science, but it is not. Sociologists are far off the course from where they should be. If indeed they were a true science, for example, they would examine such things as: The possibility that the ruling classes of Aztecs, Maya and Inca held sway over their superstitious subjects by being able to predict solar and lunar eclipses. Such a study would truly be a scientific undertaking. But, don’t hold your breath. As things are, sociologists would prefer to spend their time in pursuit of political power. Studying the connection between ability to predict eclipses and political control would have the additional disadvantage of bringing plainly to light the true agenda of the environmental movement’s advocacy of global warming: political control.

Real science would also deflect them from their control of curricula, teachers, professors, the State Department, and foundations such as Rockefeller, Ford, Sloan and Carnegie. This too would greatly diminish their power.

Here again, I am not alone in thinking this way. Here is Irving Horowitz (p. 5):

Sociology . . . has become so enmeshed in the politics of advocacy and the advocacy of self-righteousness that it is simply unaware of . . . new conditions in the scientific as well as social environments in which it finds itself.

The characteristic that sets science apart from other endeavors is that science is open for examination and criticism from anyone, including non-scientists. By definition a scientific statement is one that can be either verified or refuted. A statement that cannot be examined such as, “Trees have spirits,” is not a scientific statement. To some extent sociology has constituted itself as a system of implicit definitions. A typical definition, taken from Sociology, The Study of Human Relations is: (p. 172, photo caption) “Education has led to upward mobility in American Society. People from all social classes have traditionally viewed education as a way of getting ahead.” Such a statement of the obvious makes sense and does not demand refutation. It doesn’t add to our knowledge of the world either. These statements are typical in sociology texts. Here is another: (p. 129, photo caption) “Some elderly people are affected by senility. The majority, however, continue to function intelligently, making rational judgments and decisions.”

Sometimes a self-evident statement is followed by a controversial statement lending the second statement a certain legitimacy: (p. 379, photo caption) “Poverty is a harsh reality within our affluent society. Some 11 percent of the population lives below the poverty level.” The second statement is controversial because poverty level is defined as being below a given level of income. This includes recent high school graduates working at entry level jobs who will shortly work their way out of poverty(a phenomenon called mobility). It also includes homeless people with mental and drug problems who should be institutionalized.

Sociology makes a great deal of noise about being a science. In reality its cloistered hierarchy and rigid set of beliefs more closely resembles medieval religion.

True science allows itself to be examined and refuted by one and all. True science allows new theories to be postulated by unknown parties. The important question is: Does this theory [see Knowledge] add to our knowledge? Such was the case when an obscure Swiss patent clerk submitted a theory of light (think sunlight) that explained the absorption of light energy by plants which is the key to photosynthesis (and all life as we know it). The patent clerk’s name: Albert Einstein. He was the Joe Schmoe of his era.

Sociology is not a true science, as it rejects all attempts at refutation. Sociology holds the concept of authority as a key organizational feature. ) Karl Popper states that authority has no place in testing scientific statements.

In sociology, a common defense of a failed theory is that the data used to refute the theory has been fabricated: Invariably the response by sociologists to facts that contradict their dogma is that the facts are faulty, or that they are dishonestly contrived.

Sociology characteristically, does not answer its critics by offering data supporting its claims, it adjusts its claims and adds ad hoc revisions to rescue its theories. Popper admits that true science could employ the same methods in defense of its theories, but by self discipline must make the conscious decision not to do so. He writes (The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Section 20):

“The only way to avoid conventionalism is by taking a decision: the decision not to employ its methods. We decide that if our system is threatened, we will never save it by any kind of conventionalist stratagem.”

Thomas Sowell’s very perceptive book, The Vision of the Anointed, examines many instances of Politics and Education where conventionalism is the stratagem du jour.

Sociology regards all examination and criticism by outsiders as invalid. Here is how they respond to examination by an outsider: You don’t understand what we’re doing. This field of study is so complex that to understand it, you must study under our direction for at least __ years. (Fill in the blank.)Under the direction of Professor Pooh-Pooh.

You will rarely, if ever, hear about a failed sociological theory. Quite to the contrary, each failed sociological theory is regarded as a great success. Remember the War on Poverty? (Reagan’s comment:”Poverty won.”) Remember the war on illiteracy? Remember Crime Prevention?

Because, as mortals, we cannot arrive at a complete objective truth, sociologists assume that all truth is equally flimsy. They fail to see that some truths are very close to being 100% complete (some laws of physics, for example) while other (so called truths) are close to being totally vacant (the idea that men and women are not different, for example). The error is in thinking that because 100% certainty is impossible, all theories are equally good and equally bad. (Also see Truth in Chapter 18,Truth.)

Let’s have a brief look at two cases: astronomy on the side of "True" science, and family on the side of Phony science (i.e., sociology).

True Science:
Astronomy relies heavily on Newton’s laws of physics, observations, and mathematical calculations. Since the mid 1600s the locations of heavenly bodies (planets, the moon, constellations) have been established with great precision. At this time, we can calculate the phase of the moon for any date in the reign of Caesar. Recently, we have been told by astronomers that mars has approached the planet earth the closest ever in 60,000 years.



Phony Science (modern Sociology:
Family, we were told back in the 50s, was no longer relevant. This was an archaic idea that had to be discarded. We (students in sociology classes) were not told how they arrived at this grand theory nor whether it had been tested and proven, but the grand wizard of sociology had said it was true, so the sociologists all went out and spread the message. We were not told that other societies, going back to the start of recorded time, had tested this hypothesis and had reaped negative results each time. We were not told that Mssrs. A. Hitler and J. Stalin pushed this same concept with the full power of the state behind them. Both of these very powerful gentlemen had to give up too. Even various Israeli kibbutzes were set up in a way that the children were to be raised by the kibbutz (It takes a village to raise a child.) and not by their parents. The kibbutz has almost wholly been abandoned.

Currently we are being told that family is important, but that there is more than one way of defining a family. (Here we go again.)

When a theory of true science fails, it makes the front page of every newspaper in the world. Remember cold fusion? When a theory of sociology fails, you never hear about it. No press conference was ever called by the grand wizard of sociology to announce that all his previous statements against the family were untrue and that a new dogma, the alldependsonhowyoudefineit family, was being brought into the game instead.

Here is a brief summary of what has been presented so far:

Why Sociology is not a science.
The True Science and Sociology side by side.

Item	Science	Sociology
Foundation	Theories	Conventions
Testing of theories	Yes	Rarely
Outsider Review?	Yes	No
Authority	Modified	Absolute
Activist	No	Yes
Openess	Yes	No

I cannot present the entire list of errors and devious approaches that sociologists use to push their midieval beliefs, but I will present a brief list and examples to give my readers an idea:

Syllogism: Some white Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs) enforced racial segregation in the Southern States until the 1960s. Therefore, all WASPs, throughout the USA (except those who have been anointed with the holy waters of sociology), were (and are, 40 years later) racists.

False premise: Traditions are harmful. They trap people in old ways and prevent learning new truths. Religion is a particularly noxious old tradition.

Claiming the obvious as something new and unique: Education is good for everybody.

Fabrication of “facts”: Rampant divorce shows that, in the modern age, marriage is being discarded as an important social institution.


In colleges, education departments are very often operated as adjuncts of sociology departments. Education is the chief propaganda tool of sociology. The largest, most obvious failure of sociology is education itself. (See Education, Chapter 21.)

The single greatest concentration of pretentious knowledge (See Chapter 12) is the field of sociology. Virtually all sociologists are employed by some government agency. Their total lack of any practical skill makes them unemployable elsewhere. For the Democrat party, they are the most reliable block of voters – all paid for with your money. Worse yet: they are all agents of the Democrat party. Republicans have been foolish in thinking that these great hordes of public servants can be made to get on board with Republican causes.

A most horrible failing of sociology has been to make race and culture appear as somehow related.

Confusion over these two concepts is commonplace. The sociological establishment and the educational establishment, do nothing to rectify the situation. It seems instead they do everything possible to worsen the confusion.

What they should be saying, teaching, and screaming from the highest mountain top is: Differences between people are almost all due to culture, almost none due to race. By differences we’re not talking about hair color or skin color, we’re talking about differences in civility, attitude, and worldview.

Instead these phony, pretentious know-nothings (modern sociologists) scratch their unkempt beards and say: “Gee, we still don’t know whether it’s nature or nurture that counts most.” (Where nature represents race and nurture represents culture.)

To resolve this matter here and now, let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s imagine an Eskimo infant adopted by a middle class Montana farmer and his wife. As the youngster grows up, will he show a greater interest in seal hunting or tractor driving? If served whale blubber and cereal for breakfast, will he select whale blubber? Say he has an adoptive brother (a birth son of his adoptive parents), which of the two, he or his brother, will find the Eskimo language easier to learn as adults? This thought experiment should convince you that nurture trumps nature almost every time.

So why is this a big deal?

The big deal is that a huge portion of nurture has been usurped from the family and is now located in the neighborhood school. Your children are probably not learning what you want them to learn. They may seem normal to you, but at some point, you will realize they don’t share your culture with you, if your culture is pre-60s, that is. Among the possible things they might be taught is that, if they are black, they don’t have to do as well as whites, because their ancestors were mistreated. If they are white, they are probably being taught that their ancestors were monster racists.

Thus, if you are a black parent, and your child seems not to care about school, here is one possible thing to consider: Perhaps your child is being taught he has an excuse to fail, so he (or she) plays along. If you are a white parent, and your child accuses you and your generation of lacking compassion and tolerance, consider where he may have acquired such a notion.

One of the strangest things in this Alice in Wonderland world of nature versus nurture (race versus culture) is that the proposed fix for [supposed, past discrimination] differences in achievement between races actually worsens things. Had they not been stopped in their tracks, the Oakland School Board would have set the children in their school district on a path to homelessness, prison, and hell.

Here is what the Oakland Board tried to do. They tried to make Ebonics a required subject in Oakland, California schools. Even though the school board didn’t know it (the ignorance factor), this was a blatant racist action. I’m sure all those folks had the best of intentions, but they were fooled by the dithering, the lack of clarity, perhaps even an evil plan by the sociological/educational complex.

One of the real tragedies of the past 40 years is that the American Black escaped Jim Crow to wind up in the hands of Johnny Doogood. Under Jim Crow the Black was prevented from voting, and prevented from living in security and dignity to boot. Under Johnny Doogood he has secured the vote, as long as it is a vote for a Democrat. He lives a somewhat improved existence, but largely his security and dignity remain threatened, but now it is other Blacks who drive the threat, not racist whites. And should he attempt a shift in support of republican ideals, or heaven help us, support a Republican, he will be attacked as a sell-out to his race, an uncle Tom.

This failure to properly teach the differences between race and culture, is a most terrible, despicable shortcoming of sociology. If this is only a failing via ignorance, it exemplifies the dismal depths of academic ability ― nothing else can match it. If it is a failing promulgated purposely from some think tank to achieve political clout, those of the think tank should be jailed for crimes against humanity.

Today’s so-called racial problems are contrived mostly for political reasons. We know the real differences between people are cultural. The bad feelings exist mostly due to an attack on pre-1960s culture. Here is an example: If you believe in States Rights, you must be a racist. Or: If you know, by heart, the words to Dixie, you must be a racist.

Really? Such thinking is one more example of faulty logic blended with evil motives.

The Greatest Sociologists of all Time

The greatest sociologists ever to have existed were the ones who lived around the Mediterranean Ocean thousands of years ago. They were the sages who kept the Jews together while the Jews were captives first of the Babylonians and later of the Egyptians. These ancient sages certainly partook of the cultures of their captors, but also partook of the most advanced cultures on the shores of the Mediterranean, most notably that of the Greeks. Today’s Jews (and Christians) believe Moses was given the Ten Commandments by God on Mount Sinai. This may very well be the case. It is likely, however, that the Jewish leaders had been guiding themselves by the commandments while they endured and survived their servitude under their more powerful neighbors. Whatever happened at Mount Sinai was a culmination of great sociological significance that was underway already for many years. Anthropologists have often noted, in more than a few primitive societies, the development of tribal rules that reflect ideas embodied in the Ten Commandments. The most common primitive rules apply to ideas of ownership . . . which baby belongs to which woman, which man and woman are committed to each other, which house belongs to a family, which animal belongs to whom, etc. Ancient religions in India, predating Moses, contain many of the notions found in the Ten Commandments.

To deny the Ten Commandments a special place in law, or as a guide to the moral code of our nation, is short sighted and destructive. The reason given to deny a place in our society for the Ten Commandments is ostensibly to prevent the establishment of a religion by the state. In reality, what happens is the suppression of some of the most fundamental and useful sociology ever devised.