A Rebuttal to Ben Stein's Commentary in American Spectator

-Ben Stein, from his July 19, 2010 American Spectator article The End of Wishful Thinking.

So, here we go again. Another highbrow conservative claiming that the unemployed are lazy, good-for-nothing people with bad personalities. In a July article published online at The American Spectator, Ben Stein asserts that hundreds of millions of Americans are out of work because they are essentially unemployable due to massive personality flaws that keep them from getting along with co-workers and manager.

Stein doesn't stop there. He elaborates: "I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or who do not know how to do a day's work. They are people who create either little utility or negative utility on the job."

Frankly this sounds like Ben Stein describing himself. Because I am wondering now if he woke up one day feeling tremendously guilty for his position as an economist during a period in history when economists have proven to be the most useless resource of all. Economies everywhere are in tatters, yet men like Ben Stein can think of nothing more to do than blame the people who were fired for being difficult to work with? His logic is both absurd and sick. He does nothing to solve our economic problems but cast aspersions.

Here is how Stein justifies his logic: "Again, there are powerful exceptions and I know some, but when employers are looking to lay off, they lay off the least productive or the most negative."

Stein is full of advice for hapless souls who have been cast out of work. "To assure that a worker is not one of them, he should learn how to work and how to get along -- not always easy."

On that point we must all probably agree with Ben Stein. Getting along at work can be nearly impossible at times. Especially when managers make unreasonable or unethical demands, then threaten jobs when employees fail to comply. An associate of mine was once told by the head of a publishing company, "I can't figure it out. Our customers all love you. It's just you and me that can't get along."

Another associate was told by his manager to process all his work through him so that he could look good and take credit. "But don't worry," this manipulative manager comforted the employee. "I'll take care you."

Yet another associate lived through months of sexual harassment toward both men and women at the advertising agency where he worked. Finally he helped find a lawyer for one of the women who had been suffering the worst treatment. She won a lawsuit for $50,000 against her manager. But the whistleblower was mysteriously let go a few months later.

These are some of the employees Ben Stein is talking about. These are the people who, in Ben Stein's words, "can't get along" in the workplace.

Ben Stein makes his fortune with a banal tone while dispensing dangerous, myopic viewpoints that represent nothing less than class warfare. He could easily fill the role of Scrooge in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, screaming, "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"

It is time to fight back against the Ben Steins of the world who make the economic case that people are poor because they are stupid and lazy. In fact some of the brightest, most engaging people in the world are out of work precisely because overbearing, politically motivated boors like Ben Stein have clawed their ways into positions of power, and then pushed otherwise productive people when they had the chance.

I've interviewed some of these pleasant, principled people while they stand in lines at employment fairs, and I've received letters and emails from people I know to be of good character; members of my church, in fact, who have tried everything under the sun to find a job. These are the so-called desperate people to whom Stein refers to as "imprudent" in his article. But the Bible itself supports the notion that it is how we bear our suffering that matters much. God does not promise us wealth, but rewards those who bear difficulty in good faith. Ben Stein could stand to learn a little from those kinds of people.

They are grateful for unemployment benefits while they last, and they are often willing to take a job beneath their former compensation level if it will help them get back into the work world. But people like Ben Stein do them a great disservice by castigating them as stupid, lazy and unemployable.

Ben Stein owes all Americans an apology for his assessment of the American workforce. Because the people at whom he aimed his vitriol are our neighbors, people in need and simple victims of economic vagaries perpetrated by people apparently too smart to care about the welfare of others. God hates those kinds of people.

The type of justice that awaits those who engage in that brand of selfish zealotry has a special name. It is called hell.