WWTBAM Bored

Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does not idealize individual liberty and the structure of law and order essential to it; it does not defend the basic rights of property and contract; it does not aspire to ideals of authentic autonomy and mutuality; it does not preach an ethic of self-reliance and self-determination; it does not praise courage, forbearance or resilience; it does not celebrate the ethics of consent or the blessings of voluntary cooperation. It does not advocate moral rectitude or understand the critical role of morality in human relating. The liberal agenda does not comprehend an identity of competence, appreciate its importance, or analyze the developmental conditions and social institutions that promote its achievement. The liberal agenda does not understand or recognize personal sovereignty or impose strict limits on coercion by the state. It does not celebrate the genuine altruism of private charity. It does not learn history’s lessons on the evils of collectivism.

What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice. Those who occupy this world are “workers,” “minorities,” “the little guy,” “women,” and the “unemployed.” They are poor, weak, sick, wronged, cheated, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited and victimized. They bear no responsibility for their problems. None of their agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character. None of the victims’ plight is caused by failure to plan for the future or learn from experience. Instead, the “root causes” of all this pain lie in faulty social conditions: poverty, disease, war, ignorance, unemployment, racial prejudice, ethnic and gender discrimination, modern technology, capitalism, globalization and imperialism. In the radical liberal mind, this suffering is inflicted on the innocent by various predators and persecutors: “Big Business,” “Big Corporations,” “greedy capitalists,” U.S. Imperialists,” “the oppressors,” “the rich,” “the wealthy,” “the powerful” and “the selfish.”

The liberal cure for this endless malaise is a very large authoritarian government that regulates and manages society through a cradle to grave agenda of redistributive caretaking. It is a government everywhere doing everything for everyone. The liberal motto is “In Government We Trust.” To rescue the people from their troubled lives, the agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and other-pity, fosters government dependency, promotes sexual indulgence, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, denigrates marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship. Through multiple entitlements to unearned goods, services and social status, the liberal politician promises to ensure everyone’s material welfare, provide for everyone’s healthcare, protect everyone’s self-esteem, correct everyone’s social and political disadvantage, educate every citizen, and eliminate all class distinctions. With liberal intellectuals sharing the glory, the liberal politician is the hero in this melodrama. He takes credit for providing his constituents with whatever they want or need even though he has not produced by his own effort any of the goods, services or status transferred to them but has instead taken them from others by force.

It should be apparent by now that these social policies and the passions that drive them contradict all that is rational in human relating, and they are therefore irrational in themselves. But the faulty conceptions that lie behind these passions cannot be viewed as mere cognitive slippage. The degree of modern liberalism’s irrationality far exceeds any misunderstanding that can be attributed to faulty fact gathering or logical error. Indeed, under careful scrutiny, liberalism’s distortions of the normal ability to reason can only be understood as the product of psychopathology. So extravagant are the patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that characterize the liberal mind that its relentless protests and demands become understandable only as disorders of the psyche. The modern liberal mind, its distorted perceptions and its destructive agenda are the product of disturbed personalities.

As is the case in all personality disturbance, defects of this type represent serious failures in development processes. The nature of these failures is detailed below. Among their consequences are the liberal mind’s relentless efforts to misrepresent human nature and to deny certain indispensable requirements for human relating. In his efforts to construct a grand collectivist utopia—to live what Jacques Barzun has called “the unconditioned life” in which “everybody should be safe and at ease in a hundred ways”—the radical liberal attempts to actualize in the real world an idealized fiction that will mitigate all hardship and heal all wounds. (Barzun 2000). He acts out this fiction, essentially a Marxist morality play, in various theaters of human relatedness, most often on the world’s economic, social and political stages. But the play repeatedly folds. Over the course of the Twentieth Century, the radical liberal’s attempts to create a brave new socialist world have invariably failed. At the dawn of the Twenty-first Century his attempts continue to fail in the stagnant economies, moral decay and social turmoil now widespread in Europe. An increasingly bankrupt welfare society is putting the U.S. on track for the same fate if liberalism is not cured there. Because the liberal agenda’s principles violate the rules of ordered liberty, his most determined efforts to realize its visionary fantasies must inevitably fall short. Yet, despite all the evidence against it, the modern liberal mind believes his agenda is good social science. It is, in fact, bad science fiction. He persists in this agenda despite its madness.

danielh41 wrote:Liberalism: A Mental Disorder

I wasn't going to post this even though I found it rather enlightening. But after reading some of the comments about Sarah Palin's book deal, I figured what the heck. Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.,a forensic psychiatrist, explains the madness of liberalism in his new book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. You can read an excerpt below, and read more at his website libertymind.com.

Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does not idealize individual liberty and the structure of law and order essential to it; it does not defend the basic rights of property and contract; it does not aspire to ideals of authentic autonomy and mutuality; it does not preach an ethic of self-reliance and self-determination; it does not praise courage, forbearance or resilience; it does not celebrate the ethics of consent or the blessings of voluntary cooperation. It does not advocate moral rectitude or understand the critical role of morality in human relating. The liberal agenda does not comprehend an identity of competence, appreciate its importance, or analyze the developmental conditions and social institutions that promote its achievement. The liberal agenda does not understand or recognize personal sovereignty or impose strict limits on coercion by the state. It does not celebrate the genuine altruism of private charity. It does not learn history’s lessons on the evils of collectivism.

What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice. Those who occupy this world are “workers,” “minorities,” “the little guy,” “women,” and the “unemployed.” They are poor, weak, sick, wronged, cheated, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited and victimized. They bear no responsibility for their problems. None of their agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character. None of the victims’ plight is caused by failure to plan for the future or learn from experience. Instead, the “root causes” of all this pain lie in faulty social conditions: poverty, disease, war, ignorance, unemployment, racial prejudice, ethnic and gender discrimination, modern technology, capitalism, globalization and imperialism. In the radical liberal mind, this suffering is inflicted on the innocent by various predators and persecutors: “Big Business,” “Big Corporations,” “greedy capitalists,” U.S. Imperialists,” “the oppressors,” “the rich,” “the wealthy,” “the powerful” and “the selfish.”

The liberal cure for this endless malaise is a very large authoritarian government that regulates and manages society through a cradle to grave agenda of redistributive caretaking. It is a government everywhere doing everything for everyone. The liberal motto is “In Government We Trust.” To rescue the people from their troubled lives, the agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and other-pity, fosters government dependency, promotes sexual indulgence, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, denigrates marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship. Through multiple entitlements to unearned goods, services and social status, the liberal politician promises to ensure everyone’s material welfare, provide for everyone’s healthcare, protect everyone’s self-esteem, correct everyone’s social and political disadvantage, educate every citizen, and eliminate all class distinctions. With liberal intellectuals sharing the glory, the liberal politician is the hero in this melodrama. He takes credit for providing his constituents with whatever they want or need even though he has not produced by his own effort any of the goods, services or status transferred to them but has instead taken them from others by force.

It should be apparent by now that these social policies and the passions that drive them contradict all that is rational in human relating, and they are therefore irrational in themselves. But the faulty conceptions that lie behind these passions cannot be viewed as mere cognitive slippage. The degree of modern liberalism’s irrationality far exceeds any misunderstanding that can be attributed to faulty fact gathering or logical error. Indeed, under careful scrutiny, liberalism’s distortions of the normal ability to reason can only be understood as the product of psychopathology. So extravagant are the patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that characterize the liberal mind that its relentless protests and demands become understandable only as disorders of the psyche. The modern liberal mind, its distorted perceptions and its destructive agenda are the product of disturbed personalities.

As is the case in all personality disturbance, defects of this type represent serious failures in development processes. The nature of these failures is detailed below. Among their consequences are the liberal mind’s relentless efforts to misrepresent human nature and to deny certain indispensable requirements for human relating. In his efforts to construct a grand collectivist utopia—to live what Jacques Barzun has called “the unconditioned life” in which “everybody should be safe and at ease in a hundred ways”—the radical liberal attempts to actualize in the real world an idealized fiction that will mitigate all hardship and heal all wounds. (Barzun 2000). He acts out this fiction, essentially a Marxist morality play, in various theaters of human relatedness, most often on the world’s economic, social and political stages. But the play repeatedly folds. Over the course of the Twentieth Century, the radical liberal’s attempts to create a brave new socialist world have invariably failed. At the dawn of the Twenty-first Century his attempts continue to fail in the stagnant economies, moral decay and social turmoil now widespread in Europe. An increasingly bankrupt welfare society is putting the U.S. on track for the same fate if liberalism is not cured there. Because the liberal agenda’s principles violate the rules of ordered liberty, his most determined efforts to realize its visionary fantasies must inevitably fall short. Yet, despite all the evidence against it, the modern liberal mind believes his agenda is good social science. It is, in fact, bad science fiction. He persists in this agenda despite its madness.

Beebs52 wrote:Frank, hugs.

franktangredi wrote:

Beebs52 wrote:Frank, hugs.

Back at you.

franktangredi wrote:
I think you have finally crossed the line. I can respect many, many positions, but this degree of self-righteousness, this ascribing of mental disease to those you disagree with politically, is beyond the pale. Never mind how many people you're insulting. Never mind the fact that there are many shades to the term 'liberal,' just as there are many shades to the word 'conservative.' It's ...

Oh, damn it, why am I bothering to try to argue reasonably with somebody who has clearly gone beyond reason. Crap like this represents all that I find worst in mindless idealogy. We may even have crossed over into Ann Coulter territory here. I really don't think there is any reason to respect your opinion anymore. Lord knows, you have no respect for mine. I am simply appalled.

franktangredi wrote:
Oh, and about your whole 'they started it' defense, the difference between this and the attacks on Palin -- which I agree were somewhat gratuitous -- was that those were reactions to a single individual. This is pseudo-serious claptrap aimed at discrediting an entire way of thinking (as defined, of course, by the person doing the 'analysis.')

If you don't get any more disgusted responses than this, it either means that people have decided that you aren't worth arguing with, or that you have already alienated so many people that they've put you on 'the list.'

On principle, I don't have a foes list because I believe it's healthy to hear other opinions. But I'm rethinking that position.

WheresFanny wrote:You obviously have a lot a spare time on your hands. I bet the history folder on your computer is a very scary place.

Perhaps some of that time could be better spent volunteering with a Teen Abstinence group or getting involved with a Helping Women to Work program. Unless you feel that the causes you champion are better served by investing your energies in searching for and spouting off inanity on the internet.

I can't believe I spent three minutes of my life to see who this nutjob was and how he managed to get published. He managed to get published because he created a "publishing company" and printed them off himself. And it's not a 'new' book, he managed to save up enough for the paper and ink in 2006.

Maybe you should spend three minutes of all that extra time checking out the validity of the nonsense about which you seem to get so super excited.

danielh41 wrote:

franktangredi wrote:
I think you have finally crossed the line. I can respect many, many positions, but this degree of self-righteousness, this ascribing of mental disease to those you disagree with politically, is beyond the pale. Never mind how many people you're insulting. Never mind the fact that there are many shades to the term 'liberal,' just as there are many shades to the word 'conservative.' It's ...

Oh, damn it, why am I bothering to try to argue reasonably with somebody who has clearly gone beyond reason. Crap like this represents all that I find worst in mindless idealogy. We may even have crossed over into Ann Coulter territory here. I really don't think there is any reason to respect your opinion anymore. Lord knows, you have no respect for mine. I am simply appalled.

Most of those words in that post were not mine. But I did find them interesting in a "how can they think like that?" kind of way. I'm interested in why liberals believe what they believe. I'm sure that some liberals are also interested in why conservatives believe what we believe.

And what's wrong with Ann Coulter anyway?

franktangredi wrote:
Oh, and about your whole 'they started it' defense, the difference between this and the attacks on Palin -- which I agree were somewhat gratuitous -- was that those were reactions to a single individual. This is pseudo-serious claptrap aimed at discrediting an entire way of thinking (as defined, of course, by the person doing the 'analysis.')

If you don't get any more disgusted responses than this, it either means that people have decided that you aren't worth arguing with, or that you have already alienated so many people that they've put you on 'the list.'

On principle, I don't have a foes list because I believe it's healthy to hear other opinions. But I'm rethinking that position.

Why should I not post something that I find interesting whether it is a video of an artist who creates works on the tip of an eyelash or a psychologist who is attempting to categorize liberalism? Yes, I found the psychologist's writings fascinating. I read it the other day, but I decided not to post it then since the election was over. What would be the use, I thought. And then I read the Sarah Palin book thread, so maybe I thought I could just see how many people I can tick off by posting it. Apparently, that number was pretty high.

danielh41 wrote:

franktangredi wrote:
I think you have finally crossed the line. I can respect many, many positions, but this degree of self-righteousness, this ascribing of mental disease to those you disagree with politically, is beyond the pale. Never mind how many people you're insulting. Never mind the fact that there are many shades to the term 'liberal,' just as there are many shades to the word 'conservative.' It's ...

Oh, damn it, why am I bothering to try to argue reasonably with somebody who has clearly gone beyond reason. Crap like this represents all that I find worst in mindless idealogy. We may even have crossed over into Ann Coulter territory here. I really don't think there is any reason to respect your opinion anymore. Lord knows, you have no respect for mine. I am simply appalled.

Most of those words in that post were not mine. But I did find them interesting in a "how can they think like that?" kind of way. I'm interested in why liberals believe what they believe. I'm sure that some liberals are also interested in why conservatives believe what we believe.

franktangredi wrote:
Oh, and about your whole 'they started it' defense, the difference between this and the attacks on Palin -- which I agree were somewhat gratuitous -- was that those were reactions to a single individual. This is pseudo-serious claptrap aimed at discrediting an entire way of thinking (as defined, of course, by the person doing the 'analysis.')

If you don't get any more disgusted responses than this, it either means that people have decided that you aren't worth arguing with, or that you have already alienated so many people that they've put you on 'the list.'

On principle, I don't have a foes list because I believe it's healthy to hear other opinions. But I'm rethinking that position.

Why should I not post something that I find interesting whether it is a video of an artist who creates works on the tip of an eyelash or a psychologist who is attempting to categorize liberalism? Yes, I found the psychologist's writings fascinating. I read it the other day, but I decided not to post it then since the election was over. What would be the use, I thought. And then I read the Sarah Palin book thread, so maybe I thought I could just see how many people I can tick off by posting it. Apparently, that number was pretty high.

danielh41 wrote: Most of those words in that post were not mine. But I did find them interesting in a "how can they think like that?" kind of way. I'm interested in why liberals believe what they believe. I'm sure that some liberals are also interested in why conservatives believe what we believe.

danielh41 wrote: And what's wrong with Ann Coulter anyway?

danielh41 wrote: Why should I not post something that I find interesting whether it is a video of an artist who creates works on the tip of an eyelash or a psychologist who is attempting to categorize liberalism? Yes, I found the psychologist's writings fascinating.

danielh41 wrote: And then I read the Sarah Palin book thread, so maybe I thought I could just see how many people I can tick off by posting it. Apparently, that number was pretty high.

danielh41 wrote: And then I read the Sarah Palin book thread, so maybe I thought I could just see how many people I can tick off by posting it.

SportsFan68 wrote:

danielh41 wrote: And then I read the Sarah Palin book thread, so maybe I thought I could just see how many people I can tick off by posting it.

I just wonder how many foe lists DanielH made with that remark.

minimetoo26 wrote: I never got the connection as to how a person with an infertile wife ditched her for one who was more fecund, then devoted the rest of his life not to helping those who wanted children of their own to get them, but to making sure those who didn't want them were forced to have them.