The "ethnocentrism" fraud

Most  psychologists are Left-leaning, and leftists have an enormous talent for seeing only what they want to see, so we can be sure that psychological theories will show Leftists in a good light and conservatives in a bad light.

And, as we know only too well, race is a central Leftist obsession. They never stop talking about race and racism. American Leftists in the days of the Ku Klux Klan were very anti-black.  The Klansmen were Democrats, as were segregationists Orval Forbus and George Wallace.

But when the atrocities of Hitler made anti-minority thinking odious, the Left abandoned that orientation, though it hung on in the South for a while.  So what did the Left do when anti black attitudes became unfashionable?  Did they abandon all talk of race and focus on something else. No way!  With "affirmative action" and so on they did a rapid about-turn and became anti-white. They just love simple formulas and categorizing all sorts of different people in terms of race was too sweeping a formula for them to let go

And Leftist psychologists made it even simpler.  They invented the concept of "ethnocentrism" -- which was a claim that you disliked "outgroups" because you were strongly attached to your own "ingroup".  So all patriots were suspect racists.  The Left hate patriots because the Left want to tear society down while patriots want to preserve it.

So it was an enormously convenient simplification if white racism could be traced to patriots. Leftists routinely accuse conservatives of simplistic thinking but if you want to know what Leftists are like, just look at what they say about conservatives.

And all that came out in 1950 in the form of a big book called "The authoritarian personality" under the lead authorship of prominent Marxist theoretician Theodor Adorno. Adorno et al. had to allow that some patriotism could be OK but it was under a cloud generally.

But the ethnocentrism theory is false. Leftist psychologists just assumed it.  The only "proof" they had for it was that they could find some aggressive expressions of patriotism and some aggressive expressions of racism which correlated with one another among freshman students -- forming a reliable "scale". But at no time did they try to sample normal expressions of patriotism and normal expressions of racial attitudes and see if those two types of attitude were correlated. *

So I did that. I did it repeatedly in fact.  And I always used proper general population samples, not available groups of students. And I always got the same result:  Patriotism and racism were unrelated. Some patriots disliked blacks but roughly equal numbers of patriots did not dislike blacks.  You could not predict from knowing a person's degree of patriotism what he would think of blacks

So far in  my writings I have been content to point that out as it decisively explodes the central Leftist explanation for racism.  But I now think I can go further.  I think I can explain WHY Leftists cling to that falsehood.  They believe it because that is the way they think. They judge others by themselves. They hate the achievements of whites and they also hate patriots.  It is THEY who are ethnocentric -- but in a negative way.  They are generally hostile.  And that goes all the way back to Karl Marx.  Marx hated everybody, including his own mother.  It's in part his unwaveringly hostile tone that makes him an enjoyable study to the Left.

Instead of loving their ingroup Leftists hate it and they also hate those who thwart their goal of "fundamentally transforming" their country -- to use Obama's phrase of 2008. Attitudes to an ingroup and attitudes to what they see as an outgroup are strongly correlated among Leftists. Knowing what Leftists say about whites will enable you to make an almost CERTAIN prediction of their attitudes towards patriots. The whole affair is yet another example of my dictum that if you want to know what Leftists are like psychologically, just look at what they say about conservatives. Monolithic thinking is a trait of the Left, not of the Right.

The tendency of people to see their own faults in others is what Freud called "projection". And the Left are great projectors. They hate just about everybody so they think that conservatives do too. They even see patriotism as a form of hate. And many conservative writers these days have woken up to that and often now identify  Leftist accusations as projection. A good example is to be found in the recent utterances of Hillary Clinton.  Most of what she has been saying about Donald Trump would be much more apt as a description of her.  I put up an article recently that gave some examples of that.

Her claim that Trump is attacking democracy is a particular howler. Who is attacking democracy?  It wouldn't be the people who refuse to accept as legitimate and proper the result of a properly conducted democratic election in 2016, would it?  It wouldn't be the people who are doing their level best to unwind the result of that election would it? It wouldn't be the collective sore losers of the Left, would it?

REFERENCE: Adorno,T.W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D.J. & Sanford, R.N. (1950) The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper.

* It is however of considerable interest that anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan used  published  codes  and  data  collected for the standard cross-cultural sample of 186 societies to look at both ethnic loyalty and xenophobia.  She concludes: "If interethnic hostility is the flip side of intraethnic loyalty, the two should be strongly correlated and have the same determinants. Neither is the case".

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Project Veritas Catches Deep State Redhanded
   
We’ve long known that unelected leftist bureaucrats embedded in the bowels of the federal government have been lawlessly targeting conservatives and abusing their power to thwart the agenda of duly elected Republican policymakers. The proof keeps pouring in.

The Obama administration’s IRS deliberately discriminated against conservative groups in their applications for tax-exempt status. This isn’t an empty partisan allegation from an imaginary “right-wing conspiracy.” In 2013, an IRS official admitted scrutinizing groups with right wing identifying names, such as “Tea Party” and “patriots.” An inspector general’s report that year confirmed this nefarious practice.

At least two groups of cases were settled in 2017 with the IRS agreeing to a “substantial financial settlement” in one and expressing “its sincere apology” in another. This is the kind of tyrannical behavior that liberals used to care about.

In a case involving the Linchpins of Liberty and some 40 other conservative organizations, the IRS confessed that it used “heighted scrutiny and inordinate delays” and required unnecessary information in its review of applications for tax-exemptions.

In the NorCal Tea Party Patriots case, involving more than 400 groups, plaintiffs contended the IRS used their tax information for improper purposes.

I know opponents of President Donald Trump roll their eyes in ridicule at the mere suggestion of a deep state committed to undermining Trump’s agenda. That’s the stuff of paranoid conspiracy theorists or unhinged Trumpublican tribalists, they say. Well, James O'Keefe, and his Project Veritas, has shown, again, that there is a “there” there.

O'Keefe recently released secret videotapes in which some of these boorish bureaucrats brazenly admit their chicanery, and even brag about it. On Tuesday, Project Veritas released the first of its tapes unmasking these proud pinheads boasting of sabotaging the Trump agenda. The video features State Department employee Stuart Karaffa, a smarmy, self-proclaimed socialist using his government position to resist official Trump administration policies. Karaffa is a member of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America, bless his heart.

He admits to drafting DSA communications at his worksite. “I’m careful about it,” says Karaffa. “I don’t leave a paper trail, like I leave emails, and like any press s-— that comes up, I leave that until after 5:30. But as soon as 5:31 hits, got my, like, draft messages ready to send out.” Precious.

Karaffa’s arrogance is astounding. He says he doesn’t believe he’ll be caught and punished, saying, “Maybe someday I’ll go to board of elections jail, probably not.” But what comes next is way worse and ought to infuriate all federal taxpayers. “I have nothing to lose,” he adds. “It’s impossible to fire federal employees.” He also expresses confidence that none of his superiors will detect his conflicts of interest even though he openly discloses them on his required forms. “Somebody just rubber stamps and it goes forward … I don’t know if (the ethics officer is) is all there. He’s so checked out.” Well, that’s comforting.

Most outrageous was Karaffa’s description of his objective toward the administration’s official policies: “Resist everything … Every level. F— s— up.”

In the second released video, Project Veritas exposes Department of Justice paralegal Allison Hrabar reportedly using government hardware and software as part of her socialist activism, and Jessica Schubel, former chief of staff for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under the Obama administration, attempting to thwart Trump’s agenda.

Hrabar, also a member of Metro DC DSA, was supposedly one of those who chased Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen from a D.C.-area restaurant. That was beyond despicable. Hrabar allegedly uses the LexisNexis search engine on her work computer to find home addresses for DSA protests, such as that of D.C. lobbyist Jeremy Wiley. She reportedly ran his license plate to help locate his home. Hrabar smugly brags that as an employee of the DOJ, “We can’t, like, get fired.”

Hrabar also reveals that one of her DSA colleagues, who works in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, slows down the process to help people stay on food stamps longer.

Schubel admits on the tape to the existence of “a little resistance movement” within the federal government, and says that her friends at the Department of Health and Human Services give her confidential information before it is officially released. “Yeah. It’s kind of like the Nixon, deep throat-type of thing,” she gloats. She further admits, “There’s a lot of talk about how we can, like, resist from inside (the Justice Department).”

Isn’t it cute when leftists virtue signal their feigned concern for the integrity of our democratic process? When you hear a leftist complaining about interference with our elections — or corruption of “our democracy” — just remember that they are ends-justifies-the-means progressives who care not a whit about lawful elections, only advancing their agenda.

With their persistent lawlessness and overreach, the mavens of the “resistance” have awakened a sleeping giant in grassroots conservatives throughout the nation, and they will come to regret it.

SOURCE

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Four Characteristics of the Liberal Mind that Are Destroying Society

Conservatives often blame liberals for the breakdown in society today. After all, liberals challenged an order that existed and replaced it with a situation that is now unraveling.

This unraveling can be traced to the efforts of liberal activists to influence legislation and elections and to liberal control of the media that shape the debate.

The fragmented and polarized state of society is proof that something has gone terribly wrong.

Defining the Liberal Mindset

However, it is not only the activism that has caused the social decay of institutions, manners and communities. It is a mindset that determines the course of their action. Understanding the characteristics of the liberal mind helps people grasp the nature of the crisis.

This is not easy to do since liberal thought can be defined by its lack of definition and love of ambiguity Such characteristics might also be shocking because they cross party lines and include people from all walks of life. The premises of this mindset come from the classical liberal philosophy that is widely accepted by everyone. Only when these premises are taken to their final consequences, do the harmful effects become evident. The damage is now everywhere.

A Gradualist Progression Away from the Truth

One characteristic of the liberal mind is its gradualist progression away from the objective truth. In its early stages, the liberal mind does not deny the existence of objective truth outright. Instead, liberals deplore its rigidity. Instead, they offer half-truths that mitigate the hard-hearted attitudes of conservatives, smoothing the slide into error. The liberal mind likewise does not initially embrace error but is drawn toward and harbors sympathy for it.

Thus, the liberals might defend private property, but support excessive taxation on those who have large properties. They would oppose crime but propose leniency for felons because of imagined injustices they might have suffered.

The liberal mind is constantly looking for half-truths to appear more compassionate and kind.

Searching for Conclusions that Please

A second characteristic of the liberal mind is that it does not seek objective and external truths that explain reality. Liberals seek instead only those conclusions that please them. They search for perspectives that fit their temperaments, lifestyles and ways of being. These are the thoughts that guide their lives.

This liberal mind is perfectly expressed by the famous Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey which stated: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

A Distorted Vision of Freedom

The liberal mind gives rise to a mode of action which is easily defined. The foundation of liberal action is a distorted vision of freedom that consists of doing only what one wants to do.

Thus, liberal action tends to be relativistic and subjective, following the whims of the individual. It can be imaginative and fantasy-driven when a person takes the action to its final consequences.

Liberal action is also characterized by a spirit of doubt toward that which does not correspond to personal whims. Such doubt, however, is never directed toward that which does not please liberal whims.

A Dislike of Rules and Laws

The final characteristic of the liberal mind is a dislike of rules and laws. Law by definition is restrictive.

Law consists of those reasonable precepts coming from a competent authority to which all must conform for the sake of the common good. Rules and laws upset the liberal mind, which feels attacked by them.

Thus, liberals dislike anything that imposes restraint such as laws, manners or morals. In more advanced stages, even the restrictive nature of clothing or grammar can irritate the sensibilities of the liberal mindset.

This explains the liberal hostility to the Church and traditional notions of religion. God is the First Lawgiver and punishes those who sin against His Commandments. The liberal mind prefers a god for whom nothing is a sin. This god is one of the liberals own making. In their view, he radiates compassion, not justice.

A Common Trait

While these four psychological characteristics differ, they do have a common trait. They all are self-centered.

What governs liberal minds and actions are the dictates of each individual’s ideas, tastes and desires. The individual is the center of everything. Each person determines right and wrong, truth and error.

The Descent to Anarchy

Up to this point, the liberal order has survived because it lived off of the firm foundations of a Christian moral order. The moral influence of the Church, natural law and other institutions served to temper the disordered ideas, tastes and desires of individuals. The adverse effects of the liberal mind were mitigated by its gradualism. As long as the most extreme liberal elements stayed in the zone of half-truths, society could absorb their destructive influence.

The problem today is that half-truths now dominate and error is pushing the envelope ever closer to chaos. The liberal mind naturally leads to anarchy when taken to its final consequences. It admits no authority other than its own. It will accept no law nor respect any institution that encroaches upon the individual “right” to do whatever one wants.

Everyone wonders why the nation is polarized and fragmented. As social bonds decay, there is no unifying principle in society save that of self-centeredness. Everyone becomes increasingly isolated, lonely and frustrated.

In the words of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, the world becomes “nothing but a meeting place for individual wills, each with its own set of attitudes and preferences and who understand that world solely as an arena for the achievement of their own satisfaction, who interpret reality as a series of opportunities for their enjoyment.”

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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