28 July, 2020

Where the current craziness began


The arrogance of youth

It has long struck me how the Frankfurt School, a collection of Leftist émigrés from Nazi Germany, could have been so successful in dominating the curriculum of the American university and wielding so massive an influence over following generations of students. Its major figures, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, were the main authors of the political revolution of the 1960s which gradually filtered into the culture to produce the revisionist “narrative” and physical violence we observe all around us today.

The most publically significant spokesperson was Herbert Marcuse, whose One Dimensional Man, Eros and Civilization and his influential, totalitarian-inspired essay “Repressive Tolerance” planted the seeds of political and epistemic subversion in the fertile soil of American academia and, ultimately, in the marl of the cultural and institutional life. Marcuse argued in the essay that we must be “intolerant toward the protagonists of the repressive status quo.” By “status quo,” he meant classical liberal thought with its emphasis on tradition, individual autonomy, civic responsibility, and limited government, which he thought were responsible for deep-rooted social injustice. The narrative he developed was irresistible to his legion of acolytes.

The Frankfurters were the red brigades of the university Left, striving to fill their students’ minds with the doctrine of human and social perfectibility according to the egalitarian principles of their Marxist forbears, in particular the theories and ruminations of the Italian revolutionary thinker Antonio Gramsci and Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukács. The Woke generation now rioting in the streets of Portland, Seattle, and other cities are their unwitting progeny, the shock troops of Antifa and BLM who never read Marcuse, let alone Horkheimer, Adorno, Gramsci or Lukács—and surely would be incapable of doing so with any comprehension. They have succumbed to a political virus of which they are unaware, fallen prey to a toxic narrative developed by the luminaries of the intellectual Left. This is what I would dub trickle-down intellectonomics, how complex thought (however specious) gradually leaks away into howls, bellows, and yawps.

There is no doubt that the crucial figures of the “Western Marxist” movement were brilliant men and erudite scholars, eloquent to a fault. They were right about some things, in particular about the rise of anti-Semitism as a function of a world sinking into barbarism. But how could they have been so wrong about America, working to transform the American Dream into the American Nightmare? Could they not see how their analysis of America’s ills was based not on a thorough and intimate knowledge of American life in all its variety and complexity but on the hoary concept of “commodity fetishism” and a theoretical explication of a mystical force Adorno called “negative dialectics,” an understanding of which could show how American society might be perfected? 

Adorno believed that Western and American society could transcend its fundamental contradictions between labor and capital, between constraint and freedom, the compulsion to dominate both men and nature and the struggle for “unitary existence,” “in view of the concrete possibility of utopia,” as he wrote in Negative Dialectics. (Italics mine.) A “right condition,” he continued, could be freed from the inherent contradiction of “dialectic antagonisms.” Marcuse was much blunter. He was not interested in transcendence but repression—albeit in the name of that convenient Marxist evasion, a harmonious future. It must be said, however, that both men commanded a facility with language, combining complexity, expressiveness, and philosophic range, that few contemporary writers are capable of today. We should resist the temptation to dismiss their language as merely unintelligible or pretentious, yet their linguistic convolution is part of the problem.

Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan put the dilemma in a nutshell. “As men abound in copiousness of language,” he wrote, “so they become more wise, or more mad, than ordinary. Nor is it possible without letters for any man to become either excellently wise or . . . excellently foolish.”

The Frankfurters were excellently foolish, and the majority of our politicians, editors, public intellectuals, and corporate tycoons have imbibed their folly. With respect to the latter, as Rupert Darwall shows in Green Tyranny, “Capitalist wealth has been used to fund the Frankfurt School” to advance its own interests, primarily in the Green environmental industry; capitalists are subsidizing the very people dedicated to bringing them down. But this is true of the entire elitist cartel pushing the wages of intellectual abuse in our universities, media and political class. They have bought into the opiate narrative of the Left.

Social worker Judith Acosta puts the issue neatly when discussing the economic question with socialists young and old, who believe in “sharing the planet,” in doing away with free-market enterprise, in the free distribution of goods and services, and state ownership of the means of production: “They don’t concede that there is even such a thing as human nature, replete with base impulses. To them, humanity is perfectible (with a little government help and a lot of regulation).” She continues: “Human nature is bifurcated and fallen…there will be atrocities and power grabs no matter what economic system we have. The question more appropriately becomes…which economic and social system best deals with the reality of human nature, its innate indolence and selfishness, its ambition and creativity…So far, based on worldwide experience, a gently regulated capitalism seems to produce the most good for the broadest segment of humanity.”

But the Left will not concede to reality in attempting to advance its doctrine with mental sedatives like “social harmony,” “classless society,” “planetary village,” “unitary existence,” and so on. Its apostles and epigones have been thoroughly indoctrinated. And so their folly seems poised to prevail. We need to acknowledge that once in power the Left will enact policy predicated not on promoting the freedom and prosperity of the nation or recognizing the empirics of economic life but on a sweeping “narrative” of human perfectibility ushered in by an all-seeing aristocracy of political authoritarians. The Social Democratic “narrative” is an ideological tissue of unsustainable ideas, no matter how imposingly it may be formulated. Thanks to the Frankfurters and their infecting a generation of impressionable students with the illusion of human perfectibility and the dogmatic assurance of a self-regarding master class, excellent foolishness has become the air we breathe and the order of the day.

SOURCE 

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Biden Vows to Stamp Out 'Islamicphobia'

That means more Islamic proselytizing is coming to American public schools.

The presidential campaign of 2020 has so far unfolded in more of a crisis atmosphere than any campaign in decades. Portland, Oregon and other cities are still engulfed by Antifa violence (as the Democrats side with the violent rioters), coronavirus hysteria is still hamstringing the nation’s economic life and prosperity, social media giants are waging all-out war against the freedom of speech, and America’s history and heritage is under direct and unapologetic assault from Marxists vowing a revolution in America. In the midst of all this, on July 20, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden demonstrated anew the disturbing priorities of his increasingly anti-American party.

Instead of addressing the sharp rise in crime and lawlessness, the demonization of American history and culture, the Left’s assault on the Second Amendment and other basic rights, or any of the other burning issues of the day, Biden chose to address the “Million Muslim Votes Summit,” hosted by Emgage Action, which claims to be is the largest Muslim PAC in the United States. In the course of his rambling remarks, Biden declared: “One of the things I think is important, I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith.”[1]

In the midst of what could very well turn out to be a second American civil war, or even the end of the United States as a free republic, Joe Biden is preoccupied with getting our schools to proselytize for Islam more intensively than they already do. For make no mistake: that is what Biden means when he says he wishes that our schools taught more about Islam. Schools already teach about Islam as a major world religion. That teaching has already been widely criticized as whitewashing the crimes committed in the name of Islam and in accord with its teachings, and Biden wants even more of that: he thinks the cure for what he repeatedly called “Islamicphobia” (there’s that famous “stutter” again, but you can’t really fault him for getting a word wrong that’s artificial and made-up in the first place) is for American schoolchildren to be relentlessly indoctrinated with the idea that Islam is wonderful, and never mind about all those dead bodies of people killed to screams of “Allahu akbar.”

Biden was in effect adopting a familiar trope of post-9/11 Leftists and Islamic supremacists: that opposition to jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women is “hate,” a hatred that could be eradicated if we redneck yahoo Americans were just made to learn a bit about Islam. And so the public schools, which Democrats have worked for years to cleanse of every trace of Christianity, must be made an arena for teaching Islam. Imagine the uproar if Biden had said: “One of the things I think is important, I wish we taught more in our schools about the Christian faith.” He would have been denounced everywhere and probably would already have been replaced as the likely Democratic Party presidential candidate.

But his far-Left supporters will only applaud his recommendation that the public schools be increasingly devoted to teaching Islam. This is certain, as Biden went on to claim that America was a dark, dangerous place for Muslims, and it was all Donald Trump’s fault. The Islamic education was apparently needed because “under this administration, we’ve seen an unconscionable, an unconscionable rise in Islamicphobia and incidents including kids being bullied in schools and hate crimes in our communities.”[2] President Trump, Biden insisted, has “named people with a history of open Islamicphobia — open, straightforward, who have no business serving in high positions in our government — to key leadership roles in our Department of Defense and the US Agency of International Development.”[3]

“Islamophobia,” which is likely what Biden meant to say when he said “Islamicphobia,” is defined in a New York Post article about his address to Emgage as “prejudice against Muslims.”[4] Prejudice against any group is never justified. All too often, however, the term is used to refer to honest and accurate analysis of the ways in which jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims.

Biden is vowing to end all that, and effectively criminalize criticism of Islam, including all opposition to jihad terror, something that the Left has been working toward for a long time.

Even worse, the Washington Free Beacon reports that Emgage Action is “a George Soros-backed Muslim group, which cohosts a conference that in recent years drew speakers who called homosexuality a ‘disease’ and defended terrorist groups….Emgage has collaborated with a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated group on events that in recent years attracted speakers who openly opposed LGBT rights and supported terror groups. Last year, Emgage became an official cohost of Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conferences. ISNA was previously revealed to be part of the Muslim Brotherhood network—though it claims it is no longer associated with the group.”[5]

Biden didn’t hesitate to throw this crowd plenty of red meat, promising: “If I have the honor of being president, I will end the Muslim ban on day one, day one.”[6] There is no “Muslim ban,” but the idea that such a ban does actually exist is not just a product of the candidate’s rapidly deteriorating mental capacity. Islamic supremacists and their Leftist allies insist on calling the Trump administration’s travel bans on nationals from 13 countries a “Muslim ban,” even though five of those countries, Burma, Eritrea, Tanzania, North Korea and Venezuela, are not Muslim countries, and there are 49 other Muslim countries upon which there is no ban at all.

The ban exists because these countries cannot or will not provide accurate information about prospective immigrants. The list of countries was devised during the Obama administration, while Biden was Vice President. But that didn’t stop Biden from casting it in racial terms, declaring: “Muslim communities were the first to feel Donald Trump’s assault on black and brown communities in this country with his vile Muslim ban.”[7] It’s a peculiar “assault on black and brown communities” that leaves untouched scores of countries inhabited by “black and brown communities,” but the Left is working on the gut level of rage and hatred, not rational consideration.

Digging even deeper, Biden declared: “A hadith from the Prophet Muhammad instructs, ‘Whomever among you sees a wrong, let him change it with his hand. If he is not able, then with his tongue. If he is not able, then with his heart.’”[8]

The hadith Biden is quoting is this one: “On the authority of Abu Sa`eed al-Khudree (may Allah be pleased with him) who said: I heard the Messenger of Allah say, ‘Whosoever of you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart — and that is the weakest of faith.'” (Nawawi 34)

What might Muhammad, or whoever put this saying into his mouth, have meant by changing a wrong with one’s hand? One of the hazards of analysis of statements of jihad terrorists is that in an Islamic context, words seldom, if ever, mean what they are taken for granted as meaning by Westerners. This fools mainstream counterterror analysts on a daily basis: when Muslim leaders speak about wanting to establish justice, they think they’re ready to set up free societies, when actually they mean they want to impose Sharia.

So it is with Biden’s favored saying. Fighting and killing infidels is repeatedly commanded in the Qur’an (cf. 2:191. 4:89, 9:5, 9:289, 47:4, etc.), not because Islam is committed to mayhem for its own sake, but because the society of the unbelievers must be swept aside in favor of the rule of Islamic law. The twentieth-century Pakistani political leader and Islamic scholar Syed Abul A’la Maududi taught that Muslims must fight until non-Muslims were not be entrusted with the responsibilities of governing a state – any state. He declared that non-Muslims have “absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines. For if they are given such an opportunity, corruption and mischief will ensue. In such a situation the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.”[9]

This is the highest activity in which a Muslim can engage: another hadith has a Muslim asking Muhammad: “Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward).” Muhammad replied, “I do not find such a deed.” (Bukhari 4.52.44)

Biden’s hadith, therefore, was not some Islamic Hallmark card; it was a command to wage war against unbelievers.

Note also Biden’s reference to “the Prophet Muhammad.” It’s standard journalistic practice today to assume that everyone is a Muslim and believes Muhammad is a prophet, so Biden is just following along with the crowd and pandering to his constituency, but it’s still a manifestation of Islamic supremacism. Biden’s handlers would never, ever give him a statement that referred to “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” But Islam is the Left’s preferred religion, and Islamopandering is the order of the day, so Biden refers without hesitation to “the prophet.”

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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A STUPID KRAUT

Prof. Dr. Gert Weisskirchen is a stupid Kraut and I want to tell you why. For a start, Kraut is the German word for cabbage and -- perhaps due to their liking for Sauerkraut (sour cabbage) -- it has become a contemptuous term for Germans generally. It was a term much used in two world wars during which Germans killed a lot of people.

In this month's British report on antisemitism, Prof Weisskirchen describes the causes of antisemitism as follows:

"Nationalistic or right-wing populist movements are trying to gain a foothold to varying degrees in all European States. Apart from bringing chauvinistic longings up to date, the common elements in their rationale are the emphasis on authoritarian thinking, the stirring up of resentment towards established parties and the mobilization of right-wing extremist attitudes in the form of xenophobia or even open racism and antisemitism.

A wealth of studies, beginning with the sociological writings of Theodor W. Adorno more than 60 years ago, demonstrate that xenophobia and modern versions of ethnic and racist sentiments with antisemitic prejudices are the most significant features of right-wing extremism and populism. Although they sometimes do without the key trappings of classic Fascism and Nazism, they still make use of its arsenal of discriminatory and denigrating contemptuous prejudices. In accordance with the classic scapegoat mechanism, foreigners are held responsible for whatever social problems exist, such as unemployment and failing social systems, and are disparaged as social parasites who dispute the right of the native population to the country's wealth. As a group they are ostracized as "disruptive factors" who need to be removed. Behind the "new" forms of antisemitism the old core still remains. If preventive measures are not taken to combat antisemitism at its source it will turn into a "social disease" that infests society, gradually eating it up from within and finally destroying it.

So "nationalistic or right-wing populist movements" are the prime source of antisemitism. There is absolutely no mention of Islam or Leftist "antizionism", which are by far the main forms of antisemitism today. Could the fact that the professor is also a socialist member of the German parliament have something to do with that? In his other writings he does occasionally mention Islam and European antizionism but he never mentions that antizionism is mainly Leftist nor does he discuss causes of any form of antisemitism other than "rightist" antisemitism. Apparently the causes of Leftist and Islamic antisemitism either do not exist or must not be examined.

And the amusing thing is that the alleged origins of rightist antisemitism that he mentions derive from one of the most discredited pieces of work in the whole of the social sciences -- the claims about psychological "authoritarianism" by Marxist theoretician Theodor Wiesengrund (aka Adorno). If Prof. Weisskirchen were a chemist, he would still be talking about "phlogiston".

Below are some of the books (not to mention hundreds of academic journal articles -- e.g here) that demolish in various ways the Adorno psychological theories that Prof. Weisskirchen believes in.

Altemeyer, R. (1981). Right-wing authoritarianism. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.

Christie, R. & Jahoda, M. (1954) Studies in the scope and method of "The authoritarian personality". Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.

McKinney, D.W. (1973) The authoritarian personality studies. The Hague: Mouton.

Kirscht, J.P. & Dillehay, R.C. (1967) "Dimensions of authoritarianism: A review of research and theory. Lexington: Univ. Kentucky Press

The Altemeyer book is particularly interesting. Altemeyer rather likes the Adorno theory but he devotes the first half of his book to a comprehensive literature review (up to about 1973) of all the vast body of research on the theory -- and finds that none of all that evidence actually supports the theory!

How stupid do you have to be still to accept such a theory?

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ELSEWHERE



The scribble above is the new logo of the British Conservative party. How pathetic can you get? Background here. That the British Tories are now "green" seems to be the only message in it.

Change coming in Sweden? "Astonishing as it seems, it is just possible that on Sunday Swedes will throw out the centre-left Social Democrats who have governed them for all but nine of the past 74 years... But whether the centre-right alliance wins on Sunday or not, there are plenty of signs that the dream has darkened. It is costing too much, and immigration is straining the unspoken contract under which Swedes were happy to pay the Government for what they were confident they would later receive. The young challenger who threatens to topple G”ran Persson from his ten-year premiership is Fredrik Reinfeldt, who has been compared with David Cameron for his success in stitching together a coalition from the demoralised and fractured opposition on the Right. At 41, he would be Sweden's youngest prime minister. But he has been less coy than Cameron about campaigning for lower taxes, as well as for cutting unemployment benefits and demanding results from schools and healthcare. He may have struck a chord. Swedes are fed up with their high tax rates - and loathe the property tax of about 1 per cent of the value of a typical house.

Rare wisdom from a centre-Left government: "The [British] Government has pledged to use legislation to block the imposition of heavy-handed Wall Street-style regulation on the City if the London Stock Exchange is taken over by a foreign buyer. Users of the London market welcomed the promise, by Ed Balls, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, that the Financial Services Authority would be given the statutory right to veto rule changes proposed by recognised exchanges, including the LSE, if these were "disproportionate" in their impact on London. Mr Balls said in Hong Kong: "The Government's interest in this area is specific and clear: to safeguard the light touch and proportionate regulatory regime that has made London a magnet for international business." By contrast, the imposition on Wall Street of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act in response to accounting scandals such as Enron is seen as making it more difficult for New York to attract new issues. Nasdaq, the New York market, has 25.3 per cent of the LSE"

Unilateral moral disarmament: "As I write, it is one week after the Atrocity. And while we prepare for war, we ask ourselves, again and again, two questions: Why? Why would anyone be motivated to commit such a horror? How? How could the most powerful nation on earth let it happen? The answer in both cases is philosophical."

Geniuses get fewer hangovers: "High IQ scores may do more than separate geniuses from those of lesser intelligence, they could also be an indication of how much clever people are likely to suffer from hangovers. New research by Scottish scientists suggests that smart people are less likely to repeatedly experience the excruciating headache, nausea, dry mouth and sensitivity to light and sound that can follow a heavy night out. "The main finding of this study was that higher IQ scores at 11 years of age were associated with a reduced risk of alcohol induced hangovers in middle age," said Dr David Batty of the University of Edinburgh. In a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Dr Batty and his colleagues looked at IQ test scores of 11-year-olds taken in Aberdeen in 1962 and sent questionnaires to them between 2000-2003 asking about their drinking habits. Responses from more than 7000 showed a higher IQ score was associated with a lower prevalence of hangovers."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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THE BERKELEY VALUE JUDGMENTS

There is an interesting post at Power Line (Via King of Fools) about the Berkeley study of conservatism that does what the Leftists themselves long ago did -- take a phenomenon and simply reverse the value judgements. Like many other conservative commentators, the blogger concerned sees some truth in the Berkeley study’s characterization of the Left/Right divide but just cannot see that it shows conservatives in a bad light.

He may not be aware that the Leftist “authoritarianism” theory underlying the Berkeley claims was itself originally borrowed from Nazi psychology (I kid you not) by the Marxist Adorno and his group (another example of Nazis and Communists being simply rival Leftist sects). Adorno agreed with the Nazi psychologist Jaensch about how people differed but what Jaensch said was a good thing, Adorno said was a bad thing. So reversing the value judgements is a very old trick in this field. Both camps are wrong however. They are mistaken in ascribing Left/Right orientation to childhood experience. The geneticists (Martin and others) have long ago shown that Left/Right orientation is MOSTLY hereditary. Leftists are born arrogant know-alls. Reality sometimes gets to them however and they turn conservative in later life (see e.g. here). See also here on the biological origins of human values generally.

REFERENCES

Adorno,T.W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D.J. & Sanford, R.N.
(1950) The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper.
Martin, N. & Jardine, R. (1986) Eysenck's contribution to behaviour genetics. In: S & C. Modgil (Eds.) Hans Eysenck: Consensus and controversy. Lewes, E. Sussex: Falmer
Eaves, L.J., Martin, N.G., Meyer, J.M. & Corey, L.A. (1999) Biological and cultural inheritance of stature and attitudes. In: Cloninger, C.R., Personality and psychopathology. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press.
Jaensch, E.R. (1938) Der Gegentypus. Leipzig: Barth.

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Authoritarianism and the Leftist mental bubble

Nothing could be more obvious than the fact that Leftism is authoritarian.  Wanting to "change society" in some way is definitional of Leftism. That wish, in various forms, is what makes you a Leftist.  Conservatives want change too but generally in the direction of unwinding Leftist changes.  But, as Margaret Thatcher memorably said, there is no such thing as society.  There are only people.  So the Leftist wants to change what people do.   And that is the essence and goal of the authoritarian.  And once they gain untrammelled power, socialists such as Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot etc show how very authoritarian they in fact are.

But no Leftist seems to be able to see that.  They are in fact so heavily defended against reality that they believe it is conservatives who are the authoritarians.  I have on my bookshelf a book by Robert Altemeyer which is titled: "Enemies of freedom".  Any conservative would immediately identify the Left as the enemies of freedom but to Altemeyer the enemy is a type of conservative.  Like most Leftist psychologists, Altemeyer has obviously read nothing of what conservatives actually advocate.  Leftists need their cloak of self-righteousness so badly that they have to stay within a mental bubble formed by fellow Leftists -- a bubble into which uncomfortable thoughts must not intrude.

And that malarkey has been going on for a long time.  The ball really got rolling with the publication of "The authoritarian personality" under the lead authorship of Marxist theoretician Theodor Adorno (born Theodor Wiesengrund) in 1950.  And Altemeyer's writings are just an update on that.  Adorno identified conservatives as the authoritarians.

In my days doing psychological research, I had over 100 papers published pointing to the holes in the Adorno theory but the  papers had nil effect.  My findings could not be allowed to penetrate the little mental bubble that enabled Leftists to tar conservatives with what were in fact the traits of Leftists.

Occasionally, however, some courageous person pokes his head above the parapet and endeavours to question the demonization of conservatives.  I have commented previously on the work of Yancey, who points out that the flood of hate directed at Christians by Leftists makes claims of "hate" among conservatives look ludicrous.  Just to disagree with Leftists allegedly makes you a "hater".  To see what real hate looks like you have to see what Leftists say.

And I have just become aware of the work of Jarret T. Crawford, who is at least even-handed in finding fault on both the Left and the Right.  It is rather a wonder that he gets away with it, but, like Yancey, he appears to have some African ancestry.  So he is at that rate a member of a protected class and can say what he likes.  For anybody with social science interests a list of some of his writings is here.

Another reason for the acceptance of his work is that he operates within conventional Leftist parameters -- accepting Leftist measuring instruments such as the RWA and SDO scales at face value.  That is rather a pity as both instruments are abortions.  Although allegedly a measure of "Right-wing authoritarianism", the RWA scale offers no useful prediction of vote at election time!  Not very right-wing, is it?  In psychometric terms the scale lacks predictive validity.  And the SDO scale is an even bigger joke -- as I pointed out some years ago.

I look forward to Crawford discovering psychometrics.  With better measuring instruments there is no telling what he might find.  My paper on  SDO does offer some alternatives.

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Anti-Capitalist Administration Makes for Tough Economic Sledding

The true scope of the damage that the Great Recession inflicted on the American economy, along with the Obama administration’s poor management of the crisis and its regular bent against the free market, is put in stark relief by some recent economic reports.

One study by Kansas City Federal Reserve economist Andrew Foerster calculates that continued economic uncertainty has cost the U.S. one million jobs since 2010, the year after the recession was officially declared “over.” Foerster maintains that high uncertainty in the economic recovery was generated by three separate incidents – the May 2010 European sovereign debt crisis, the 2011 U.S. debt ceiling debacle, and mixed signals over the Federal Reserve Bank’s June 2013 plan to wind down its bond buying program. The result was muted employment in the U.S. job market, about 16,000 fewer jobs per month between 2010 and 2013.

The current job market is also experiencing a sharp decline in male participation. Men have been leaving the workforce steadily since the late 1940s, but the trend has risen sharply in recent years. After World War II, 87% of adult men held jobs or were actively seeking employment. As of last month, that number dropped to just over 69%. The male participation rate has dropped three points since 2009 alone. In the cohort of men ages 25-54, there are 1.85 million “missing workers,” able-bodied males who have given up looking for jobs due to weak opportunities.

There are a number of factors at play behind this sharp decline of male workers. Manufacturing, a male-dominated profession, once accounted for one-quarter of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product but has fallen to around 11%. Education, social services and other service jobs traditionally held by women, have been on the rise, now claiming a large share of GDP. Women have entered the work force in greater numbers since the 1960s, and the female participation rate is at 57%. Women are also earning more college degrees these days, making them better suited overall for a more skilled workforce. There are some men who have made a lifestyle choice to stay at home and let their spouses be the breadwinner, but that’s a small portion of the total. The drop in labor is due largely to lack of opportunities.

Are there any signs of relief in the job market? That depends on who you listen to. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez insists that talk of the recovery consisting only of low-wage jobs is “categorically inaccurate,” adding, “This recovery is creating a lot of good jobs.” According to The Washington Post, nearly 40% of the jobs created in the last six months have been in high-wage industries such as construction and professional services. However, a recent U.S. Conference of Mayors and HIS Global Insights report reveals there is still a 23% wage gap in sectors hardest hit by the recession such as construction and manufacturing. Low-wage industries have seen the bulk (41%) of job growth in the last year. Mid-wage and high-wage industries have seen 26% and 33% growth, respectively, but there are still 1.2 million fewer jobs in those industries than prior to the recession.

Five years after the end of the recession, the Obama “recovery” can still be categorized as anemic, and without a doubt that’s due to the Obama administration’s policies. The high tax burden on investors and businesses has reduced capital investment and the incentive to put money into growing companies and hiring more workers. ObamaCare has also kept a number of small and mid-size businesses from growing at all, but especially beyond 49 employees, as they seek to remain below the law’s costly regulatory threshold for mandatory insurance coverage.

There is also a marked anti-capitalist flavor to the rhetoric continually coming out of the administration and its choir on Capitol Hill. We have listened to six years of incessant calls for making the rich “pay their fair share,” sparking class warfare and inspiring jealousy and disdain of success. The president told entrepreneurs they don’t deserve the fruits of their labor because they “didn’t build that,” in reference to the infrastructure that made their success possible. It’s no wonder so much intellectual and monetary capital is sitting on the sidelines or drifting overseas through corporate inversions, which Obama slams as a lack of “economic patriotism.” Eight years is a long economic malaise, so we must work to make sure 2017 brings a free-market oriented administration willing to allow the American economy to reach its full potential.

SOURCE

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The President's True Colors Finally Revealed

When I first glanced at the headline on today's Jerusalem Online and reports in the Jerusalem Post and other Israeli newspapers, I thought they must have been a satire: "Washington officials have told Egypt that the US will grantee Israel's commitment to any agreement signed." But it was not a satire. The was deadly serious, confirmed by other Israeli newspapers and sources in Cairo.

The US offering to Hamas to "guarantee" Israeli commitments to any agreement signed? As if anyone needed proof of the Obama Administration's antipathy to Israel, here it was in black and white. If anyone party needed a commitment to enforce its agreements in any deal, it would have been Hamas, that has been known to break every commitment it ever made. To pick just a few at random:

Hamas recently violated 9 cease fire agreements, including two of its own

Hamas illegally siphoned thousands of tons of cement and steel shipments it received from international donors and Israel that it had committed to use the build the civilian infrastructure in Gaza for hospitals, schools and apartment buildings; instead it spent upwards of $500 million of these humanitarian shipments to covertly build numerous tunnels buried deep underground into Israel in order to carry out murderous raids on Israeli civilian communities intended to kill tens of thousands of Israelis

Hamas violated the 2012 Cease Fire negotiated by then State Department Secretary Hillary Clinton together with then Egyptian Muslim President Mohammed Morsi in which Hamas committed to stop smuggling weapons and missiles into Israel, of which nearly 4000 were recently launched into 80% of Israel's population centers

Hamas violated the commitment to the Palestinian Authority that it would never launch a coup d'état against the PA after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. But in 2007, Hamas did exactly that in a bloody takeover of Gaza, kicking out and killing PA officials.

Hamas violated a publicly solemn commitment to its own civilians that it would uphold the rule of law (yea, right) when it took over Gaza only to subsequently execute hundreds of dissident Gazans, torture and imprison thousands of political opponents, violently persecute the minority of Christians still living in Gaza and imprison and prosecute suspected gay Gazans.

Violating a commitment it made in the Clinton negotiated 2012 truce that it would cease its missile attacks on Israel.

And at the same time, it should be noted that President Obama personally signed an official letter at the time of the 2012 negotiated cease fire to Prime Minister Netanyahu that the US would provide Israel with the technology to defeat and stop Hamas smuggling of weapons. But subsequent to that empty promise, Hamas soon received in massive quantities from Iran, Sudan, and North Korea. That promise was never carried out.

Israel on the other hand meticulously fulfilled its part of the bargain by severely relaxing the blockade on Gaza, allowing tons of previously restricted cement and steel into Gaza, increasing the number of daily truckloads of food, medical stuff and building equipment through the two Israeli checkpoints into Gaza by more than 250 truckloads a day (a commitment is still upheld during the Hamas war against Israel, a fact mostly ignored by the mainstream media blindly committed to the Hamas narrative that Israel was the aggressor).

Remember when Obama spoke to the annual AIPAC conference a few years back and ceremoniously declared, "I got your back." This is the same President who, as the Wall Street Journal disclosed last week, personally held up the Israeli request for additional Hellfire missiles that it had depleted in its war with Hamas.

As far back as 1967, the United States had made a firm promise to Israel that it would never allow the Egyptians to blockade the Straits of Hormuz, considered the lifeline of Israel. But when the Egyptians blockaded the Straights of Hormuz in May 1967, what did the US do? Nothing.

And in the current round of negotiations being held in Cairo now, according to leaked details in Egyptian newspapers reported by today's Jerusalem Online, Israel agreed to make the following astonishing concessions:

"Israel will stop its attacks in Gaza - in land, sea and air. No ground operations will be conducted."

Israel has agreed to the "opening of crossings between Israel and Gaza [in which] Movement of people and merchandise will be allowed, to rebuild Gaza."

"Eliminating the buffer zone in the North and East of Gaza and deployment of Palestinian military forces starting from January 1, 2015"

"Freedom of fishing and action in the territorial waters of the Palestinians in Gaza to a range of 6 miles. The range will gradually be increased, to no less than 12 miles..."

"Israeli authorities will assist the Palestinian Authority to restore the foundations in Gaza, as well as help provide the necessary living needs for those who were forced to leave their homes due to the battles. Also, Israel will provide emergency medical attention to the wounded and will supply humanitarian assistance and food to Gaza as soon as possible."

It should be noted that even during the recent murderous war waged by Gaza, Israel had opened up its borders to treat wounded Gaza civilians in Israeli hospitals and continued to supply daily more than 500 tons daily of humanitarian assistance and food to Gaza even as the Hamas launched thousands of rockets and attempted mass murder of Israeli civilians by attempts, fortunately thwarted by Israel, to infiltrate dozens of fully armed Hamas terrorists into Israel via the tunnels dug by Hamas.

And what did the Hamas commit to?

"All Palestinian factions in Gaza will stop the attacks against Israel, in the land, the sea and the air; also, building tunnels from Gaza to Israeli territory will be stopped."

That was it. Virtually the same identical commitments it agreed to in December 2012. Quite interestingly, Hamas insisted-which Israel did not agree to-to the immediate opening of a Gaza seaport and airport. But the party that suggested to Hamas that they insist on these demands was none other than the Qataris, the country-which is the top financial patron in the world today to Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and many of its terrorist offshoots-curiously selected personally by Obama to be the official diplomatic interlocutor in the Cairo talks.

The role that Qatar was supposed to play was to convince the group to make concessions. But curiously the opposite happened. Qatar, the country to which that the US just sold $11 billion worth of military weapons, actually sabotaged the negotiations. So far, the President has been studiously silent on this betrayal.

In light of the fact that Hamas has manifestly never upheld any of the commitments it has ever made, the salient question that has to be asked is why Obama did feel compelled to assuage Hamas with an assurance that the US would "guarantee" that Israeli upheld its commitments? The word "guarantee" has a rather expansive and vague latitude for definition. The most recent demonstration of an American guarantee that Israel would halt its defensive war against Hamas was the suspension of critical military deliveries to Israel during the height of the conflagration instigated by Hamas.

Indeed, for all the public affirmations made last week-after the WSJ expose-- by the Obama Administration that the US was "totally committed to the security of Israel," Obama suddenly decides to make a promise to Hamas-whose covenant differs not one bit from the fascist radical Islamic doctrine adopted by ISIL-that it would enforce the commitments made by Israel, which in fact have historically been studiously upheld by Israel.

If Obama was truly sincere in his now obviously contrived promises to "watch [Israel's] back", he would have offered to guarantee Hamas commitments, a terrorist group that has repeatedly violated its commitments in previous agreements. But with his statement that he would "guarantee" Israeli commitments and not those made by Hamas, the President has revealed his true colors for everyone to see.

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) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Altemeyer is still fundamentally confused

At least since 1950, Leftist psychologists have been fascinated by the concept of authoritarianism.  They have good reason to be.  The most authoritarian regimes in recent history have been socialist:  From the Communist Lenin, Stalin and Mao, through the national socialist Hitler to the ghastly Pol Pot.  So authoritarianism is in the bones of Leftists. We also see that orientation in their virtually universal refusal to condemn the gran lider of Cuba ("Great Leader", Fidel Castro) and their unrelenting attempts to fasten the bonds of regulation around  most aspects of life in the USA. And they are always eager to spend your money for you whether you want them to or not.

But authoritarianism is repugnant to most people gripped by it so the Left have a need to deny the authoritarianism which is innate to them.  They need to pretend to be something else.  And they are rather good at that. They pretend to be do-gooders even though most of what they do turns out badly.

Another very useful way of deflecting criticism is simply denial.  If you say often enough that you are not authoritarian, people might believe you.  And a very effective way of reinforcing such denials is of accusing your opponents of what is really true of yourself.  Freud called that "projection".  So Leftist psychologists have made great efforts to prove that conservatives are the authoritarian ones, not themselves.

That merry little scheme started with the work of Marxist theoretician Adorno in 1950 but foundered eventually on the poor evidence for the various Adorno assertions.  I cover that here.

The Adorno work was however refurbished from 1981 on by Robert Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba in Canada and I have pointed out from early on how sloppy Altemeyer's work is (e.g. here and here and here) .

Altemeyer has however continued to write books on authoritarianism and has gained a certain degree of notice outside academe,  particularly through the blog of Jonathan Turley.  Not much about Altemeyer's story has changed over the years but maybe there is by now a case for me to update a little my comments on his work.

Altemeyer has compiled a set of statements (the RWA scale) which in his view reflect "Right Wing Authoritarianism".  But he is very shifty about what he means by "right-wing".  Sometimes he refers to it as meaning conservative and at other times he admits that it is uncorrelated with vote for conservative political parties.

In other words his research is about conservatives who are as likely to vote Democrat as Republican!  A truly odd bunch!  The truth, I suspect, is that Altemeyer would not know a conservative if he fell over one. I have  no doubt that the Psychology Dept. at the University of Manitoba is the standard Leftist bubble that one expects of such Depts so strange beliefs about conservatives and much else could flourish in that environment.

So what the RWA scale really measures is anybody's guess.  I see it as measuring an old fashioned form of extreme conservatism that no longer has political relevance or, indeed, any relevance at all.  So the political relevance of Altemeyer's various research findings exists only in Altemeyer's imagination and need detain nobody for any time at all.

But if Altemeyer is vague about "right wing", he is quite clearly wrong about authoritarianism.  He makes it clear that it is not dictators he is talking about but rather their followers.  He claims that he is measuring a tendency for people to submit to authority.  But there is no such thing.  Nobody just respects authority per se.  Different people respect different authorities.  Altemeyer is convinced that conservatives in the USA are characterized by a respect for conventional authority.  Yet most American conservatives these days almost spit when they talk about the President, Congress and the Supreme Court.  Not much respect for the conventional authorities of America there!

And even the old mainline churches get short shrift among conservatives.  Conservatives tend to respect "rebel" evangelical churches, churches with a strong streak of independence.

Altemeyer has some awareness of the political  irreverence of American conservatives so to save his theory he nominates Rush Limbaugh and his ilk as authorities that conservatives respect.  But Limbaugh is no authority at all.  He is just a radio commentator!  People listen to him because they agree with him, not for any other reason.  In Altemeyer's world, agreeing with anybody is dangerous!

And it is not only in conservative politics that one finds an absence of a general tendency to respect authority.  I set out here some evidence from psychological research which shows that respect for authority in one field does not generalize to respect for authority in other fields.  That being so, Altemeyer is studying a unicorn (or perhaps more specifically, a chimera).

So wherever you look at Altemeyer's theories you find that he is not studying what he thinks he is studying.  He is studying something that exists only in his own imagination.

But a relatively recent work of his really puts the cap on his intellectual confusion.  He has written an extensive history and analysis of the Tea Party movement.  And he does get one thing right.  He notes that a lot of the Tea Partiers are evangelical Christians.

Even Altemeyer cannot avoid noticing however that Libertarians are prominent in the Tea Party movement too. So are Libertarians authoritarian? Good old Altemeyer sticks to his guns and says they are. He calls libertarians "The Other Authoritarian Personality". That people who comprehensively reject authoritative control over our lives are also submissive to authority must be one of the most crosseyed assertions in contemporary politics. Black might as well be white. Again Altemeyer is living in a little world of his own imagination.

Altemeyer also likes the "Social Dominance Orientation" theory of Pratto and Sidanius but I have pointed out the large holes in that some time ago.

Finally, the whole idea that you need to be a particular personality type to support an authoritarian regime is contrary to the evidence. Well-known experiments by both Milgram and Zimbardo showed vividly  that perfectly ordinary people can be conned into supporting extremely authoritarian actions and prewar writers such as Roberts and Heiden agree that by the late 30's Hitler was quite simply the most popular man in Germany. They LIKED his claim that they were a Herrenvolk (Master race)! His support ranged from the intelligentsia to the workers and, contrary to the usual Marxist piffle, the hard-core Nazis (the SA) were predominantly working class -- usually the more rebellious element of society.

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Oops, maybe government is tyrannical

By Marta H. Mossburg



Less than two weeks ago President Obama stood in front of graduates from The Ohio State University and told them to reject those who warn of government tyranny.

“Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems,” he said.

To young, idealistic people his words likely sounded insightful — until last week. That’s when it became officially impossible to deny that the government abuses its power for political gain.

Practically overnight people labeled conspiracy theorists by the elite were proven prescient interpreters of how big government operates when news broke last Friday that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny in their tax-exempt applications. The media pile on against the administration is so ferocious Fox News could run live feeds from its competitors without losing a beat.

It should be so because the partisan treatment of hundreds of groups is stunning.

Ginny Rapini saw the IRS in action firsthand. The volunteer coordinator for the NorCal Tea Party applied for 501(c)(4) status for her group in July 2009. In the spring of 2010 the IRS asked for more information. She sent in the information immediately but didn’t hear from the IRS again until January 2012, she said. At that point the agency sent the group a list of 19 questions, including a request for the names of donors, every email the group sent and minutes of each board meeting, with the requirement that everything be returned within two weeks or the agency would consider the application void, she said. She sent the IRS 3,000 pages of information prior to the deadline — but did not include the names of donors. “I think they wanted to intimidate me, but instead they made me mad,” said Rapini.

After Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) spoke about NorCal’s problems with the IRS on the floor of the House and wrote to the agency, she got a favorable response to her application in the summer of 2012 — three years after the initial request, not unlike many other organizations treated to years of silence in between harassing questions.

What makes the IRS’s actions even worse is that top officials knew about the inappropriate questioning of conservative groups since 2011 but didn’t say anything about it to Congress. Steven Miller, the acting IRS commissioner, was fired earlier this week, and should be the first of a long line of people held accountable for the agency’s flagrant mistreatment of political opponents by one of the most powerful government agencies.

On top of the IRS scandal, the Department of Justice (DOJ) last week admitted to secretly taking records of incoming and outgoing calls on work and personal phones of Associated Press (AP) reporters, its main lines in New York, Washington and Hartford, CT., and for the AP number in the House of Representatives. It took records on more than 20 lines in total in April and May of 2012 — lines used by more than 100 journalists.

Asked by National Public Radio how many other news media phone records the DOJ had taken Attorney General Eric Holder said, “I’m not sure how many of those cases…I have actually signed off on…I take them very seriously.”

So, confidential sources are not confidential if the government wants to know who they are. Whistleblowers beware.

That all of this is happening as the IRS is in the middle of hiring potentially thousands of new employees to write and enforce ObamaCare regulations should make everyone afraid. It is also happening while the IRS is in the middle of creating a giant information center with other federal agencies called the Data Services Hub to assist with rolling out ObamaCare (See here) that will provide one stop shopping on everything but what color underwear someone is wearing for the day.

The government promises, “Protecting the privacy of individuals remains the highest priority.” But after the last week, Americans should know there is no guarantee of personal privacy with the government or impartiality in how their information is used. It should also put Americans on notice that their political party could determine the quality of their health care. Welcome to the real world, Ohio State graduates.

SOURCE

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Fight the Power

Mona Charen

It's plausible to grant that Obama himself did not know that IRS agents were targeting tea party groups, Jews and other -- one almost wants to write "enemies of the state" -- for audits, harassment and delay. If Obama understood the conservative critique of big government even a little, he would know that his lack of knowledge is expected. In fact, it's part of the problem. As David Axelrod put it, the government is just "too vast" for the president to control. Who would have thought?

Obviously the government has always been too large for any one person to control. But our brilliant founders arranged matters so that power would be diffuse. Interest would counter interest, branch would check branch and transparency would ensure accountability to the voters. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51:

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

The tea party movement -- those the IRS harassed -- dressed up as Founders, a rich irony. A good progressive, Obama finds Adams, Jefferson and Co. passe. He doesn't recognize the capacity of government to abuse power when in the proper (i.e. Democratic) hands -- or, more likely, doesn't care. His arrogance about his own good intentions for the "middle class" -- odd that he almost never speaks of the poor -- makes him contemptuous of those who agree with Madison that government power must always be carefully constrained.

You needn't believe that Barack Obama personally texted IRS agents and instructed them to harass conservatives to know that he disdains the constitutional order. The evidence is in the legislation he signed. Both the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank create boards with utterly (in the case of Dodd Frank) and nearly (in the case of Obamacare) unreviewable power. Both are the subjects of lawsuits challenging their constitutionality.

Dodd Frank (aka "Dodd Frankenstein") creates at least two panels that are insulated from Congress's power of the purse. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Financial Stability Oversight Council derive their funding directly from the Federal Reserve. The president can appoint the director of the CFPB but can remove him only in very limited circumstances. The courts, which can normally overturn agency actions deemed "arbitrary or capricious," have limited review. The president highlighted his contempt for law by illegally naming the current director of CFPB as a "recess appointment" - when the Senate was not in recess.

The FSOC can declare firms "too big to fail" and thus obligate taxpayers for bailouts. The courts will have no say.

Under Obamacare, the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is exempted from the notice and comment rules of federal agencies. IPAB dictates automatically become law unless Congress itself intervenes, but Congress has little time to do so and must vote by a three-fifths majority to modify an IPAB decision. The courts are not permitted to review its rulings.

Even abolishing IPAB has been made virtually impossible by the law.

At his Thursday press conference, Obama promised that if "there's a problem in government, we'll fix it." But his overweening signature legislation guarantees that power will be abused. Shielding government agencies from judicial and congressional review is an open invitation to the kind of misuse a wiser person would guard against. Wiser men did. They created our constitution, which Obama and his progressive allies flout.

SOURCE

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Still one of the funniest photos of all time


Vice-President Biden and a very startled official

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Lakoff reinvents the wheel

Poor old George Lakoff. There is a review of his latest book here. He is a linguist by trade but nobody takes him seriously there so he has for some years now been trying his hand at political psychology -- which happens to be my particular area of academic expertise.

It is no surprise to find that he has nothing original to say but it is sort-of sad that he gets some basic stuff ass-backwards. He buys into the compulsive Leftist myth that conservatives are "authoritarian", blithely ignoring that, from the French revolution onward, it has been Leftists (in the person of Communists like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot and Socialists like Hitler and Mussolini) who have been by far the biggest authoritarians. For a quick summary of how and why Leftists sustain the myth that it is conservatives who are authoritarian, see here.

It always amuses me that even outright Marxists often identify authoritarianism with conservatism even though one of their founders, Friedrich Engels (co-author of Das Kapital) was perfectly commonsense about the matter:

"Revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon". -- from his controversy with the anarchists.

With such a wilfully blind start, Lakoff cannot possibly have much to offer. I was, however, amused by this Lakoff prescription that I found in the review above:

What should progressives say? That conservatism is "fundamentally antidemocratic."

Once again poor old George is reinventing the wheel. Precisely that assertion was an integral part of the old 1950 Adorno work that started the "authoritarian conservative" myth. I guess Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were democrats! There have been many Communist movements worldwide over the years but not one could reasonably be called democratic. So Communism is conservative? Black might as well be white. And in the Western democracies today, Leftists never stop their attempts to censor and suppress conservative speech. See my TONGUE-TIED blog for almost daily examples of that. Is that democratic? It is an attempt to hobble democracy as far as I can see.

To cap it off, the original Adorno questionnaire that was used to characterize conservatives as anti-democrratic (the F scale) was in fact a compilation of beliefs that were common in the "Progressive"-dominated America in the first half of the 20th century. See here on the nature of the F scale questions and see here for the rather surprising details of America's "Progressive" era. So if there were any ideas that were shown by Adorno to be anti-democratic, they were in fact "Progressive" ideas at the time!

Another amusing Lakoff prescription: "progressives should rely less on facts and more on images and drama". Talk about preaching to the converted! Since when did Leftists EVER rely on facts? Appeals to emotions have been their stock in trade since the year dot. If they relied on known facts they would certainly have given up very rapidly and very long ago any notion that socialism was a cure for poverty.

The reviewer (Saletan) goes on to point out more of the huge holes in Lakoff's thinking so I will not go on. I have however had a close look at Lakoff's threadbare old ideas previously. See here.

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McCain still not impressive on oil

Oil, oil everywhere and not a well to sink, because of current US policies. John McCain came out for more drilling the other day, an utterly common sense thing that is overwhelmingly popular in the polls, and he has Dick Morris swooning at his superior political judgment to Obama. Standards in politics are low, apparently. But what about ANWR? In the course of complaining about Senator McCain's inexplicable devotion to the remote, utterly unpopulated northern reach of Alaska we call ANWR, Charles Krauthammer reminds us of some history:

Gas is $4 a gallon. Oil is $135 a barrel and rising. We import two-thirds of our oil, sending hundreds of billions of dollars to the likes of Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. And yet we voluntarily prohibit ourselves from even exploring huge domestic reserves of petroleum and natural gas.

At a time when U.S. crude oil production has fallen 40 percent in the last 25 years, 75 billion barrels of oil have been declared off-limits, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That would be enough to replace every barrel of non-North American imports (oil trade with Canada and Mexico is a net economic and national security plus) for 22 years. That's nearly a quarter-century of energy independence. The situation is absurd. To which John McCain is responding with a partial fix: Lift the federal ban on Outer Continental Shelf drilling, where a fifth of the off-limits stuff lies.

This is a change for McCain, but circumstances have changed. When the moratorium was imposed in 1982, gasoline was $1.20 and oil was $30 a barrel. Since the moratorium was instituted, we've had two wars in the Middle East, and in between a decade of garrisoning troops in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE to preserve the peace and keep untold oil riches out of the hands of the most malevolent of our enemies.

Technological conditions have changed as well. We now are able to drill with far more precision and environmental care than a quarter-century ago. We have thousands of rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, yet not even hurricanes Katrina and Rita resulted in spills of any significance.

Krauthammer makes the common sense case that what is true offshore should obviously be true for ANWR, and chides McCain for his inconsistent stance, and that brings us to whether MCain's position is political or intellectual. For example, Paul Krugman thinks that Senator McCain's change of heart on offshore drilling is the result of cynical political calculation: "I'm reasonably sure that Mr. McCain's advisers realize that offshore drilling would do nothing for current gas prices. But they may believe that the public can be conned." Krugman's analysis and McCain's obstinance to date on ANWR raise the question of whether ANWR poll-tests poorly among swing voters, or whether McCain's stance is just uninformed and dumb.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Another Haditha Marine Prepares to Sue John Murtha: "Cold-blooded John Murtha was wrong about the Haditha marines. In May 2006 antiwar Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) accused US marines of killing innocent Iraqis "in cold blood" after the former news magazine TIME published a piece of Al-Qaeda propaganda about an incident in Haditha, Iraq. In May 2006 antiwar Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) also announced that there was a grand coverup to to stifle the story. Today Drudge reported that another one of the exonerated Haditha marines is preparing to sue John Murtha. With most of the eight Marines charged in the Haditha, Iraq, incident now exonerated, the highest-ranking officer among the accused is considering a lawsuit against Democratic Rep. John Murtha, who fueled the case by declaring the men cold-blooded killers. The lead attorney for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, Brian Rooney, acknowledged to (Michael) Savage it's difficult to sue a sitting congressman, but he believes it can be done".

Why can't Britain equip its soldiers properly?: "The Ministry of Defence must remove Snatch Land Rovers from operations following the deaths of four soldiers in Afghanistan this week, military experts have said. The poorly-protected vehicles, which are due to be phased out entirely later this year, have been withdrawn from use in Iraq but are still being used in Afghanistan, where it was thought that the bomb threat was less sophisticated. Three Special Forces soldiers and Corporal Sarah Bryant, the female Intelligence Corps soldier, were killed when their Land Rover was hit by a roadside explosion on Tuesday. Charles Heyman, a defence analyst and former Army major, said that the roads in Afghanistan were "too dangerous for normal troop movement." [But Britain has no shortage of money to pay clerks and "administrators", of course]



Surprise: A Jew-hating Jew is a nut: "Critics are calling for the resignation of a U.N. official who publicly supports investigating theories that the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were an "inside job." Richard Falk [pic above], the special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, investigates alleged Israeli violations of human rights law for the U.N.'s Human Rights Council. But the former Princeton professor would also like to investigate whether "some sort of controlled explosion from within" destroyed the Twin Towers, he told FOXNews.com.

Environmental wackos endorse Obama : "The NY Times reports that the Sierra Club is making its endorsement of Barack Obama official. This is not a man bites dog story. It is more of a dog licks man story. I think this is good news for Republicans. These wackos were not going to vote for McCain anyway and now they have associated their anti energy movement with the Democrat nominee it will make the attacks on his energy non policy all the more persuasive. In another shocker the United steel workers labor bosses will also endorse Obama. Whether their members will vote for him is an altogether different matter. One of Obama's real challenges this fall will be getting the blue collar vote. They are just not arugula type people nor do they shop at Whole Foods."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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More stupid anti-conservative psychology

The recent book by John Dean (of Watergate fame), called Conservatives Without Conscience has been a great hit on the Leftist blogs. There is for instance a huge and hugely self-satisfied comment string about it here. The comments there that amused me most were the ones by Leftists saying that they had not actually read the book but still thought it was great. Very Leftist. They KNOW what is right: Evidence is irrelevant.

The book says of course that conservatives are psychologically disturbed and "authoritarian" -- an ongoing leftist theme that goes all the way back to a 1950 book which had as its leading author the Marxist theoretican Theodor Wiesengrund (aka Adorno). The Adorno book was written at a time when most Leftists alive could remember themselves espousing doctrines similar to Hitler's (the prewar American Left was heavily into racism, antisemitism, eugenics, nationalism, homophobia etc.) so, nonsensical though it was, the book was eagerly seized on by the Left of the day as a way of attaching Nazism to conservatives rather than to themselves.

The book has long since been discredited (See e.g. here and here) and one of the most comprehensive demolitions of it was by a curious Canadian psychology professor known as "Bob" Altemeyer. Altemeyer (1981) pointed out in great and convincing detail that the research methods and research results available did not support the claims of the book but he still thought that the theory behind the book was pretty right. So he set out on his own large program of research to find support for at least some parts of the theory.

The central pillar of his research was a new inventory of attitudes -- attitudes which he claimed reflected "Right-wing authoritarianism" (RWA). In a quite hilarious piece of bathos, however, he concluded in one of his later books that: "Right wing authoritarians show little preference in general for any political party" (p. 239 of Enemies of Freedom). In other words, the people Altemeyer's questionnaire identified as "Right-wing authoritarians" were in fact as likely to vote for the Canadian Liberals or the U.S. Democrats as they were likely to vote for Conservatives or Republicans! His "Rightists" were, in other words, often Leftists!

Such a stupid body of work as Altemeyer's claims about conservatism would of course long ago have been consigned to the dustbin of history if reason and logic were what motivated the Left but in fact Altemeyer's work is wildly popular among Leftist social scientists and social commentators -- and the John Dean book relies heavily on it. So if you ever do get around to looking at the Dean book, just remember that everything he says is just as likely to be true of Democrat supporters as GOP voters!

For those interested in a more comprehensive demolition of the Dean book, Peter Thomas has written one. See Liberals Without Logic.

References

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

Altemeyer, R. (1981). Right-wing authoritarianism. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.

Altemeyer, R. (1988) Enemies of freedom: Understanding Right-wing authoritarianism. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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Why the Leftist conspiracy theorists think the 9/11 events were "staged"

Excerpt from Ace of Spades

The writer of the current conspiracy book gives the game away several times. Here's a telling example:

Why had the FBI failed to put the record straight over the previous four-and-a-half years? One answer is that it suited the heroism legend to keep silent as the Pentagon banged the drum for war in Iraq.

"Heroism legend"? Again, assuming for the purposes of the argument that he's right -- how does this diminish the heroics of the Flight 93 Rebellion whatsoever? In his own mind it diminishes their courage, because he needs physical courage to be denigrated and exposed as futile. His entire worldview depends upon this.

For the rest of us, the planes crashed into the WTC, the Pentagon, and a field in Shaksville, Pensylvania. For the left, the planes crashed into their entire worldview, collapsing it as surely as the Twin Towers were collapsed.

And since then, they've made a determined and relentless effort to substitute in their own preferred narrative, in which the WTC was destroyed in a controlled demolition by the CIA, the Pentagon was simply blown up with an American missile or planted American bombs, and the first soldiers in the Greater War on Terror shouldn't even have bothered, because the Sidewinder missiles were on their way no matter what they did.

What links all these conspiracy theories? The unshakable belief that there is no enemy except the US Government (except, perhaps, for the Mossad), and that heroism, patriotism, and a physical defense of one's country and one's very own life is a doomed venture hardly worth the candle.

Admitting there is an external, implacable, and deadly threat to us strongly implies we need to fight it. But they've decided a priori that fighting is never the correct response.

Ergo, somewhere the syllogism must be flawed. They focus their attention on the premise-- that there is in fact a deadly external threat. That must be demonstrated as incorrect if their preferred conclusion -- pacifism at any price -- is to remain viable.

In their own minds they've rebulit the Towers so they were never destroyed that day, but they now stand on a foundation of magical thinking and a childish retreat into dreamworlds and fantasies.

For some, the choice between adapting one's worldview to the real world or adapting the real world to one's worldview is a fairly easy call.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here). Other backups here

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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HOW THE LEFTISTS DUCK AND WEAVE!

John Moore has snared another Leftist who does not let the facts get in the way of his argument. He agrees with the findings of the Berkeley study of conservatism because:

“Adorno proved all this in the late 1940's with ex-Nazi party members. And don't give me that bull that Fascism is really different from Conservatism. Name a single significant German conservative party or individual which did not enthusiastically endorse Hitler.”

The facts are that Adorno did NOT study ex-Nazis. He mostly studied normal Californians undergoing college education. Former German Nazi leaders WERE studied by others and they were NOT of the “new anthropological type” described by Adorno. They were all different types. And German monarchists were among the victims in the Nazis’ “Night of the Long Knives” but both the orthodox socialists (SPD -- Gerhardt Schroeder's party) and the Communists voted WITH the Nazis in the Reichstag on various important occasions. I could go on ....

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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.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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