"The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness"

The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness

By Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr, MD

Monday, December 4, 2006

Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.,a forensic psychiatrist, explains the madness of liberalism in his new book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. You can read an excerpt below, and read more at his website libertymind.com .

Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. [Values like human rights, voting rights, free speech, and government by the people, for the people? -- Jay] Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does not idealize individual liberty and the structure of law and order essential to it; it does not defend the basic rights of property and contract; it does not aspire to ideals of authentic autonomy and mutuality; it does not preach an ethic of self-reliance and self-determination; it does not praise courage, forbearance or resilience; it does not celebrate the ethics of consent or the blessings of voluntary cooperation. [Umm... I know this doesn't reflect my values, and I'm a liberal. Does that matter? -- Jay] It does not advocate moral rectitude or understand the critical role of morality in human relating.

[Wrong. One example: What is 'political correctness' except an effort, albeit clumsy at times, to ensure civil discourse between the powerful and the powerless? PC culture, even when it goes too far, is basically harmless, and offers many net benefits. But Rossiter ignores this inconvenient truth, because it restrains the individual's "absolute" right to express intolerance, sexism, and racism. So, should we throw the baby (civil discourse) out with the bathwater (taking protection of minorities' feelings too far)? Of course not. -- Jay]

The liberal agenda does not comprehend an identity of competence, appreciate its importance, or analyze the developmental conditions and social institutions that promote its achievement. ["an identity of competence"? Like "Heckuva job" Brownie, Don "Quagmire" Rumsfeld, or our F-up-in-Chief, Dubya? -- Jay] The liberal agenda does not understand or recognize personal sovereignty or impose strict limits on coercion by the state.

[Like free association of anti-war group "Grannnies for Peace" without being spied on by the FBI; or protestors at the GOP convention corralled into "free speech zones;" or U.S. citizens having their phone calls spied on without a court-ordered warrant; or no-knock rules for police searching a suspect's premises? -- Jay]

It does not celebrate the genuine altruism of private charity. It does not learn history's lessons on the evils of collectivism.

[How, exactly, ought we -- or more to the point, the Federal Government -- "celebrate" private charity? What does this phrase mean? -- Jay]

What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice.

[Those bad things exist. If you're passionate about justice, equal rights under the law, and fairness, I think you ought to be passionate about eradicating those things. What's not to like about liberalism? -- Jay]

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

[And in the extreme conservative's mind, all of these things -- poverty, sickness, oppression, disenfranchisement, exploitation, victimization, and marginalization -- are either the fault of, or the cross to bear, of the "free" individual. Even if the government can eradicate these evils, the ultra-conservative believes it shouldn't. It just shouldn't. Suffering for principle's sake. Never mind that we live in society, and no man is an island. Except when it concerns sex or advocating religion, ultra-conservatives deny our fundamental inter-relationships as citizens, and our shared burden of the economic externalities of free markets. They yearn for the "freedom" of the jungle for the strong, and the protections and comforts of society only for those who can afford to buy them. -- Jay]

The liberal cure for this endless malaise is a very large authoritarian government that regulates and manages society through a cradle to grave agenda of redistributive caretaking. It is a government everywhere doing everything for everyone. The liberal motto is "In Government We Trust." To rescue the people from their troubled lives, the agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and other-pity, fosters government dependency, promotes sexual indulgence [how so? -- Jay], rationalizes violence [and "people kill people, guns don't kill people" isn't a rationalization?! -- Jay] , excuses financial obligation, justifies theft [like by S&Ls, WorldCom, and Enron? Oh, wait... -- Jay] , ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, denigrates marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition [whose religious and social tradition? -- Jay], declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship.

[What would those "duties of citizenship" be, if conservative zealots had their say? I'll tell you: to build a big fence; to bow piously before a Judeo-Christian God in all public forums; to mow your lawn so as not to decrease your neighbor's property value; and to have enough guns to protect your family, or else. That's all. Paradise! -- JL]

Through multiple entitlements to unearned goods, services and social status, the liberal politician promises to ensure everyone's material welfare, provide for everyone's healthcare, protect everyone's self-esteem, correct everyone's social and political disadvantage, educate every citizen, and eliminate all class distinctions.

[What a nightmare. I mean, imagine the horror: no abject poverty because we have a social safety net; free education so people can better themselves, even if they come from a poor family; ensuring nobody is spit on or put down in schools or public places; and no class distinctions. My God, what a terrible distopia that would be! Anything but that, aaahhh! -- Jay]

With liberal intellectuals sharing the glory, the liberal politician is the hero in this melodrama. He takes credit for providing his constituents with whatever they want or need even though he has not produced by his own effort any of the goods, services or status transferred to them but has instead taken them from others by force.

[Hey, sounds like "liberal politician" is a pretty cool job! How do I become one? 'Cause, like, it sounds pretty easy. I mean, you just promise people whatever they want, like, you know, lower taxes and higher gov't. spending. People are so dumb! -- Jay]

It should be apparent by now that these social policies and the passions that drive them contradict all that is rational in human relating, and they are therefore irrational in themselves.

But the faulty conceptions that lie behind these passions cannot be viewed as mere cognitive slippage. The degree of modern liberalism's irrationality far exceeds any misunderstanding that can be attributed to faulty fact gathering or logical error. Indeed, under careful scrutiny, liberalism's distortions of the normal ability to reason can only be understood as the product of psychopathology.

[Hmm... interesting. You know, as a real lefty lib, I see an opportunity to milk the system here. Since I'm obviously a psychopath, maybe I can apply for disability pay -- then I'll never have to work again! Bring on Nurse Ratchett, I'm ready for my free meds! And I don't even have to pay for a "golf" junket to Puerto Rico to get them. Sweet! -- Jay]

So extravagant are the patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that characterize the liberal mind that its relentless protests and demands become understandable only as disorders of the psyche. The modern liberal mind, its distorted perceptions and its destructive agenda are the product of disturbed personalities.

[Remember, the 2nd Amendment shall not infringe upon my right to keep and bear firearms. So back off! I might just snap if Big Gubument don't ante up with the free handouts. -- Jay]

As is the case in all personality disturbance, defects of this type represent serious failures in development processes.

[You mean... my momma doesn't really love me? Where's the nearest gun show, I can't take it anymore!... -- Jay]

The nature of these failures is detailed below. Among their consequences are the liberal mind's relentless efforts to misrepresent human nature and to deny certain indispensable requirements for human relating. In his efforts to construct a grand collectivist utopia—to live what Jacques Barzun has called "the unconditioned life" in which "everybody should be safe and at ease in a hundred ways"—the radical liberal attempts to actualize in the real world an idealized fiction that will mitigate all hardship and heal all wounds. (Barzun 2000). He acts out this fiction, essentially a Marxist morality play, in various theaters of human relatedness, most often on the world's economic, social and political stages. But the play repeatedly folds. Over the course of the Twentieth Century, the radical liberal's attempts to create a brave new socialist world have invariably failed. [Like in Sweden, Finland, Switzerland... -- Jay]

At the dawn of the Twenty-first Century his attempts continue to fail in the stagnant economies, moral decay and social turmoil now widespread in Europe. An increasingly bankrupt welfare society is putting the U.S. on track for the same fate if liberalism is not cured there. Because the liberal agenda's principles violate the rules of ordered liberty, his most determined efforts to realize its visionary fantasies must inevitably fall short. Yet, despite all the evidence against it, the modern liberal mind believes his agenda is good social science. It is, in fact, bad science fiction. He persists in this agenda despite its madness.

[Um... in science, aren't you supposed to, like, you know, give evidence to support your hypothesis? By the way, Dr. Rossiter's book mentioned here isn't even for sale on amazon.com. Shouldn't a real capitalist disciple like Rossiter take that kind of commercial failure as a signal from the free market that nobody's interested in buying what he's selling? Ironic, and pathetic.

This 'psychiatrist' Dr. Rossiter contradicts himself on the most basic level.

He writes that "None of their [liberals'] agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character."

Never mind that it's hard to give yourself, or wish on yourself, mental illness... He writes:

" So extravagant are the patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that characterize the liberal mind that its relentless protests and demands become understandable only as disorders of the psyche. The modern liberal mind, its distorted perceptions and its destructive agenda are the product of disturbed personalities. As is the case in all personality disturbance, defects of this type represent serious failures in development processes."

So... if being liberal is really just an illness caused by an unfortunate childhood, how can anybody be faulted for being liberal? Dr. Rossiter unwittingly argues the ultra-liberal's "environmental causes" theory of anti-social behavior! -- Jay]

Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr, MD is the author of The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Po litical Madness. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago and served for two years as a psychiatrist in the United States Army. He is currently in private practice in the Chicago area.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/LyleHRossiterJrMD/2006/12/04/the_liberal_mind_the_psychological_causes_of_political_madness

[Dr. Rossiter's replied to my comments by urging me to read his book, wherein, he promised, is actual evidence to support his anti-liberal claims. "Otherwise we'll just be talking past each other." Fat chance, Doc. If you wanna send me a free copy, maybe I'll read it. -- Jay]