The liberal mind
BUMPED: Because in the comments you can see someone actually say, "The dog ate my browser cache." It has to be an internet First.
Dr. Lyle Rossiter, a greatly experienced psychiatrist who trained at Chicago, has written that liberalism is a mental disorder. Wondering why so many of the patients that he has diagnosed presented with views that were utterly resistant to argument, he was led from the traditional view that they were informed by ideology and instead has come to the opinion that liberalism, as understood today in its coercive rather than libertarian sense, is a mental disorder, and, informed by his reasoned thoughts over decades of practice and thousands of cases, has written The Liberal Mind.
WorldNetDaily has done an article on it, and this is a bit of it:
... the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:
creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.
"The roots of liberalism - and its associated madness - can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."
Strong stuff. But illuminating.
Anyone is welcome to an opinion, but for that opinion to be respected he, or she, must be willing to test it against others' opinions. This involves the exchange of ideas: advance an idea and defend it. It by definition requires interaction with others, and requires listening to others.
The modern liberal presents a talking point, and when challenged on the facts, runs shrieking from a defense, only to deliver herself of another platitude. When pressed to defend her statement, she does not even try and perhaps cannot; the cognitive dissonance might be destructive if resolved. Instead she makes every effort to avoid engagement, thinking that she is exchanging ideas if she turns herself into a handbill of sodden liberal pieties.
Handbills cannot argue, only proclaim. People argue. Healthy people argue. People in touch with reality argue. Adult people who acknowledge the existence of others argue. Children demand and proclaim.
If the statement of faith is based on divine revelation, one can, if one wishes, and in general I don't, argue about the nature of that God providing the divine revelation. There is that God's ineffable nature, and the unknowable eternity which may exist after death. The very nature of a supernatural faith, any of them, is that it can be right. I think them all needlessly complicated explanations, but I could be wrong.
But if the faith is a secular one, as is liberalism, then it must face knowable challenges. It must, if it is to be nothing more than an endless supply of talking handbills, actually acknowledge the existence of other people and the fact that other people might have ideas. There is no possible reliance on a supreme being in a secular religion, therefore every tenet is open to secular challenge and there is no possible defense in divine revelation. Assumed moral superiority just won't do.
The modern liberal can, most of the time, be shown to be wrong. But she will simply not engage in the debate. Her idea of engaging in the debate is to offer up yet another liberal talking point and then when challenged, run to the refuge of the sucker punch of the ad-hominem attack, "...wasting energy...," "Why are you so angry?" And note that all of this is an effort, perhaps not deliberate, to avoid engagement. It is patronizing, taken from an assumed viewpoint of moral superiority, which does not believe that argument is necessary, only the statement of faith, which being secular, can be challenged easily. Notice all the energy that she herself has expended to avoid engaging.
The substitution of platitude for discussion is a mental defense against reality. The substitution of unsupported platitude for engagement is the willful disregarding of the existence of other people, the mentality of a two-year-old having a tantrum. "Don't you have better things to do?" is code for "It's all about me."
The modern, religious, coercive, paranoid liberal flashes her sodden pieties, showing them to be the prayer beads that they are, "Hail Michael Moore..." and steadfastly refuses to defend them, instead offering only stale slogans, the mantra of modern liberalism which substitutes for thought.
For it must. A secular religion can be disproved. And therefore for a liberal to work, and work hard, to avoid the bother of defending a single idea, leads me to think that there is no point in talking with her, to be met only with slogans, for her reason is hostage to a mental problem, as neatly analyzed by Dr. Lyle Rossiter.
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24 Comments
Pandora, you have it backwards again. He formed his conclusion after decades of practice.
Thank you, Pandora, for answering. I was afraid that you would not. Wanting to ease you of the work of studiously avoiding the point every single time, I confected the above article as a trap. It is not nice and I'm not that proud of it, but I'm tired of the yapping.
I called you a handbill of sodden liberal pieties and then went on to call you demented. This is very strong and a slap in the face. Now I am going to close the trap.
The thrust of the article is the liberal's inability or unwillingness to engage with other people. Your response above was a textbook case I couldn't have bettered had I written it myself as a parody.
Here is a task for you, and how you handle it determines whether or not you are demented and the Well is watching. You have three possible choices.
Twice you have called me a sexist because I do not like Hillary Clinton. I say that is a logical fallacy.
1. You can prove that I am a sexist because I do not like Hillary Clinton. This requires you to prove that saying anything bad about a member of a group means that I do not like anyone in the group.
2. You can admit that I am not a sexist just because I do not like Hillary Clinton.
3. You can respond with another platitude, or veer off in the Brownian motion of your mind, or assume that the argument is settled and accuse me of anger, or using too much energy, or any other misdirection.
If you choose 1 or 2, you are engaging with a single point.
If you choose 3, it means that you either will not engage in debate about a single, well-defined issue that you brought up, and that indicates that you operate in bad faith, or it means that you cannot engage in debate which will considerably support Rossiter's contention that liberals are demented, which was much amplified by what I wrote above.
Pandora, this is a serious challenge. If you choose 1 or 2, it means that you are engaging with other people.
If you choose 3, it means that you are demented, either by choice or by nature.
Which way will you have it?
Pandora:
Simplified, during our discussion of forestation and old growth forests, an intellectual would have taken the time to answer my questions. Or at least would have pointed me towards the data so I could form my own conclusions.
All I received in return for my time and effort was subject changes, new assertians no more substantiated than the first set, and something about squirrels.
Could you do me this favor at least? All you have to do is cut and paste a link or two.
When I showed that North American forestation levels were at a 50 year high you countered that it was only because Canadian efforts at conservation had been so successful that they had essentially made up for an entirely deficient American conservation effort and still pushed the combination of the two efforts to that 50-year high.
Just provide me the sources that you found that show how the two efforts differ and also a link that quantifies the re-forestation rates of the two countries over time.
Our opinions are going to differ frequently...can we at least work from the same data?
To form an opinion of whether another human being is crazy, you have to go about it as a scientist. The minute one begins to label people as insane for having a political opinion which differs from one's own, science is in the scrap heap. It's as silly as saying, "All Baptists must be insane, all Catholics," etc.
Walsingham, I'm so sorry I no longer have the data you wanted several days later. Strangely enough, the growing of trees is one of my biggest passions, so I was quite happy that we could talk about it. I bet you could Google this subject and come up with the same pages, if your search terms are right.
Theo, your little "trap" reminds me of what Brer Rabbit said in the Uncle Remus story, "Oh please, PLEASE, don't throw me in that briar patch!"
Pandora,
Data like that to a passionate tree lover should be easy to find (or recreate from whole cloth).
Try harder, you dig yourself an even deeper hole of dementia.
I find that, being in the entertainment arts, I cannot have discussions with many without being summarily dismissed when the subject of politics comes up. Their opinions are correct and I am a dolt. The discourse becomes shrill.
Seems like you chose the Brownian solution...
Linda, am I imagining it, or do you sound exactly like Theocritus? Hard to imagine one woman saying to another, "you dig yourself an even deeper hole of dementia," instead of "Hello."
The government has sites on forestry you might look at, and if you don't mind reading an environmentalist site, go to the Forest Guardian site and explore a little. Of course they object to all efforts to destroy forests, whether by excess roads, destructive logging practices, or misguided efforts to control forest fires with faulty science.
The Canadian site I think you may have to find yourself, as I don't keep more than one day in my browser history. I usually don't include links in my postings as many bloggers have had trouble with posters adding spam links and they tend to dislike the practice. I write a truthful statement and then go on. It should be up to others to refute my data if they can.
Actually, reading up on true forestry science would be good for folks who tend to dismiss it, calling those who love the environment "tree huggers." Sometimes in one's zeal to prove someone wrong, some useful knowledge filters into the brain and one's mind is changed on the subject.
How many people understood that destroying the rainforests could affect the world's climate, until scientists pointed it out? Every time you pull one thread in the cloth of the world, something else begins to go bad somewhere else. As an example, when Americans nearly brought about the extinction of the wolf, they unfortunately increased the numbers of coyotes, as wolves used to keep the coyote population under control. Coyotes have destroyed plenty of livestock in our own neck of the woods, and are even more willing to come close to human habitation as the wolf packs were.
I think my best advice is to Google, Google, Google. Get off the Conservative sites and see what actual scientists say, people whose jobs and careers hinge on verifiable truth.
Take your own advice Pandora. Practically everything you have commented on this blog is wrong, verifiably and rationally wrong. You must only read the work of fake 'scientists', and google will lead you to a good many zealots masquerading as independent scientists.
You think the large forestry companies don't look to experts to ensure the long term viability of their companies? They do. They employ scientists to manage their resources. Experts in the field of forestry, trained in biology and soils and climatology, researchers who innovate and solve problems. It matters to them and they test their hypothesis with their bottom line, unlike those who pay $5 month for a domain name and fill it with scientific sounding nonsense that will draw like minded readers looking for empirical support to give validity to their affections.
"It should be up to others to refute my data if they can"?
1. You offer zero data. Only your own conclusions-but no data.
2. That is a very unscientific attitude.
3. It follows that without data, and without making any effort to prove a self proclaimed "truthful statement", your "work" will never be taken seriously, nor peer reviewed.
What you mean is that it should be up to others to refute my conclusions. Data is simply data. Yet you offer none to refute anyway. You are in over your head on this one.
Sometimes in one's zeal to prove someone wrong, some useful knowledge filters into the brain and one's mind is changed on the subject.You've been offered some useful knowledge and remain unchanged. You deny your belief in this practically every time you reply to Theocritus, Walsingham or me. To state that others should do what you are unwilling or incapable of doing is either pure hypocrisy or an indicator of insanity.
Hard to imagine one woman saying to another, "you dig yourself an even deeper hole of dementia," instead of "Hello."
How is that not a sexist statement? You look at a name, assume it represents the thoughts of a female, and are shocked that they do not conform to your narrow view of how a woman might contribute to this discussion. This conforms with your narrow view of most everything, and it is simply wrong, again. You have continued to skirt the issues, judging the poster rather than the content of the post.
You have to admit that it might be crazy to go out on a limb and accuse one half to three quarters of all the citizens of the United States of insanity.This is insane. You can't look at polling data and equate that to the liberal/conservative viewpoints of the nation. If you want to do that you have to come to the conclusion that only a small percentage of the nation is really liberal, and a not quite as small percentage of the nation is truly conservative, as polling data shifts wildly over time, but true political ideology does not. Average it all out and you get a bell curve, weighted slightly toward the right. And the polling data that really matters, elections, laws, behavior, shows that the nation has been leaning conservative for decades.
And to add some anecdotal evidence, most liberals I know are really conservative at heart.
On the contrary Pandora, one could spend a lot of time on the internet and still not run across any comments anywhere near as clarifying as your last two.
When I asked my question about your sources your responses were a dream come true.
My work here is done.
Nat, in all fairness, she may have had the sources but does have legitimate reasons for deleting her browser cache every day.
On the other hand she may have never had the sources and made it all up and is a total hound for internet porn.
Rowl!
Facts? What facts? Feelings replace them and a browser history would only encumber things.
Nat, I do like the "bowser ate my browser history" but here is, to my enfeebled mind, the real gem:
I write a truthful statement and then go on. It should be up to others to refute my data if they can.
I have never seen a more delusional or arrogant statement. Dropping pearls of wisdom to the unwashed churls, and moving majestically on...
I've read the same pseudo-intellectual propaganda
several times previously. In most instances, the
person with mental unfitness is a conservative, at least according to the Internet post.
I suppose one could find a respected resource to pronounce a highly-placed political appointee as a cannibal if enough money was paid.
"Pseudo-intellectual propaganda?" The man has good credentials and sneering at it because you don't like his results is like saying that gravity is wrong if you weigh too much.
Yes, one could find, if one looked hard enough, someone to state that liberals, or conservatives, or popes, were cannibals. But that devalues the knowledge of Dr. Rossiter. Also absolutely no attempt has been made to refute any of my charges. Denials, yes, refutations, no.
Why are you liberals always in denial? Why is denial all that you do?
Refutation is the ticket. Not charges and sneers, ad-hominem attacks, assumptions that the matter is settled.
Liberals have walked the high moral ground for so long that they are incapable of defending their positions.
And many of them were good ones, at the time. Equal opportunity, fairness--all good. But liberals have forgotten in the last few decades how to argue a position on the facts, which implies either laziness or knowledge that an argument on the facts must be lost.
All words are not created equal. Words have meanings and truth is more than attitude.
Refute. Argue. Stop being in denial. For insofar as I can see, denial is all that a liberal has.
Well, I read through all of that and all I can say is that every one of the comments signed "Theocritus" "bob" and "Walsingham" have always sounded exactly alike, full of big words and sneering dislike, and now you've added "Linda" and "Contrarian" to the list of phony signatures. Don't you realize that a person can be recognized by the way they write? Why don't you just put all the mean comments together under one name, and stop pretending that you agree with yourself?
What was once fun is now getting tiresome. When an intellectual debate turns to personal attacks, name-calling, and thinly-veiled hatred, it's a schoolyard brawl. It's just like screaming, "Billy is a poopy face!"
It breaks your heart when the Midland Reporter-Telegram drops your blog from their front page, but if they are reading these comments you make, who could blame them?
I work and the little time I have to write comments used to be so much fun, until it descended into this. You have no facts and data to support your views, and you make fun of any scientific community that opposes your opinions. It wouldn't matter if most of the scientists of the world believed in Global Warming, you'd trot out one scientist provided by Fox Network who opposed the science, and she would be the only qualified scientist in the world, in your opinion.
It doesn't make you crazy, but it does make you an old-stick-in-the-mud.
Today is the last time I will write anything for you. Every time I write what I think is a carefully-worded opinion piece, it unleashes an avalanche of long-winded, identical comments about how stupid, demented, wrong, and ignorant I must be. Do you treat people around you like this? Is there some house out there where no word may be spoken on the subject of politics because Dad will jump up and down like Rumplestiltskin with steam coming out of his ears?
Weakling.
Now lets get an intelligent, strong woman in here.
Thanks for the compliment though, good company to keep, Walsingham, Theocritus.
Nobody really enjoys the company of idiots so you won't be missed.
Bob, thanks.
I think that Pandora has adequately proved my point. The only thing is that I feel a bit like a puppet master in this, and the thing that will keep me up at night is considering where the puppet master's hand goes. But all I did was prime the pump, really.
Well, it wasn't much of a challenge, after I quit rising to her bait.
Now I am going to have a new thing for any other liberal who fires off the wild accusation and then runs off, and responds only with a platitude or an ad-hominem charge or vapor.
I'm going to call it Pandora's Box and I will regularly put liberals in it who do not finish off what they started.
I'm PISSED ! I'll get over it but please realize that the only way any of US are going to straighten out these "entitled leftists" is to engage them and not chase them back into their lairs of self-importance and rotten thought .
I realize that with Pandora nothing would probably have gotten through BUT, sure as the world , her arguments would have drawn other Kool-Aid victims as herself into other discussions . At which point we may, MAY , have had a chance of rescuing them from themselves .
Believe me I COMPLETELY understand your anger with the woman but obviously she believes ONLY what she is comfortable with and ,by now ,probably feels herself a VICTIM set upon by the vicious dogs..er ..DOG..As all of us know Jessicas Well IS only One Person at the keyboard.
We are Legion and We are One ! MuhWahahaha !
I understand y'all got tired of the fuzzy logic but if you go back you'd see it drew others of her ilk out and ,I think , it may have been interesting to have engaged them.
Ah well , maybe next time . What the hell do I know .?.
I am Old Otto.
I have actually had a hard time thinking of 'pandora's box' without remembering a lecture that compared it to The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao Spain, and the "quivering mound of venus", as the 80 year old professor put it, of the aroused woman.
I hope you are still doing all that Googling, Walser, because it looks like Pandora is going to leave you high and dry with with your requests for links and references.
Not that her self-declared "truthful statements" shouldn't suffice....but apparently they will have to.
Otto:
The problem is that she never would actually engage.
She can claim victim status all she wants and I think that even then she would have hung around forever to play the "victim" for all of the attention it afforded her.
What drove her off was that even she realized how clumsily she revealed that she could not produce any hard data to back up her "truthful statements".
Two words killed Pandora: "Show me".
She knew she couldn't. We knew she couldn't (did she think that Walser hadn't already spent a bunch of time trying to Google that nonsense up?).
And she had to realize that anyone without a brain disorder who read her response to Walser knew that she couldn't either.
The worst Walser ever suggested about her was that she was essentially too lazy to cite her references. Obviously, he was not wrong about that.
The worst Walser ever suggested about her was that she was essentially too lazy to cite her references. Obviously, he was not wrong about that.
Well, there was that part where I said she might be a total hound for internet porn.
She should consider herself lucky....her dog just ate her browser cache. I once had a dog that corrupted my whole Windows regsitry.
So let me get this straight:1) A woman asserts something as true.
2) A man, taking her as his intellectual equal, disagrees with her sharply, without fretting too much about how the "Softer Sex" might take his angry and harsh "Man-Words."
3) The woman properly considers herself oppressed and intimidated into silence.
Sound familiar? I think we have un-masked Pandora.
Check this out over at Ace of Spades HQ.
I took the tour and laughed my guts out Mr.S.A.
it was well worth the trip.
I once knew a woman named Skeeter--very nice, very pleasant, and she was described as a dominant whiner. This was before the term "passive-aggressive" came into parlance.
One thing I learned from Pandora is to recognize more forms of changing the subject. Today a woman at a company, who thought I had nothing to do other than throw everything aside to humor her incompetence, told me my schedule.
I replied with some heat that I had already disobliged good customers on Friday and wouldn't do it again.
"You mean that the xxx aren't good customers?" Well, no. But notice the entire shift, the attack against me to avoid admitting her incompetence.
Slightly apropos of this is the test given to women about Slick Willie. They were asked if a perjurer should be president. To a woman they said, "No."
"Then do you think that Bill Clinton should be impeached?" Liking him, most said no too.
When pressed about the cognitive dissonance, most were frustrated to tears.
Otto, there is no dealing with Pandora; she is the product of an easeful existence which does not require concision or precision of thought--it's not a survival characteristic for her. But I'll say it again. She's not angry. See the Kos Kiddies--their rage sometimes goes to true bloodlust. And remember Michael Moore and Dave Lindorff--wishing for the death of people who disagree with them.
I rather liked Pandora, frankly--for a leftie she wasn't bad. Irrational, spewing the projectile vomit of liberal platitudes, dissembling, but not mean. Not mean at all. And in fact I felt guilty for she seemed a little bit hurt.
But I still had to put her in Pandora's Box.
My concern was not so much about Pandora , Theo , but the lefties she could bring in .
And then the fun of trying to actually change A FEW .
But it was fun while it lasted and I understand what you had to do as I have seen "Ole Yeller ".
We had joy , we had fun
We has seasons in the sun........ Heeeee !
This man is hired to testify in trials as to the mental fitness of a person. You'd think that it would hurt his business to go around pretending that a person's political views showed mental illness. "Oh, she appears to be a good mother, fit to raise those babies, but she's a LIBERAL, which of course we all know makes her crazy as a loon."
You have to admit that it might be crazy to go out on a limb and accuse one half to three quarters of all the citizens of the United States of insanity. Wouldn't that be like spitting into the wind?