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**************************************************************************************It is amusing to note that many Leftists even used the national sovereignty doctrine in a (pathetic) attempt to defend the status quo in the Middle East. In particular they used it to protect Iraq's Saddam Hussein and attack President George W. Bush. They used the international law doctrine which says that boundaries must be respected without looking at what goes on inside them. But the origin of that doctrine may be a bit inconvenient:
LEFTISM AS PSYCHOPATHY
By John Ray (M.A.;Ph.D.)
I have shown elsewhere that there can be many causes of Leftism. I have also shown in the same place, however, that although all sorts of different people can be Leftist in one way or another, there would seem to remain a core Leftist type -- seen at its clearest among Leftist academics and intellectuals. Although such people form only a small fraction of the total population, their influence and their grasp on the levers of power in the media, in the bureaucracy, in the universities and, at times, in politics, make what they think, say and do very important indeed. And it is my contention that this type is eerily reminiscent of a well-known psychiatric category: The psychopath. So the ULTIMATE explanation for all the core characteristics of Leftism that have been described so far lies in many Leftists being sub-clinical psychopaths.
The characteristics of the clinical psychopath can be summed up as follows: He is not obviously "mad"; he is often highly intelligent; he is unmoved by brutality (except to enjoy perpetrating it); he has no moral or ethical anchors or standards; he secretly despises others and thinks they are fit only to be dominated and exploited by him and those like him; he is a great manipulator who loves getting others to do his bidding by deception or otherwise; he is the master of the lie and the false pretence but sees no reason to be consistent from occasion to occasion; he will say anything to gain momentary praise or admiration; his only really strongly felt emotions seem to be hate and contempt and he is particularly enraged by those who have what he wants and will be totally unscrupulous in trying to seize what others have for himself. But above all, the psychopath does not seem to be able to tell right from wrong and, as a result, does sometimes commit or connive at murders and other heinous crimes with what seems to be a clear conscience.
That seems to me to constitute, by and large, a fairly comprehensive description of your average Left-wing intellectual -- particularly of the many intellectuals who did (and often still do) support in various ways the old Soviet system in Russia. I think that I have already touched on each of the above characteristics as underlying much of what Leftists say and do but I will treat in detail some of the major features just mentioned, one by one, below.
I should however also note at this stage that Leftists are clearly not clinical psychopaths -- i.e. they generally keep out of trouble with the law and with mental health authorities. They do not, for instance, usually commit murders (though one still-revered Leftist intellectual -- Althusser -- certainly did). But they do definitely seem to show a milder form of all the psychopathic characteristics -- some of which can be even advantageous in certain ways -- as I have pointed out elsewhere. Psychologists do of course find that most human characteristics are normally distributed -- i.e. any extreme characteristic will tend to have much more frequent milder forms -- so the present proposal is in that sense perfectly orthodox within modern academic psychology.
Just to make sure we know what we are talking about, and to reassure readers that I am not biasing my account of the matter, here is a summary of what one of the classic authorities on psychopaths says about them:
Robert Hare, in his book Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, which I have just finished, estimates that there may be as many as two million psychopaths in the U.S. Sooner or later, you are bound to come across one, a truly frightening prospect, an encounter that could ruin your life. A psychopath is characterized, as the book's subtitle has it, by a lack of all scruple, a willingness to look out for number one that leaves the greatest egotists in the dust. He (and males in this category outnumber females 20 to 1) will lie, cheat, steal, and kill without the slightest remorse, blaming the victim, and bemoaning his own fate when caught. The real kicker is that the psychopath is often charming, a glib talker who is adept at seeing when and how someone may be taken advantage of, and most victims of psychopaths walk unaware right into their traps. The psychopath knows full well how to make use of people's natural propensity to trust others
Leftist amorality as sub-clinical psychopathy
As just mentioned, the most striking characteristic of the psychopath has always been his "moral imbecility" -- his often breathtaking lack of feeling for other people and his disregard for the rules they live by. So if it shows nothing else, the assertions of "moral equivalence" between brutal regimes and democratic regimes (which I have also referred to elsewhere) that Leftists are quite famous for show their utter amorality. Neither Joseph Stalin nor Pol Pot nor Saddam Hussein bothered Leftists one bit and all were excused by Leftists in various ways -- as just doing what they had to do or some such. So Stalin's heirs are among us. One of them recently said: The disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life". And that was George Galloway, a British Labour Party member of parliament in the year 2003. And going back further, Malcolm Muggeridge, one of the few journalists to report honestly what he saw in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, knew well the British Leftists of his day. He says that members of the Left intelligentsia, like Beatrice Webb, knew of Stalin's vast brutalities against his own people of that time but just didn't care. They were attracted by the Soviet "vision" of a people who were made to do what intellectuals thought was a good thing so that was all that mattered. Mass-murder and suffering were a matter of indifference to them -- as I will set out at greater length below.
Principles? What principles?
Stalin's mass murders certainly appear to this day to be regarded by many Leftists in the economically successful "Western" democracies as merely awkward from a PR point of view rather than wrong. This psychopathy means, of course, that the Leftist really has no standards at all. Like any psychopath, he/she will say anything and everything as a means to getting what he/she wants (i.e. personal pre-eminence of some kind). U.S. Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004 was a good example of that. He was renowned for his flip-flops -- saying different things to different audiences so that he came down on both sides of almost every issue. And that seemed not to bother his Leftist supporters one bit -- though the "Washington Post" was critical:
"John Kerry has become the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination without a detailed or clarifying debate on many issues.... Now, with the nomination seemingly within his reach, the Massachusetts senator must begin to more fully explain where he stands on the major challenges facing the country. That task is particularly important for Mr. Kerry because of his fuzziness on issues ranging from Iraq to gay marriage".
And as Jeff Jacoby wrote:"In the 2004 presidential field, there is a candidate for nearly every point of view. His name is John Kerry. Equivocating politicians are sometimes accused of trying to be "all things to all people," but few have taken the practice of expedience and shifty opportunism to Kerry's level."
There was in fact a fascinating short article in the "Wall Street Journal" pointing out that Kerry and the Democrats at that time abandoned any pretence of idealism in foreign policy and advocated instead stability and the status quo! Given their constitutional aversion to stability and the status quo, that was surely another proof that Leftists will advocate ANYTHING that they think will get them power. Historians will also remember that J.S. Mill was a great spokesman for liberty but that he was in fact on the Left in British politics and voted in favour of government restrictions and regulation on lots of issues. Principles were very rubbery for him too.
And even after their defeat in the 2004 Presidential election, U.S. Leftists remained locked into the defence of the status quo. As Rich Lowry put it:
"Please, don't change anything." That bids fair to become the liberal slogan for the early 21st century. Who knew government programs circa 2004 would have achieved an equipoise of perfection such that disturbing them in the slightest way would represent liberal heresy? And who would have guessed that "progressives" would become opponents of change so thoroughgoing that they would make Edmund Burke blush?
Reactionary liberalism will be the order of the day in President Bush's second term. Take Social Security. The program was started in the 1930s. Back then, there were 41 workers for every retiree. Now, there are three workers for every retiree. Back then, life expectancy was significantly shorter than its current 78 years. In other words, in 70 years the world has changed, but the structure of Social Security hasn't -- and liberals desperately want to keep it that way.....
The same basic argument will apply to tax reform, tort reform, health-care reform and further education reform. No issue quite highlighted the left's reactionary impulse than when, during the campaign, Bush proposed redeploying American troops from their Cold War outposts around the world. Liberals immediately reacted negatively, making the argument, basically, that the troops should stay where they are, because they've been there for 40 years, and everyone is comfortable with it.
It is in foreign policy that the new liberal orientation has been most stark. Liberals once believed in global change based on the advance of human rights. This was an admirable idea (if sometimes poorly implemented). Now it's been abandoned because Bush has picked it up, and liberals believe in little else in foreign policy except that whatever we attempt will fail...."
So we see how important the MOTIVATION for change is. When conservatives propose changes that will empower the individual and reduce the degree of power and control exercised by the State, they are clearly acting out historic pro-individual conservative values. Whether they like or dislike change as such does not come into it. The change concerned (private retirement savings accounts, health savings accounts etc.) meets their basic goals so is pursued. And because the selfsame changes go against the centralization of power and subjugation of the individual that Leftists want, they oppose the changes concerned. Leftists do in general like to engineer change as a way of making themselves look good but if any given change does not do that and in fact moves power further way from them, they with perfect ease go into reverse gear and do exactly what they otherwise have always accused conservatives of doing: They defend the status quo both at home and abroad.
Some posters on my Ethics of War blog appear to think that sovereignty is absolute, i.e., that nothing could possibly justify intervention in another nation's affairs. This is as indefensible as any other absolutist position, such as extreme pacifism and anarchism. Nor should it be thought that sovereignty is meaningless unless it is absolute. Sovereignty is the analogue of personal autonomy. But of course personal autonomy is not absolute. My right to govern myself has limits. I may not exercise my autonomy to harm or threaten harm to others, for example. So the question is not whether Iraq was a sovereign nation at the time coalition forces intervened. It's what the scope and limits of sovereignty are and whether the limits were exceeded in this case. I submit that sovereignty does not include the right to harm one's citizens, as Saddam Hussein had a long record of doing and gave every reason to believe would continue to do unless prevented by force from doing so. It wasn't just Saddam, either. His sons, Uday and Qusay, had been groomed to carry on his tyrannical, genocidal ways. The coalition led by the United States did right in taking these moral monsters down.
"Will Hutton, Britain's foremost critic of capitalism and an outspoken advocate for affordable social housing, is married to a property developer who has made a fortune out of selling and renting inner-city properties, often at rates which local council housing officers describe as exorbitant."
"Please keep in mind that I was a liberal for a long time. I know the liberal mentality and tactics. Liberals have no shame. They're unfulfilled totalitarians. Their only goal, despite their declared concern for the disadvantaged, is power. Think about it. If liberals truly cared about the disadvantaged, as they say they do, they'd dispose of their wealth. There are enough wealthy liberals in this country to feed, clothe, shelter, and medicate every poor person. Don't hold your breath waiting for this to happen. The Kennedys are still wealthy, aren't they? John Kerry is more than happy to take advantage of the Heinz fortune. Liberals insist on forcing others to pay for their hare-brained social-engineering schemes. This suggests that they're driven by envy and spite, not benevolence".
"Ann Sparanese, a member of the governing Council of the American Library Association, has written a letter to the Voice criticizing my columns about Fidel Castro's prison sentences of 20 and more years for 75 Cuban dissenters, including 10 independent librarians. ... At an upcoming midwinter meeting in San Diego, from January 9 to 14, the ALA plans to decide whether it will indeed live up to its principles and finally support the locked-up independent librarians in Cuba. It has refused so far."
"The planned economy has also produced a public transportation system of astoundingly high quality compared to what we've got in, say, the United States. On the other hand, the extremely cramped housing in what is, objectively, a nearly empty country seemed totally absurd. And of course millions of people got themselves killed in Stalin's various schemes.
"Russia was not "a totally undeveloped country" in 1917. It was an industrial nation spanned by railroads with an emerging capitalist class, labor unrest, factory strikes and all the other attributes of a developed nation of the time.... Still, it had freed its slaves (serfs) before the US did and even gave them land though they had to pay for it in future installments."
"If you believe the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) - an organization that extols the virtues of communism and detests capitalism - North Korea is nearly a paradise. A nation where a peace-loving president governs a land of contented people, living a happy existence, with sustenance not even a tertiary concern. On September 29th, 2003, a self-appointed group of representatives of the United States of America traveled to North Korea to build a bridge between the two nations. The group consisted of four NLG lawyers... The NLG repeatedly claims there is no starvation in the DPRK."
"The silence of the Left in the face of uncomfortable truths is a hallowed tradition, of course, dating back to the earliest crimes of the Soviet Union. When the reality confronting the Left contradicts the theory, the theory must be preserved at any cost.
And there's no sign of improvement, not a glimmer of the least scrap of conscience or integrity on the Left. It's all about revenge against a democratic system that gives a blue-collar worker a vote equal to that of a university professor's ballot, about hatred for the free market for providing better lives for the great majority while Marxism drowned in the bile of its victims. There's no one the new American Left so despises as the working man or woman who continues to believe in the United States.
And it's about power. Had Bill Clinton invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam, the Left would have cheered their throats raw, praising him as one of history's greatest liberators. The rhetoric about Iraq isn't about justice, or the Iraqi people, or even about the horrors of war ..... The great, unforgivable insult to the Left is that conservatives took the idea of liberation seriously and acted, while the Liberal-Arts faculty merely chattered about it...
The global Left never cared about the Iraqi people until they became American "victims." As Saddam Hussein slaughtered more Muslims through campaigns of oppression and wars of aggression than any tyrant since Tamerlane, the Left remained silent. But now that Saddam himself might face the death penalty, Leftists everywhere are wringing their hands at the thought of such injustice.
Where were they when the screams of torture victims pierced the prison walls under Saddam? Where were the celebrity journalists when Iraq's mass graves were being opened over the past fifteen months? Where are the reports of the fierce joy of the Kurds, free at last, free at last?
Now, in late July of 2004, where is the Left as the Sudanese government conducts a campaign of genocide against the wretched of the earth in Darfur Province? Oh, yes, there have been a few crocodile tears - but where are the demands for intervention?
Where are the campus demonstrations against that great liberator, Robert Mugabe, who destroyed Zimbabwe, terrorized its people - and is using scarce reserves of food as a weapon while his citizens slowly starve?
Where is the American Left's sense of justice in the face of European anti-semitism? Of course, the spreading hate-crimes against Jews, synagogues and cemeteries are all Israel's fault.that's been explained to us.
Then where are the protests against the corruption and repression used as tools of control by the Palestinian Authority? The self-respecting Leftist whispers, "It's their culture." As are suicide bombers, no doubt. Why doesn't the Left complain about the hate speech spewed in mosques and madrassahs around the world? Are calls to exterminate Jews and butcher Christians just "part of their culture," too?
When will we see mass demonstrations demanding rights for women in the Islamic world? Are women's rights only for middle-class whites with college degrees? Where is the Left's passionate sense of humanity when Islamic extremists behead the innocent - and videotape the event, to the glee of the Muslim world? Of course, those decapitations are really America's fault ... we've driven them to it, you see.
The truth is that our Left is so intellectually decrepit, so infected by dishonesty, so morally feeble that it has only breath enough to condemn American actions. No matter how many brown or black human beings suffer around the world -s tarved, ethnically cleansed, raped, tortured, murdered - it doesn't count unless you can blame America.
This is a moral crime for which we all pay. By obsessing about Iraq - where the United States and its allies performed a great and noble deed, however imperfect the day-to-day details - the Left has tacitly agreed to let the rest of the world rot. And it is, indeed, rotting. Intervention to stymie tyrants couldn't be right in Bosnia or Kosovo when Democrats owned the White House, but automatically wrong with Republican sponsors.
This isn't just hypocrisy on the part of the Left. It's complicity. With tyrants and thugs everywhere. The blood of al Qaeda's victims is on the hands of terror's apologists, whether in Cairo or in Cambridge.
"Today immaturity reigns in the Democratic Party -- from the Clinton frat house to the left's top authors (while conservative titles include the thoughtful "Why We Fight" and "Inside American Education", the bestsellers of the left are "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot", New York Times writer Molly Ivin's "Shrub" -- a fifth grader's jealous play on the name of the popular new kid, Bush -- and her infantile sequel "Bushwhacked."). In fact, not only does immaturity reign, to today's Democrat it is considered a badge of honor....
This type of insane hyperbole has become the norm in the Democratic Party because, like the child, the leftist lives in a world of self-importance, where nothing is bigger than the servicing of their immediate wants. A child can believe his parent is "the worst in the history of the world" because the child knows little -- and cares even less -- about the world outside his tiny domain. The same is true of the Modern Liberal. To them little thought is given to long term consequences of their actions or the historical context of their words.
Today's Democrats, like small children, see only their own immediate gratification and the chance to advance their short-term personal wants.
The silent endorsement of Saddam's war crimes by the fake peace movement is fortunately highlighted by the indiscreet George Monbiot. This Marxist academic not only accused the US of being a war criminal, meaning Bush, but also claimed that "The five soldiers dragged in front of the cameras this week should thank their lucky stars they are prisoners not of the American forces fighting for civilisation, but of the 'barbaric and inhuman' Iraqis"
A regime that beats and murders POWs, uses civilians as shields, fakes surrenders, beheads women, shreds opponents, shoots down protestors and shells refugee is not barbaric and inhuman according to Monbiot. I always tell people who are rightly outraged by the lying likes of Monbiot that we should nevertheless be grateful to them because they inadvertently tell us what the left is really thinking. And it ain't pretty.
More of the psychiatric summary of Harris can be found here. And for a fuller discussion of how prevalent elitism is on the Left -- despite their claimed passion for "equality"-- see here. And for the destructive envy that is part and parcel of Leftist elitism see the discussion elsewhere under "Envy".
Their vision was to create a nightmare so devastating and apocalyptic that the entire world would shudder at their power.... Klebold is easier to comprehend, a more familiar type. He was hotheaded, but depressive and suicidal. He blamed himself for his problems. Harris is the challenge. He was sweet-faced and well-spoken. Adults, and even some other kids, described him as "nice." But Harris was cold, calculating, and homicidal. "Klebold was hurting inside while Harris wanted to hurt people," Fuselier says. Harris was not merely a troubled kid, the psychiatrists say, he was a psychopath.
In popular usage, almost any crazy killer is a "psychopath." But in psychiatry, it's a very specific mental condition that rarely involves killing, or even psychosis. "Psychopaths are not disoriented or out of touch with reality, nor do they experience the delusions, hallucinations, or intense subjective distress that characterize most other mental disorders," writes Dr. Robert Hare, in Without Conscience, the seminal book on the condition. (Hare is also one of the psychologists consulted by the FBI about Columbine.. ) "Unlike psychotic individuals, psychopaths are rational and aware of what they are doing and why. Their behavior is the result of choice, freely exercised." Diagnosing Harris as a psychopath represents neither a legal defense, nor a moral excuse. But it illuminates a great deal about the thought process that drove him to mass murder. Diagnosing him as a psychopath was not a simple matter. Harris opened his private journal with the sentence, "I hate the f---ing world." ... It rages on for page after page and is repeated in his journal and in the videos he and Klebold made. But Fuselier recognized a far more revealing emotion bursting through, both fueling and overshadowing the hate. What the boy was really expressing was contempt.
He is disgusted with the morons around him. These are not the rantings of an angry young man, picked on by jocks until he's not going to take it anymore. These are the rantings of someone with a messianic-grade superiority complex, out to punish the entire human race for its appalling inferiority. It may look like hate, but "It's more about demeaning other people," says Hare.
A second confirmation of the diagnosis was Harris' perpetual deceitfulness. "I lie a lot," Eric wrote to his journal. "Almost constantly, and to everybody, just to keep my own ass out of the water. Let's see, what are some of the big lies I told? Yeah I stopped smoking. For doing it, not for getting caught. No I haven't been making more bombs. No I wouldn't do that. And countless other ones."
Harris claimed to lie to protect himself, but that appears to be something of a lie as well. He lied for pleasure, Fuselier says. "Duping delight"-psychologist Paul Ekman's term-represents a key characteristic of the psychopathic profile.
Harris married his deceitfulness with a total lack of remorse or empathy-another distinctive quality of the psychopath. Fuselier was finally convinced of his diagnosis when he read Harris' response to being punished after being caught breaking into a van. Klebold and Harris had avoided prosecution for the robbery by participating in a "diversion program" that involved counseling and community service. Both killers feigned regret to obtain an early release, but Harris had relished the opportunity to perform. He wrote an ingratiating letter to his victim offering empathy, rather than just apologies. Fuselier remembers that it was packed with statements like Jeez, I understand now how you feel and I understand what this did to you.
"But he wrote that strictly for effect," Fuselier said. "That was complete manipulation. At almost the exact same time, he wrote down his real feelings in his journal: 'Isn't America supposed to be the land of the free? How come, if I'm free, I can't deprive a stupid f---ing dumbshit from his possessions if he leaves them sitting in the front seat of his f---ing van out in plain sight and in the middle of f---ing nowhere on a Frif---ingday night. NATURAL SELECTION. F---er should be shot.' "
Harris' pattern of grandiosity, glibness, contempt, lack of empathy, and superiority read like the bullet points on Hare's Psychopathy Checklist....
"Sitting before a rapt audience of thirty-somethings, the former president recounted the childhood horrors of a negative body image and a drunken stepfather and the grown-up challenges of brutal Republicans and journalists who live to hurt politicians' feelings. Oprah was, at all times, duly sympathetic and handled the subject of adultery with considerable skill: Scolding her guest with affectionate concern, she drew from her audience laughter and applause simultaneously. This enabled Mr. Clinton to smile in his trademark boyish fashion and pledge that marathon counseling had made him a better man, better husband, better father, better president and better guest on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show.'"
George Bates, another officer in Coastal Division 11, participated in numerous operations with Kerry from January 1969 to March 1969. In Bates' view, Kerry was a coward who overreacted with deadly force when he felt threatened. Bates, a retired Navy captain, believed that Kerry treated the South Vietnamese in an almost criminal manner.
Bates is haunted by a particular patrol with Kerry on the Song Bo De River in early 1969. With Kerry in the lead, their Swift Boats approached a small hamlet with three to four grass huts. Pigs and chickens were milling around. As the boats drew closer, the villagers fled. There were no political symbols or flags in evidence. It was obvious to Bates that existing policies, decency and good sense required the boats simply to move on.
Instead, Kerry beached his boat. Upon his command, numerous small animals were slaughtered by heavy-caliber machine guns. Acting more like a pirate than a naval officer, Kerry disembarked and ran around with a Zippo lighter, burning up the entire hamlet.
Bates was appalled by the hypocrisy of Kerry's quick shift to the role of a peace activist condemning war crimes upon his return home. Even today, Bates describes Kerry as a man without a conscience.
(Quote from p. 62-63 of "Unfit for command" by J.E. O'Neill and J.R. Corsi)
For his entire life, he was seen as so ambitious to be president, as so eager to consort with heiresses, that it was off-putting; his St. Paul's classmates played "Hail to the Chief" on kazoos when he walked by, and in the Senate, Bob Dole mocked the Massachusetts senator's love of cameras by nicknaming him "Live Shot".
"Speaking early this month at a church in Selma, Ala., Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said: "I'm in Washington. I see what's going on. I see those powers and principalities have snuck back in there, that they're writing the energy bills and the drug laws." . . .
But not only did Obama vote for the Senate's big energy bill in 2005, he also put out a press release bragging about its provisions, and his Senate Web site carries a news article about the vote headlined, "Senate energy bill contains goodies for Illinois." . . .
On Sunday, the Chicago Tribune reported that an extensive search found no basis for an episode Obama recounts [in his 1995 book, "Dreams From My Father"] about a picture he ran across in Life magazine of a "black man who had tried to peel off his skin" in a failed effort to use chemicals to lighten it. Obama writes that "seeing that article was violent for me, an ambush attack." The Tribune reported: "Yet no such Life issue exists, according to historians at the magazine. No such photos, no such article. When asked about the discrepancy, Obama said in a recent interview, 'It might have been an Ebony or it might have been . . . who knows what it was?' (At the request of the Tribune, archivists at Ebony searched their catalogue of past articles, none of which matched what Obama recalled.)" . . .
As another example, consider Obama's stirring tale for the Selma audience about how he had been conceived by his parents, Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham, because they had been inspired by the fervor following the "Bloody Sunday" voting rights demonstration that was commemorated March 4. "There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala.," he said, "because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Ala. Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Ala."
Obama was born in 1961, and the Selma march occurred four years later, in 1965. The New York Times reported that when the senator was asked about the discrepancy later that day, he clarified: "I meant the whole civil rights movement."
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