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. 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. It does not advocate moral rectitude or understand the critical role of morality in human relating. 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. The liberal agenda does not understand or recognize personal sovereignty or impose strict limits on coercion by the state. It does not celebrate the genuine altruism of private charity. It does not learn history’s lessons on the evils of collectivism.
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 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.”
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, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, denigrates marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
Source: http://townhall.com/columnists/lylehrossiterjrmd/2006/12/04/the_liberal_mind_the_psychological_causes_of_political_madness/page/full/
The official website of The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness.
Please take a few minutes to read about a book that will change forever the way you look at politics.
The Liberal Mind is the first systematic examination of human nature and human freedom. It is the first book to explain why certain economic, social and political arrangements are compatible with human nature -- and why some are not.
The Liberal Mind is the first book to explain how modern liberal collectivism undermines the legal and moral foundations of ordered liberty.
Read The Liberal Mind and learn why:
- The laws and moral codes--the rules--that properly govern human conduct arise from, and must be compatible with, the biological, psychological and social nature of man.
- The liberal agenda’s Modern Parental State violates all of the rules that make ordered liberty possible.
- The modern liberal agenda is a transference neurosis of the modern liberal mind, acted out in the world’s economic, social and political theaters.
- The liberal agenda’s Modern Permissive Culture corrupts the foundations of civilized freedom and is destroying America's magnificent political achievements.
- The liberal agenda’s basic principles are not only antithetical to our most cherished liberties; they are also directly contrary to all that is good and noble in the human enterprise. The Liberal Mind is the first work to explain why modern liberalism appeals to the irrational tendencies of the human mind. It is the first work to explain how liberalism can be defeated.
In the course of this analysis, The Liberal Mind asks and answers the following critical question: Why would anyone want a political system that restricts personal freedom instead of enhancing it; denounces personal responsibility instead of promoting it; surrenders personal sovereignty instead of honoring it; attacks the philosophical foundations of liberty instead of defending them; encourages government dependency instead of self-reliance; and undermines the character of the people by making them wards of the state?
The Liberal Mind contains the elegant solution to the problem of modern liberalism; it is a systematic, fact-based analysis of why the left’s collectivism not only does not work but cannot work.
The Liberal Mind explains:
- The two major goals of the modern liberal agenda: the Modern Parental Society and the Modern Permissive Culture, and why they violate the basic principles of freedom.
- How the modern liberal agenda attacks the moral and legal foundations of individual liberty.
- How the modern liberal agenda violates the defining characteristics of human nature and ignores the essential realities of the human condition.
- How the modern liberal agenda corrupts the character of the people by appealing to their base instincts and undermining the constraints of conscience.
- How the modern liberal agenda’s ideas and goals are self-contradictory and logically inconsistent.
- Why the liberal mind believes in the irrational principles of the liberal agenda -- and what it takes to effect a cure.
- The Liberal Mind is the most comprehensive, intellectually-coherent analysis of political psychology ever published. The Liberal Mind will empower you to understand why the political madness of modern liberalism is destroying individual liberty in all corners of the world.
Order the book at: http://www.libertymind.com/
Read more excerpts from the book: http://www.libertymind.com/index.php?page_id=257
Vooraanstaande sielkundige sê Liberalisme is ‘n Afwyking
‘n Vooraanstaande sielkundige het tot die gevolgtrekking gekom dat liberaliste kranksinnig is en die ideologie van liberalisme as ‘n geestelike afwyking gediagnoseer.
Net toe liberaliste trots op hulleself begin voel het, het ‘n vooraanstaande sielkundige, dr. Lyle Rossiter die stelling gemaak dat die ideologie wat hulle aanhang as ‘n gevaarlike afwyking getipeer kan word.
“Gebaseer op totale irrasionele geloof- en emosionelesisteme, ondermyn moderne liberaliste die belangrikste beginsels waarop ons vryheid gevind is,” sê hy in sy boek: The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness: Hy sê dat liberaliste is soos woedende kinders wat teen alle normale verantwoordelikhede van volwassenheid rebelleer en eis dat ‘n vaderlike regering in al hulle behoeftes van geboorte tot die graf moet voorsien.
Dit is eienskappe wat die konserwatiewe vleuel lankal raakgesien het. Dr. Rossiter egter beskik oor die professionele kwalifikasies en het ‘n lewe vry van enige vorm “regse” aktivisme gelei.
Rossiter, ‘n kliniese en forensiese psigiater met 35 jaar ondervinding sê dat die liberalisme wat deur Obama en die Clintons geopenbaar word, slegs as sielkundige disfunksie verstaan kan word.
“‘n Sosiale wetenskaplike wat die menslike natuur verstaan sal nie die noodsaaklike rol van vrye keuses, vrywillige samewerking en morele integriteit negeer nie – soos wat liberaliste maklik doen,” sê hy. ‘n Politieke leier wat begrip het vir mense sal nie die verskille in talente, dryfkrag en werksetiek ignoreer en dan ekonomiese en sosiale gelykheid op die bevolking afdwing – soos wat liberaliste doen nie. En ‘n wetgewer wat begrip vir sy mense het sal nie wette en reëls maak wat die bevolking oor-reguleer, oor-takseer en sodoende hulle karakter verwring en hulle na voogdyskap van die staat laat daal nie.
Volgens hom teer die liberale agenda op swakhede en die gevoel van minderwaardigheid by mense deur:
* ‘n slagoffer persepsie te skep en te versterk;
* die bevrediging van infantiele eise vir behoeftes, bevrediging en vergoeding;
* te teer op primiewe gevoelens van jaloesie;
* die verwerping van die soewereiniteit van die individu deur alles omtrent hom onderhawig aan die wil van die regering te maak.
Volgens hom is die wortel van liberalisme en die gepaardgaande kranksinnigheid daarvan in die ontwikkeling van die kind. “Wanneer die moderne liberale kla oor denkbeeldige slagoffers, in woede reageer teenoor denkbeeldige skurke en bowe alles probeer om beheer van mense te neem wat self in staat is om dit te doen, is die liberalis as versteurde neuroot op sy sigbaarste,” sê hy.
Bron: http://www.dievryburger.co.za/2013/04/vooraanstaande-sielkundige-se-liberalisme-is-n-afwyking/
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