[The following first appeared at Eternity Road on February 25, 2008 – FWP.]
Your Curmudgeon strongly disapproves of psychologizing one's political or ideological adversary. For those unfamiliar with the term, "psychologizing" is the attribution of motives, character defects, or mental or emotional aberrations to one's adversary as the "real reasons" for his positions, instead of arguing against them on objective grounds. Persons who do such things are all too obviously seriously disturbed, dangerous to themselves and others, no doubt damaged by their toilet training traumas or failure to resolve their Oedipal conflicts before attaining puberty.
Hm. Well, anyway, by way of Cassy Fiano at Wizbang comes this example of the practice from a conservative, aimed (of course) at liberals:
Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder."Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."...
Dr. Rossiter says 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."
This is no more valid an approach to political argument than it was when liberal-leaning "scholars" in the University of California system claimed that their study proves that conservatives are inherently fear-ridden and deficient of imagination.
Back about fifteen years ago, your Curmudgeon first heard the political Left styled "bookless." It was an apt characterization, and remains so today. The Left has run through all its ideas, all have failed, and it can generate no new ones. If a new one were to happen along, liberal political strategists would have to weigh the consequences of adopting it -- contradicting standing liberal dogma; alienating a special interest; admitting to error -- against the consequences of not adopting it -- trundling along on the same tired slogans and failed policies. Therein lies the danger of assuming a pose of moral and intellectual superiority while selling one's movement to a coalition of interest groups.
But the Right is treading substantially the same ground. The "Republican Revolution" of 1994, so bravely begun, proved to be a wet firecracker. That wasn't because the ideas it had promulgated were bad ones, nor that its representatives were arrogant asses, but because once in power, Republican legislators overwhelmingly placed press approbation and "collegiality" above achieving what the voters had sent them to Washington to achieve. They allowed their victorious theses to be muddied by their conduct in office -- talking low taxes, free markets, and the rule of law while perpetuating the existing regime out of fear of criticism from their opponents and bad notices in the New York Times.
The Left can no longer write books; the Right has burned the ones it penned.
The Left seems a bit frenzied these days, frenzy being the behavioral evidence of having no new ideas, yet staring at the same old problems. But the Right is tinged with despair, having betrayed its ideological legacy, and seeing it badly stained by public disdain, for a mess of column-inches. Conservatives and libertarians had the intellectual assets with which to establish a truly enduring majority; they merely failed to act on them.
The Republican majorities of 1994-2006 are now only a memory, and Republican officeholders have only themselves to blame. Their overt ideology is still vastly superior to that of the Democrats, but their embrace of the privileges of power, and their preference for praise over the public interest, have tarnished it in a fashion that might take decades to cleanse. That's what you get for burning the books you've written. Psychologizing your opponents is no substitute for well thought out ideas and their faithful execution.
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