THE SANITY SQUAD - The Wimps of the West vs. The Mad Mullahs
In spite of the overwhelming technical problems encountered in making the last podcast, The Sanity Squad is now posted at Pajamas Media Politics Central! We have the reknowned Ed Driscoll to thank for fixing the recording and making it usable. We who are without technical know-how bow to his amazing talent!

In this go-around, the Squad analyzes the high stakes hold 'em game the Iranians are playing with the British (and the rest of the world). Iran seems awfully sure that the West is too conflicted and too corrupt to appropriately respond to their provocation of illegally seizing 15 British sailors and using them for political purposes (in direct violation of the Geneva Convention). What is going on in those clever little mullah brains as they play this dangerous game? What should the West do and why is their response to this crisis so important for the future of civilization?

Join Siggy, Shrinkwrapped, Neo-neocon, and me as we discuss the latest Iran Hostage Crisis and the Iranian agenda; including Ahmadinejad and his nukes; and the psychopolitical factors that obstruct and limit the Brits ability to respond. Will the Wimps of the West be able to act decisively against the Mad Mullahs? Tune into The Sanity Squad for psychological and political analysis of this escalating world crisis.

All podcasts of The Sanity Squad can be found here; and you can also download them from iTunes. (search for Pajamas Media)

(The Sanity Squad cartoon is drawn by Eric Allie, whose collection of political cartoons can be found here and here).
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 3:40 PM |

 
THE RETURN OF THE COPPERHEADSTINFOILHEADS
According to Wikipedia, the Civil War era "Copperheads":
"...strongly opposed the war, for which they blamed abolitionists, and they demanded immediate peace and resisted draft laws. They wanted Lincoln and the Republicans ousted from power, seeing the president as a tyrant who was destroying American republican values with his despotic and arbitrary actions.

Some Copperheads tried to persuade Union soldiers to desert. They talked of helping Confederate prisoners of war seize their camps and escape. They sometimes met with Confederate agents and took money. The Confederacy encouraged their activities whenever possible. [1] Most Democratic party leaders, however, repelled Confederate advances.

Some historians, such as Richard Curry, have downplayed the treasonable activities of the Copperheads, arguing that they were traditionalists who fiercely resisted modernization and wanted to return to the old ways."

Remind you of any modern-day "progressives" who want to return to the good old days and ways before 9/11? Mackubin Owen thinks it does:

The Copperheads exploited the North's widespread antiwar sentiment.

They actively interfered with recruiting and encouraged desertion. Indeed, they generated so much opposition to conscription – including armed resistance in some places and the infamous draft riots in New York City – that the Army was forced to divert resources from the battlefield to the hotbeds of Copperhead activity in order to maintain order. Many Copperheads actively supported the Confederate cause, materially as well as rhetorically.

The Copperheads were particularly dangerous because of the substantial influence they exerted on the Democratic Party. During the election of 1864, the peace Democrats wrote the party platform, and one of their own, Rep. George Pendleton of Ohio, was the party's candidate for vice president. Until Adm. David Farragut's victory at Alabama's Mobile Bay, Gen. William Sherman's capture of Atlanta, and Gen. Philip Sheridan's success in driving the Confederates from the Shenandoah Valley in the summer and fall of 1864, hostility toward the war was so profound in the North that Lincoln believed he would lose the election.

Fortunately for the country, the turn of events on the battlefield permitted a coalition of Republicans and "war Democrats" to reelect Lincoln in 1864. Of particular importance was the fact that Union soldiers voted overwhelmingly for Lincoln, abandoning the once-beloved Gen. George McClellan because of the perception that he had become a tool of the Copperheads.

Go ahead and read it all to see how the "tinfoilheads" of today have inherited the obstructionist--and treasonous--mantle of the Civil War copperheads. It's quite stunningly relevant.

Today's tinfoilheads have the same unreasoning hatred and bile directed toward the President. They aid and abet the goals of the enemy and prefer the path that weakens the country as long as it takes down the evil Republican President (Lincoln was a Republican, did you know?).

The tinfoilheads have no shame whatsoever as they pursue their political agenda--no matter what the cost. They can't even stir themselves to stand up for one of America's most important allies when an act of war has been committed against them--they are too afraid of the negative implications for their own antiwar posturing--a stance they take, not out of principle, but out of a desire to reassert a failed ideology and regain a position of power to implement it.

As, John at PowerLine puts it:

Lord knows the Democrats would not want to insert Congress into an international crisis. In the same spirit of non-insertion, Pelosi departed for the Middle East, where she will visit Syria, Israel and the West Bank. I suppose we should be grateful that she won't stop by to pay her respects to Ahmadinejad.

Nor would they want to admit that we have actually been fighting Iranian forces for some months now in Iraq. No, the tinfoilheads in the Democratic Party and the lunatic left (becoming more and more indistinguishable unfortunately) would rather take their idiotic conspiracy theories public; uninterested in any facts or examining their own premises. Denial and paranoia run deep in the psyche of the tinfoilheads, who would rather believe the country has more to fear from the "bloodthirsty tyrant" in the White House (how the Copperheads referred to Lincoln), than from terrorists in Iraq or Iran.

The truth is that the Copperheads in all their perfidy and treason have been reincarnated in todays antiwar tinfoil hat brigades, and they use the same style of rhetoric to actively work to defeat America and encourage tyranny.


- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:38 AM |

 
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
Charles Krauthammer makes perfect sense today (as always) in assessing the lame rationalizations of Democrats who insist that Afghanistan is strategically more important than Iraq:

Of all the arguments for pulling out of Iraq, its comparative unimportance vis- a-vis Afghanistan is the least serious.

And not just because this argument assumes that the world's one superpower, which spends more on defense every year than the rest of the world combined, does not have the capacity to fight an insurgency in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan. But because it assumes that Afghanistan is strategically more important than Iraq.

Thought experiment: Bring in a completely neutral observer -- a Martian -- and point out to him that the United States is involved in two hot wars against radical Islamic insurgents. One is in Afghanistan, a geographically marginal backwater with no resources, no industrial and no technological infrastructure. The other is in Iraq, one of the three principal Arab states, with untold oil wealth, an educated population, an advanced military and technological infrastructure which, though suffering decay in the later Saddam years, could easily be revived if it falls into the right (i.e. wrong) hands. Add to that the fact that its strategic location would give its rulers inordinate influence over the entire Persian Gulf region, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf states. Then ask your Martian: Which is the more important battle? He would not even understand why you are asking the question.

Al-Qaeda has provided the answer many times. Osama bin Laden, the one whose presence in Afghanistan presumably makes it the central front in the war on terror, has been explicit that "the most serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War that is raging in Iraq." Al-Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has declared that Iraq "is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era.''

And it's not just what al-Qaeda says, it's what al-Qaeda does. Where are they funneling the worldwide recruits for jihad? Where do all the deranged suicidists who want to die for Allah gravitate? It's no longer Afghanistan, but Iraq. That's because they recognize the greater prize.

The Democratic insistence on the primacy of Afghanistan makes no strategic sense. Instead, it reflects a sensibility.

But that is the fundamental emotional and irrational character of today's Democrats, who would rather wallow in their hatred of Bush to compensate for their own lack of integrity and gumption. These hallow women and metrosexual men that make up the Democratic leadership are immature, petty, and self-serving. Even combined, they fail to achieve a level of maturity superior to the most confused adolescent. What they desire more than anything is popularity. They repeatedly choose to do what is easy instead of what is right as they focus on the trivial and the ephemeral so that they can score points.

Their irresponsibility is turned into some sort of virtue, as they prance about claiming to do the "will" of the people. The same "will" that voted in George Bush in 2004 in the only poll that matters (but that didn't count).

Leadership means doing what is right, even if it is not popular. It means putting the interests of the country above one's own narcissistic needs. It means taking the time to understand the realities on the ground and applying sense, not emotion or wishful thinking to the problems that face us. It means working together for a US victory, not in saying with adolescent snarkiness that this is a "Republican war". What a bunch of children.

Gagdad Bob writes and I must agree with his diagnosis:

Ontologically, leftism is "the substance of nothing," which is why politically it is the party of nihilism. There is no leftism without the intoxicated celebration of tearing down, of thanatos, the death instinct. When I say Democrats are the party of death, I mean it quite literally, but as always, in a way that the leftist cannot possibly understand. This is why, when they read this, they will have the subjective experience that I am "hitting" them instead of teaching them. Which is why they keep coming back, because they wish to be hit, as it gives them sanction to hit back -- which is what they wanted to do to begin with.

Not only is the leftist destructive, but his primary unconscious identification is with a destructive or absent object instead of a nurturing one. Bear in mind that I am mainly talking about activists and true believers; respectfully, the majority of Democrats are basically too stupid, too busy, or too informed by habit to know what they are supporting, but have simply internalized a "ruling cliche" repeated endlessly by the MSMistry of Truth, such as "Democrats are for the little guy" or "Republicans only care about the rich." But the true leftist believer is a sick soul and a dangerous person, probably a sociopath, not in terms of the DSM, but in terms of their unconscious mental structure.

In the sense I am discussing, the sociopath is someone who, for whatever developmental reason, was not safely ushered into the human community by benign parental objects, but was excessively frustrated or traumatized, leaving them deeply alienated and cynical.

The immature Democrats are completely unable to lead, particularly in difficult times when sound judgment, moral clarity, and an ability to tolerate ambiguity and are essential. Indeed, in so many ways they have become the "party of death" but have managed to satisfactorilly disguise that reality within a faux compassion and concerned sensibility. In truth, they care for nothing but their own power.

I do not say this lightly, but I cannot be sanguine about the terrible toll their immaturity and malignant narcissism will take on this country and the world if they manage to get their way. Their profound irresponsibility and obtuseness is only highlighted by the fact that they have carefully, in advance, set it up so that even if the worse comes to pass, they will deliberately shirk any responsibility for their actions and externalize the blame onto the usual suspects.

But we will all end up paying the price for their dangerously juvenile inability to appreciate that their actions and willful denial of reality will result in serious and catastrophic consequences.




- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:11 AM |

 
ANOTHER TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE OF DISPLACEMENT
Displacement is a psychological defense mechanism that is in there among the ones classified as neurotic (along with intellectualization, repression, reaction formation, and dissociation). It can be defined as:

...the separation of emotion from its real object and a redirection of the [usually intense] emotion toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening

I have discussed at length this mechanism as the primary foundation of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS), particularly in its vilest, most virulent form exhibited by otherwise relatively normal people.

Captain Ed today links to an article from Germany that gives us another textbook example of displacement at work:

The German political establishment, which will no doubt loudly lament the result of the poll, is largely responsible for this wave of anti-Americanism. For years the country's foreign ministers fed the Germans the fairy tale of what they called a "critical dialogue" between Europe and Iran. It went something like this: If we are nice to the ayatollahs, cuddle up to them a bit and occasionally wag our fingers at them when they've been naughty, they'll stop condemning their women to death for "unchaste behavior" and they'll stop building the atom bomb.
That plan failed at some point -- an outcome, incidentally, that Washington had long anticipated. Iran continues to work away unhindered on its nuclear program, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reacts to UN demands with an ostentatious show of ignorance. The UN gets upset and drafts a resolution.

Another item on the Iranian president's wish list is the annihilation of Israel. But that will take a bit longer. In the meantime, just to make sure it doesn't get out of practice, the regime had 15 British soldiers kidnapped a few days ago. But it's still all the Americans' fault -- that much is obvious. ...

Not a day passes in Germany when someone isn't making the wildest claims, hurling the vilest insults or spreading the most outlandish conspiracy theories about the United States. But there's no risk involved and it all serves mainly to boost the German feeling of self-righteousness.

And, to add icing on the cake, the author, Claus Christian Malzahn, rightly points out the secondary gain that further enhances the psychological act of displacement as it improves the self-esteem of the person so engaged: it just makes them feel so good about themselves for speaking "truth to power".

Nevermind that from a psychological standpoint, it represents the psyche at its most cowardly, and deep in the throes of self-preservation. This is not necessarily a bad thing from a survival perspective. But what always gets to me is the high level of self-righteous, moral superiority and self-congratulation that always seems to go with the displacement.

The left practically have a corner on this defense mechanism these days. Their lack of insight and unwillingness to face either the truth about themselves (which is unbearable) or the real enemy that threatens their existence (which is too frightening).

Like a deer in the headlights, this particular form of denial keeps them immobilized and frozen, focusing on trivialities and blithely unaware of the lethal danger that is speeding toward them.

This reality and the consequences that go along with ignoring it are, of course, why displacement is considered neurotic and not a particularly healthy--or smart-- way of coping.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 2:21 PM |

 
"PERFECT' TOTALITARIANISM, IMPERFECT FREEDOM & BIOLOGICAL FANTASIES
Avaro Vargas Llosa writes in TCS about the impossibility of "perfect" totalitarianism (a perfect oxymoron, in my opinion):

What "The Lives of Others'' reminds us of -- and the reason it is such a timeless work of art -- is that man is capable of totalitarianism, but not perfect totalitarianism. Even when all the pegs are in place, something will alter the clockwork mechanism of the regime. That ``something'' is human nature, pure and simple. Nobody in the film is a perfect totalitarian in the sense that no one -- not the bosses, not the servants, not the victims -- acts in the way that the logic of the system dictates they should act in any given circumstance. There will be moments of weakness in the least humane of despots and moments of fortitude in the most hopeless victims that will shatter the perfect order of the totalitarian system.
The minister who uses the power of the Stasi to satisfy his libido rather than to preserve the German Democratic Republic's ideological purity, and who blacklists a theater director for reasons that have little to do with cultural orthodoxy, ensures that the system is less than perfect: His actions have consequences that in small ways subvert the order he is supposed to preserve by triggering the gradual disobedience of a subordinate, the moral awakening of an artist who has shown no prior penchant for rebellion, or the self-doubt of a woman torn between her career and her heart. Emotions, intuitions, and free expressions of will begin to erode the edifice of oppression in the most unpredictable circumstances....

The lesson of our time, a decade and a half after the fall of communism in Europe, is that the slow, almost geological, accumulation of little bits of heroism throughout society can bring down a totalitarian giant over time. These acts of heroism, both inside and outside the structure of power, constitute the best hope for countries in which governments continue to enslave millions of people today.

But even if these acts of silent heroism are not enough to cause all despots to come tumbling down, they are at least enough to keep the human spirit alive. That is a comforting thought.(emphasis mine)

It is indeed a comforting thought, especially in light of the unbelievable idiocy and totalitarian proclivities of some people in the teaching profession:

...the Hilltop Children’s Center in Seattle has banned Legos.

A pair of teachers at the center, which provides afterschool activities for elementary-school kids, recently described their policy in a Rethinking Schools cover story called “Why We Banned Legos.” (See the magazine’s cover here.)

It has something to do with “social justice learning.”
[...]
The root cause of Hilltop’s Lego problem was that, well, the kids were being kids: There were disputes over “cool pieces,” instances of bigger kids bossing around little ones, and so on.

An ordinary person might recognize this as child’s play. But the social theorists at Hilltop saw something else: “The children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive.”

This is probably as good an example as anything of the kind of biological fantasies that swirl around in the minds of tyrants not too dissimilar from those teachers. The teachers at Hilltop justify their particular brand of "selfless" tyranny and malignant narcissism by couching its oppression in terms like "social justice", but it is tyranny nonetheless. Because, unlike the capitalist system they abhor, where basic human nature--both the good and the bad parts--is harnessed and made socially useful, the ideologically-motivated teachers intend to stamp out all the parts of human nature they don't happen to like.

Someone should tell them it has been tried before, and by much smarter tyrants than they will ever be. It won't work.

A Cato Institute Policy Report from 2005 notes:

In the spring of 1845, Karl Marx wrote, ". . . the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations." Marx's idea was that a change in the "ensemble of social relations" can change "the human essence."

In June 2004 the communist North Korean government issued a statement to its starving citizens recommending the consumption of pine needles. Pyongyang maintained that pine needle tea could effectively prevent and treat cancer, arteriosclerosis, diabetes, cerebral hemorrhage, and even turn grey hair to black.

Tragically, human nature isn't at all as advertised, and neither is pine needle tea. According to the U.S. State Department, at least one million North Koreans have died of famine since 1995.

Marx's theory of human nature, like Kim Jong Il's theory of pine needle tea, is a biological fantasy, and we have the corpses to prove it. Which may drive us to wonder: if communism is deadly because it is contrary to human nature, does that imply that capitalism, which is contrary to communism, is distinctively compatible with human nature?

The Cato article goes on to discuss evolutionary psychology, which is a relatively new area of psychology that "seeks to understand the unique nature of the human mind by applying the logic and methods of contemporary evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology."

Somewhere between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene era, when humans adapted from a "hunter-gatherer" to "agricultural" mode of living, the physiology and structure of the human brain--and hence, human psychology--was finalized by the concerted environmental and biological pressures on the human species during the previous 1.6 million years. In other words, modern human beings have the brain of their stone age ancestors. Our brains are not designed specifically for the "modern" world that we live in.

The article goes into some of the recent research of evolutionary psychologist, who are trying to understand exacly what "human nature" is all about. Basically, the results of their research shows that we are hard-wired--and therefore psychologically the same "hunter-gatherers" of 50,000 years ago. OUr social interactions are thus defined and limited by those ancient humans. Their findings are:

- HUMANS ARE COALITIONAL
We tend to form into groups of 25 - 150 most easily. Larger groups--where we do not have face-to-face contact with other members, are instinctively considered less trustworthy; and we tend to think often in terms of "us" versus "them". Having said that, when we develop social institutions that reinforce this built-in coalitional tendency (e.g., representative, democratic government) social tensions are relaxed and societies can thrive. OTOH, when political rhetoric encourages people to identify themselves as members of groups with no biological basis (e.g., "rich" versus "poor") tensions rise and animosity interferes with social stability. Free trade, or capitalism, encourages us to be wary of other groups, but also wo view them as partners in mutually beneficial trade; rahter than as "enemies".

-HUMANS ARE HEIRARCHICAL
If you look around you will see evidence of this in every aspect of our life. Most social organizations have formal heirarchical structures (president, VP and the like). Even in area that aren't "formally" organized (e.g., high school or middle school) dominance and status issues are a primary concern of the students who vie with each other to be the most "cool". We so dislike being at the bottom of a heirarchy, that we naturally form coalitions that help to check the power of the dominant groups.

-HUMANS ARE ZERO-SUM THINKERS
We have difficulty in thinking of resources or wealth as ever-expanding, and tend to think that their gain must be our loss. This leads to envy and all the associated social and political conflicts. And yet, the first two characteristics (coalition and heirarchy forming qualities) show that by working together and engaging in mutually beneficial trade and thereby increasing productivity, wealth can be created beyond what we think it can. But this tendency from hunter-gatherer days makes us have difficulty understanding our own economic system (especially if coalitions are formed which enhance the "us" versus "them" thinking).

-PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE NATURAL
In order to prevent the allocation of all resources to those at the top of heirarchies, the recognition of individual property rights has been part of our make-up for thousands of years. Animals mark out territories for exclusive use in foraging, hunting, and mating--and so did our ancestors. This is "hard-wired" into our species as a survival tool.

-MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL EXCHANGE IS NATURAL
Trade, exchange, and division of labor are human universals that existed long before complex societal structures.

-WE CAN NAVIGATE THE "US" vs."THEM" CONUNDRUM BY TRUST
We have a biological capacity for and need to trust others. This psychological trust enables us to solve otherwise unsolvable social problems--e.g., how to deal with strangers; outsiders; and other groups. Without this biological instinct to give other humans the benefit of the doubt, complex social interactions are impossible.

An article in the LA Times titled "The Anatomy of Give and Take" discusses some recent research that tries to explain the economic interaction of humans, using high technology equipment such as MRI scanners. In one such experiment, two individuals are pitted against each other in an attempt to see which one could maximize their financial gain in the marketplace:

As the pair wavered between cooperation and betrayal, scientists recorded how their brains changed. The researchers hoped to discover the secret of trust — the human variable missing from the mathematics of modern economics.

The terms of the experiment were simple: At the beginning of each round, Belur could put up to $20 in play. Any investment automatically tripled. Tang then decided how much to return and how much to keep.

Belur's safest strategy was to hoard all of her money. Tang's most logical move was to cheat her partner at every opportunity.

There was a riskier but potentially more profitable way.

They could trust each other.

The experiment was part of a new frontier in the exploration of the brain — a field called neuro- economics that seeks to understand the biology underlying economic behavior.

In universities and research centers across the country, scientists are probing the brain with coin flips, $5 bills and gift certificates from Amazon.com. Bit by bit, they are assembling a mosaic of the financial brain, identifying how competing neural circuits shape decisions.

This is an example of a new scientific field known as "neuroeconomics", which trys to figure out why people trust each other, when economic theory says they won't. The field of evolutionary psychology has evidence that such trust is built into our brains, and it is what makes such economic activities as "trade" and "production" possible.

Matt Ridley, in his book The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation tackles this particular issue head-on (and is well worth reading, I might add).

The point of all this discussion is to emphasize that human nature must be taken into account as we evaluate the usefulness and consequences of certain economic and political systems that are advocated in the world today.

Humans are clearly well-suited to some economic and political systems and not to others. Some social, economic, and political systems--socialism and communism to be precise-- are nothing more than the Procrustean bed of mythology that try to adjust human nature to their "perfect" theories. That is why their implementation almost always end in either in catastrophic human misery and death (when the theory is applied ruthlessly and viciously) or stagnation and decay (when applied nonchalantly and accepted passively).

Many will say that it is capitalism that destroys humans, spiritually and physically, but they are incorrect; and all the evidence leans to the exact opposite conclusion. In fact, among social, political and economic systems, democratic capitalism is probably the one and only system that is most consistent with human nature in that it allows all aspects of human nature to express itself in socially acceptable ways that can benefit the individual and the society-at-large.

Capitalism does not pretend that those messy and omnipresent negative human emotions can be "stamped out" by the will of a tyrant or even an elementary school teacher in Seattle, for that matter. It accepts human nature as a given and provides a system through which humans are able to sublimate and redirect those negative emotions to better both themselves and incidentally the larger society. As economic systems go, this is a miraculous psychological breakthrough; and it is why capitalism dovetails so nicely with political systems that promote individual freedom and democracy. Altogether, these theories come as close to "perfection" as humans are likely to get--and it isn't accomplished by making humans survive on pine needle tea; or squelching their quite natural inclination to stake out a territory and mark it as their own.

And, far from encouraging the "survival of the fittest", capitalism encourages cooperation for mutually beneficial trade as well as for competition. Instead of encouraging war and dominance; capitalism thrives on trust and human cooperation; as well as alliances to maximize productivity and wealth creation.

Far from concentrating wealth in the hands of a few, capitalism makes it possible for anyone to accumulate wealth (contrast for example the number of people who earn over $100,000 a year in the U.S., with those do in Cuba. The only really wealthy person there is Fidel Castro and his cronies. Likewise, in Iraq, the only wealthy were Saddam and his thugs).

Envy and greed are both real human emotions that will always be part of the human condition, but only in a capitalist system can one transform both envy and greed into socially acceptable actions that improve one's own lot without attacking or destroying others. As Llosa's article on "The Lives of Others" demonstrates so clearly, it is actually in the totalitarian systems that emotions like envy and greed are allowed to run amok because they are pushed into the unconscious and given no healthy outlet. Because of that, their destructiveness in those societies is unchallenged and unparalleled.

Human nature is what it is. This is not at all tragic; it is a simple truth. The biological fantasies of the leftist utopians; and the delusional fantasies of communists and socialists and all their 21st century heirs, have lead to incalculable levels of human suffering all over the world, as the proponents of these theories have tried to force humans to evolve into some sort of "ideal" state.
All such systems have failed the real-world tests in the last century; and all current versions of these ideologies will also eventually fail and fade away. To the extent that they attempt to incorporate some aspects of "human nature" into their failing system, they may last a bit longer as they slowly chip away at the human spirit and work to extinguish it; but it is actually much more likely that human nature will transform the perverse ideology than that the reverse will happen.

What we see in the Middle East today is the re-assertion of human nature after years of being crushed under the oppression of yet another social system that has attempted to rebuild humans along the lines of a religious "ideal", spiked with totalitarian fantasizing. For all the opposition to giving democracy and freedom a chance in Iraq in Afghanistan, the seeds have been planted and there is little doubt that those seeds will grow as healthy human nature reasserts itself after decades of oppression.

Ask yourself how many deaths will it take before despots like Kim Jung Il with his theory of pine needle tea will be wholly and unequivocally discredited in the minds of those pathetic socialist teachers/oppressors at Hilltop Children's Center in Seattle? Oh, they would be so shocked!shocked! at the idea that their little exercise in "social justice" lays the moral foundation for a social system quite indistinguishable from Kim's paradise, where all structures belong to everyone and no one; where the individual means nothing and his desires and needs are subservient to the state; and where nothing is special and everything is "standard" (except of course for Dear Leader who looms rather large).

How much human misery and oppressive injustice will it take before the social engineers of today's neo-fascist left abandon their attempts to force human beings to adapt to their fantasies? When will their "moral awakening" occur? As SC&A noted once, " Utopias cannot be created without imposing tyranny.

In a post titled "Utopian Dreams and Nightmares" I wrote about the differences between today's left who advocate the New!Improved! versions of totalitarian ideologies; and the selfish capitalists they so despise:

The do-gooder leftist in all the various ideological incarnations--the antiwar crowd, the environmental crowd, the communists, socialists, and assorted collectivists--offers the rationale that he does what he does for the "common good" and for "social justice", "peace" and "brotherhood". His high-minded, self-righteous rhetoric justifies (to him anyway) imposing his will and beliefs on others for their own good; and he will not hesitate to use whatever coercive capablity he has at hand to get others to do what he wants and what he says.

The capitalist, on the other hand, is overtly out to pursue his own selfish profit, and understands he must use persuasion. That is, he must convince people that his ideas and the products of his mind are better than all the rest so that they will be willing to part with their hard-earned money to possess them. His desire for power over others is manifested in an indirect manner because people must wnat what he has to offer and believe that they will benefit from an interaction with him.

Imperfect freedom and selfish capitalism do not rely on biological fantasies for their implementation. That is why they work.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:56 AM |

 
INSANITY ROUND-UP
Well, due to technical difficulties, The Sanity Squad will not have a podcast this week (we recorded one, but the software malfunctioned--how insane is that?); so, I thought I'd direct you to some other choice links:

First for your midweek dose of insanity, head on over to see who won this week's Whacky Awards! I honestly don't know where Siggy finds some of these people, or what planet they hail from.


Next, GM Roper has a round-up of the psych-bloggers in this post, which is sure to help you analyze the political craziness that runs rampant today.

Last but not least, The Anchoress has put together an outstanding collection of links that take you from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Enjoy!
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 1:01 PM |

 
A MATTER OF PRIORITIES
Regarding the "sewage tsunami" in Gaza: (cartoons from Cox and Forkum)




I don't know why anyone is surprised at this. Hamas has made it clear what its priorities are and its agenda is no secret. What is really fun is to read the articles about this sewage story and notice how it is --as always--Israel and the Jews who are to blame for the poor plight of the hapless Palestinians.

And all the millions and millions of dollars in aid that the world has given to the Palestinian people has gone...for what?

Guess.

Keep that financial support coming!**



**This message of Peace and Social Justice was brought to you by the left, who doesn't have a f***ing clue.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:24 AM |

 
THE SANITY SQUAD - A New, Improved Iranian Hostage Crisis
This week, the latest podcast of The Sanity Squad at Pajamas Media focuses on the obsession with the confession of key Al Qaeda psychopath, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed (affectionately known as "KSM"), who has been singing like a bird in Gitmo. Whether that confession is the product of braggadocio and waterboarding, or the real deal, the question becomes: why are we so obsessed with the context of his confessions rather than the content of his crimes? As per usual, the MSM and the left are mostly obsessed with with inconsequential aspects of this malignant mass murderer's revelations of evil.

Can you say the word D-E-N-I-A-L ?

Is their confession obsession just another attempt to pretend that 9/11 was simply a sad and tragic event that just happened, like some sort of natural disaster; and not a horrific act of war on the scale of Pearl Harbor?

If you want to know about KSM, read this; then take a look at his confession. Is there anyone who doubts his stellar credentials as a mass murdering terrorist kingpin? Whether he's also a braggart or not is wholly immaterial. This is a guy directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent lives. But somehow, since his capture he has morphed into just one more "victim" of brutal American torture.

This is all part of the unbelievable insanity that continues to swirl around the prosecution of this war, the most "politically correct" war in history.

Join Shrinkwrapped, Neo-neocon, Siggy and me as we enter into the mind of a mass murderer; then into the mind of the mass media and the political left, who simply can't quite grasp the enormity of the evil we are up against in this war on terror--or just don't care.

All podcasts of The Sanity Squad can be found here; and you can also download them from iTunes. (search for Pajamas Media)

(The Sanity Squad cartoon at the right is drawn by Eric Allie, whose collection of political cartoons can be found here and here).
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 10:32 PM |

 
DON'T ASK
You can tell I'm in a really really bad mood today because this is the second song parody I've posted. It has just been one of those days. Don't ask.


A FEW OF MY LEAST FAVORITE THINGS

Bombs on "insurgents" and al Qaeda hideouts
Nancy Pelosi in one of her big pouts
Loud angry leftists with Che on their frock
These are a few of the things that I mock

Democrat leaders who froth and who blather
MSM marxists; Code Pink in a lather;
Moonbats who fly like those monkeys with wings
These are a few of my least favorite things

Murtha and Kerry and Gore in his green dress
Postmodern delusions make me ill, I confess
Moveon's George Soros who pulls the left's strings
These are a few of my least favorite things

When the truth bites
When what's real stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my least favorite things
'Cause nothing is quite...as bad!
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:34 PM |

 
REPRISE - THE IRANIAN CIRCLE GAME
Jack Kelly says that the British must respond firmly to Iran's provocations. Yeah, right.

"No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy," Lord Nelson said.

Lord Nelson, alas, was killed at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The captain of the HMS Cornwall is Commodore Nick Lambert, a more modern sort. He did nothing as six Iranian speedboats seized the boarding party from his ship as they were leaving the freighter they had inspected in Iraqi territorial waters.

The 14 men and one woman have been taken to Tehran, where the mullahs are threatening to try them as spies.

U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Erik Horner, executive officer of the USS Underwood, which shares patrol duty in the Shatt al Arab with the HMS Cornwall, expressed surprise that the British let their sailors and marines be taken without a fight.

"U.S. Navy rules of engagement say we not only have a right to self defense, but also an obligation to self defense," LtCdr Horner told the British newspaper the Independent. "Our reaction was 'Why didn't your guys defend themselves?'"

British rules of engagement "are very much de-escalatory, because we don't want wars starting," the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Alan West, told the BBC.

"Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back and that, of course, is why our chaps were, in effect, able to be captured and taken away," he said.

Lord Nelson never met Admiral West or Commodore Lambert, of course, but he knew the type very well: "If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain his opinion is against fighting," Lord Nelson said.

So Britain has responded to the seizure with stern words. "We have certainly sent the message back to them very clearly indeed," said Prime Minister Tony Blair. "They should not be under any doubts at all about how seriously we regard this act, which is unjustified and wrong."

But actions -- or in this case, inactions -- speak louder.

Read it all, because within this story we have highlighted and encapsulated the suicidal and absurd political correctness of the West as it deals sensitively with the Islamofascist thugs who make no bones about their intention of destroying us.

They provoke. We issue stern words. They escalate and use military force. We send diplomats to make nice. They tell us clearly and repeatedly what they their plans are. We don't believe them.

Personally, in addition to the tyrants in Iran, I blame Jimmy Carter; whose behavior under similar circumstances paved the way for making hostage-taking not only an effective strategy to use against the West, but also a way to get Western wimps to engage in an orgy of self-recrimination and hopelessness; as well as for leftists to indulge in the usual psychotic conspiracy theories.

But, I suppose, we can always hope that there is a leader in the West who can respond appropriately to the Iranians latest move in their circle game. And with that thought, let me reprise this blast from the past, sung to the tune of "The Circle Game":

THE IRANIAN CIRCLE GAME

Yesterday the UN got to wondering,
If Tehran would ever get a clue?
A fearful world could hear the mullahs thundering
That Islam had to have a nuke or two.

As Mahmoud ambles slowy through the seasons
And the mullahs play their games with the EU
They give words, excuses, promises and reasons;
Then provoke and bluster seemingly on cue.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the lying mullahs go up and down,
The West is captive to taquiyya every day
We can’t believe a single thing they say
Their words and deeds are lame...
So we go round and round and round
In their circle game.

Ahmadinejad waits for the 12th Imam now,
Sure that Blair or Bush won't rein him in;
And he's got those fifteen British prisoners
That he can use for diplomatic spin.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the lying mullahs go up and down,
We’re captive to taquiyya every day:
We can’t believe a single thing they say
Their words and deeds are lame...
So we go round and round and round
In their circle game.

The years go by and soon they'll have their weapon,
And the left will still be blaming Bush,
It's true;
Meanwhile Iran won't care what toes they step on,
As they proceed to wipe out all the Jews.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the lying mullahs go up and down,
We’re captive to taquiyya every day:
We can’t believe a single thing they say
It's just insane...
Can't someone put a stop
to their circle game?
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:36 AM |

 
TIME OUT OF MIND ***Updated***
Noemie Emery has a great column in The Weekly Standard that rips Time magazine for its assessment of the current Administration and conservatism. In "How the Right Went Wrong", the writers at Time seem to have conveniently forgotten how, in a similar analysis done toward the end of the Reagan's Presidency (1987), they unanimously dismissed his legacy; while in the new article, they wax nostalgic about what a great man Reagan was; a beacon of purpose and clarity, a statesman of genuine vision and character, dwarfing the pygmies who have frittered away his inheritance. But when he was president:

A dim bulb, leading an unpopular movement, and presiding, ineptly, over a culture of avarice: To be fair to Time, it was hardly alone in this assessment of Reagan, which at the time was conventional wisdom, expressed in a number of markets and venues, by the establishment press. In the book The Reagan Legacy, a collection of essays published in 1988, David Ignatius of the Washington Post called Reagan's foreign policy an out-and-out failure, and said he was leaving a legacy of terrible problems for administrations to come. "Compared to the Reagan record of nonachievement, former President Jimmy Carter looked like a master diplomat," intoned the author. "Because he concentrated so much on image rather than substance, Reagan leaves behind an array of unresolved substantive problems. His successor will inherit a collection of outdated strategic premises, alliances that don't quite adhere, [and] roles and expectations for America that no longer hold." In the book Landslide, published the same year, Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times and Jane Mayer, now of the New Yorker, reiterated the Time view of Reagan as reality-challenged, fact-averse, and inert in the face of catastrophe: "Far from bequeathing a dominant Republican party to his successor, Reagan no longer commanded even the conservative coalition that had brought him into power. Right wing activists who had rejoiced at his elections now dismissed him as impotent and soft."

Tumulty says the Republicans today are facing defeat in 2008, with a demoralized base and an electorate eager to change horses in Washington. According to McManus and Mayer, they faced the very same prospect in 1988: "When GOP voters were asked if they would vote for Reagan, only 40 percent said yes." And through Reagan's two terms, the New York Times's James Reston, arguably the era's most prominent establishment windbag, denounced the president unrelievedly as a showman and hypocrite who conned the American people into blithely supporting his inept and callous regime. It was on November 4, 1984, after Reagan had won his historic 49-state landslide, that Reston really unloaded, not only on how much he detested the president, but how much this feeling was shared by his peers:

Among the losers in this Presidential election campaign you will have to include the nosy scribblers of the press. Not since the days of H.L. Mencken have so many reporters written so much or so well about the shortcomings of the President and influenced so few voters. . . . Some editorial writers and columnists and most Washington reporters were on to his evasive tactics, easy cheerfulness, and unsteady grasp of the facts. They did not hesitate to point out his deficits, personal and fiscal, condemn his windy theorizing, and mock his zigzag contortions, but Mr. Reagan had the photographers and television cameramen for allies and proved that one picture on the nightly news can be worth a million votes. . . . It is said that the people get the government they deserve, which is undoubtedly true, and also that what they see is what they get, which is not true. For the world of television is the world of illusion, and what they see and hear--all those promises of peace and prosperity--are precisely what they are not likely to get in the next four years.
Peace and prosperity, of course, were exactly what they would get from Reagan.

Which it took Time and the Times 20 years more to admit.

Clearly a magazine with such a spectacular track record of failure in the prognostication of Presidential legacies has not earned the right to be taken seriously on such matters today. Either they were completely incompetent when they analyzed the events happening around them back in the 80's; or they were deliberately misinforming the public then and marching to their own ideological agenda. In either case, their opinions today are not worthy of any attention.

Rather than humbly admitting they haven't the slightest idea about how to assess the future's analysis of present events--except, of course their own wishful thinking; which happens to be exactly as useful as yours or mine--they instead, conveniently do not mention their previous incompetence and irrelevance as they arrogantly manipulate public opinion. And, of course, Time is not the only one; there is an whole cadre of leftist ideologues who have the same execrable track record on such prognostications.

During Reagan's confrontation with communism and the Soviet Union, the pundits and critics were completely unable to see or understand the key issues and wallowed in the same kind of hysteria and shrillness that we are subjected to today. They didn't know what mattered and what did not during Reagan's Presidency; they likewise haven't a clue about what will matter in the long run in assessing this adminisration's impact and all the changes and forces that have been set in motion by its actions.

If we go back even further in time, we can appreciate how completely irrelevant and useless the Time article-- and all such agenda-driven analyses--are when articulated during times of great change and social upheaval. John Dwyer at American Thinker, reminds us of the shrill and angry voices of retreat and surrender were present even when Abraham Lincoln was Commander-in-Chief during the Civil War:

Never Call Retreat was the last of eminent historian Bruce Catton's Civil War series. Section 3 of Chapter One is titled "The Politics of War." In it you will read the following

"During many unrewarding months of war, public men in Washington became convinced that the country's woes came from bad leadership. This belief was pessimistic but comforting, because there was always somebody to blame for misfortune, and so whenever bad news arrived, eloquent letters were written...Congressman William H. Wadsworth, a border state conservative, took heart after Fredericksburg (1862) ‘a nation which Lincoln and his controllers could not destroy in two years is immortal.' Ultra-radical senator Zachariah Chandler asserted that folly reigned supreme and complained of ‘fool or traitor generals.'

"....Reflective liberal-intellectuals like George Bancroft...summed up the complaint (about Lincoln's leadership) in a letter to fellow liberal Francis Lieber: ‘How can we reach our president with advice? He is ignorant, self-willed, and is surrounded by men some of whom are almost as ignorant as himself...what to do, when his power must continue for two years longer and when the existence of our country may be endangered before he can be replaced by a man of sense. How hard, in order to save the country, to sustain a man who is incompetent.'"

I would argue that, in the case of Iraq and the war against Islamofascism, America and despite cowardly congressional actions, America must never call retreat.

Of course, those histrionic and irrelevant voices of doom and gloom still desire to drag this country down into defeat and surrender (or, as Larwyn appropriately notes, Greenwald's message is: "Surrender Now! Before it's too late!") disguised as "realism". Their claim to being "reality-based" is based on the ludicrous "fact" that they are perfectly willing to face "reality" in order to acknowledge that defeat is the only option available.

Does it even occur to them that this willingness to "face reality" as they refer to it, is just another psychological maneuver (specifically DENIAL) meant to disguise an ideological agenda that wholly depends on American failure and defeat for its own success? That it is their wish/fantasy/desire--and not "fact" at all?

One conclusion we can surely make from the two historical examples noted above is that in times of crisis and change--particularly when major changes have been set in motion--no one can fully appreciate how things will settle out. It is at best a complex system upon which many things depend. Another truth that just jumps out at you from the above two examples is that wishful thinking based on ideology will always seems to trump critical judgment when it comes to perceiving reality.

There are few individuals who can stand outside the ideological boxes in which they willfully enclose themselves, and objectively evaluate all the ripples racing outward from the present into the future time-space continuum. In other words, all the bullshit we read today by so-called "historians" and "experts" about how the events in Iraq and the Middle East will be viewed tomorrow are not "history"--they are merely the ridiculous ramblings of today's ideologues and agendanistas trying to push their present agenda into the future. They willingly allow that agenda--whether it be mere partisan politics exercised for short-term gain; or the more malignant totalitarian politics of today's leftist anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-freedom group mindset--to distort not only the present, but to proactively distort the future.

You can bet that those who were incapable of seeing Lincoln's greatness or appreciating Reagan's vision live on today in mindset of all those sufferering from end-stage BDS and its co-occuring syndromes.

They will do almost anything to make you believe that they and they alone can predict how history will judge this administration. They will do anything to make you accept that history is a done deal and is on their side.

But history is on the side of reality; and reality is not something you can make-up or spin or simply feel. It exists outside of what anyone would like to believe or think or feel; no matter how comforting it may be believe a certain way.

I happen to be inclined to think that Bush will do just absolutely fine by history--just as Lincoln and Reagan did despite all their critics. Those critics and detractors were clearly not in their right mind and were mindlessly reacting to potent psychological forces that clouded their judgment and limited their ability to appreciate the reality and truth of their time.

A little humility and insight would have gone a long way, perhaps, then as now.

I certainly could be wrong in my own analysis, but I am willing to wait and see. Meanwhile, I know that we must never call retreat; and that whatever the cost, we must stand and fight for the values and freedoms that have made our civilization so great. I am not ready to surrender and submit; and I will do everything in my limited power to preserve the blessings of liberty for myself and my daughter's generation. I would rather my generation make the sacrifices today so that her's will not have to.

Today's doomsayers would have you believe that to be "progressive" a person must ignore the unpleasant reality of 9/11; and pretend that we are not at war with Islamic fundamentalism. Being "progressive" today amounts to marching backwards over that Clinton/Gore bridge; back to the much more comfortable and safe denial of the late twentieth century.

No, the political right--for all its policy failures and the omnipresent hypocrisy of many of its members-- has not gone anywhere near as "wrong" as the political left, who proudly would rather piss away all of Western civilization rather than face themselves in that mirror of insight.

And no matter what the final decision of history, you can be sure that the left will triumphantly congratulate themselves for their perspicacity and courage; even as the real heroes do all the work and make all the sacrifices; and as the real leaders bear all the burdens.



UPDATE: OTOH, certainly enough time has passed since Jimmy Carter was President for us to take a rational look at his legacy, which Jules Crittendon does in this post:

Jimmy Carter is proud of the mistakes he made in the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. He brags to this day of how he talked tough to the mullahs, conveying the message quietly that if any of the hostages were harmed, he would blockade Iran’s ports. He froze the Iranian government’s assets in the United Sattes and began what was essentially ransom negotiations with kidnappers.

Carter’s resolve not to do anything sent a clear message to Iran: It’s party time with American prestige and power in the world. The 53 hostages came home alive, and thousands of people have died since as a direct result of Iran’s boldness and deceit, including hundreds of Americans murdered in cold blood.

So, considering the historical evidence of his incompetence, appeasement and self-righteous bloviating (which continues to this very day); and considering the monster his policies actually created and continues to enable, why isn't the left protesting outside his door and carrying placards that attest to what a sanctimonious asshole he is? Just asking.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:22 AM |

 
CARNIVAL OF THE INSANITIES
Time for the weekly insanity update, where the insane, the bizarre, the ridiculous, and the completely absurd are highlighted for all to see! This has been a week of rare idiocy (as always!). So, if you want to remain sane, the best thing is to poke some fun at the more egregious absurdities.

And, while you are in the Mood for Madness, click on the image of Siggy on the right to go directly to the Weekly Whackjob Awards!

Send all entries for next week's carnival to Dr. Sanity by 8 pm ET on Saturday for Sunday's Carnival. Only one post entry weekly per blogger, please. And you might read this before submitting an entry.

Thanks for all the submissions. I try to use as many as possible! SO MANY INSANITIES! SO LITTLE TIME!!!

1. Uh-oh, the British soldiers are really in trouble now. As if the Iranians give a rat's ass about it. Meanwhile, British society is becoming more Muslim than Mohammed, some say... a nation of sheep! Elsewhere, a death notice has been put up.

2. Still only "freedom fighters", you know, fighting for the downtrodden; but actually, these particular animals' behavior is not "species-appropriate" either. At least we like to think so. Maybe not.

3. We no longer question their patriotism. They have none to question.

4. Not the public image this company wanted to portray....But maybe they were multiculturalists gone wild? Or, possibly ambassadors?

5. Hard-hitting, investigative journalism. Inquiring minds want to know. No, really? They have an agenda?

6. Whoa boy! Get out the conspiracy detection meter. And while you're at it, the cuteness detection meter. Both would be on overload! And how about an alien perspective on the Presidential candidates?

7. Did you ever wonder what the Beatles would sound like if they'd been from New Delhi, instead of Liverpool? Wonder no more. And he went where no man has gone (or ought to go) before.

8. Kung pao chickens. Somehow, this seems appropriate. As does the idea of "big sister". (Oh, regarding that latter link: turnabout is fair play)

9. Sand... Just go watch. And this too: Rachmaninoff had big hands. (another link to it)

10. Go ahead and ask what your country can do for you...it's all about you, isn't it? What we need is a dysfunctional personality warning system....

11. Some people just say one thing and mean a mother. Or, maybe they mean to go father?

12. A year without toilet paper? A bum deal!

13. St. Alfonzo's martyrdom... but it is not his fault!!

14. What do Janis Joplin and a grad-grubbing Charles Schumer have in common? (you'll never guess, so click on the link)

15. Too many cars? Way too many houses.

16. The Carnival of the Newbies and the Kharnival of the Iranities!

17. Procrastination is very taxing.

18. A march toward madness? Yet another march toward madness down the 'magnificent moronic mile'.

19. Levitating children is fun if you can get away with it!

***************************************
Carnival of the Insanities can also be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival and at the BlogCarnival.

If you would like to Join the insanity, and add the Carnival of the Insanities button to your sidebar (clicking on it will always take you to the latest update of the Carnival), click on "Word of Blog" below the button to obtain the html code:

- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:33 AM |

 
WE ARE ALL SERFS NOW
Caroline Glick today in the Jerusalem Post talks about some students at Cambridge University who had the sheer audacity to mock the hypocrisy of Muslims because they accuse British society of racial prejudice while at the same time calling for its violent destruction. How did these politically incorrect students mock them? By publishing in their student magazine some of the Danish cartoon caricatures on the one-year anniversary of that brouhaha. Reprisals--including death threats-- on the students by Muslims, their College, and the police were swift. Glick notes:

The persecution of these students provides a case study of the two-pronged offensive being carried out today against Western culture. First there are the jihadists, who call for our destruction. Then there are the leftist intellectuals and public figures who defend radical Islamists and work to silence those who criticize them by criminalizing speech and condemning free thinkers as racists.

The direct consequence of this two-pronged offensive is the repression of free thought.

Meanwhile, the free speech that is being promoted by these leftist "intellectuals" in this country includes defecating on the US flag.

None of these peaceful protesters would ever be so insensitive as to hurt the feelings of Muslims (even the most radical of them); but it is OK by them to trash and vilify America; carry around extremely vulgar and obscene signs depicting Bush and Cheney; signs saying "Death to the world's #1 terrorist pig Bush and his Sheep" and "Kill Bush Bomb His F--king House" and wearing t-shirts that say "We are all Palestinians Now".

You won't see a single one of these morons taking it to the streets for the rights of their fellow students to publish the benign caricatures on the right side of this page.

If, indeed, "We are all Palestinians now", then you will see no middle-aged, grinning hippie-type upset by the following facts of Palestinian life :

…Palestinian kindergartens teach their charges to march and sing the ditty, ‘HAMAS! HAMAS! JEWS TO THE GAS! It goes without saying that proud parents applaud. Not a word from Massad as children of suicide bombers appear on state television proudly parrot what they are taught hold up a hand, fingers outstretched and declare their pride in the mother that killed ‘this many Jews!’

That protester's sanctimonious hatred of America and Israel- sanctioned by leftist multicultural dogma--allows the "oppressed" masses in Palestine-- to get away with murder and child abuse...literally.

Nor will you see today's leftist feminists marching in solidarity with this woman ; or outraged by the pervasive institutional sexual hypocrisy and subjugation of women that is just "oppression business as usual" in the Middle East.

These "champions of social justice" have no time for such frivolous trivialities since they are proudly baring their breasts against American "imperialism" and aggression. They are defiantly "speaking truth to power", strutting their incredible cowardice in front of the cameras for all to see.

Because either they are too afraid to confront the real, malignant evil that is spreading like a cancer around the world; or, as Glick suggests, they are deliberately working in tandem with that evil, to overthrow freedom, democracy and enslave the world to its horrific vision.

In the first case they are in psychological denial and using displacement, projection and paranoia to avoid a lot of upleasant truths about their malignantly narcississtic selves. I won't discount the fact that they are also incredibly stupid, naive and malicious. It is likely there are elements of all those processes.

In the second case, they have allowed themselves to become--wittingly or unwittingly--a crucial part of that evil and indistinguishable from it--just like the protester below. Either way, they have chosen to drag us down the road to serfdom; and --God help us (or, as the Islamists say, Inshallah, Allah willing)--we will indeed all be Palestinians soon.


- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:01 AM |

 
ONE SMALL PSYCHOLOGICAL STEP FOR ACADEMIA...
...AND A GIANT LEAP FOR MARXIST/ISLAMIST 'SOCIAL JUSTICE'.

The story documented in the previous post demonstrates clearly the consequences of worshipping at the altar of multiculturalist / politically correct dogma. These ideas have been taken to the ultimate absurdity by the political left and we will all suffer for their irrationality.

In a case closer to home, John Podhoretz reminds us that those who preach this ideology always seem to escape unscathed from the havoc they create for others (read the entire article):

IT seems that the trumped-up charges against three young men who played for the la crosse team at Duke University will be dismissed either today or sometime next week.

That will mostly end their ordeal, though they'll still have to deal with millions of dollars in legal fees (which, in the end, the city of Durham, N.C., will probably have to pick up).

The same can't be said of their false accuser - who is in a world of trouble, since you're not supposed to make false accusations to the authorities...

Yet some of the most disgraceful actors in this case will go unpunished.

I'm referring to a huge cohort of the professors at the top-flight university attended by the three unjustly accused men.

Some 88 of them - more than 10 percent of the entire Duke professoriat - engaged in a shocking rush to judgment in the weeks following the party where the accuser falsely alleged she had been raped....

Since the academic work of those who organized the ad centers around the notion that the white male power structure subjugates and violates all those who are neither white nor male, the case was actually a dream come true for them...

So here the accusation of a race-and-sex crime falls right into their laps.

Ah! At last! Proof!

Here it was: Real-world support for their absurdly airy conspiracy theories....

So what if the lives of young men in their charge were at stake? It was time to "turn up the volume" - not to save countless African-American women from rape, but rather to justify their own ideas.

Do you begin to understand the intellecutal and moral bankruptcy of today's political left?

As a consequence of their unquestioning belief in a bankrupt ideology they have become the very essence of the evil they claim to oppose.

Because their ability to think rationally has been severely compromised by that ideology, today’s left is bereft of ideas and reduced to relying on mere Marxist rhetoric and tired, worn-out slogans that are trotted out in every circumstance and situation. They dare not face the real and pressing injustices of the world; instead, they mouth the multicultural and politically correct dogma, offically approved and sanctioned by the high priests of their ideology.

That female judge in Germany was only acting on the principle that all culures are equally good and wonderful--except for Western culture which is uniquely bad (The First Commandment of Multiculturalism). She understood clearly that the religion of Islam whose holy book sanctioned the beating of women must be correct, since Islam is clearly being oppressed by the patriarchal society of the West.

Those professors at Duke were only acting on the principle that any white, male patriarchal society and its members are guilty guilty guilty, no matter what the facts or truth may happen to be.

Don't wait up late at night waiting for an admission that they were wrong or that they made a mistake. In their ideology, that is not possible.

This is what passes today for "social justice" on the left. They march in the streets in solidarity with the Palestinian suicide bombers and murderers, while wearing the fashionable cute scarf popularized by the heroic personage of Yasser Arafat (while also sporting their Che T-shirts, of course).

Like the privileged academics at Duke, "...They're fighting the white patriarchy. They're on the side of the dispossessed and oppressed. They're giving voice to the voiceless. They're giving hope to the hopeless."

In short, they have morphed into the very worst kind of bigoted, sexist, and racist hatemongers they claim to be fighting against.

I wrote in that earlier post:

When confronted with the real evil that exists in the world, e.g..the reality of gays being tortured and murdered systematically in Islamic countries; or the reality of the oppression and humiliation of women; they recite facile multicultural and politically correct mantras that conveniently prevent them from making judgments about such behavior, or from having to take action to stop it.

Let’s face it. If feminists can adore Bill Clinton, even after Paula and Monica and all the sordid details; then it is only one small psychological step further down this path for them to embrace the institutionalized misogyny of Islam.

How long before those academics and their ideological handlers convince this country into taking that final psychological step into the swamp of nihilism and moral hopelessness?

How can they possibly live with themselves?
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:38 AM |

 
"NO CAUSE FOR ALARM"

He beat her and threatened her with murder. But because husband and wife were both from Morocco, a German divorce court judge saw no cause for alarm. It's a religion thing, she argued.

The Koran seems to have become the basis for a court decision in Frankfurt.
The case seems simply too strange to be true. A 26-year-old mother of two wanted to free herself from what had become a miserable and abusive marriage. The police had even been called to their apartment to separate the two -- both of Moroccan origin -- after her husband got violent in May 2006. The husband was forced to move out, but the terror continued: Even after they separated, the spurned husband threatened to kill his wife.

A quick divorce seemed to be the only solution -- the 26-year-old was unwilling to wait the year between separation and divorce mandated by German law. She hoped that as soon as they were no longer married, her husband would leave her alone. Her lawyer, Barbara Becker-Rojczyk agreed and she filed for immediate divorce with a Frankfurt court last October. They both felt that the domestic violence and death threats easily fulfilled the "hardship" criteria necessary for such an accelerated split.

In January, though, a letter arrived from the judge adjudicating the case. The judge rejected the application for a speedy divorce by referring to a passage in the Koran that some have controversially interpreted to mean that a husband can beat his wife.

Even the female judge saw through this thinly veiled (no pun intended) attempt to suggest that Western values are anything but evil and oppressive.

NOTE TO FEMINISTS: This is a case of multicultural relativism at its finest! You should be proud! Keep up the good work.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 4:50 PM |

 
THE DEMOCRAT'S NARCISSISTIC NARRATIVE OF DEFEAT
Surge, what surge? If you look at the news headlines and the buzz in the blogsphere, there is nary a word about surges.

Just a few short weeks ago Democrats were quite adamant that a surge of troops into Baghdad was a god-awful and foolish idea. Who seemed to be saying that it was sheer stupidity to imagine that anything the US could do would change the hopeless quagmire that is Iraq.

Fooled again.

This week, antiwar protesters are sitting in the offices of Democrats who they say aren't working quickly enough or enthusiastically enough to suit them.

The antiwar protesters are worried, you see. What will happen to them and their cause, if the unthinkable happens? That is, if things start to improve in Iraq. Imagine how discouraged they must already be to have discovered just the other day that Iraqis are "optimistic"; and that they don't believe their country is in the middle of a "civil war".

It sounds to me like the leftist template for this war is in danger of being cracked wide open. The most recent antics of the antiwar clownscan hardly be taken seriously by any adult. They only expose themselves as immature, silly, and grossly out of touch with reality. Scroll down through the pictures at the link above to get a full flavor of how the left "supports the troops". They appear to pride themselves on their cleverness and irreverent use of profanity and vulgarity--as if somehow this makes them real grownup people and not simply a bunch of narcissistically self-absorbed adolescents.

Rich Lowry has this to say:

When President Bush announced a surge of troops into Baghdad in January, Democrats pounded him for the folly of putting U.S. troops in the “middle of a civil war.” Two months later, the question is, What happens to a civil war if only one side shows up to fight it?

The Shia militias that had become the main driver of violence in Baghdad are ducking and covering. Mlitia leader Moqtada al-Sadr is in hiding, perhaps in Iran. His fighters aren’t resisting U.S. troops who have begun conducting patrols in his stronghold of Sadr City. According to Gen. Dave Petraeus, 700 members of Sadr’s Mahdi Army have been detained in recent months.

This hardly means that peace and harmony reign in Baghdad, but it has reduced the killing significantly. If at the beginning of the year anyone had predicted such progress from the addition of just two U.S. combat brigades in Bagdad (six brigades eventually will be part of the surge), he would have been derided as a delusional optimist.

This progress might be transitory, but it illustrates the falsity of a key assumption of Democrats. They prefer to talk of Iraq in terms of a civil war because it suggests that nothing can be done about the violence, that it is running its own hermetic course. Well, it clearly isn’t. What the U.S. does matters. If we hadn’t surged, Baghdad already might have descended into the genocidal fury toward which it was headed earlier in the year.

....According to a U.S. intelligence report quoted by the New York Times, captured materials from al Qaeda in Iraq say that the group sees “the sectarian war for Baghdad as the necessary main focus of its operations.” So the Democrats profess to want to fight terrorists in Iraq, and al Qaeda in Iraq is making Baghdad its focus. It would stand to reason, then, that the Democrats wouldn’t want to undermine our effort to control Baghdad. Our counterinsurgency mission there is a counterterrorism mission. It aims to squeeze out terrorists, neighborhood by neighborhood.

Nonetheless, Democrats in the House and Senate are attempting to force our troops from Baghdad, exactly as al Qaeda in Iraq wants. There is an essential symmetry to the goals of Sunni militants and Democrats here at home with regard to the disposition of our forces — the fewer, the farther away from Baghdad, the better (needless to say, for vastly different reasons).

Lowry goes on to say that each side--the opposition to the war and the supporters of the war--are completely invested in their respective narratives of the war. The left is invested in a narrative of defeat; while Bush and his allies are invested in a narrative of success.

Think about that carefully for a moment.

A significant portion of our population is completely invested in making sure that the US suffers a significant military defeat at the hands of an enemy who find it perfectly acceptable to do things like this; and this.

Oh yeah, how could I forget. The compassionate left and the Democrats are adamantly against this war (and all wars, of course), "for the sake of the children."

Mouthing the usual platitudes; frolicing semi-naked in the streets for the sake of "peace"; or engaging in pious--and meaningless-- posturing during Congressional debates makes all of them feel so darn good about themselves and what great guys and gals they are, though.

It's hard to ask them to give up their narrative of defeat when so much of their precious self-esteem is utterly dependent on it. I wouldn't want to hurt their feelings or anything.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:50 AM |

 
LITE BLOGGING, GREAT LINKS
Sorry for the light blogging. I am under a deadline to finish a major project by the weekend and haven't had much time.

So, let me give you a few links to enjoy!

Siggy has posted his Wednesday Weekly Whacky Awards -- and this week you are in for some serious insanity. This week, pay particular attention to the Thomas Szaz Psychotherapy Award and the HRT Prize. Unbelievable.

If you have not read Gerard Vanderleun's incredible piece at American Digest that discusses the 4th anniversary of the Iraq war, then go and read it. I linked to it before, but it is really excellent and worth your time.

Fausta's blog has been banned in China! She tells me that Dr. Sanity has also been banned. I sincerely hope so!

The Anchoress has a list of great links up herself--she does all the work, I link to her!

And, Susan Estrich pays tribute to Cathy Seipp, who passed away this afternoon quietly.

That's all for now. I'll be back blogging tomorrow sometime.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:30 PM |

 
THE SANITY SQUAD: Confession Obsession
This week, the latest podcast of The Sanity Squad at Pajamas Media focuses on the obsession with the confession of key Al Qaeda psychopath, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed (affectionately known as "KSM"), who has been singing like a bird in Gitmo. Whether that confession is the product of braggadocio and waterboarding, or the real deal, the question becomes: why are we so obsessed with the context of his confessions rather than the content of his crimes? As per usual, the MSM and the left are mostly obsessed with with inconsequential aspects of this malignant mass murderer's revelations of evil.

Can you say the word D-E-N-I-A-L ?

Is their confession obsession just another attempt to pretend that 9/11 was simply a sad and tragic event that just happened, like some sort of natural disaster; and not a horrific act of war on the scale of Pearl Harbor?

If you want to know about KSM, read this; then take a look at his confession. Is there anyone who doubts his stellar credentials as a mass murdering terrorist kingpin? Whether he's also a braggart or not is wholly immaterial. This is a guy directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent lives. But somehow, since his capture he has morphed into just one more "victim" of brutal American torture.

This is all part of the unbelievable insanity that continues to swirl around the prosecution of this war, the most "politically correct" war in history.

Join Shrinkwrapped, Neo-neocon, Siggy and me as we enter into the mind of a mass murderer; then into the mind of the mass media and the political left, who simply can't quite grasp the enormity of the evil we are up against in this war on terror--or just don't care.

All podcasts of The Sanity Squad can be found here; and you can also download them from iTunes. (search for Pajamas Media)

(The Sanity Squad cartoon at the right is drawn by Eric Allie, whose collection of political cartoons can be found here and here).
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:36 AM |

 
WHEN KARL MET SIGMUND--Second Time Around
Yesterday a commenter suggested that I not quote or refer to my previous posts so much. I hate to disoblige him, but, not possessing infinite time, I do what I can to discuss as succinctly as possible some very complex issues (my critics would say that I am hardly succinct, and at times they are absolutely correct). Rather than include arguments from my older posts in which I have talked relevant ideas, I will just link to those posts. Some people will read them, and some won't. Nevertheless, I link to them so that I don't have to repeat myself or my arguments/ideas over and over.

Today I am going to upset that commenter even more! I am going to reprint an older post from August of last year, because it is relevant to the other post today; and because I am pretty much overwhelmed with non-blogging work. Additionally, it has multiple links to even earlier posts of Dr. Sanity!

So, like it or not, here is take 2 on "When Karl Met Sigmund":

Many have observed that the fields of psychology seems to attract those on the political left. As far as I can tell, there is no really good explanations about why this should be, but I have a theory.

It is a theory that goes back to when Marx met Freud--not literally, but intellectually. For Marx's followers, it was love at first sight. But for poor Sigmund, the relationship was toxic--at once popularizing his thoughts among the intelligentsia, but at the same time distorting them out of all recognition.

Let me explain.

We will have to go back to the first half of the 20th century to understand how and why this all came about.

In the 30's and 40's it became increasingly clear to Marxists that something was fundamentally wrong with the master's economic hypotheses. Like the followers of Jesus, they had been waiting so long for the expected collapse of capitalism, and had been so encouraged by the Great Depression, they expected that it wouldn't be long now.

But like a bad dream, capitalism rebounded stronger than ever.

Why, they asked themselves, are the proletariat not rising up in rebellion against the oppressive forces of capitalism?

By the 50's, capitalism was actually flourishing, and so too were Marx's "oppressed proletariat". Far from rising up against their "oppressors", they were buying into the capitalist system and the "American Dream". The sharp differences between the classes was eroding, and more and more of those in poverty were finding their way into the middle class and gaining hope for themselves and their children.

Not only that, the proletariat astonishingly seemed relatively happy and content!

Happy and content people do not generally initiate violent revolutions nor rise up against their oppressors--particularly when they don't feel oppressed, but feel empowered.

And, furthermore, much to the puzzlement and subsequent rage of the intellectuals, in those places in the world where socialist and communist theory had triumphed, wealth was disappearing; initiative was in decline; and the human misery index was climbing.

The "great experiment" in the Soviet Union was failing abysmally; and in 1956, when Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary and violently crushed all dissent, it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that the socialist utopias were not all they were cracked up to be. Even today, many on the left cannot bring themselves to admit that the application of Marx to the real world had only succeeded in bringing about abject poverty, misery, death, and slogans. Many many slogans.

Instead of creating a utopia for the proletariat, Marx and his theories only generated the conditions for societal suicide.

One might have hoped that the resultant rage and frustration of the intellectuals who mastermined the whole thing could have been directed inward, resulting in a suicide pact that would have eliminated them from history.

History was not so fortunate.

Instead, it was about this time that Karl's descendents met Sigmund. In searching around for explanations for the sad failures of Marxism, Freud's theories of the unconscious seemed like a lifeline--a potential explanation of why everything had gone wrong.

Instead of blaming the theory, they blamed human nature.

Instead of understanding how capitalism worked with human nature, instead of against it, they claimed that capitalism had psychologically repressed the proletariat!

If only they could tap into that instinctual energy, then they could have control over the proletariat and bring about the desired political and economic result.

So it was that the relationship was initiated. As Stephen Hicks notes (pg 167-8):

...Marcuse concluded [that] capitalism's repression of human nature may be socialism's salvation. Capitalism's rational technocracy suppresses human nature to the point that it bursts out in irrationalisms--in violence, criminality, racism, and all of societies other pathologies. But by encouraging those irrationalisms the new revolutionaries can destroy the system. So the first task of the revolutionary is to seek out those idividuals and energies on the margins of society; the outcast, the disorderly, and the forbidden--anyone and anything that capitalism's power structure has not yet succeeded in commodifying and dominating totally. All such marginalized and outcast elements will be "irrational," "immoral," and even "criminal," especially by capitalist definitiion, but that is precisely what the revolutionary needs. Any such outcast element could "break through the false consciousness [and] provide the Archimedian point for a larger emancipation."

As I noted in this post, Freud argued that human instincts are indeed out of sync with modern civilization; and that aggression and other instinctual needs, once absolutely necessary for survival in a dangerous world, are now frequently only archaic impulses that impede our ability to live happily in the present day and age.

He posited that the same aggression that was once directed towards survival, in the modern era is frequently turned inward, to the self, rather than outward toward the environment, and causes the psychological phenomenon of depression. In psychiatry we refer to this as "aggression turned inward".

But the mistake the Marxists made in marrying their theory with Freud was in thinking that somehow this fundmental aspect of human nature was only present under capitalism. If they thought for a moment, they might have realized that violence, racism, criminality and all the other pathologies of society, are actually pathologies of the individual--independent of the society.

Individual human nature must be taken into account when one evaluates the usefulness and consequences of certain economic and political systems that are advocated in the world today. Humans are clearly well-suited to some things and not to others.

But there are some social, economic, and political systems that like to indulge in biological fantasy and place human beings on a Procrustean bed to try to adjust human nature to their theories. The more out of touch with reality are the biological fantasies , the more the society tends toward catastrophy, human misery, and death. The worse of those societies are engaged in constant war/jihad and domination over others. You can identify them by the accumulation of wealth in the leaders as the followers become more and more impoverished.

The left somehow continues to believe that capitalism is what brings these things to pass, despite all historical evidence to the contrary. The truth is that, among social, political and economic systems, democratic capitalism is probably the one and only system that is most compatible with human nature.

Although portrayed as encouraging the "survival of the fittest", capitalism simultaneously encourages cooperation for mutually beneficial trade as well as competition. Instead of encouraging war and dominance; capitalism encourages trust and human cooperation; as well as alliances to maximize productivity and wealth creation. Far from concentrating wealth in the hands of a few, capitalism makes it possible for anyone to accumulate wealth (contrast for example the number of people who earn over $100,000 a year in the U.S., with those do in Cuba. The only really wealthy person there is Fidel Castro and his cronies.

But the Marxists of the mid 20th century were correct in a way, when they started their love affair with Sigmund. Freud's theories do indeed explain why capitalism is successful in the real world and marxist theory is not.

Capitalism allows the basic nature of man to creatively express itself by mastering the physical world. The instinctual energy Freud spoke of is directed away from the destructive pursuit of power over other people and sublimated toward acts of creation, which further both the individual's life and all of civilization.

The Marxist intellectuals big mistake was in not recognizing the difference between repression and suppression. And in not understanding the way psychological defense mechanisms work.

They correctly noticed that the instinctual energy of the proletariat was being harnessed both for the individual's good as well as the society under capitalism; and yet were unable to appreciate the fact that unless you accept the reality of human nature and give it the freedom to transform all its most negative aspects into something positive for the individual and the culture/society, then you end up crushing all human initiative, creativity, and productivity.

Societies can either encourage the development of healthy, mature psychological defenses with which to cope with reality; or they can encourage the development and expression of the worse aspects of human nature--i.e., those which result in violence, racism, criminality and all the other pathologies. Either way, social, political and economic systems can only encourage certain human traits that result in civilized behavior; or, they can encourage those that are barbaric and antisocial. Human nature is the same, though, no matter what type of society or political system it finds itself in.

Simply put, totalitarian systems--whether from the left or the right (and that includes Marxism in any of its incarnations, whether religious or secular)-- actively promote the most negative, primitive, and immature aspects of human nature. In fact, they give a societal/institutional blessing to such behavior; and thrive on the resulting projection, paranoia, distortion, and denial of reality.

So the relationship between Marx and Freud has not really accomplished what the left's intellectuals wanted. Instead of diagnosing the pathology of capitalism, real understanding of Freud's psychological theories actually exposes the inadequacies and fatal flaws of Marxist theory.

Because nowhere is there more violence, naked aggression, envy, greed, oppression, racism, injustice, slavery, poverty, and misery than in the shining examples of socialism and communism in today's world.

So, getting back to my theory of why psychology seems to attract so many on the left. It relies on the fact that many of those who pursue advanced education are, by the time they reach college, pretty much already immersed and completely brainwashed by the ubiquitous Marxism that infuses almost all aspects of K-12 education. And modern Marxism relies heavily on the popularized and distorted tenets of Freudian thought for its continued existence.

Therefore they tend to be already invested in the psychological holy trinity: the deification of victimhood; the supremacy of feelings over reason, and the glorification of self-esteem over self-control; and are predisposed to think of a career in psychology as the heroic pursuit of "social justice" for the poor, unhappy and oppressed masses.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 10:56 AM |

 
21st CENTURY REPETITION COMPULSION
While Barbara Walters is busy sucking up to Hugo Chavez, I wonder if her inquiring mind is even aware of the damage this wonderful and passionate guy is doing to Venezuela's economy? (hat tip: Instapundit)

Venezuela is knocking three zeros off the bolivar, its currency, and renaming it the "bolivar fuerte" (strong bolivar). This is an effort to cope with rising inflation. Inflation has spiked in recent months due to Mr Chavez's very expansive fiscal policy, and capital flight following recent nationalisations. Mr Chavez will also reintroduce the locha, or half-quarter, which was phased out in the 1970's. Venezuelan children may see their pocket money go less far, but at least they will be mastering decimals.

Ahhh. The wonders of socialism!

You would think that this "charming", "passionate", and "intelligent" man might have learned from the economic debacles that socialism wrought in the 20th century. You would think he could look around the world and grasp that a country's embrace of socialist and communist principles is directly proportional to its level of poverty and misery. And that even in the so-called "advanced" and "enlightened" European Union (socialism lite), life is deteriorating.

And, in spite of the disastrous and traumatic effects of socialism and communism during the last century; despite the millions of people who suffered economically, politically, and personally because of the inherent sickness of these ideologies--no matter whether they are implemented by ruthless, oppressive dictators or by delusional do-gooders ; today there appears to be a revival of sorts going on, with opportunists like Chavez leading the festivities in this part of the world. They have managed to bury the horrors that socialism and communism wrought in the last century deep down in nether reaches of their unconscious--as if they had never occurred.

I have often wondered if the political left in the 21st century hasn't been suffering from some sort of bizarre group manifestation of a pattern of behavior Freud called "the repetition compulsion". This is a psychodynamic situation where a person repeats a traumatic event or something having to do with it over and over again in an attempt to deal with it. This time, the person says to himself, it will turn out differently.

It never does.

Venezuela's economy will hardly be on the fast track to improve over time by implementing tion Chavez' glorious socialist policies. Nevertheless, the compulsion dictates that he will use the worsening economic situation to enhance his rhetoric (and incidentally consolidate his own power) against the U.S.and Bush, who have already been set up as the external fall guy to blame for Venezuela's descent into further poverty. He may even designate some group internally as the culprit (you know, a group like the "Jews" or perhaps businessmen--he has some room for creativity here)

It won't be Chavez' fault; nor will socialism or communism be faulted--especially if Chavez can successfully whip the people of Venezuela up into a frenzy of projection and paranoia.

Ahhh. The wonders of individual and group psychopathology!
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:28 AM |

 
CONDITIONED RESPONSES
Michael Barone at RCP:

"They always blame America first." That was Jeane Kirkpatrick, describing the "San Francisco Democrats" in 1984. But it could be said about a lot of Americans, especially highly educated Americans, today.

In their assessment of what is going on in the world, they seem to start off with a default assumption that we are in the wrong. The "we" can take different forms: the United States government, the vast mass of middle-class Americans, white people, affluent people, churchgoing people or the advanced English-speaking countries. Such people are seen as privileged and selfish, greedy and bigoted, rash and violent. If something bad happens, the default assumption is that it's their fault. They always blame America -- or the parts of America they don't like -- first.

Read it all.

This conditioned response on the part of the academics, the intellectual and Hollywood elites is a result of many years of devouring a toxic diet made up of postmodern drivel, political correctness, and multicultural relativism--all of which feeds their already over-inflated egos, while starving their brains. Like Skinner's rats, they have been conditioned to respond automatically to certain cues; and Barone is perfectly correct when he concludes his piece, by quoting one of the few people in the Democratic party who have broken out of the leftist Skinner box and "gets it":

"There is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism," Sen. Joseph Lieberman said in a speech last week. What is profoundly wrong is that too many of us are operating off the default assumption and have lost sight of who our real enemies are.

- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:06 PM |

 
THEY'LL NEVER ADMIT IT'S GETTING BETTER
Iraqis say that life is getting better:

MOST Iraqis believe life is better for them now than it was under Saddam Hussein, according to a British opinion poll published today.
The survey of more than 5,000 Iraqis found the majority optimistic despite their suffering in sectarian violence since the American-led invasion four years ago this week.

The Democrats beg to differ, of course. The left just wants the nightmare (theirs) to end. Can't you see the harm that a victory in Iraq would do for their lovely socialist cause? And wouldn't you just know that a new poll specifically designed to counter any optimism would come out at the same moment....

Vanderleun has taken the measure of these pathetic little postmodern purveyors of hopelessness and doom, and gets it exactly right (hat tip: Larwyn):

Four years in. An inch of time. Four years in and the foolish and credulous among us yearn to get out. Their feelings require it. The power of their Holy Gospel of "Imagine" compels them. Their overflowing pools of compassion for the enslavers of women, the killers of homosexuals, the beheaders of reporters, and the incinerators of men and women working quietly at their desks, rise and flood their minds until their eyes flow with crocodile tears while their mouths emit slogans made of cardboard. They believe the world is run on wishes and that they will always have three more.

Like savages shambling about some campfire where all there is to eat are a few singed tubers, they paint their faces with the tatterdemalion symbols of a summer long sent down to riot with the worms. They clasp hands and sing songs whose lyrics are ash. "We shall... over... come." Overcome what, overcome who? Overcome their own nation? Is that their dream? It is the lifelong dream of those that lead them, that much is certain.

Four years in and we see these old rotting rituals trotted out in the streets like some pagan procession of idols and shibboleths, like some furred and feathered fetish shaken against the sky by hunkering witch-doctors, to hold back the dark, to frighten off the evil spirits and graven images that trouble the sleep of the dreamers.

Four years into the most gentle war ever fought, a war fought on the cheap at every level, a war fought to avoid civilian harm rather than maximize it. Picnic on the grass at Shiloh. Walk the Western Front. Speak to the smoke of Dresden. Kneel down and peek into the ovens of Auschwitz. Sit on the stones near ground zero at Hiroshima and converse with the shadows singed into the wall. Listen to those ghost whisperers of war.

Four years in and the people of the Perfect World ramble through the avenues of Washington, stamping their feet and holding their breath, having their tantrums, and telling all who cannot avoid listening that "War is bad for children and other living things." They have flowers painted on their cheeks. For emphasis. Just in case you thought that war was good for children and other living things.

There were children and other living things on the planes that flew into the towers.

I want to excerpt the entire piece, it is so perfect. But you will have to go there and read it all.

And, since they have chosen to use John Lennon's Imagine as the holy bible for their utopia, I think it only fitting that I use as my parody template Lennon and McCartney's "Getting Better". Something the Democrats and left will never--under any circumstances and no matter what the actual facts are--will say about the situation in Iraq.

WE'LL NEVER ADMIT IT'S GETTING BETTER

It's fun to get mad at the Prez
And trash everything that he says
He's holding us down, making us frown
We'd rather love Hugo Chavez!

We'll never admit it's getting better
Here at home or in Iraq
We'll never admit it's getting better
'Til we get the White House back.

We used to be happy, you see
But now we're the knights who say NIE
Iraq got to vote
But we really hope
That no one pretends they are free.

We'll never admit it's getting better
We stand for nothing and have no plan
We simply hate to admit it's getting better
And we hate that we lost and that now he's the boss
And we'll thwart him as much as we can.

We'll never admit it's getting better
Here at home or in Iraq
We'll never admit it's getting better
'Til we get the White House back.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:38 AM |

 
CARNIVAL OF THE INSANITIES
Time for the weekly insanity update, where the insane, the bizarre, the ridiculous, and the completely absurd are highlighted for all to see! This has been a week of rare idiocy (as always!). So, if you want to remain sane, the best thing is to poke some fun at the more egregious absurdities.

And, while you are in the Mood for Madness, click on the image of Siggy on the right to go directly to the Weekly Whackjob Awards!

Send all entries for next week's carnival to Dr. Sanity by 8 pm ET on Saturday for Sunday's Carnival. Only one post entry weekly per blogger, please. And you might read this before submitting an entry.

Thanks for all the submissions. I try to use as many as possible! SO MANY INSANITIES! SO LITTLE TIME!!!

1. The argument against using any military action has been going on for decades. Amazing!

2. You can almost certainly lay the blame at his door. He is evil, after all. But, let's face it, not as evil as those ominous totalitarian theocrats just waiting to take over the US.

3. Some guy sent him. Then he outed her. A tale of two crimes.

4. Apologize at once to adulterers! How dare you offend those poor anti-semites! And stop insulting our civilization, for god's sake!

5. A variant of BDS according to experts. Note that it's perfectly ok to insult them. Heh. The "Islamo-Chavez" threat. I like it. OTOH, some idiots seem to think that the totalitarian vision of Chavez is strangely "empowering." I believe they said the same thing when Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, and "fill in charming psychopathic dictator's name here" came to power, too.

6. First, she has to stop her own bullshit ...

7. A populist? No, he's just a douchebag. And she just re-created herself again. Both of them are definitely sleeping with money but they don't let it cloud their visions of power.

8. Even honor killings can be blamed on the Jews. Simply stupefying.

9. And there are endless new variations on honor killing! When you spend all your time in a burka, you can get very creative.

10. Dreaded articles of blasphemy. Read, then go back and re-read #2 about the totalitarian Christian theocrats.

11. Very popular pet among singles.... and here is a way to ensure excellent service when you go out to eat.

12. Reality bites...or at least frostbites....Not the best way to bring attention to global warming....the snow is deep, but their faith is strong! Only an alien can truly understand global warming.

13. If the NY Times is growing skeptical, maybe the whole panic has jumped the shark....

14. A force for evil or a force for good? You decide. Is the Pope Catholic?

15. There is an advantage to having multiple personalities--but only if they all know karate. Being popular won't help much.

16. Disposable parents? Something every kid can look forward to. Another heartwarming tale of familial dysfunction. And speaking of family dysfunction, it's hard to beat this family's insanity.

17. She fails to see the mystery in this. But the mystery of Daylight Savings time goes on and on....

18. The sanctions are up and Ahmadinejad is down!

***************************************
Carnival of the Insanities can also be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival and at the BlogCarnival.

If you would like to Join the insanity, and add the Carnival of the Insanities button to your sidebar (clicking on it will always take you to the latest update of the Carnival), click on "Word of Blog" below the button to obtain the html code:






- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:34 AM |

 
UNITY, BUT PROBABLY NOT PEACE
The Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismael Haniya has unveiled the new "unity" government plan derived from a recent agreement made between Hamas and Fatah:

President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas agreed on the make-up of a Palestinian unity government on Wednesday and will submit it to parliament for approval on Saturday, officials said.


The cabinet deal was reached when Abbas and Haniyeh settled on an academic with little security experience for the hotly-contested post of interior minister, which oversees key security services.

"We have finished all the issues relating to the formation of the government," Haniyeh said after talks with Abbas in Gaza.

Palestinians hope the deal will end fighting between the secular Fatah and the Islamist Hamas, and ease a crippling Western aid embargo of the Palestinian Authority, though it is unclear whether either goal will be accomplished.

As Abbas and Haniyeh were meeting, nine people, including two children, were wounded in another bout of factional violence between Fatah and Hamas.

The Europeans have adopted a "wait and see" attitude and Israel is concerned--with good cause, as it turns out.

The recent agreement between rival Palestinian groups that was put together during February, 2007 in Mecca under the guidance of Saudi Arabia, had the following preconditions imposed by the West (in particular, the "Quartet" of negotiators for peace in the region: the US, EU, UN and Russia) on a Palestinian "Unity" Government. It must:
• Recognize Israel's right to exist
• Renounce violence
• Accept past Palestinian peace accords with Israel and the UN

A translation of the document is here. In reading it, there seems to be a fundamental conflict between the two parts of the Mecca agreement ( the "principle part" and the l"etter of appointment"). The "principle" part, which deals with intra-Palestinian relations, includes an explicit commitment to the agreement by both sides.

In contrast, in the "letter of appointment" for the unity government, which deals with relations with Israel, there is no direct and explicit acceptance by Hamas for the provisions of the agreement. Instead, Abbas, as the president of the PA, calls on Haniya, as the prime minister of the PA, to "act in accordance with the decisions of the Palestinian National Council, the provisions of the Basic Law, the National Accord document the resolutions adopted at Arab League summits, U.N. resolutions, the consensus of the Arab states, and prior agreements signed by the PLO with Israel."

Abbas has since declared that the organizations participating in the future national unity government will not be obligated to the government's position; only the ministers will be obligated to these positions.

In return for acceptance of this diversionary tactic, Hamas has been granted political support and sponsorship from the PLO, as a government and as a future partner in the PLO.

With the Mecca agreement, the Quartet's (US, EU, Russia and the UN) demands have been only partially met, and it is likely that Abbas and Hamas believe that the Quartet's position will soften in the future and that it will settle for this partial acceptance.

Both Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Mash'al have kept their followers from making statements to the media that could reveal the nature and the details of the agreement between them.

Here are some translated portions of the negotiatied agreement and of the letter of appointment :
"National unity is important as a basis for steadfastness on the national level, for rising up against the occupation, for actualizing the national and legitimate goals of the Palestinian people, and for adopting the language of negotiation as the only foundation for solving the political disagreements in the Palestinian arena."
"We are committed to the spirit and to the letter [of the agreement], so that we can now turn to attaining our national goals, to freeing ourselves from the occupation, to restoring our rights, and to tackling the main issues, which are first and foremost Jerusalem, the refugees, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the prisoners, and dealing with the fence and the settlements."

Also, these reports from various news sources are relevant:
Hani Al-Masri, senior Palestinian Information Ministry official and columnist for the PA daily Al-Ayyam, wrote: "Fatah agreed to the wording [demanded by Hamas]... that states that the agreements of the PLO, the decisions of the Arab summits, and the U.N. decisions must be 'honored.' This wording is less strong than [saying] 'commitment' to the agreements and the decisions."

Abbas has also said:
"The exaggerated and subjective interpretations of the agreement or of one of its sections could change its basic aim. There is no need to elaborate in interpretation or commentary, since the agreement is about putting together a national unity government according to an agreed-upon and well-considered formula... Neither side has conceded to the other on political content or in the area of putting together the government... We will launch an extensive political campaign to remove the siege on our people and on our government..."

Ashraf Al-Ajrami, columnist for the PA daily Al-Ayyam, was more explicit:
"We must break the siege placed upon us that is causing injustice, and this demands a flexible political language that will maintain constructive ambiguity without the need for statements that aid Israel in its war against the Mecca agreement..." (emphasis mine)

Fatah spokesmen maintain that:
"political changes have begun in the Hamas members... Hamas's political view has begun to change, and it now stands in a different place than the one in which it stood a year ago [in early 2006]."

Thus, the Mecca agreement is said to be a "step forward", because in it Hamas seemingly commits to honor agreements signed by the PLO as well as the [Saudi] peace initiative and the U.N. resolutions. This is exactly what the Hamas and Fatah Players believe the international community want to hear.

However, it seems very doubtful that it is, in fact, true; and it is far more likely that the "constructive ambiguity" of the language of the agreement only makes it appear that way for the purpose of lulling the outside world and the key players in the US, Europe, Russia and the UN into believing some fundamental change has occurred in Hamas' position.

Indeed, the main purpose of the agreement appears to be to give the impression that Hamas has finally agreed to accept the general direction of the PLO's political plans, and that these plans do not constitute an obstacle in the Palestinian relations with the international community -- particularly the resumption of international aid (money).

It is important to note that Hamas' position with regard to the Palestinian people has been deteriorating ever since they were elected to run the government. The ongoing violence between the Palestinian factions has resulted in a worsening of conditions for the already-beleaguered Palestinians and a catastrophic cutting off of funding from the International community. Hamas desperately wants the international community to view it as a reasonable participant in the Palestinian state and not as a terrorist group. But, at the same time, it is not willing to give up terrorism and violence to do that.

Instead, it has opted for "ambiguous language" to give the impression that its spots have changed.

For example, in an interview with the London daily Al-Hayat, a spokesperson for Fatah suggested that with the Mecca agreement, Hamas had in actuality recognized Israel and that Hamas need not declare its explicit and legal recognition of Israel and Fatah also need not do this. And that each faction was entitled to retain its own special ideology and platform as long as they are committed to national unity.

Such phrasing allows the Unity Government to have its cake and eat it too and gives it room for diplomatic maneuvering with the international community, while in effect not altering anything. In fact, it permits the Unity Government to suggest that the West's refusal to continue its financial support or its general unhappiness with regard to Palestinian actions is--after the Mecca Agreement--"no longer a Palestinian problem, but the West's problem."

In other words, the Unity Government can say they gave the West what it wanted, without actually giving it what it wants. The beauty of "ambiguous language" at work!

One very interesting point is that Hamas also apparently agreed to accept "the Arab legitimacy." This is a new term, which refers to the decisions of the Arab summits, including the 2002 Beirut summit at which the Saudi peace initiative was ratified. Up until now, Hamas had not agreed to accept this initiative. But note that it sets Saudi Arabia and the "Arab" summits above the Iranians who are in competition with the Saudis for influence and control over the region.

Hamas spokesman Isma'il Radwan said:
"The agreement with Fatah on the national unity government, which includes an undertaking to honor prior agreements signed by the PLO, does not mean recognizing Israel. The positions of the Hamas movement are permanent and known - no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity... The government is not required to recognize Israel. The PLO recognized [it], but that is its own business. Hamas will join the PLO on the basis of new standards based on reshaping the PLO and non-recognition of the legitimacy of the occupation."
"Hamas remains steadfast in its principles, and has not retreated. Hamas will not recognize Israel, will not abandon the resistance, and will not relinquish its principles."

Khalid Mashal, the Hamas leader states:
"Hamas is adopting a new political language. The Mecca agreement is a new political language [spoken by] Hamas, and honoring the agreements is [also] a new language, because there is a national need and we must speak a language appropriate to the time, and in the framework of an outlook that is shared by all factions. Nevertheless, each faction will retain its own political belief."

The Mecca Agreement serves to--in the words of a Palestinian Legislative Council member and writer for a Hamas publication: "Secures the Internal Front So We Can Address the Zionist Front" (translated from a Hamas report)

Publically, Khaled Mash'al is quoted (in a London newspaper in English): "The Agreement Gives an Opportunity for Significant Achievements - And When They Are Attained, It Will Be an Important Step on the Way to Achieving Peace In the Region"

Let me predict that the "new" improved unity government of the Palestinians represents no significant change in either Hamas' or Fatah's policies toward Israel or peace in the region, except insofar as they have agreed for the time being to cease hostilities between each other and focus instead on Israel.

It is simply more of the same dancing by the key Palestinian players in Hamas (Mashal and Haniya) and Fatah (Abbas)--all of whom have demonstrated repeatedly that they are not particularly invested in a Palestinian state as much as they are invested in Jihad and the destruction of Israel. Abbas, being the most acceptable to the international community is the "face" of this new agreement, and his main efforts have been to obscure the reality of its nothingness for the purpose of getting financial support flowing again from the EU and the US.

Besides Hamas, who hopes to get its stream of funding back so it can return once again to terror, the big winners of the Agreement may actually be Saudi Arabia, who are anxious to override the growing influence of Iran on events in Palestine.

We will have to wait and see if this new peace fantasy manages to connect with the real world and is a "first step" toward peace in any way, shape or form. The international community has an overabundance of wishful thinking, when it comes to the Palestinians; and unfortunately, their hopes have always been badly misplaced.

I suspect that this time it will not be much different.

UPDATE: From the news this morning:

Palestinian leaders struck discordant notes on how to deal with Israel on Saturday as parliament met to usher in a unity government intended to halt factional fighting and ease a crippling Western aid embargo.

President Mahmoud Abbas stressed the search for peace, while Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of the Islamist Hamas movement said the new coalition government upheld the right to "all forms" of resistance against Israel.

Israel again ruled out dealing with the new government, citing Hamas's refusal to accept demands, set by a Quartet of foreign peace mediators a year ago, that it forswear violence, recognize the Jewish state, and accept past interim peace deals.

"We're not going to work with this government," said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokeswoman Miri Eisin.

"This government does not recognize our existence, it does not recognize the treaties, and most important, does not in any way renounce terror," she declared, seizing on Haniyeh's remarks about resistance.

But with international impatience mounting over the diplomatic impasse, Fatah-Hamas violence and deepening Palestinian poverty, there have been signs of Western flexibility on talking to non-Hamas members of the new cabinet.

And so, onced again the West will very likely be "flexible" and give into the beasts who make up the Palestinian leadership (and who are the true descendents of Arafat); nothing will change; and the death and destruction will continue so that all can be happy in their respective delusions.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:51 AM |

 
A CRITIQUE OF PURE BULLSHIT
This article by Jonathan Rosenblum writing in the Jerusalem Post the other day got me to thinking about philosophy:

Inveterate Bush haters are as derisive of the president's religiosity as they are of his supposed stupidity. Indeed the former is often cited as proof of the latter. A lengthy New York Times Magazine hatchet job prior to the 2004 election portrayed Bush as convinced that he had a direct line from God - a conviction that rendered him oblivious to both reason and all empirical evidence.

The president's refusal to pull out of Iraq, his failure to sign the Kyoto Protocols and his use of religious terminology - e.g. the "axis of evil" - are said to betoken the rigid mind-set of a religious zealot.

That critique of Bush's faith-based anti-empiricism is nonsense. I don't know one religious person who believes that God speaks to her directly, or that one need only open the Bible to determine whether the Iraqi insurgency is primarily led by al-Qaida or by ex-Ba'athists.

If all that is needed in Iraq is greater attention to facts, let the Democrats in Congress - many of whom are stumped about whether Iran is a Sunni or Shi'ite country or whether there is any difference between the two - show the way rather than just pass non-binding resolutions to appease their voters. That many crucial "facts" remain unknown has nothing to do with Bush's lack of interest. The intelligence community itself remains sharply divided about who is leading the insurgency in Iraq.

Democrats charge that the administration cooked prewar intelligence about Saddam's WMDs, even though CIA director George Tenet called the conclusion a "slam dunk" - a view shared by every Western intelligence service and the Clinton administration. And in the same breath, they are scandalized that undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith sought alternative analyses of the data on a possible Saddam-al-Qaida connection, in the face of the CIA's conclusion that secular Ba'athists and Islamists could never join forces. (And Hitler and Stalin could never have agreed to divide Poland.) President Bush, according to his critics, is being anti-empirical whether he accepts the CIA's conclusions or questions them.

Talk of an axis of evil deeply offends those whose default inclination is to assume that all men are basically rational economic actors seeking to increase material goods and pleasures. In describing radical Islam as "evil," however, Bush means that radical Islam constitutes a belief system irreconcilable with that of the West and its adherents seek to destroy the West. That seems like a fair description of reality.

One of the major controversies of our time boils down to these questions: how do we know reality and how do we know what is true?

Empiricism is a theory which holds that the origin of all knowledge is the experience of our senses. The term also refers to the method of observation and experiment used in the natural sciences. Often, empiricism is contrasted with rationalism, a theory which holds that the mind may apprehend some truths directly, without requiring the medium of the senses.

The dispute between rationalism and empiricism takes places within epistemology, the branch of philosophy devoted to studying the nature, sources and limits of knowledge. And one of the important questions in epistemology is, "What does it mean to "know" something as opposed to merely having an opinion?" As you can see, this is not only a question that plagues the blogsphere and all political discourse; it is an issue that has been at the core of Western philosophy since before Socrates.

Until it is answered, all other questions become unsolvable.

Rationalism and empiricism are not conflicting philosophical concepts, so much as they are complementary ones. For example in some areas of mathematics, rationalism is clearly the method used to obtain knowledge and ideas about the universe; while in the physical sciences, empiricism generally rules.

G.W. Leibniz in New Essays on Human Understanding makes the following excellent argument to illustrate this (page 150 -151):

"The senses, although they are necessary for all our actual knowledge, are not sufficient to give us the whole of it, since the senses never give anything but instances, that is to say particular or individual truths. Now all the instances which confirm a general truth, however numerous they may be, are not sufficient to establish the universal necessity of this same truth, for it does not follow that what happened before will happen in the same way again. . . From which it appears that necessary truths, such as we find in pure mathematics, and particularly in arithmetic and geometry, must have principles whose proof does not depend on instances, nor consequently on the testimony of the senses, although without the senses it would never have occurred to us to think of them…"

Whatever the conflicts and disagreements philosophically between empiricism and rationalism they are actually complementary mental processes; and it seems reasonable to conclude that optimally gathering knowledge of the real world requires the use of both capabilities. On a primal level, our senses give us direct information about reality; and our brain is then capable of using rational deductive and inductive processes as a meta-process to evaluate that information further.

However you cut it, it seems clear that OUR MINDS are the source of our knowledge of the world, and while a given mind might be corrupted by a variety of factors, and its reliability may be suspect at times; our mind is the best tool we have for understanding and evaluating reality.

Certain very popular ideologies today subscribe to the notion that the human mind is incapable of knowing the real world because there is no world out there that exists separately from our senses. In other words, everything that exists is all in our heads.

And, furthermore, what's in your head is no better than what's in my head.

When you think about it, that's a rather an amazing assertion, particularly since it is inherently contradictory. Those who fervently believe this BS are Cretans--or rather, they suffer from a variation of the famous Cretan Paradox. "What is in your head is no better than what is in my head" is a statement of absolutes which presupposes that the "my head" person is correct --i.e., what's in his head about this issue is the absolute truth--that what he "thinks" is no better or worse than what you think.

But, what if what's in your head tells you differently--i.e., what if you think you think better than him? Personally, I get a bad headache just thinking about the mental contortions necessary to formulate this theory in the first place.

In fact, almost all applications of postmodern philosophy (for that is what this crazy theory is called)--from art criticism to politics; and psychology from philosophy and rhetoric to science--result in a pervasive blurring and distortion of reality, rather than in its understanding.

If you are still with me, let us consider a rather astonishing attempt to further undermine reality and our ability to perceive it, reported by Melanie Phillips (hat tip: G.Hanner and Ray). Phillips is discussing comments made by Professor Mike Hulme, from the school of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia and the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research — a key figure in the promulgation of climate change theory. Phillips says:

What an admission! Let’s read that one again. Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking. Of course not. The facts don’t support it. It’s not true. So, says Hulme, let’s abolish the need to establish the facts and the truth and impose the theory on the basis of — what’s that again — ‘values and beliefs’. In other words, climate change science has got to be anti-science. It’s got to be anti-truth. It’s got to be nothing more than an ideology.

Post-modernism long ago deconstructed truth. Now in similar vein, ‘post-normal’ science deconstructs scientific empiricism and rationalism and detaches science from truth. In other words, where science fails to support an ideology, the absolute and overriding imperative of putting that ideology into practice means that science has to suspend its very essence as a truth-seeking activity and instead perpetrate lies. That is the inescapable implication of Hulme’s position.

A blatant rejection of reason and truth by a leading scientist is, to say the least, incredibly ironic. Back when the entire premises underlying postmodern philosophical BS were first beginning to make their way up the idea food chain, its proponents had a simple objective: to preserve faith and religion, which they believed was under siege from reason and logic.

The epistemological basis for postmodernism has its origins in this desire. Philosopher Stephen Hicks notes:

By the late 1700s religious thinkers had a choice—accept evidence and logic as the ultimate court of appeal and thereby reject their deeply-cherished religious ideals—or stick by their ideals and attack the whole idea that evidence and logic matter. “I had to deny knowledge,” wrote Kant in the Preface to the first Critique, “in order to make room for faith.” “Faith,” wrote Kierkegaard in Fear and trembling, “requires the crucifixion of reason”; so he proceeded to crucify reason and glorify the irrational.

Thus Kant and others in the 18th and 19th centuries paved the way for the more recent postmodern attacks on reason, logic and reality itself. Postmodernism is merely the latest incarnation of the Kantian rejection of reason in order to “make room for faith”. The irony is that in today's postmodern world, it is the supposed champions of reason and logic--scientists--and those that like to call themselves "the reality-based"community" who have wholly embraced religion and faith as primary, though it is an entirely secularized religion and perfectly godless.

Have you ever wondered why the political left is so relentlessly hostile to Christianity and Judaism? The answer is simple—they are in competition with these religions for the hearts of the people. The ideology of the left has evolved into a religion that is essentially even more fundamental (and certainly more fanatical) than either Christianity or Judaism--both of which had their more toxic elements blunted by the rationality of the Enlightenment. Interestingly, the left regularly makes common cause with a third religion, sharing with Islam a fundamentally postmodern view of both metaphysics and epistemology.

In the ensuing 300 years since Kant critiqued pure reason, religion--i.e., Christianity and Judaism-- have more or less come to an uneasy compromise with those who recognize the importance of reason, logic, and reality in the real world. This is almost certainly the psychological foundation of the Western concept of "the separation of church and state"; which is a very bold strategy designed to keep the fundamental conflict at bay and allow the independent development of both these spheres of human experience unimpeded by the other (sort of like "don't ask, don't tell").

The left refuses to accept such constraints on their religion, and have embraced postmodern rhetoric and politics with religious fervor in order to save their own sacred beliefs about socialism. This time instead of rescuing faith from reason and logic, they have managed to rescue science from it so they can make science whatever they want it to be.

It is immensely interesting to observe how the left's topsy-turvy thinking about this conundrum works: realistically, rationally, and logically the left finds itself unable to criticize the excesses of Islam in any way, shape or form--without exposing for even the most dim-witted to see, the fatal flaws and contradictions in their own religion--which disavows reality, reason, and logic.

Kant and his successors have never been able to explain away the formidible contradictions inherent in a philosophy that celebrates the irrational and the unreal at the expense of reason and reality; yet somehow expects to bring peace, harmony, productivity and progress to human living.

From all perspectives, postmodernism is pure bullshit.

UPDATE: More on "post-normal science" from Jules Crittendon; Maggie's Farm and The Belmont Club
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:25 AM |

 
LOOKING FOR HUMOR IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES ?
My nomination this week for the whackjob most likely never ever ever to use a healthy psychological defense mechanism--like HUMOR, for example--was the anonymous commenter on this post:

Just to make sure everyone understands, these are supposed mental health professionals who apparently think it's a hoot to give out "Weekly Whackjob Awards".

Look around all you like, but I doubt you'll find a shred of credibility here...

FYI, Dr. Sanity,

I am forwarding this information to everyone at UM I can find who matters. Screw you and your bullshit. It's time for people other than your little group of fans to catch on to your lies.
anonymous

Too bad for anonymous, but we happy little band of mental health professionals are far too unserious to let such idiocy go by without mocking it unmercifully (after all, "anonymous" is not our patient and we can say what we want about him and his pathetic attempts to limit our free speech rights).

And yet, even without the help of the courageously "speaking truth to power" Mr. anonymous quoted above, Siggy has managed to find some amazing examples of seriously ridiculous insanity that far surpass even the histrionic capability of my anonymous commenter.

Have you been looking for some humor in a bland, humorless world that seems to be dominated by the do-gooder-PC-free -speech nazis? Well, stop looking in all the wrong places!

Proceed immediately to the Weekly Wednesday Whacky Awards; do not stop, do not pass GO; Click on the image of Siggy Unplugged to the right, and prepare yourself for some serious insanity!
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:26 AM |

 
THE SANITY SQUAD: THE OSLO SYNDROME AND DELUSIONS OF DIPLOMATIC GRANDEUR
This week on the latest podcast of The Sanity Squad , posted at Pajamas Media, we are pleased to have special guest, Dr. Kenneth Levin, a Harvard psychiatrist and author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege. (Click on the link to the left to get more information about the book or order it).

In the book, Dr. Levin discusses how in the 1990s, Israel believed that it had found a "partner for peace" in Yasser Arafat, even as he made speech after speech calling for the annihilation of Israel.

The United States of the 21st century likewise believes that it can negotiate with Islamic totalitarians post-9/11. This is all part of the psychological dynamics of people who feel under siege and who desperately hope that negotiation and appeasement will finally bring about a cessation of hostilities. Unfortunately, this hope is at best wishful thinking; at worse a serious delusion. It is far more likely to bring about an escalation of hostilities and violence, rather than peace. In an earlier interview Levin was asked why people under siege often end up internalizing the hatred against themselves and delude themselves about the malicious intentions of their enemies? He replies:

They do so because they are eager to feel some control over a painful situation which is, in reality, out of their control. Chronically abused children - more specifically those subjected to parental abuse - typically blame themselves for their victimization because to do so supports a fantasy that if they reform, if they become "good," their parents will treat them differently. To look at their predicament more realistically would force them to accept their helplessness to change their terrible circumstances, and children, and adults as well, prefer to fend off acknowledging such bitter realities.
Similarly, within populations under chronic siege - whether minorities marginalized, demeaned and attacked by surrounding societies or small nations besieged by their neighbors - some will invariably seek either to avert their gaze from the severity of the threat or rationalize the threat and blame themselves or others within their community for the danger. Their doing so reflects wishful thinking that if only they would reform sufficiently the danger would be alleviated.

Israel has, at best, a capacity to respond effectively to attacks by its neighbors; it does not have the capacity to end the Arab siege, to force peace upon the Arabs. Peace, if and when it comes, will do so on the Arabs' timetable, not Israel's. Unfortunately, all the evidence indicates the Arab world is not about to choose genuine peace with Israel in the foreseeable future. This lack of control over a painful situation led many Israelis to embrace delusions of control; delusions that the right concessions could not help but win peace from the Arabs.

Join Shrinkwrapped, Neo-neocon, Siggy and me as we engage in a lively discussion of the psychdynamics of appeasement and the delusions of diplomatic grandeur that grip the West as they refuse to take into account the essential nature of Islamofascism.

All podcasts of The Sanity Squad can be found here; and you can also download them from iTunes. (search for Pajamas Media)

(The Sanity Squad cartoon at the right is drawn by Eric Allie, whose collection of political cartoons can be found here and here).
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:54 AM |

 
THE PARABLE OF THE SNAKE
Pajamas Media is reporting that the US is in disarmament discussions with elements of Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq:

The U.S. is in serious discussions with commanders of the Mahdi Army to lay down their arms, an intelligence officer directly involved in Iraq operations told Pajamas Media Tuesday....

The Mahdi Army, a predominantly Shia Muslim force led by Moqter al-Sadr, has terrorized Sunnis into fleeing certain Baghdad neighborhoods and has been linked to Iran. Al-Sadr has disappeared from the Iraqi capital and is widely believed to have holed up in Iran. Al-Sadr’s family and senior officers are believed, by elements of American intelligence in Iraq, to have left with him.

With al-Sadr’s paymasters gone many mid-level commanders are unpaid. And so are the fighters under them. (In the Mahdi Army, commanders are responsible for the financial well-being of the men under their command.) Some have resorted to extortion, robbery and violent crimes. They are desperate for money. And they are also being hunted by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers throughout Iraq.

This has created a unique opportunity for American and allied troops, intelligence sources say.

Through intermediaries — known in spook-speak as “assets” — a handful of Mahdi Army leaders have approached allied forces and begun negotiating.

This brings to mind The Parable of the Snake which I now relate:

Once upon a time there was a serpent who was badly injured in a fight with another animal. It managed to slither away to safety but would have surely died if a benevolent man had not seen it suffering by the side of the road. The goodly man carefully wrapped the snake up and took it to his house, where he bestowed the kindest and gentlest care on the snake until it was healed and could return to the wild. Just as the man was releasing the serpent back into the grass, the ungrateful snake turned and bit him on the hand.

"What did you do that for?" cried the man, who knew that the bite of this particular snake was usually fatal. "Didn't I take care of you when no one else would?"

The snake shrugged (no small feat for a snake!) and replied to the benevolent--and now doomed-- man, "What did you expect? You knew I was a snake when you picked me up."

We certainly know without any question that they are snakes.

Time will tell if the moral of the tale is applicable.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 2:31 PM |

 
IF YOU THINK WALTER REED IS BAD....
...just wait until you vote in the people who hope to have the government take over ALL health care. Walter Reed, after all, is only one example of what we would get when the government is in charge of all our health care needs. Yet some people seem to think that the solution is more government. Somewhat counterintuitive, to say the least.



Whatever you do, don't get sick.

If you would like a glimpse of the daily horrors of socialized medicine and a national health care service, then you need to read this. Here is a brief excerpt in the day of a NHS doctor in Britain:

Third patient in is Mary, one of the local speech therapists. She is approaching retirement. I sent her husband into hospital three weeks ago in rip-roaring heart failure. He was on CCU for three days but now is on the far flung corner of Dixon, one of the medical wards. He is partially sighted due to an old stroke, and is hard of hearing. The nursing care is appalling. He has developed pressures sores on his sacrum and heels and, oddly, a suppurating area above both ears which Mary thinks is due to the oxygen mask he uses being too tight. He is losing weight because he cannot really manage to feed himself. Mary was in each day over the weekend. Uneaten food from Saturday was still on his bedside table on Sunday. Mary went to the nursing station at the end of the ward. The nurses were all eating take-away Pizza. Deep Pan pizza from Pizza Hut. Mary remembers that particularly. Mary thinks her husband is dying. She is not sure which consultant he is under, and has not been able to find a doctor to talk to. The nurses over the weekend do not speak English. She tried to tell them that her husband is partially sighted but they do not understand. They show here the nursing assessment. Under “visual problems” it says "none". Mary is in tears and asks what she should do. I suggest she phones the Chief Executive and makes a formal complaint.

I do not suppose that Pizza Hut pizzas carry harmful bacteria, but should they be on an acute medical ward?

This is only one of several cases the good doctor must deal with on his daily rounds. Read about all of them. Caution--very graphic picture of some of the results of the caring NHS system is included.

You may remember that in Canada--another country that has socialized medicine, the Supreme Court recently issued an opinion saying, in effect, that Canada's vaunted public health-care system produces intolerable inequality.

Or, if you still have questions about socialized medicine and how it works, you might check out this post about the illness of the soul that is Cuba's health care system.

Try to remember these stories when Hillary decides on an opportune moment to bring back up her socialized health care plans for this country; or when the next compassionate and caring Democratic presidential hopeful proposes a similar system to "eliminate the injustices" of American medicine.

The three socialized systems cited above are the cream of the crop when it comes to government controlled medical care. Clearly, your best bet is not to get sick.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:38 AM |

 
FUNNY GIRL
The daughter of a good friend of mine is a student at UM and is one of the finalists in a national comedy contest sponsored by American Eagle. I invite you to go to the link here and vote for her. She is in Region 3 and her name is Julia Young (the only woman who made it to the finals !) You can watch the comedy routines of all the college finalists at the link, as well as hers.

But she is definitely the funniest IMHO!
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 12:12 PM |

 
THE MORALLY VACUOUS LEFT AND ITS NEO-MARXIST AGENDA
Thomas Sowell makes an excellent point this morning about the way the leftist media "support the troops":

The front cover of Newsweek's March 5th issue featured a woman with amputated legs and a sweatshirt that said "ARMY" across the front. Inside, there were pages and pages of other pictures of badly wounded and disfigured military veterans, in a long article that began under the big headline: "Forgotten Heroes."

The utter hypocrisy of all this can be seen in the word "heroes." There have been many acts of heroism among our troops in Iraq -- but those heroes didn't make the front cover of Newsweek.

One man fell on a grenade to protect his buddies, smothering the fatal blast with his body, so that those around him might live when he died. But that never made the front cover of Newsweek. It was barely mentioned anywhere in the liberal media.

They are not interested in heroes. They are interested in depicting victims -- in the military as in civilian society...

After generations of dumbed-down education in our schools, perhaps it is inevitable that there would be large numbers of people who have no way of separating rhetoric from reality.

The reality is that many of those in the media and in politics who are constantly talking about "supporting our troops" or "honoring our troops" have for years been in the forefront of those criticizing or undermining the military, long before the Iraq war.

Ah...victimhood. Now this is a meme the MSM can really get behind! Particularly when they aren't recycling the one about the US military being murderous, raping oppressors.

Almost all of the rhetoric against the Iraq war has focused dramatically on the toll it has taken on our military. This is seen in the daily death counts; the portentous talking heads seriously intoning about the latest explosions and such. How horrible and tragic it all is.

But as Sowell notes, parading casualties in front of the public is not the same thing as "honoring our troops." Honoring them means that we talk about the good things they have done; their achievements. But on those realities, the MSM is almost completely silent. Simply "pointing out that someone is dismembered or disfigured" is not "honoring" them.

Honoring them is recognizing their sacrifice by placing it in perspective. No one in the MSM, for example, has ever acknowledged that those who join the military and put their lives on the line for their country do so voluntarily and that they see it as a profession; with professional risks that they are willing to take. Instead, they focus on the one or two who deeply regret having made the choice to serve and now want to break their committments and walk away from it all. Such morally vacillating individuals are celebrated for "coming to their senses" and heroically "speaking truth to power". That they made a choice and that the honorable thing would be to live with the consequences of that choice is never discussed. It is considered a "travesty" that they have consequences--like a court martial--at all.

Almost everything that is reported is designed to demonstrate what an awful war the poor victimized soldiers have to fight in. And how inconsiderate and uncaring the evil Bush Administration is toward their plight.

You may have noticed that, for the most part, there are only two templates that exist for journalism on the U.S. military: Either, (1) they are the poor helpless victims of an oppressive military system and the current political administration which horribly abuses them; OR, (2) they are the brutal, savage, sadistic psychopaths that enjoy inflicting death and misery and who are encouraged to do so by the oppressive military system and the current political administration.

Do you also notice something familiar about these two templates? They just happen to dovetail nicely with the same old, tired marxist view of the world; where a person is either one of the "oppressed" victims or one of the brutal "oppressors".

Apparently that is the only world view taught in journalism schools these days. And, further, the journalist wannabees are encouraged to bring their perspective (they call it "social justice" in the nether realms of neo-marxism) into every article and story as part of the journalist's role of being an advocate for the socialist way.

Caught up in the marxist agenda of their postmodern rhetoric--with which they hope to "make the world a better place"--the graduates of these journalism schools march in lockstep with the other "oppressed" people of the world, including the poor victimized terrorists and all the helpless and persecuted dictators and tyrants who also only want to make the world a better place (with them in charge, of course).

But if you speak to the vast majority of military personnel; or read the blogs and letters they write home about their experiences, they will give you a perspected that does not depend on the marxist dialectic template; and which also presents a more realistic and honest portrayal of events.

In their own writings you can clearly see the honor they bring to their mission; and the everyday valor and courage they live as they serve their country.

The important point is this: the grim costs of any war or conflict--which include the damaged lives and bodies of the soldiers depicted in the latest round of MSM handwringing over Walter Reed, as well as the death of every soldier in Iraq and anywhere--must always be placed in the context of how much peace and security have their sacrifice, given voluntarily and with honor, brought to the country and people they willingly serve?

The inescapable truth is that there has not been another 9/11 to date on our soil. This reality was an unimaginable one after that horrific day in our history. No one thought that we would be spared for the next 5 years. Yet that is exactly what has happened; and the only conclusion that can be drawn is that it is the bold (and occasionally flawed) actions of our military--in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other efforts by this administration, that have made us safe during this time. And, other areas of the world (e.g. Europe-- whose countries are in full appeasement mode) have not been.

James Lewis remarked at American Thinker in a recent editorial about the utter moral vacuity of the left and its media partners:

The greatest disappointment since 9/11/01 has been the total moral vacuity of the Left—a complete and utter nullity—both here and in Europe. Today, five years later, psychological denial still rules the day, and the few Democrats who raise their heads above the screaming mob are chased out, like Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller.

One-third of American voters are still being suckered by the left-wing media, who live in some sort of Toon-Town where you can Have your Cake and Eat it Too, where Lunches are Free and Health Care is Too, and where there are no ideological killer movements in this world, and to achieve World Peace you just have to point your finger at the “Warmongers” and scream really loud. The Left is now populated by “mewling, puking infants,” as William Shakespeare put it, utterly lacking an understanding of the world as it is.

Sowell concludes with this:

People's opinions can differ on troop deployment, even if -- like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- they have never deployed troops in their lives and have no military experience whatsoever.

But if anyone in Congress is serious about stopping the war, they can simply cut off the money -- and take responsibility for the consequences that follow.

Instead, they want to have it both ways, passing a non-binding resolution whose only effect is to embolden our enemies and undermine the morale of our troops that they keep saying they are "supporting."

If you can extricate yourself from the postmodern neo-marxist rhetoric for just a brief moment, you might reflect that the greatest way to honor the members of our military is to give them the status of real human beings with free will--and not automatons of a ridiculous marxist dialectic, i.e., they are neither oppressors nor are they oppressed--who have chosen to fight for this country; and who want only to complete the mission they have been given with honor and integrity. They are willing to cope with the consequences of their choices and they do so on a daily basis.

And in this postmodern day and age, that accomplishment is truly, remarkably heroic.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:35 AM |

 
A REAL DISADVANTAGE
Somehow, this reminds me of this post about a young female patient with hysterical blindness:



I concluded that post with the following point, which is still valid:

Somehow, she had to develop the necessary maturity to cope with the new reality of her world--to "see" it for what it was. And somewhere along that difficult psychological path, her vision returned.

I sincerely hope that the Democrats are able to negotiate that same path.

Since I wrote the post, I have observed very little progress in understanding or insight for either the Democrats or the political left in general. But, unlike the frog in the cartoon above, whose blindness is confined to only one side; the Democrats are unhappily at an even more severe disadvantage. They can be blindsided from all directions; and their blindness is of a strickly voluntary nature.

Reality, when it finally comes swooping down out of the sky, is definitely going to be very painful.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 3:37 PM |

 
THINK OF THE CHILDREN !
Cliff May at The Corner muses about the fate of Scooter Libby:

Bill Clinton lied to a grand jury. As a result, he did not lose his job, did not go to jail and soon thereafter became a multi-millionaire, lionized and celebrated in his party and around the world.

If that’s the fate in store for Libby, by all means, bring it on.

One more point: Valerie Plame is getting $2.5 million for “her story.” How much did New York publishers and Hollywood producers pay for the stories of Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick?

May doesn't get into the hypocrisy of many of the Clinton pardons. Many of which were incredibly controversial; with Clinton even pardoning his half-brother Roger for his drug charges.

Tell me how appropriate that is for a President.

The self-righteousness of the left makes any normal person want to puke.

So, I'm begging them (and Nancy Pelosi): Think of the message you are sending to the children!



(Eric Allie's cartoons can be found here)
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:03 AM |

 
CARNIVAL OF THE INSANITIES
Time for the weekly insanity update, where the insane, the bizarre, the ridiculous, and the completely absurd are highlighted for all to see! This has been a week of rare idiocy (as always!). So, if you want to remain sane, the best thing is to poke some fun at the more egregious absurdities.

And, while you are in the Mood for Madness, click on the image of Siggy on the right to go directly to the Weekly Whackjob Awards!

Send all entries for next week's carnival to Dr. Sanity by 8 pm ET on Saturday for Sunday's Carnival. Only one post entry weekly per blogger, please. And you might read this before submitting an entry.

Thanks for all the submissions. I try to use as many as possible! SO MANY INSANITIES! SO LITTLE TIME!!!

1. So unbelievably stupid , even a caveman wouldn't do it ! (political incorrectness intended; sorry Geico).

2. The wonderfulness of socialism . But they can still consider themselves morally superior, I guess.

3. Islamic cross-dressing. It's a multipurpose garment! Kharnival of the Insanities Iranities!

4. Those omnipotent Elders of Zion have struck again! Meanwhile the peace-loving Palestinians use all their energy to create....explosives.

5. Houston, we have a problem! But they may be too busy emailing each other to address it? Fired! ...perhaps because of her expertise with diapers, she can get a job with this organization? (I'll bet you didn't know that it wasn't safe2P, did you?)

6. But, but, but... what about diversity? And is McDreamy is just another McOpportunist....?

7. DEPOTUS? Pelospolitik? Now she's into ritual sacrifice!

8. Shocked! Shocked! An undercover DNC operative? Makes perfect paranoid sense! Comic irony of rare clarity?

9. What some people will do to get the black vote! Or the Jewish vote. Or any vote really...it may not help your career, but you might get some votes from it. The Emperor's new clothes comes to mind.

10. You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy....

11. Do you need eroticism, fantasy and subtlety? Boomers prefer chocolate so when will the ads begin to exploit that reality?

12. Green sports? An inconvenient--but very profitable--truth... there's peer reviewed research, and then there's this secret basement lab ! Son of a Birch!

13. Yet another "number one cause" of global warming! And this is the weather story that's NOT topping the news. Maybe global warming is caused by cold weather?

14. If only we could put people in a "steel tube of truth"...it would save everyone a lot of trouble.

15. He must have been going to a sale. This guy was also seriously confused and took a number of wrong turns.

16. Tolerance through humor. With Israelis like these, who needs Arabs? With patriots like this, who needs enemies?

17. A fixed rule never to listen to music by living composers seems like a good idea

18. Scholastic insanity? Democratic insanity, or clever reverse psychology?

19. She's doing it "for the children", I assume?

20. Laugh, and the world laughs with you! Really.

***************************************
Carnival of the Insanities can also be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival and at the BlogCarnival.

If you would like to Join the insanity, and add the Carnival of the Insanities button to your sidebar (clicking on it will always take you to the latest update of the Carnival), click on "Word of Blog" below the button to obtain the html code:


- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:45 AM |

 
THE POSTMODERN NARCISSISTIC DILEMMA AND THE PRISM OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
Wretchard captures the essence of what bothers me most about today's sensibility toward the past. In the post, he discusses a movie review of "300", which is about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. The review includes the following presumably serious statement by the reviewer:

One of the few war movies I've seen in the past two decades that doesn't include at least some nod in the direction of antiwar sentiment, 300 is a mythic ode to righteous bellicosity.

Wretchard then goes on to comment:

I have no idea whether 300 is a good movie, but Steven's review is an entertaining example of how all events, including those which happened nearly 500 years BC, must be judged according to prisms of contemporary political correctness. Miller had to remember, for example, "that we're in the middle of an actual war". Did he not realize his duty to denounce it? But what if Miller had made a movie about the fight against Hitler? Would it have been necessary to remind the audience that Hitler was a nonsmoking, animal-loving, vegetarian artist? Or had he remade Zulu to include some white faces among Prince Dabulamanzi's impis?

The most interesting thing about those who habitually denounce ethnocentricity and cultural blindness is that they are not without such sentiments themselves, the difference being that their cultural point of view is rooted in the mid-20th century, rather than say, ancient Lacedaemonia.

Once upon a time intellectuals who sought to understand the modern world looked to the giants of intellectual thought from humanity's past. In the wisdom of their writings we would be able to find the words and meanings relevant to analyzing the events of today. But now, it is as if history has been turned upside down. We no longer look to the past to understand ourselves and our journey--instead we use our present feelings and our modern understandings and prejudices to reinterpret and deconstruct the past.

Is it any wonder that we are horribly confused and disoriented, not knowing who we are or where we are going? Is it any wonder that today's events do not seem to have any rhyme or reason? Modern philosophical assumptions distort and/or obscure any appreciation of our own past. Where once we strove to understand the thinkers and events of the past by placing them within their own context and culture; it is now common practice to judge them by contemporary standards and inclinations.

That this rather perversely condescending and ultimately nihilistic tendency is a direct result of the essential narcissism of our times there is no doubt. Only a narcissist of the most pathological sort could or would haughtily dismiss Plato or Aristotle as merely primitive Greeks; or reject the writings of a Thomas Jefferson or John Adams because they were white male slaveholders. Only a self-absorbed postmodernist who believes he has all the answers to not only current problems, but that his superior and perfect intellect has nothing to gain by considering the admittedly imperfect thinkers and ideas of the past.

The dilemma of the postmodern narcissist is thus an unqualified belief in his or her own righteousness and moral obligation to judge the past; that is simultaneously combined with an aggressive ignorance about it.

Their behavior begs the question, how can we possibly understand our present selves--we who represent the sum of more than 5000 years of civilization--if we dismiss all that has gone before us and made us who we are?

When the very philosophical foundations that have made it possible for us to live and thrive in this modern world are abandoned because they were conceived and acted on by imperfect human beings (unlike today's "intellectuals" whose perfection is apparent to all), then what is left but the pointless and pervasive nihilism currently promulgated via postmodern political rhetoric?

The nihilism has been concealed within the doctrines of political correctness and multiculturalism, both of which cleverly assert their own absolute and inviolate truth, even as they advocate the most blatant relativism and subjectivity.

One of the most critical tasks that must be accomplished in order to unravel reason, truth and reality from human experience is a reinterpretation of the past . By deconstructing the ideas, events, and thinkers of the past; forcing them into our own postmodern procrustean template, we have essentially cut ourselves adrift from history and removed our philosophy from any anchor in the real world.

Somewhere in the last fifty years or so, the entire field of philosophy has been completely hijacked by its most narcissistically-inclined branch--politics. Metaphysics, epistemology, and even ethics, are all now subservient to politics. Normally there is a heirarchical relationship between all the branches; with the base being metaphysics, the study and the nature of existence. Epistemology is dependent on and closely related to metaphysics, and it is the study of how we know reality and existence; while ethics, the study of how humans should act, is dependent on epistemology. Politics--or how humans should interact in society--should be dependent on ethics. Yet in our postmodern world we have turned it all upside down. We are told how we should properly interact and it has become the ethical standard of behavior. Having set up this relativistic ethical standard; postmodern intellectuals can now question both how we know reality and even insist that it does not exist separately and independenly from our senses.

The entire purpose of this vast philosophical inversion is give the advocates and followers of totalitarian collectivism--particularly socialism and communism--a carte blanche to rewrite the history of the last century that clearly and undeniably demonstrated their ideology's intellectual and moral bankruptcy. It also permits the deconstruction of reality and truth necessary to undermine and distort the history of humanity's struggle for individual freedom.

The resulting relativistic rhetoric that emanates from postmodern philosophy has obscured and hidden the actual events of the past (they must be recreated in movies that conform to the dogma of today); ridiculed the actors and thinkers of the past simply because they were not "modern"; casually dismissed or undermined man's cognitive faculty--the essential tool for perceiving the world; altered the very meaning of words; and inverted any and all criteria by which we are able to make moral judgements.

This philosophical disintegration is celebrated by postmodernists as "freeing" ourselves from the tyranny of the past; but it is really a calculated attempt to radically dissociate our thinking from any of those unpleasant and inconvenient dictates of an "oppressive" reality that is always threatening to undermine the narcissistic belief that we are the center of the universe; and place limits on our unbridled sense of moral superiority.

Victor Davis Hanson wrote recently:

Our current crisis is not yet a catastrophe, but a real loss of confidence of the spirit. The hard-won effort of the Western Enlightenment of some 2,500 years that, along with Judeo-Christian benevolence, is the foundation of our material progress, common decency, and scientific excellence, is at risk in this new millennium.

But our newest foes of Reason are not the enraged Athenian democrats who tried and executed Socrates. And they are not the Christian zealots of the medieval church who persecuted philosophers of heliocentricity. Nor are they Nazis who burned books and turned Western science against its own to murder millions en masse.

No, the culprits are now more often us. In the most affluent, and leisured age in the history of Western civilization--never more powerful in its military reach, never more prosperous in our material bounty--we have become complacent, and then scared of the most recent face of barbarism from the primordial extremists of the Middle East.

We have so embraced multiculturalism and political correctness that we no longer have the intellectual tools to fight--or even face--the barbarism.

And let me conclude with a quote from Douglas Murray (page 218), and as you read it, think of the postmodern movie reviewer from the beginning of this piece:

Cultures which have forgotten about war, or believe it is a thing of the past, can neither imagine, nor imagine the need for, conflict. Portions of America are as attracted to such dreams as their European cousins....Though they cannot imagine the apocalypse, only a generation brought up on self-esteem would draw from that the conclusion that the apocalypse cannot therefore happen.

The postmodern narcissistic dilemma we face is that the politically correct prism through which we perceive and interpret the world around us, is entirely dysfunctional and useless; but it sure makes us feel good, doesn't it?
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:32 AM |

 
DEFENSIVE MANEUVERS
There is evidence that the Surge is working, as I noted in the two posts prior to this one. In fact, there is some interesting evidence coming out of Baghdad, and discussed at Iraq the Model and The Belmont Club , that suggests the Surge has created a "frenzy of political activity in Iraq."

Wretchard concludes from this activity the following:

I believe the Nancy Pelosi approach of threatening to weaken America on the ground in order to achieve changes in Iraqi politics is the wrong one. My intuition is that the precise opposite should be attempted -- that strengthening the position on the ground is likely to effect reform.

The truth is that Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha and the other Democratic leaders are completely uninterested in whether or not the Surge might work, primarily because they are wholly committed to American failure in Iraq.

Failure in Iraq means success for them, and a failure for President Bush and Republicans.

As I commented in the post just prior to this one: The Democrats are far more interested in "directly challenging President Bush" than they are in directly challenging the real enemies of civilization or the United States.

Let us, for a moment suppose that this behavior is not deliberately malignant and self-serving; and that it arises not from an incredible stupidity or naivete. This is a really big assumption, of course, and I have no doubt that there are those in the ranks of the Democrats and the left who fit both of those descriptions. But let us take them at their word for the moment--that they really and truly believe they have the best interests of the country at heart; that they are the real patriots; that they are acting to protect American civil liberties from egregious destruction; and that they "support the troops."

What we are witnessing then, in their indifference to any actual facts about the matter; or their casual lack of concern about the consequences of their thoughtless behavior and frenzied oppositional activity--is a psychological defensive maneuver that is probably the most common psycological response to the worldwide threat of Islamofascism since 9/11. This response is a very specific kind of psychological denial; and it is called displacement.

As I have mentioned before, it is the same defense that is at the root of Bush Derangement Syndrome ; and before someone tells me that a reasonable person can dislike President Bush and not be exhibiting a psychological defense, let me say that I perfectly agree with you.

Many people intensely disliked President Clinton for a variety of reasons--even prior to the Lewinsky scandal--but there was never the intense rage and unbelievable vitriol directed at him that President Bush has had to endure during his entire term of office. Disliking a President is perfectly normal and a part of political life in this country. But those kind of feelings should normally lead to a decision not to vote for him or the party that supports him; not to the constant, pervasive, and highly inappropriate behavior we observe every day by those who have gone so far over the top of normal political expression, that they have landed in an alternate universe.

The kind of inappropriate and nearly psychotic paranoid behavior that I am talking about is the same psychological dynamic that lies behind the dramatic increase in anti-semitism and general anti-American sentiment in this country and worldwide--even among those who are relatively normal and sane individuals otherwise.

You can think of psychological displacement as a process somewhat analogous to how an attenuated virus is used to immunize someone to prevent the catastrophic consequences of an otherwise life-threatening illness. Except that in medicine, the attenuated virus actually does prevent the real virus from causing damage. Displacement of the sort I am talking about is a method of temporarily attenuating a psychological threat--but the real threat is not halted in its advance; nor does it go away when attention is deflected away from it.

But the person using displacement believes he or she is now safe.

That is the reason that displacement is an attractive alternative to dealing with reality-- because it can work in the short term for the individual or group who uses it.

Psychotherapy itself revolves around, and works because of the temporary displacement of the patient's psychopathology onto the therapist. This is referred to as "transference." As an example, let's say, that the patient has a conflict with his father. For all intents and purposes, the therapist becomes the "psychological father" and the therapeutic relationship then plays out the drama in a less threatening, and more manageable setting.

The entire purpose of displacement is to gain control over a conflict that otherwise feels out of control.

By focusing on something you have some control over, the psyche is much less threatened. After all, you can always fire your therapist; you can express your animosity unreservedly; and there will not be the consequences if that emotion were directed toward the real object of emotional conflict.

You can even pretend, that if it weren't for the therapist, everything in your life would be perfect.

Displacement can be thought of as an slightly more mature type of psychological projection. In projection, the individual remains oblivious to the fact that he owns and is responsible for the emotions that he imagines are in the person or group into which he is projecting. In other words, ownership of the idea and/or affect is banished from the self.

In displacement, the idea or emotion is merely deflected from one object to another, less threatening one; but the ownership of the negative emotion or idea (e.g. animosity, anger) is retained--and is then often raised to a virtue. [For proof of this in BDS, note the righteous fervor of the sufferers who further delude themselves into thinking that their hatred and unparalleled animosity is "patriotic" and for the "good" of the nation as a whole.]

A common example of displacement that can be witnessed every day, is the person who is angry at a loved one, but settles for kicking the dog. The anger is evident in the action and is still owned by the person experiencing it.

At its most primitive, anti-semitism is a form of psychological projection (just as all racism is).

We see this infantile defense used repeatedly in the Arab/Islamic world. They seem unable to appreciate the irony of their labelling of Islam as a "religion of peace", for example, and dismiss the barbarism done in the name of Islam as misunderstandings or the actions of only "a few." In other words, they dismiss their own aggression in toto; asserting that it is the Jews who are always the aggressors; that it is the Jews who are out to destroy them; and that they are the poor, helpless victims of the Jews. By distancing themselves from their own aggression and projecting it onto Israel and the Jews; they have retained their honor as the peace-loving people they assert themselves to be.

It is essential to the success of the defense that they portray themselves as the victims and be seen as the victims in the eyes of the world. Even when their own behavior is responsible for the deaths of innocents, it is rationalized away and ultimately also blamed on the Jews.

Displacement, like projection, is an effective method for psychologically avoiding reality and facing one's own inner demons. It is a step above projection in being a less primitive and somewhat more mature method of coping; and is considered simply neurotic.

While projection can often appear to be completely uncoupled from reality, displacement has the advantage of allowing someone filled with unpleasant emotions to have an acceptable object onto which to express those emotions. Note that in projection, the individual completely denies that he or she even possesses-- or is capable of possessing-- the unacceptable emotions; it is the "other" who possesses them, and wants to inflict them on you.

Historically, the Jews have been the offical scapegoat (object of displacement) for many societies. If only the Jews were gone, then all would be well. The world would be perfect.

We see something similar in much of the rhetoric of today's left and their political mouthpieces in the Democratic Party. If only Bush were gone, they insist, everything would be perfect! None of these awful things--like 9/11, for example-- would have happened and the U.S. could go back to the idyllic days of the Clintonian utopia.

Likewise, if only the world put a halt once an for all to Israeli aggression, then the Middle East would be at peace.

When it comes to anti-semitism, you are witnessing possibly the clearest possible case of "blaming the victim" that you are ever likely to see. It is far too threatening to blame the real aggressor in the Middle East; the real source of hatred and genocidal intent; the real entity that is incapable of being rationally dealt with or deterred.

This real aggressor repeatedly states its intentions clearly and unambiguously. Yet, for some curious reason, those in the West to whom it is stated refuse to believe them! Their words are dismissed, and the actions that logically derive from their words are minimized or ignored.

In a perverse way, this defensive maneuver on the part of the West is understandable. No truly rational person is able to deal easily with persons or culures that glory in suicidal victimhood to a degree unparalleled in human history; and who scream "god is great"-- even as he blows you and himself up in a nihilistic frenzy.

To say the least, this sort of behavior is truly and incredibly frightening and completely inexplicable for the modern human to psychologically metabolize. Thus, it is only natural that it's unacceptable reality must be defended against and prevented from being digested and analyzed.
The dynamic and logic of displacement goes a long way to explaining the remarkable and sometimes lunatic appeasement of Islamofascist aggression and violence by so many individuals and governments and around the world, even as they trash the US (and particularly Bush) and Israel.

Denial and displacement give you the illusion that you are in control of the situation and that the solution is simple.

The only problem is that reality doesn't go away simply because you have found a way to satisfactorily (and temporarily) deflect it; nor does hiding the unpalatable truth from yourself make that truth disappear.

No matter what defensive maneuver is chosen, eventually the individual, group, or society must face reality, or they will face the consequences--which may well be catastrophic.

Pelosi, Murtha and the others may very well and truly believe what they say they believe. But by making the enemy President Bush, and focusing all their energy on fighting him, they do their country and the principles they claim to represent great--and possibly irreparable--harm.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:28 AM |

 
FOR THE PSYCHOLOGICALLY HARD OF HEARING
The following cartoon is especially helpful for the psychologically hard of hearing; and the hysterically blind members of the Democratic Party as well as their lefty sidekicks in the blogshpere. But these impaired persons are far more interested in "directly challenging President Bush" than they are in directly challenging the real enemies of civilization.



In psychiatry, we call this PSYCHOLOGICAL DISPLACEMENT and it is the main defensive strategy that underlies the pervasive pathology of Bush derangement on the left. Displacement is a particularly useful psychological technique for maintaining DENIAL.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 4:06 PM |

 
SURE SIGNS OF THE SURGE'S SUCCESS ?
1. The Democrats are no longer talking about it.

2. The whiney left is no longer talking about it.

3. The Media is talking about everything else except for it.



Meanwhile, check out here, here and here.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:19 AM |

 
THE "WHACKY'S" ARE POSTED FOR THE WEEK
Proceed immediately to the Weekly Wednesday Wacky Awards; do not stop, do not pass GO; Click on the image of Siggy (unplugged) below for some serious insanity! And you thought YOU were crazy!


- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:17 PM |

 
AN INVITATION TO REJOIN THE CIVILIZED WORLD
Quoted in The Corner, Irshad Manji:

“Moderate Muslims denounce terror that's committed in the name of Islam but they deny that religion has anything to do with it," she says. "Reform-minded Muslims denounce terror that's committed in the name of Islam and acknowledge that our religion is used to inspire it."

This distinction is important, I think, particularly in light of the conference on secular Islam that was recently held. "Moderate Muslims" have not been able to stop the rising storm of totalitarian jihad that is being generated by Islamic fanatics; but, "reform-minded Muslims"--like those who met in St. Petersburg, Florida just might have the key to bringing it to a halt by inviting Islam back into the civilized world.

Here is the a statement released by the participants at that conference (and you should read the entire Declaration):

Released by the delegates to the Secular Islam Summit, St. Petersburg, Florida on March 5, 2007

We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.

We affirm the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience. We believe in the equality of all human persons.

We insist upon the separation of religion from state and the observance of universal human rights.

We find traditions of liberty, rationality, and tolerance in the rich histories of pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. These values do not belong to the West or the East; they are the common moral heritage of humankind.

We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called “Islamaphobia” in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason or rights. We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called “Islamaphobia” in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason or rights.

We call on the governments of the world to

reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their forms; oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostacy, in accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights;

eliminate practices, such as female circumcision, honor killing, forced veiling, and forced marriage, that further the oppression of women; protect sexual and gender minorities from persecution and violence;

reform sectarian education that teaches intolerance and bigotry towards non-Muslims;

and foster an open public sphere in which all matters may be discussed without coercion or intimidation.

We demand the release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men and the rigid strictures of orthodoxy.

We enjoin academics and thinkers everywhere to embark on a fearless examination of the origins and sources of Islam, and to promulgate the ideals of free scientific and spiritual inquiry through cross-cultural translation, publishing, and the mass media.

We say to Muslim believers: there is a noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine;

to Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Baha’is, and all members of non-Muslim faith communities: we stand with you as free and equal citizens;

and to nonbelievers: we defend your unqualified liberty to question and dissent.

Before any of us is a member of the Umma, the Body of Christ, or the Chosen People, we are all members of the community of conscience, the people who must chose for themselves. (emphasis mine)

And with this brilliantly clear and morally precise declaration, the religion of Islam has been given an opportunity to rejoin the rest of civilization. For far too long, they have allowed themselves to abjure civilization and embrace barbarity--all in the name of Allah.

Siggy points out in his usual direct and no-nonsense manner:

Writing in the Arab News, Linda Heard says that Israel Should Embrace The Arab Peace Plan:

Israel is concerned about maintaining a demographic balance so that Jews outnumber non-Jews. Fears are that should there be more Arab Israelis than Jewish Israelis Israel would no longer be able to label itself a Jewish state and would have to fend off calls for a one-state solution.

No Ms Heard, Israel and the civilized world are not so much concerned with a ‘one state solution’ as they are worried about wholesale slaughter, as promised by the religious leaders of her patrons, the Saudis, the rest of the Arab world and the Palestinians themselves. Israel is concerned that ‘Itbach Al Yahud!’- Slaughter the Jews! is an acceptable expression of religious and political expression in the Arab world. Israel is concerned Holocaust denial is most loudly heard from by the same people who ‘promise to finish what Hitler started. Israel is concerned about what is taught in Arab world schools, broadcast on Arab world media and preached from Arab world pulpits.

Ms Heard can pretend as mightily as she can that the Arab world, Israel and the west are all moral equivalents, but in the end, you can’t make reality go away no matter how many times you click your heels....

Under tyrannical regimes with no hope for a future for themselves or for their children, it isn’t hard to understand how so many otherwise rational people would be intoxicated with the idea of a meaningful life by fighting for a ’cause,’ bought and paid for by regimes with a vested interest in keeping rage and attention focused outward. These regimes go with the tried and true- make Israel and the Jews the enemy, not only of the Palestinians but the enemy of Islam as well. Throw in a few wild conspiracy theories, a harsh repressive police force and the road to maintaining power in the region is assured. Make sure the media, school curriculum’s and carefully chosen clergy that can be bought and paid for easily, will spew hate, bigotry and revisionism on demand and populations that number millions, will come out and march for you. Why? Because they believe that an ideology or religion that bestows upon them even a contrived notion superiority and meaning is more than they can ever hope for in their real lives. Add a few cameras, wave the flag and millions upon millions will thank their leaders for their oppression.

As I explained in this post about the strategic question of our time--is Islam compatible with freedom and democracy:

President Bush has bet everything on the hope that Islam can be changed if it is infused with some democratic opportunities and freed from some of the political and religious tyranny that has dominated the Middle East. If such a democratizing process had been started--and carried through-- a decade or two earlier, well who knows how much the situation might have changed by now? But it only began after a devastating attack within our borders finally spurred us to mobilize our resources and fight back both militarily and strategically.

....contrary to the infantile imaginings of the antiwar and so-called "peace" movements, Bush's [middle east] strategy actually represents the best possible hope for peace; even if it is slight.

It is a strategy that faces the grim reality of Islamic contradictions and historical brutality; yet has enough optimism and goodwill in it to be genuinely worth the price we are paying in Afghanistan and Iraq. If it works--and I haven't entirely given up hope yet-- millions of deaths might still be prevented. And if the peace crowd really cares about peace, then they would do well to reconsider their own perverse antics; and the Democrats their knee-jerk opposition.

Because, if they succeed in their determination to undermine American policy as it is now formulated; or if the extremists succeed in eliminating any voices for moderation and tolerance; then there will be only one strategic option open.

Whether it is appreciated or not, these last few years have indeed been our "Golden Hour" --the short time we have to deal with the threat that is represented by the radical elements of Islam. So much of the last three years has been wasted and frittered away by the left and their carping and undermining of Bush's strategic ploy. The continual appeasement, encouragement and cover given to those who would destroy us without mercy, has markedly diluted what we might have accomplished up to now with our aggressive pursuit of the YES Strategy.

The Golden Hour is winding down. As the clock moves closer to answering NO to that fundamental strategic question; and as we creep closer and closer to the ultimate confrontation with a medieval, uncompromising and fanatically ruthless religion; there will be no deus ex machina --and no pointless protest march with clever placards--that will be able to save the millions of lives lost in that conflagration.

This is not only the West's "Golden Hour" --it is also Islam's. The writers of the St. Petersburg Declaration understand this reality. They have taken a clear and unambiguous stand against all the regressive and medieval aspects of their religion and represent a lighthouse, blazing a path toward safe harbor in the tempestuous night, as Islam is tossed and turned by its own stormy contradictions, coming ever closer to permanent self-destruction.

The St. Petersberg Declaration will either provide a life-giving infusion of liberty, rationality, and tolerance into a religion that has been redefined by dysfunctional leaders and, as a result, is in terminal decline; or else the virulent pathology with which it is infected will continue to spread, undeterred; bringing even more death, destruction, and tyranny into the world.

UPDATE: Phyllis Chesler, who was at the conference in Florida has this to say (read her entire article, please):

Now is the time for Western intellectuals who claim to be antiracists and committed to human rights to stand with these dissidents. To do so requires that we adopt a universal standard of human rights and abandon our loyalty to multicultural relativism, which justifies, even romanticises, indigenous Islamist barbarism, totalitarian terrorism and the persecution of women, religious minorities, homosexuals and intellectuals. Our abject refusal to judge between civilisation and barbarism, and between enlightened rationalism and theocratic fundamentalism, endangers and condemns the victims of Islamic tyranny.

Yes, let us see which side the gormless intellectual "elites" of the left are really on, once and for all.

UPATE II: Neo has a related post up:

This is exactly what Islam needs. Whether this tiny graft of Enlightenment thought has any chance of taking I do not know; the forces arrayed against it are powerful, determined, and vast, both inside and outside the Muslim world....

Postmodernist moral relativism and its handmaiden, cultural relativism, have acquired a domination over modern academia, and although both exist and flourish only because of freedom of thought and expression, both refuse to acknowledge their own debt to the superior—yes, superior—values of the Enlightenment. Therefore we are faced with the puzzling fact that those who ought to be the greatest champions of exactly what the St. Petersburg Declaration is asking them to speak out for—liberty in the Muslim world, and elsewhere—make excuses for and even ally themselves with those who would deny it to that Muslim world.

- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:32 AM |

 
THE SANITY SQUAD AND THE FUTURE OF CRAZY !
The psychiatric DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) is the holy bible of psychiatry that contains all the clinical diagnoses ever invented. It is now in its fourth iteration-- with the fifth expecited to come out in 2011 or so, updated with new and improved diagnoses and the criteria for making them.

With all the insanity going on in the world today, that new version of the DSM should probably have a apecial category ceveloped for the wide variety of "Psychopolitical Disorders" we are all witness to every day. The latest podcast of The Sanity Squad , now posted at Pajamas Media includes our tongue-in-cheek (and less than respectful) discussion of up-and-coming political syndromes.

Run of the mill narcissicism is simply not cutting it anymore as the daily dose of politics rises to ever higher levels of insanity and ridiculousness. The Sanity Squad has come up with a plethora of new disorders for the all the politically conscious lunatics among us. From Frankly Regressive Acute Utopian Disorder (FRAUD), and clinical political paranoia with or without conspiracy theory, to KimJongillomania (a political leader's obsession with their hair), Culture-Related Acute Psychosis (see if you can figure out that acronym), and Carter Martyrism. Let this week’s podcast be your guide to the future of crazy!

Join Shrinkwrapped, Neo-neocon, Siggy and me as we irreverantly revise the DSM for future political punditry.

All podcasts of The Sanity Squad can be found here; and you can also download them from iTunes. (search for Pajamas Media)

(The Sanity Squad cartoon at the right is drawn by Eric Allie, whose collection of political cartoons can be found here and here).
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:57 PM |

 
THE LEFT'S THEORY OF RELATIVITY
Victor Davis Hanson in The Corner:

Democratic Disconnect
We need an Orwell to offer some psychological explanation for why an Al Gore, who gobbles up carbon-based power in his mansion and private jet, continues to harangue the less well off about their energy profligacy and threats to the planet, or why a John Edwards, who just finished a towered 28,000 sq. foot palace, claims Jesus would find us unforgiving to the poor, and serially speaks in terms of two nations, rich and poor.

Is this disconnect explained by an easy means of alleviating guilt over their own largess through cosmic preaching about the inequality and selfishness of others?

Or is it a genuine notion that as a crusading Senator and trial-lawyer they have battled enough for the less well off to justify some small compensation for their ongoing labors?

Or is it a clinical schizophrenia in which one side of the Mother Teresa brain has no connection with the Donald Trump other?

It may be all or none of the above clinical syndromes, but I refer to it as the political left's "theory of relativity." Al Gore is just one of the more recent relativists who believe in the theory.
For Democrats and the left, there is no "disconnect" or even cognitive dissonance about such contradictions. As a group that wholeheartedly subscribes to moral relativity and subjective ethics, it makes perfect sense that they have no problem with any "moral authority" as long as that authority just happens to agree with and justify their beliefs.

After all, if morality is relative; if truth is subjective and there is no objective "good" or "bad"; then why bother to look any further?

Let us look at their tactics to try to understand the underlying psychological motivations in this obvious contradiction.

Cindy Sheehan is a prototype of an "absolute moral authority" on the Iraq war because her son was killed in Iraq. To the leftists, it doesn't matter that there are hundreds--even thousands--of parents who happen to believe the opposite from Sheehan about the war. The only opinion that matters and conveys "authority" is one that they agree with.

Ann Coulter is [rightly] criticized by the left--and the right-- when she inappropriately shoots her mouth off about John Edwards; but there is a deafening silence on the left (except for laughter at the cleverness of it all) when Bill Maher is even more inappropriate and publically expresses "sorrow" that terrorists did not succeed in assasinating the Vice President. No relativity of opinion there.

This article discusses the frequent leftist accusation of being a "chickenhawk" if you support the war but have not been a veteran; or have not lost a loved one or sent your own "children" off to fight in the war. John Murtha is one who makes this accusation. He has the proper moral authority, because he fought in Vietnam. So does John Kerry. The other 25% of the Congress who served in the military have no such authority (because they disagree with Murtha and Kerry perhaps?); and the opinions of the vast majority of the grown-ups who are actually doing the fighting for the American public are unimportant. You might as well call Al Gore and most of the environmentally righteous "chickengreens" as one blogger, noting the left's hypocrisy has.

In all three of these cases, the persons in question have become the left's vocal "moral authority" because they happen to agree with the left's beliefs about the key political issues and are anti-Bush , anti-Republican, along with varying degrees of anti-Americanism and anti-capitalistism thrown in for good measure.

What these three examples (and there are many more) have in common is both a breathtaking subjectivism and relativism in one breath; and ideological absolutism in the next.

They all demonstrate the inherent philosophical and psychological contradictions that the postmodern left exploits in order to achieve political power. They are perfectly aware that their positions don't make any sense and can be refuted by anyone with basic knowledge of logic and logical fallacies; but their goal is to maintain the psychological denial necessary to believe in the left's ideology. Interpreting this defense and exposing it is essential to countering that ideology.

Stephen Hicks asks this important question (page 184):

The pattern therefore raises the question of which side of the contradiction is deepest for postmodernism. Is it that psotmodernists really are committed to relativism, but occasionally lapse into absolutism? Or are the absolutist commitments deepest and the relativism a rhetorical cover?

The possibility that the relativism is primary can be ruled out with some thought. If the modern leftist truly embraced relativism, then you would not see the uniformity of their politics. Hicks again:

If subjectivity and relativism were primary, then postmodernists would be adopting political positions across the spectrum, and that simply is not happeniing.

Indeed. Thus we must conclude that the moral relativism that characterizes the left's equation of terrorism with America; deliberate targeting of innocents with herculean efforts to spare innocent life; Bush with Hitler; Iraq with Vietnam; and the use of the global warming debate (and it is still a debate) to morally impugn their critics, while exhibiting the most obvious hypocrisy themselves--all this suggests that these issues are are simple rhetorical devices that are used to manipulate and forward their socialist / totalitarian agenda.

The truth is that the postmodern leftists don't need to believe anything that they say. In fact, they can easily ignore evidence that contradicts their arguments; never acknowledge that their arguments (or more precisely, their beliefs) have been debunked and; and ultimately they can simply redefine words or resort to word games (the various meanings of "is" for example); or move the goalposts (those aren't the WMD's we were looking for) when convenient.

The word games and much of the use of anger and rage that are characteristic of much of their style can be a matter--not of using words to state things that they think are true--but rather of using words as weapons against and enemy that they still hope to destroy.

The usefulness of the theory of relativity is that all issues can be brought up over and over again at the appropriate time to get your opponents or critics off your back and get some breathing space.

If your opponent accepts that the debate is a matter of opinion or semantics, then your losing the argument does not matter: nobody is right or wrong. But if your opponent does not accept that everything is a matter of opinion, then his attention is diverted away from the subject matter at hand--namely politics--and into epistemology. For now he has to show why everything is not merely semantics, and that will take him awhile.

We see this done cyclically. No issue is every resolved. When the left realizes it is in a losing position, it simply backs off until it is opportune to revive the argument. And then they start back at the same points which were countered and try again, this time with more passion and outrage.

This theory of relativity works very well for them.

You might want to remember all this when the cycle of gloom, doom and quagmire starts up again.

It's just a matter of opinion or semantics anyway. Right?
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:47 AM |

 
GUILT CULTURE
I've been overwhelmed by several projects today and will back to blogging tomorrow sometime.

Meanwhile, I couldn't resist this cartoon:


- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:52 PM |

 
NOTES FROM ALL OVER
Neo-neocon has moved to a new site!

"Brief Politico-Therapy" - a roundup of psych bloggers is now posted at GM's Corner...AND he has up a cool, new banner for his blog!

Guess what? Socialism just doesn't work. Shocking.

Bogus and possibly fruadulent? It never made much sense to begin with.

"Nuts for Sanity"? I'm eagerly waiting to sign the $million contract.....

And over 17,000 scientists dissent to the "consensus" on global warming. Imagine that-debate is apparently not closed after all.

Speaking of debates, this is another one the left would like to see closed as quickly as possible --before people realize that the Surge is working.

I've got a bunch of meetings to go to today, so I'll be back sometime this afternoon.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:11 AM |

 
The Usual Political Pandering?

Hah!

Sen. Barack Obama said Friday the use of military force should not be taken off the table when dealing with Iran, which he called "a threat to all of us."
Speaking before a pro-Israel crowd at a downtown hotel, Obama also repeated his call for a phased pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq and strongly backed a strong U.S. relationship with Israel.

Of course, he was talking to a pro-Israel group. So, either he's engaging in the usual political pandering or there's something more to McWonderful than meets the eye....

- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:19 AM |

 
CARNIVAL OF THE INSANITIES
Time for the weekly insanity update, where the insane, the bizarre, the ridiculous, and the completely absurd are highlighted for all to see! This has been a week of rare idiocy (as always!). So, if you want to remain sane, the best thing is to poke some fun at the more egregious absurdities.

Send all entries for next week's carnival to Dr. Sanity by 8 pm ET on Saturday for Sunday's Carnival. Only one post entry weekly per blogger, please. And you might read this before submitting an entry.

Thanks for all the submissions. I try to use as many as possible! SO MANY INSANITIES! SO LITTLE TIME!!!

1. A cornucopia of craziness. And, even more whacky awards!

2. Twelve percent of Canadian muslims agree: behead Harper. Religion of rape; Birds of a feather?

3. Slandered! Let's hear it for the Big Mac!

4. Assassination chic. Nine perfectly good reasons to kill him....And Ten ways Cheney can kill you! But the heinous attacks on Chavez are unsupportable!

5. Victimhood gone berserk. It's all Bush's fault. Everything is. Never question their patriotism....

6. The mouse that roared invaded... It was just an accident; apparently they were "directionally challenged". France has surrendered as a precaution.

7. Money advice for the young, the fabulous, the gay! And speaking of financial matters, take a look how easy it is for anyone to get a credit card. Even miserable handwriting on the application won't matter. Secrets of the Federal Reserve!

8. Mapping the God genome.

9. Al-Gorged. Nature overindulges. This willdefinitely put you off your fried chicken...

10. An open letter to the Goracle.... Hypocrisy of the first odor. Let them eat cake...from the carbon-offset emporium.... Does toking up lead to global warming? Inquiring minds want to know!

11. Of course, an imaginary threat requires a paranoid response. Uh-oh! It begins to unravel. As does a certain self- righteousness. Et tu, Al?

12. Chickengreens--great name that sounds like a faux meat salad! Green with envy?

13. If it's not perfect, you're not allowed to use it! If it was wrong on Iraq, then it's wrong on Iran, wrong on NoKo and they should put down those decoder rings before they hurt somebody.
14. Even therapists obsess about things (even me...hard to believe!)

15. Balancing fear and greed. Problems connecting. Backup blues.

16. Star Trek: Gen X .... Still reeling.

17. Lysistrata's revenge! She stoops to conquer. Sometimes all that's needed is a good spanking?

18. "Crotch deep in mud" and other Google searches. Sheesh.

19. The joke is on Jeter, but they're both Topps in my book!

20. Dr. Sanity is not banned in China. I'll definitely have to do something about that!


***************************************
Carnival of the Insanities can also be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival and at the BlogCarnival.

If you would like to Join the insanity, and add the Carnival of the Insanities button to your sidebar (clicking on it will always take you to the latest update of the Carnival), click on "Word of Blog" below the button to obtain the html code:


- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:39 AM |

 
DIPLOMACY IS BREAKING OUT ALL OVER
Claudia Rosett:

It would be wonderful to feel warm and happy about the diplomacy now breaking out all over. Five years ago America was confronting the axis of evil. Today we are offering access to envoys. After years in the cold, North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan is on his way to New York for talks involving U.S. promises of aid and diplomatic normalization if Pyongyang just stops making nuclear bombs.

Later this month, at a "neighbors" conference convened by Iraq, America plans to sit down with Syria and Iran, whose leaders, in the grand tradition of Tony Soprano, are sending delegates to ponder ways of "stabilizing" the region they have been destabilizing with terrorist networks and bombs.

From global superpower and world cop, America is now recasting itself as feel-good therapist for rogue regimes - seeking to know what's really on the mind of Kim Jong Il, and ready to break bread with the ayatollahs. It all sounds so civilized.

But I am more worried now than I have been since that clarifying and awful morning of Sept. 11, 2001. While America's policy may be shifting, the nature of our enemies has not. We are now seeking good-faith deals with governments that rule by terror, and lie and cheat with an impunity that our own leaders cannot afford.

But according to the polls and according to the Democratic Party and according to the political left, this is exactly what we should be doing. And, we can expect to see more and more of this happy diplo-talk as we approach the 2008 elections. Unless, of course, there is another 9/11 type attack in this country.

Even then, I'm not sure that the people mentioned above who are vocally for "peace in our time" will grasp what it is they are doing to enable the enemies of peace, and to make the liklihood of our being attacked much greater.

I see many individuals who come to a psychiatrist because they ostensibly want change in their lives. Often, their world is in considerable chaos and turmoil. They are often desperate enough to insist that they are willing to do what is necessary to change, but what they want is a "magic pill" that will make everything better. Rarely do they see the crucial connection between their own behavior and choices and the resulting chaos.

Thus, I see battered and abused women who tearfully ask for antidepressant medication (and often, they are severely depressed), but who have difficulty understanding that giving them an antidepressant won't change the fact that their spouse gets drunk and beats them; and if they fail to change their own behavior or choices that lead to the dysfunctional situation, then nothing is going to change.

Then they get upset that the medication "isn't working" and want to try a different one, or a higher dose; or--even better-- a different doctor.

But the fact remains that no amount of medication will work if they do not also deal with the reality of their life; and changing doctors only allows them to keep up the pretense that they themselves don't have to change.

I sometimes explain this concept to my students by telling them about the "biopsychosocial model", which essentially argues that you can view any presenting medical problem by taking into account its biological, the psychological AND the social aspects; and then making sure you address each one specifically in your treatment plan.

Every presenting problem has a different proportion of the three, but if you neglect the social or psychological realities of a patient's life and concentrate only on the biological; then chances are that things will not significantly improve--no matter how brilliantly you might solve the biological component of the problem. If the medication (addressing the biology) helps the person to cope better (i.e., gives them energy to get out of bed in the morning or sleep better etc.) then it can have a beneficial effect on the psychosocial situation in that the patient might behave differently or make different choices. But medication or any biological intervention that ignores reality is destined not to work; nor is focusing on only the social aspects if there is happens also to be an underlying biological problem.

Expecting diplomacy--that refuses to take into account the psychological or social realities of North Korea or Iran and the psychopathologies of its leaders--to alter those dysfunctional regimes is completely unrealistic. In this sense, the West is behaving similarly to the battered spouse who fervently believes that a spoonful of medicine down her own throat will change the abusive behaviors of her husband.

It won't.

Diplomacy by itself, that ignores external reality is destined not to work either.

Medication and biological interventions set-up a stable biological framework within which a person can then change their life or situation. But individuals using it must acknowledge that medication alone will not alter the behavior of other people in their lives; nor will pretending that if only the perfect drug is taken, then life would be perfect. Reality must be embraced in toto for change to be optimal; you cannot pick and choose which aspects of it you will face and expect that all will then be well. Addressing one aspect at the expense of the others may indeed cause change by altering the balance--but it might not be the change you are hoping for; and it actually might make the situation worse.

The same is true of diplomatic solutions. Rosett notes:

Diplomacy has its own impetus toward promises, treaties and frameworks that depend on good faith from both sides. America, when making a pledge, is under tremendous pressure - by the very nature of our democratic system of transparency and law - to keep it. A Dear Leader Kim Jong Il, or a President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Bashar al-Assad, is not....

When we sit down to negotiate deals with their tyrants, we dignify and strengthen and buy time for the bomb-building Kims and Ahmadinejads, and the terrorist-backing Assads. We betray our own principles and our real friends. America is at core better than that, and if we are not honest with ourselves now, we are at high risk of getting hit - like it or not - with the much more costly and dangerous realities right down the road.

Diplomacy may be breaking out all over, but like a bad rash or toxic reaction to medication, it actually might make the international situation much worse; and ensure that the idea of "peace in our time" will remain only a fantasy.

UPDATE: SC&A remind us of history:

Diplomacy only works when the parties involved shared like minded values. Diplomacy effects compromise, which is easy to come by when dealing with Australia, Luxembourg or Canada.

An enemy, as opposed to an opponent, is a very different creature.
An enemy is someone with whom we, as individuals and as a community, have fundamental differences. An enemy has values and beliefs, that are very different than out own. An enemy wants to deprive us of our beliefs and values, because that enemy finds our beliefs repulsive or threatening to their own. Enemies will fight to the death, should they choose to engage us or we choose to engage them...

There are people who believe that enemies are opponents- that is, they can reasoned with and rationalized with and common ground can be had. Believing that an enemy can be an opponent is what led much of Europe to appease Hitler, in the beginning. Herr Hitler, it was believed, was after all a European. Surely he could be reasoned with. Surely he would respond to the rational idea that war was catastrophic.

The world watched and listened as Germany stated her objectives and prepared for war- and remained in denial about the obvious German intentions. The Germans could never be enemies, they believed. They might be opponents- but never enemies.

- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:47 AM |

 
Who You Gonna Believe--Them, Or Your Lyin' Eyes?

- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:55 PM |

 
GONNA GET ALONG WITHOUT YA NOW
This article by Gerard Baker discusses the awful dilemma of Geroge Bush and America bashers everywhere:

Somewhere, deep down, tucked away underneath their loathing for George Bush, in a secret place where the lights of smart dinner-party conversation and clever debating-society repartee never shine, the growing hordes of America-bashers must dread the moment he leaves office.

When President Bush goes into the Texas sunset, and especially if he is replaced by an enlightened, world-embracing Democrat, their one excuse, their sole explanation for all human suffering in the world will disappear too. And they may just find that the world is not as simple as they thought it was.

Oh no, Gerard! You give them far too much credit. Bashing George Bush (and Republicans and America) is waaaaay too intellectually and morally convenient to give up without a fight! The sheer simplicity of psychological denial and displacement will undoubtedly work its incredible magic on the minds of those currently afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome, and they will merely exchange one Chimpy McHitler for another with an equally clever little evil nickname.

Why, they've even begun searching for a new object of their affection hatred now! It's just a little too early to settle on one particular scapegoat. But you can already begin to see signs of a reconciliation between the left and their identified forces of evil....

Let me tell you a story that will explain how this baby works.

When I was a resident in psychiatry there was a young male patient I was consulted on, who came to the Emergency Room on a daily basis, convinced that he had Hodgkins Lymphoma. He would present with this or that symptom and demand to be worked up; and when the work-up was invariably negative would eventually go away. Eventually, the docs in the ER got tired of this and referred him to me.

Gerry was a 27 year old perrennial college graduate student. He was working on finishing a degree at one of the local universities, but kept changing his mind about his thesis topic. He had been in the biology program for almost 6 years and his doctorate was still not in sight. About a year earlier, his parents had given him an ultimatum: they would no longer financially support his studies and he was going to have to get a job if he did not finish the program within the next year. One month before the deadline, Gerry became fixated on the idea that he had Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a nasty cancer in the lymphatic system that is particularly common in young people, after he read a story about it in the news.

He literally became obsessed with the idea that he was dying of this disease and he was furious with the medical doctors because they weren't able to diagnose it. Gerry was a bright, articulate individual, and I figured it would be useful to do everything possible to rule out Hodgkins from the differential diagnosis; and so I did just that. He went through a battery of lab and x-rays; as well as consultations with cancer specialists at my behest. Then, armed with all the data I sat down cheerfully with Gerry and went over it piece by piece; showing him conclusively that there was no possibility he had an occult Hodgkin's tumor.

Gerry sat there very quietly, listening carefully. He exhibited very little throughout the explanation and would only nod almost imperceptibly as we went through the various tests. I thought he took it rather well when I told him that he no longer had to worry about dying from Hodgkin's.

"You are sure?" He asked me, when I was done. I emphatically told him I was sure. My working diagnosis had been simple anxiety grown all out of proportion into an obsession from an slightly enlarged lymph node in Gerry's neck after he had suffered from a cold. Gerry did not seem overjoyed, but he accepted my conclusion. We scheduled to meet the next week to talk about his parent's ultamatum, which I suspected was the actual source of his worries.

However, that weekend I got a call from the ER. Gerry was back. I would be glad to know, the ER Resident informed me sarcastically, that Gerry no longer believed he was dying from Hodgkin's lymphoma. He was now convinced he had a rare type of thyroid cancer.

Only then did I realize the extent of Gerry's delusional system. From what I have told you, you might be able to figure out the psychological purpose that the delusion served for him. Suffice it to say, that logic and reason were unable to eliminate the delusion because as long as he focused on the details of the delusion, he didn't have to face the threat that was even more dangerous to his sense of self.

This is called displacement, and it is an unconscious mechanism that people use to avoid facing an extremely unpleasant or severely dangerous threat to their core sense of self. Like most psychological defenses, it is a form of denial.

Like Gerry, those who suffer from the peculiar delusion that the existence of George Bush accounts for all the evil in the world, will simply replace him with an equivalent delusion when he is gone.

Either that, or face a reality that threatens to overwhelm them. And there is no reason at the moment to believe they are any more ready to face reality than they were on September 12, 2001.

GONNA GET ALONG WITHOUT YA NOW

Got along without ya before I met ya
Gonna get along without ya now.
Gonna find somebody twice as mean
To be responsible someway, somehow.

You were the source of ev’ry thing gone bad
And ya caused me sorrows I never knew I had.
But when you're gone things will be the same
I'll just find someone else that I can blame!
Boom, boom. Boom, boom.
Gonna get along without ya now.
Boom, boom. Boom, boom.
Gonna get along without ya now.

Got along without ya before I met ya
Gonna get along without ya now.
Gonna find somebody twice as mean
To be responsible someway, somehow.

I don't wanna be frightened and lose my pride;
Without someone to blame my ass is fried.
The world is scary and makes me weep
But long as I got a chimpy mchitler, I can sleep.
Boom, boom. Boom, boom.
Gonna get along without ya now.
Boom, boom. Boom, boom.
Gonna get along without ya now.

Got along without ya before I met ya
Gonna get along without ya now.
Gonna find somebody twice as mean
To be responsible someway, somehow.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:55 AM |

 
THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE DO-GOODERS AND SOUL MURDER***UPDATED***
UPDATE: Kate at Small Dead Animals has a perfect example of how these totalitarian idealogues casually use and brainwash children. This is just so incredibly appalling I hardly know what to say. It parallels how the Palestinian gunman hide behind children and use them to throw rocks at the Israelis, knowing full well that decent people are repulsed at the idea of retaliating against innocents. And then consider the harm it does to the souls of the children themselves who are being used in such a manner.

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Betsy Newmark links to an article that demonstrates clearly how socialism's "social justice" advocates have taken over our k-12 education system and are determinedly undermining capitalism:

Working in an elementary school classroom they trace their efforts to tell students that private property ownership is bad by creating a town out of Lego where everyone has to have the same-size house and how valuable it is if the public can have rights to private property. As Martin summarizes their article,

According to the teachers, "Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation."

The children were allegedly incorporating into Legotown "their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys." These assumptions "mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society -- a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive."

They claimed as their role shaping the children's "social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity ... from a perspective of social justice."

So they first explored with the children the issue of ownership. Not all of the students shared the teachers' anathema to private property ownership. "If I buy it, I own it," one child is quoted saying. The teachers then explored with the students concepts of fairness, equity, power, and other issues over a period of several months.

At the end of that time, Legos returned to the classroom after the children agreed to several guiding principles framed by the teachers, including that "All structures are public structures" and "All structures will be standard sizes."

How Orwellian is that lesson? It sounds like something out of Animal Farm but now it's being taught to children as what is optimal rather than to be condemned.

These teachers are so ignorant that they don't realize that the rights to private property are not only the essence of our democratic system as well as the best guarantee for a thriving economy. Who would want to invest and improve anything in an economy if they didn't have guarantees that they would be able to reap the profits from their invested time and money? And these teachers are so proud of their Lego lesson on socialism that they wrote it up and submitted it to an education journal. Amazing.

This is yet another example of a pervasive intellectual trend in the West to continually bash capitalism, private property, business, and free trade; while simultaneously enjoying the benefits of all of them.

Our academics--even the kindergarden ones-- rail against business and private property. Our government constantly seeks to control them. Our youth are propagandized to death about its evils from pre-school through college.

Make no mistake about it, what those teachers are doing is indoctrinating their students minds into an unquestioning obedience to the collective.

While our popular culture refrains sensitively from prtraying Islamofascists as villians in movies out of political correctness (yet another aspect of socialism's quest for "social justice"); it does not hesitate to make businessmen evil and malignant oppressors of the innocent. Individualism, the pursuit of profit, and private property is always bad and everyone must bow to the will of the collective. Islam (the name even means "submit"),even in all its terrorist varieties, does very well by this perverted moral standard.

One very harmful result of this sorry educational situation is that there are few people--even among those who stalwartly defend the free market, who understand and appreciate the essential morality of capitalism. Certainly our children, taught by ideological purists like the ones above who are leftover from the 20th century debacle of socialist/communist tyranny--never even have a chance to rationally consider any ideas not approved by their aggressively collectivist teachers, so intent at quashing those aspects of human nature they don't like.

This is child abuse, pure and simple. It is indoctrination. It is the willful manipulation of young minds which cannot never be allowed to develop even the capability of thinking for themselves. And these perverts call it "social justice."

In fact there is nothing that is "just" about it. It represents the worse kind of oppression with the goal of enslaving the human mind. And enslavement is exactly what is required to establish their socialist utopia, since it refuses to acknowledge the reality of human nature.

Socialist ideologues like those teachers know that in a free market of ideas, their pathetic system-- which has only brought human misery, slavery and death to those who have embraced--cannot function in a real world. Thus they must "stack the deck" and take absolute control over the thinking of the utopia's future citizens.

On some level they even understand that the very foundation of capitalism is human freedom in its most classical, liberal tradition. And that frightens them to death.

Capitalism's incredible production of wealth is the economic side-effect that occurs when political freedom is present. It has been argued, and I agree, that both economic and political freedom are absolute prerequisites for moral behavior.

Children propagandized by dogmatic tyrants like the ones above have had not only their capacity to think for themselves abrogated; they have had their capacity to make moral choices taken from them.

The moral case for capitalism is not taught in our schools, nor is it argued much in our culture. In fact it has been more or less universally accepted by the intellectual elites that systems such as communism and socialism are "morally superior" to capitalism (hence more "socially just")--even though in practice such systems have led to the death and enslavement of millions, and to those unlucky enough not to die from them, they have led to the most horrible shrinking and wasting of the human soul.

The truth is that neither socialism nor communism nor any kind of religious fundamentalism is compatible with morality at all.

If one's actions are coerced by the state or religion, or both; if human activity is indoctrinated, legislated, regulated and ordained down to the last minute detail--particularly to the degree we see in other countries of the world (e.g., Cuba, China, most Middle Eastern countries, North Korea, and now in Venezuela--then how can it possibly be argued that one's actions are moral? Human behavior under such systems is not voluntarily chosen, but actively coerced.

Morality, though, must always be a matter of choice, not mandate.

One cannot hold a person responsible for actions that are coerced or forced from him. Morality can only exist when freedom of action exists; and thus moral actions in any field of human endeavor require freedom.

Conduct may only be thought of as moral or immoral when it is freely chosen by the individual. It is only then that the moral significance of the action can be assessed. It is only when we are free to act that we can exercise moral judgement.

Which brings us to a capitalist economic system. Only in a free economic system within a free political system is it even possible to be moral, since benevolence toward others, compassion, charity, and generosity cannot exist without freedom. Benevolence, generosity, charity, and compassion that are mandated by the state, or by a religion (on pain of death or other consequence); or by any regulations on behavior; or by force--are meaningless insofar as individual morality is concerned.

Taking the mind of a child and feeding it exclusively on your ideological pablum is not only the most cruel and abusive of behaviors; it also ensures that such a mind becomes cognitively stunted and morally impaired (much like the minds of the teachers who so proudly perform such oppressive acts).

In a previous series of posts on Narcissism and Society, I stated:

We have seen that the development of a Cohesive Self is dependent on two separate, equal and parallel developmental lines that arise originally from the biological and psychological fusion of the Infant and Mother early in life. If each of these lines are not interrupted in their normal evolution the Infant will eventually become an Adult with both narcissistic poles adequately developed and be able to function in the world in a healthy way—both in his attitude toward his own physical and psychic self; and in his attitude toward other human beings.

In some ways, the rise of human civilization from the cave to the present day has resulted because of attempts through the Rule of Law and social controls to set limits on the unrestrained Grandiose Self. This is primarily due to the destructiveness of the Narcissistic Rage generally associated with that part of the Self.

Because of this, the Grandiose Self has received a bad reputation philosophically, morally, and politically. The natural development of Governments and Religions (which ultimately are an expression of the Idealized Parent Image/Omnipotent Other side of the Self)have all too often attempted to ruthlessly suppress the Grandiose Self--much to the detriment of the individual AND the success of the particular society or religion.

In fact, despite the obvious truth that governments, nations, and religions are in a much better position to wreak far more systemized misery and death on human populations, it is almost always the Grandiose Self that gets the blame. As Wretchard at The Belmont Club pointed out in a recent post, a review of the 20th century, for example, shows that all the "people's revolutions" supported by the Left and purportedly for the purpose of "freeing" large populations of people; resulted instead in enslaving them and increasing authoritarian rule.

Without a political or economic framework that is able to incorporate what we refer to as "human nature" into its calculations, all so-called "perfect" societies and ideologies will at best simply fail in the real world; and at worse cause untold human suffering. With the best of intentions (this is perhaps debatable), the social engineers of philosophy, political science, and economics have caused so much more slavery, misery and death on a grand scale--that the grandiose CEO's of the largest corporations can be considered mere pikers by comparison.

When we talk about the individual versus society; or the individual versus the state; or indeed any discussion of individual rights versus the rights of a group, we are also referring to the psychological tension between the two poles of the Self. Any political or economic system that expects to succeed in the real world will have to accommodate that tension, and find a way to optimally negotiate the needs of BOTH sides of the Self--that is, they will have to take into account human nature.

A perusal of any list of economic systems will demonstrate that ALMOST ALL OF THEM are relatively extreme expressions of the Idealized Parent Image/Omnipotent Object. Almost all emphasize the group, the community, the collective, the nation, the state, or god at the expense of the individual. Examples are numerous. Socialism and Communism; fascism and religious fundamentalism.

The major exception is Capitalism, where the individual and the individual's needs are emphasized over the the group.

Just yesterday I wrote a post about the "self-esteem gurus" of education who have twisted the minds of our young and perverted the development of a healthy narcissism into a much more malignant variety. We see evidence of this malignant variety in the behavior of teachers who would force their own world view onto the minds of defenseless 5-year old children. One of the questions asked college students in the study from yesterday's post was "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place." Sociopathic narcissism (what I call "sociopathic selflessness") is the defining characteristic of the "dictatorship of the do-gooders". They claim to strive for "social justice" and to "end poverty" and bring about "peace" and "brotherhood"---so, how is it that they never seem to notice that their ideology always brings about the exact opposite of those things? (see the paragraph above about cognitive stunting and moral impairment).

The WSJ put it thusly (from a previous post of mine):

Policy makers who pay lip service to fighting poverty would do well to grasp the link between economic freedom and prosperity. This year the Index finds that the freest economies have a per-capita income of $29,219, more than twice that of the "mostly free" at $12,839, and more than four times that of the "mostly unfree." Put simply, misery has a cure and its name is economic freedom.

The reason that systems such as socialism and communism don't work in the real world and are ultimately destructive of the individual self; and of the human soul, is that they remove moral action and judgement from the individual and place it in the collective. The individual is not permitted to make his/her own moral judgements, and must obey the mandates of the collective. This can only work when the individual is stripped of all freedom to act independently and fears reprisals for doing so.

Thus political freedom and economic freedom go hand in hand. Capitalism cannot exist for long inside an oppressive regime. Since it is more compatible with human nature than any other economic system, it will cause any totalitarian regime that permits it to some degree to last longer (China is a good example), but that can only be a temporary state. Without true political freedom, economic freedom cannot last and will either wither away slowly; or, alternatively cause individuals living under the oppression to demand more political freedom.

You can't be a "little bit" free because human nature will always demand more and more freedom once it has had a taste of it; until the despot who rules is finally deposed, or he totally crushes those who oppose him. In situations where the latter happens, you will always find the worse scenarios of poverty, oppression,misery, death, genocide and/or human degredation.

Likewise, true political freedom cannot last, and in the end is meaningless, where there is no economic freedom. Think for a minute about what money really is. Anti-capitalist intellectuals are rather fond of the phrase "money is the root of all evil" (see here for a further discussion of this point), but, in truth, money is the most efficient method of allowing individuals to make moral judgements. The phrase "put your money where your mouth is" is actually a more meaningful insight for understanding the importance of money and its relationship to freedom.

This is, of course not to say that everyone will make good and/or moral decisions. Nor do all people necessarily spend or even earn their money wisely. They clearly don't. But that is neither here nor there. That is why political freedom demands a rule of law, and the protection of individual and property rights from other individuals and from the state.

In essence, capitalism is actually good for the soul. It is the only system where the soul and the self can flourish, where individuals have a right to their own life and liberty, and can make the specific choices in the pursuit their own particular happiness. Malignant do-gooder teachers, more committed to imposing their ideology on young minds ("If I ruled the world, it would be a better place") rather than teaching student to think for themselves, are not in the business of education; they are in the business of soul murder.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 11:25 AM |

 
THE SANITY SQUAD GOES TO LA LA LAND
The latest podcast of The Sanity Squad is now posted at Pajamas Media Politics Central ; and this week the fab four immerse themselves in popular culture and discuss the the impact that the star culture has had on some of the key issues of the day.

Oscar night is Hollywood’s annual ritual of fashion and self-congratulatory spectacle. The Sanity Squad skips the glam gowns and the glitz, and focuses instead on the influence of the movies on politics, sexuality, and even on our perception of history.

The Sixties were a turning point for film and American culture, and the Squad hones in another critical turning point: the psychological and sociological effects of "abortion on demand".

Join Neo-neocon, Siggy , Shrinkwrapped and me as we "do" Hollywood--the capitol of LA LA land--and dissect the psychopathology of the movies and culture;their impact on our children.; and the illusions and delusions of the cultural and political elite! We let no one off the hook--including ourselves. Go and take a listen--it's free food for your brain!

All podcasts of The Sanity Squad can be found here; and you can also download them from iTunes. (search for Pajamas Media)

(The Sanity Squad cartoon at the right is drawn by Eric Allie, whose collection of political cartoons can be found here and here).
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:12 AM |