Pathologizing Conservatism

Reason ^ | October 20, 2004 | Ronald Bailey

[morkfork]

Here is his obligatory email address

rbailey@reason.com

Just sent him an email discussing my thoughts on this article. Thought someone else might want give him a piece of their mind, though not much, this guy can't "reason" that well, as the article deftly shows.

[familyop]

"Then it will be plain that the first condition for the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and that this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society" (Frederick Engels, "Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State").

Mao's Little Red Book on Women (a book that many California feminists carried with them in the late '60s and early '70s)

Some of Lenin's words on women

Betty Friedan, known as one of the most moderate of feminists, was a socialist.

[neverdem]

Cathy Young, another writer for Reason, has sometimes advocated homosexual activist issues, recently, and amazonian feminism in the earlier past.

Cathy Young routinely criticizes feminism, at least lately, especially the "sacred truth" that virtually all domestic violence is by men and all victims are women.

The vast majority of big 'L' Libertarians believe in the Second Amendment as well, such that NRA Voter Guides for years have included the comment in the column with the heading, "Here's What the Ratings Mean:". At the bottom of the column it states, "NRA members should be aware that Libertarian candidates as a rule are pro-gun". Show me some socialists that believe the Second Amendment protects the right of the individual to own guns.

[neverdem]

Thanks for the links, but what makes you think I don't know enough about hard core lefties like Mao, Lenin and Friedan? They all thought society needed transformation. Most libertarians are very individualistic and cherish individual rights, property rights and small government.

[familyop]

Libertarian individuals, like feminists, claim to be in favor of or against just about anything when it suits their arguements. But they do have one Official Platform.

National Platform of the Libertarian Party
http://lp.org/issues/platform/preamble.html#toc

And run

"outright libertarians"

(quotes and all) as a phrase at google.com

[SERKIT]

How do the psycho-babblists explain the violence, thuggery, break-ins, Kristalnacht-tactics, shooting out windows of campaign HQ's, voter intimidation (the REAL kind), etc perpetrated by the rabid left? That stuff must be "normal".

[John Lenin]

Good article.

Such great egotism and hunger for power and attention does of course make a mockery of the Leftist's claim to be in favour of equality. Like the pigs in George Orwell's "Animal farm", the Leftist wants to be "more equal than others". He wants to rule or at least dominate. Beneath his deceptive rhetoric, he is the ultimate elitist. He actually despises most of his fellow men and thinks that only he and his clique are fit to run everything. The last thing he wants is to be lost in a sea of equal people.

[neverdem]

Thanks for the link, but if the two major parties were the pubbies and the Libertarians, I would probably vote for the Libertarian. It's not that I agree with all of their platform. Some ideas are looney and would never be enacted. But I like their ideas limiting authoritarian government of any kind. It's just that the dems prevent me from throwing my vote away.

[Freedom4US]

Professor Meyer-Emerick wants to know if there are genetic tendencies that promote what she dubs "authoritarianism."

Oh, just call everyone NAZIS and get it over with, lady.

[Freedom4US]

These people are deadly serious. Any deviation from their "liberal" ideas is prima facie evidence of you-know-what.

See: Theodore Adorno "The Authoritarian Personality"

Basically, what happened during the Weimar period in Germany, the fascists kicked out a bunch of far left wack jobs who emigrated to the US and set up shop at major universities. They decided that the US was too "authoritarian" with deep respect for police, religion, family, etc, the hallmarks of the Nazis. I'm not making this up.

[Innisfree]

It's plain why people took this article for a spoof. If you follow the link above, however, and read just the abstract to the article from the APA journal---Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition--- you'll find that the authors have indeed amassed "evidence" that pathology drives conservatism. It seems that conservatives have long been singled out for the study of "psychological motives and tendencies" underlying ideology. I would like to see an honest analytical piece on the psychological origins of liberalism.

The above is an NIH-funded study, btw: your tax dollars at work... It begins with a quote from George F. Will, who is patently in need of some psychological assistance...or maybe some reeducation.