When they learn this:
"Unscientific and simpleminded liberals like to pretend that "poverty causes crime..."
"If liberty were natural to man, it would have appeared much sooner in history, not just a few hundred years ago."
"Natural man" will always take security in exchange for liberty. Only transnatural man can say "give me liberty or give me death," since only he knows that there is something higher than nature, and that there are certain worldly political arrangements that are not worthy of man."
"Quite simply, it is difficult if not impossible to become what the Creator intended if one falls into the parallel looniverse of the left."
"True independence and individuation are marks of the spiritually mature, so long as one's prior dependence upon spirit is acknowledged and appreciated. Otherwise, the isolated individual is a monster, a mere caricature of uniqueness and wholeness. An original perhaps, but an original nothing -- creativity in service of death, vanity, and ego-aggrandizement. It is simply the opposite side of the same worthless material coin."
"Ideology is always nourished by religious roots. "
"...Thus, it merges nicely with the modern material ego, which is why it is also almost always left wing."
<>//<>
Explaining the Cognitive Barbarism of the Proglodyte Left
"..Politics truly is a sort of show business for the unattractive -- the psychologically unattractive. And you can well understand why the Democrat party would attract such people, because unlike conservatism, it does not mainly consist of ideas but of promises made to various constituencies of dysfunctional losers, weirdos, cranks, misfits, and malcontents. It is the party of the Unhappy who imagine that the state can make them happy. .."
DSM-IV 301.95 PROGRESSIVE PERSONALITY DISORDER
A. A pervasive pattern of progressive political thought and action, rooted in discredited leftist (neo-Marxist) beliefs, beginning in early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by at least five of the following (individual must be at least 18 years of age to qualify for the diagnosis of Progressive Personality Disorder, as many of the criteria are age-appropriate for adolescents and children):
1. Utopian thinking: A delusional belief that there exist simple, linear, side effect-free solutions to all social problems. (Note to clinician: please differentiate between mere historical ignorance, e.g., a doctorate in history from an elite university, vs. psychotic delusions of grandeur or adequacy.)
2. Anthroplastic ideation: The delusion that behavioral conditioning performed by the government or some other collective will cure all behavioral and social problems, rooted in denial of fixed human nature. Implicit in this delusion is the idea that human beings are infinitely malleable and subject to behavioral manipulation leading to perfect control and predictability. Free will, personal conscience, and objective morality are denied, devalued or denigrated. No concern for actual behaviors or personal beliefs that either cause or eliminate poverty.
3. Anti-theistic rebellion: An emotional antagonism to the Judeo-Christian tradition, rooted in an abnormal persistence of adolescent rebellion (may also be related to the need to avoid counter-arguments that would question utopian, anthroplastic ideation). This behavior ranges from a mere antagonism to Christianity to a hatred of all forms of religion. The rejection of religion leads to a deep longing for a secular messiah and master. (Generally the more Western a religion is, the more it is despised. Thus, these patients may openly accept more primitive pantheistic, neo-pagan, or animist belief systems, such as Wicca or fraudulent "new age" philosophies, e.g., Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins, etc.)
4. Naturist delusion: The belief that mankind is evil and nature is benign. The incidence of this symptom is inversely related to practical knowledge and experience of nature. Collective self-hatred is a feature in this area, paradoxically existing side by side with egomaniacal omniscience, e.g., ability to accurately predict weather 100 years into the future. Typical thinking includes the paranoid belief that mankind is a cancer on earth and that the planet (subjectively felt as a "feeling being") will "retaliate." The naturist delusion includes considerable cognitive dissonance, since the typical Progressive Personality is a believer in natural selection, which has resulted in unimaginable suffering and cruelty, mitigated only by mankind's presence.
5. Environmental spasm: Chaotic, unreasonable, or incoherent episodes of manic activity on behalf of the environment or "mother nature." The delusional nature of this activity is evidenced by the misanthropic attacks on all works of man, and also by the manic focus on visible or totemic biological objects of little actual worth. The patient is typically obsessed only with cute or cuddly creatures, often a displacement of the nurturing urge (which is not infrequently unfulfilled due to abortion). Such patients may show more concern for the President swatting an insect than his waving aside the concerns of millions of human beings living under tyranny and crying out for his support.
6. Control obsession: The tendency to strive for excessive control over others through state intrusion. A contemptuous projection of unconscious greed into anonymous others (the mythic "little guy"), which is subjectively experienced as "compassion." Through the magic of this unconscious mechanism, the very people who want the state to appropriate your wealth can imagine themselves to be generous and "compassionate," irrespective of how they actually treat real human beings.
7. Racist/feminist hypocrisy: Passionate advocation of government-enforced discrimination based on sex or race, while aggressively proclaiming opposition to policies which are "racist" or "sexist." Obsession with conformity of thought within a racially diverse population. For example, such a person might favor seating a racist on the Supreme Court, so long as the person is of the "correct" "race."
8. Overemotional perception: Excessive concern with how a social action "looks" or "feels," to the exclusion of actual effects in the real world, in particular, any effects beyond the immediate. Resistance to, and denial of, objective evidence proving the adverse consequences of progressive policy. Superficial cognition about most matters of significant import, as the progressive personality relies on the "feel" of issues rather than truly understanding them. Obsession with "fairness" or "social justice" as opposed to what actually works.
9. Sexual dysfunction: Significant anxiety about sexual matters, manifested as:
a. Obsession with sexual and gender roles.
b. Passionate celebration of nontraditional sex roles and preferences.
c. The compulsion to define individuals by their "sexual preference" and to design social policy as if all individuals share the obsession.
d. An inordinate interest in preserving inappropriate, lewd, perverse, or antisocial forms of sexual expression.
e. Fascination with immature or deviant expressions of sexuality; reduction of human sexuality to animal sexuality.
10. Replacement of patriotism with matriotism: Unwillingness to defend country when attacked or threatened. Allied with inability to name or recognize evil. General devaluation of the masculine virtues.
11. Cultural and moral relativism: The fervent belief that all cultures are beautiful except one's own, and that it is immoral to judge another's morality unless they are conservative.
12. Devaluation of human life: The belief that the four-toed salamander or Illinois mud turtle is entitled to more protection than a human baby. Belief that a bald eagle egg is a bird, but that a human fetus is not a person.
Marking for later read ... that’s a lot to absorb while distracted by other things. Sorry, but I’ll have to read it later, when I can give it the attention it deserves. Thanks for the lengthy and informative post.
Oil Spill Commission Failed to Examine Key Evidence
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=41460
by Tina Korbe
01/29/2011
President Obama’s oil spill commission spent six months examining the “root causes” of the Gulf disaster, yet never inspected the failed blowout preventer — the part of the well that could have, as its name suggests, prevented the explosion.
At a House Natural Resources Committee hearing this week, the co-chairman of the National Oil Spill Commission faced a barrage of questions from Republicans and Democrats about why their final report is long on regulatory recommendations but short on engineering explanations.
Lawmakers took issue with the commission’s apparent lack of effort to explain the failure of the blowout preventer. Republicans said it calls into question the commission’s recommendations — and, more seriously, leaves the Gulf vulnerable to a similar malfunction in the future.
“Why should we take [the commission] seriously if [it] did not even make that modicum of effort to determine the actual cause of the disaster?” asked Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.). “We’ve never had a blowout failure like this one. Until we find out why it failed, it could happen again. It could happen anytime — and the commission has not advanced our understanding of how to prevent that. … We have before us a report recommending bureaucratic solutions to engineering problems authored by bureaucrats rather than an engineering solution authored by engineers.”
Up until Wednesday’s hearing, the oil spill commission has largely avoided sharp questioning. Its 381-page final report on “The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling” was released earlier this month, the result of six months of research.
Republican lawmakers expressed alarm that the commission — made up of Obama appointees who lack engineering experience — would offer recommendations without attempting to identity the precise mechanical cause of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion.
“We still don’t know what caused the explosion,” said Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.). “We don’t know how or why the blowout preventer malfunctioned.”
Commission co-chairman and former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) responded: “It is true that no one at this point has had the benefit of a full examination of the blowout preventer. What we do know is that it didn’t perform as it should have.”
When Obama created the commission last May, it’s top priority was to “examine the relevant facts and circumstances concerning the root causes of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.”
The commission’s report heavily explores the human error and managerial mistakes behind the spill — again, at the relative expense of exploring the technological causes. It could have done both, McClintock said, citing the work of the Rogers Commission, which examined the causes of the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
“When the Challenger exploded, people only knew one thing for sure after the accident — that this was a launch that was fatal and catastrophic,” he said. “The Rogers Commission was a panel that was filled with technical experts that painstakingly recovered the wreckage from underneath the ocean and reassembled that wreckage and then determined the precise cause of the disaster. It then recommended changes so that the space program could move forward.”
Commission co-chairman William Reilly deflected criticism and defended the report. Reilly, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, drew an interesting analogy.
“I think you can draw an analogy between a blowout preventer and a seatbelt in an automobile accident,” Reilly said. “It’s obviously important to the survival of someone that a seatbelt wasn’t fastened, but it doesn’t really explain why the accident occurred. We explain why the accident occurred. We identified all the major contributors. … Examining the blowout preventer is not going to cause those other factors that we have covered to go away. They are there, they are distressing and they do have implications for policy.”
Those policy implications worry some committee members. The report’s imbalance suggests a desire to limit the capabilities of the oil industry, which is evident from the phrase “systemic, industry-wide failure” — without examples from more than three companies to back up its use. In fact, the report implies the need for a complete governmental overhaul of the industry when no such overhaul is needed.
“Here’s the issue,” Rep. Bill Flores (R-Tex.) said. “Congress has considered legislation, the Department of Interior has issued new regulations, lease sales have been canceled, other areas of potential offshore activity have been put off-limits again and it’s all based on a report that doesn’t give a full post-mortem of what happened.”
Even committee Democrats questioned the report’s most sweeping claim.
“Some of the verdicts, sometimes even just the words used in the report, I kind of have some concerns about,” said Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.). “One was the use of the term ‘systemic,’ that there are ‘systemic’ problems in the industry. If you look at a 30-year history, over the last 30 years, the history of the offshore oil industry, there have been some incidents, but I think a major incident is very rare and, if you compare it with the airline industry or the consumer trade industry, the oil and gas industry has done quite a good job.”
But Reilly and Graham stood behind this conclusion. While the report only cites as safety offenders three companies, those companies are highly prevalent in the industry, they said.
“It is simply inconceivable to us that this is a problem so exclusive, so especially circumstantial to one rig,” Reilly said.
That perspective is likely to shape future policymaking, a point that wasn’t lost on Flores. “This report is being relied upon to continue moratoria, either de facto or regulatory or however they want to be described, and it goes back to this ‘systemic, industry-wide’ failure comment.”
Going one step further, Flores asked the commission to remove the phrase from its report.
“Based on what I see, and the weight which this report is being given for the energy future of this country, I would respectfully ask the commission to remove from the report the phrase, ‘systemic, industry-wide failure.”