Posted on 04/23/2006 10:31:41 AM PDT by Dark Skies
For several months, I have felt like the little boy in The Emperor’s New Clothes. Standing in the middle of a crowd of my elders and betters, watching the current political spectacle, I have been waiting for someone to say the obvious, waiting in vain until I feel compelled to blurt it out myself.
Here goes: “Many Democrats want the US to fail in Iraq!” I don’t mean that they think we’ll fail—they want us to. They want a big embarrassing collapse of US military and political policy in Iraq and will do whatever they can to make it happen. There, I’ve said it and I feel much better.
That doesn’t mean that they are traitors, taking bribes from al Qaeda, or prepared to jeopardize their country’s welfare to advance their careers. Not all of them, at least. There are some prominent Democrats who are morally so far gone that they may just possibly think that way. (After all, a person who can think up Travelgate is capable of any infamy.)
But the vast majority of Democrats think of themselves as loyal Americans and a polygraph would show that they honestly believe it.
The neural pathways inside their heads run something like this:
• The best thing for the United States would be for the Democratic party to come back into power.• A really embarrassing failure in Iraq would tip next year’s election toward the Democrats.
• Therefore, a failure in Iraq would be good for the USA.
Take another issue, illegal immigrants. I contend that, if for no other reason than homeland security, it is essential that we seal our borders against illegal immigrants and expel the ones we have now. The reason behind the Democratic party’s insistent call for amnesty for all illegal immigrants has nothing to do with compassion; the syllogism is rather:
• The best thing for the United States would be for the Democratic party to come back into power.• Illegal Hispanic immigrants, if naturalized, would vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
• Therefore, the naturalization of illegal immigrants would be good for the USA.
To explain this peculiar logic, we must look to the emerging field of mental ophthalmology, which describes the aberrations of what Hamlet called “the mind’s eye.”
Blurring the Mind’s Eye
One such aberration is psychomyopia, or mental nearsightedness. Like most politicians in most parties in most countries of the world, these Democrats cannot see beyond the next election. Issues such as the fate of our nation, the fate of the Iraqi people, and the success or failure of Islamic terrorism are vague blurry background features that they cannot discern.. The only thing their brains can focus on is the nearby goal of getting into power and staying there.
The Democrats are not alone in this aberration, of course. Psychomyopia is a widespread affliction. Republicans are sometimes just as bad when they are out of office or with regard to certain topics that will not be discussed here. It flourishes in all kinds of settings.
Bureaucrats and (if you’ll pardon the double misnomer) civil servants are often so preoccupied with career survival that they cannot see even the most urgent assigned tasks in any other light. Journalists can be so obsessed with publishing a scoop that they are oblivious to the harm they may cause by doing so. And let’s face it, dear reader, haven’t you and I occasionally been guilty of similar myopias?
But psychomyopia can be a relatively mild aberration, due to stupidity and shortsightedness. It is often not culpable because “they know not what they do.”
It is even occasionally curable, not by glasses but by patient explanation. A notable literary example of a cure is described by Robert Louis Stevenson in “Father Damien”:
…he had originally intended to lay out [the money] entirely for the benefit of Catholics, and even so not wisely; but after a long, plain talk, he admitted his error fully and revised the list… I was struck by the fact that he had the honesty of mind to be convinced. I may here tell you that it was a long business; that one of his colleagues sat with him late into the night, multiplying arguments and accusations; that the father listened as usual with “perfect good-nature and perfect obstinacy”; but at the last, when he was persuaded — “Yes,” said he, “I am very much obliged to you; you have done me a service; it would have been a theft.”
It is rare, but it does happen. And it attests to the shortsighted honesty of at least some psychomyopics.
The symptoms of psychomyopia are easily confused with those of psychoglaucoma, or tunnel vision—a preoccupation with one aspect of a situation, coupled with a willful refusal to consider certain other aspects. As in physical ophthalmology, the latter is much more serious and (along with psychoastereopsis – failure to perceive depth) one of the few aberrations of the mind’s eye that can twist a soul into something evil.
Psychoglaucoma is culpable because it perverts the essence of free will. As Aquinas and others have pointed out, we are not free to refrain from choosing an obvious good or rejecting an obvious evil. Our freedom consists in deciding to ignore certain aspects of the choice—to avert our eyes from factors we don’t wish to see and confine our attention to the rest.
An intelligent and just man forces himself to see all aspects of a problem and therefore chooses the good. A psychomyopic cannot see some aspects but chooses as best he can. But a victim of psychoglaucoma chooses evil by seeing only what he wants to see and avoiding what he doesn’t want to see
The Bible provides us an example of psychoglaucoma, the elders in the story of Susannah, who
…suppressed their consciences; they would not allow their eyes to look to heaven, and did not keep in mind just judgments. [emphasis mine].
I remember a confrontation between pro-abortion and anti-abortion demonstrators, on a street in East Los Angeles some thirty years ago. One of the pro-life demonstrators held up poster showing a large picture of a baby-like fetus. He was surrounded by pro-choice demonstrators who were trying to cover up his poster with theirs—they didn’t want to look at it! Later, at a rally, pro-life advocate Susan McMilllan was asked about initiating a dialogue with pro-choice leaders.
“It doesn’t do any good”, she replied, “they know what they are doing and refuse to discuss it.”
Like the corresponding optical aberration, psychoglaucoma is a slow progressive disease. You develop it by first ignoring a few tiny unpleasant details and then, over the course of several years, you pile one self-deception on top of another until, without conscious dishonesty, you can be utterly oblivious to whatever you don’t want to see.
You must be farsighted.
lol...comes in handy for peeping toms.
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"• The best thing for the United States would be for the Democratic party to come back into power.
• A really embarrassing failure in Iraq would tip next year’s election toward the Democrats.
• Therefore, a failure in Iraq would be good for the USA."
I disagree with the initial premise. The initial premise should be something like:
We need to be in power, and the democrat party is the most easily manipulated vehicle to achieve that purpose.
Well, this guy is obviously not a Freeper.
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, it isn't that Democrats are ignorant, it's just that they know so many things that aren't true.
Most Democrats are just ignorant of basic facts about history and economics. And they have very poor critical thinking skills. But the DemoRat "leadership" is anti-American. They resemble Mao Tse-tung, in that they will say or do anything to obtain political power, even if it undermines our troops, our economy, the U.S. Constitution, and our freedom. They are immoral socialists.
“Many Democrats want the US to fail in Iraq!”
Oh for pete's sake, EVERYBODY knows this. It really isn't a revelation. VIETNAM! WATERGATE! VIETNAM! WUAGMIRE! These are the things the democrats live for. They'd probably be happy to have the race riots of the 60s all over again too. They have NO PLAN and need a crisis to regain power.
Liberals are "plagued" by childhood-acquired narcissism. They are obsessed with getting even with those who they believe "oppress" them. They do not think about country. In fact, they find it hard to think beyond their next "trip", or their next form of instant gratification.
Since they really do not think about others, is it not surprising that they cannot fathom what relates to the future security of the nation, of our children and grandchildren-- our neighbors? People who actually DO care about others, instinctively think in terms of protecting them. And that includes fighting for them, if necessary.
This is nature.
Liberals are an aberration of nature.
think about this.....
governments have been utilizing "emminent domain" to procure land for developers...purportedly for the "common good".
The idea of increasing the tax base and stimulating local economies might even win support from a majority of people.
Then consider domestic oil reserves offshore and in Alaska that have been placed off limits by government....the same government that whines about lessening dependence on foreign sources of oil.
In this case a small group of fanatical envirowhackos continue to stand against the common good.
Government is psychotic!!
The biggest argument against drilling locally is a threat of spillage and pollution.
However, dozens of rigs in the Gulf of Mexico were damaged or destroyed by a category 5 hurricane last summer with little or no spillage or pollution.
Where are the sane polititians who are willing to stand up against their psychotic colleagues and the crazy tree-huggers...... for the common good?!
I'm amazed that it took this guy so long to arrive at this obvious conclusion.
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It's not really the Democrat voters whose opinions are being reflected here. It is the Democrat position writers. The Democrat position writers are completely under the control of a particular strain of academic and journalistic thinking that abhors naked power.
The New York Times editorial page is the home base of this strain of thinking.
When the United States uses, or even hints at the use, of naked power, the "naked power phobics" go ballistic. The defeat of the Republicans and the defeat of the U.S. Military both look like necessary steps in the progress of man to them. In their view, mankind can not move forward into a new and better age until we all learn that power can not make the world a better place.
This is a pretty attractive position to many. Indeed it can seem to be the core principle of the New Testament and many Christians take this position.
For the rest of us, who appreciate the police who help us keep criminals at bay and who wish to defend our nation and our lifestyle, this position seems extreme. Power often defends the good and stands in the way of evil.
God help us in this debate. This isn't the end of the discussion, though.
Many of us cannot be comfortable in a country run by the New York Times rather than by the voters, however well informed the New York Times may be. The Democrats are run by the New York Times. Can we be comfortable with a Democrat government?
Not me.
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