Is Conservatism A Mental Disorder?

Jewish World Review ^ | July 24, 2003 | Michael Graham

[suspects]

The great schism between America Left and Right can be traced back to a tiny fracture in opinion: What is the fundamental nature of Man?

Liberals, when all the politics is stripped away, believe that people are fundamentally good, that when protected from the evil influences of corporations, institutional racism and the poisonous ether of talk radio, the average person will naturally choose to act selflessly and in the public good.

Conservatives like myself recognize this as sheer idiocy. Man lives in a fallen state, prone towards selfishness, pettiness and narcissism. Without some redeeming force acting upon us, the average hausfrau would shoplift the week's groceries and blow her savings at the track, and the typical minister of the Gospel would spend his unwatched hours in the "laying on of hands" upon nubile sopranos from the Sunday choir.

Which is why, generally speaking, we conservatives are more comfortably able to bear the existence of our liberal counterparts. We're not surprised to encounter the failed logic and naiveté of liberals because we are well aware that our human beings are so very fallible.

Liberals, on the other hand, find us conservatives difficult to abide because we simply shouldn't be. Given every person's innate desire for the joys progressive taxation, gun control and abortion on demand, the very existence of conservatism makes no natural sense.

And so a conservative meets a liberal and thinks "You're wrong," while a liberal meets a conservative and wonders "What's wrong with you?"

Now they think they know.

[Alberta's Child]

Liberals, when all the politics is stripped away, believe that people are fundamentally good, that when protected from the evil influences of corporations, institutional racism and the poisonous ether of talk radio, the average person will naturally choose to act selflessly and in the public good.

This is absolute bullsh!t. If this were the case, then why do liberals consistently support an agenda that is based entirely on the presumption that people cannot be trusted to act selflessly and in the public good (i.e., gun control, single-payer health care, etc.)?

[vbmoneyspender]

Conservatives believe people will act in their self-interest. If the system is setup so that there is less advantage to working hard and taking risks due to things like regulations and taxes then people will act in their self-interest and sit back and receive the gov't welfare benefits that liberals like to dole out to assuage their guilty consciences.

[Maceman]

Liberals, when all the politics is stripped away, believe that people are fundamentally good, that when protected from the evil influences of corporations, institutional racism and the poisonous ether of talk radio, the average person will naturally choose to act selflessly and in the public good.

Maybe some liberals believe that. Too many I know believe the opposite. Their first premise about the proper role of government, as voiced by a NY Times reading, liberal trial lawyer friend of mine, is: "People are greedy and need to be controlled."

That's why so many social engineering liberals have always tried to "perfect" people by controlling them through government institutions.

[Lockbox]

Is Conservatism A Mental Disorder?

YES!

and every time a law is created which harms Conservatism we should sue under the Americans with Disability Act.

[ZULU]

Liberals believe people are inherently evil and stupid. That's why they believe it is necessary to have a large powerful government which controls all aspects of an individual's behavior and choices.

Conservative place more trust in the individual than in the state when it comes to making intelligent choices which impact that individual. Liberals do not. Liberals trust the state and beaurocrats before they trust individual citizens.

Conservatives also believe that an individual is capable of free choice and hence responsible for his own actions and the consequences that result from the same. Liberals, believing in the inherent stupidity of ALL individuals, believe that ethnic background, social circumstances, ancestral injustices, etc. etc., override personal choice, and hence individuals are not responsible for their own actions - society as a whole is.

Conservatives, while admitting the existance of shades of gray, still believe in certain absolutes - that some things are absolutely wrong and some things are absolutely right. To a liberal, all things are a matter of personal perspective and varying shades of gray. Hence they believe in moral and cultural relativism.

Conservatives believe in the principles of the Founding Fathers and a strict interpretation of the Constitution and the Founding Documents in a light more closely approximate to that intended by the original framers. Liberals believe that meaning can be changed by time and by the perspective of the interpreter.

Most conservatives accept and acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being, and the debt our Nation owes to Divine Providence. Most liberals are closet agnostics or atheists.

The author of the cited piece just doesn't get it.

[Naspino]

You are saying the same thing as the author. He says "that when protected from the evil influences" then you are trusted (until they find the next issue to get elected on). So once guns, profits, choice of health care and education, fatty acids, and bibles are removed you are free to do as you like! Of course to me this sounds like enslavement -- but I'm mental apparently.

[Chewbacca]

Liberals are nuts.

I believe liberalism is a demonically inspired mental disease.

[William McKinley]

Liberals, when all the politics is stripped away, believe that people are fundamentally good, that when protected from the evil influences of corporations, institutional racism and the poisonous ether of talk radio, the average person will naturally choose to act selflessly and in the public good.

The irony here is that corporations are made of collections of people, institutional racism is racism across a collection of people, talk radio is radio listened to by an audience, which is a collection of people. Liberals think people are fundamentally good except when influenced by people collectives- yet liberals are drawn like moths to the flame of collectivism.

[Naspino]

The author of the cited piece just doesn't get it.

I think he gets it -- he just stated it as sarcasm. He said liberals trust you so long as all your "evil influences" are removed. He just doesn't qualify what the real "evil influence" is. Freedom of choice except in (abortion). So long as you don't have the right to make your own choices and all "tools" of your choices are not available then you'll be content to your position as a Democratic voter (aka. slave).

[bandleader]

I couldn't agree more!Liberals have absolutely NO confidence that people(given the opportunity)will"do the right thing"!It's just the opposite with Liberals!!I can still hear BeelzeBubba telling a crowd of Kool Aid guzzling Sheeple in Buffalo,NY;"I Could Have Giveb You A Tax Cut,But I Couldn't Be Sure That You Would Spend It Correctly"!!!This is pretty much verbatim!!!!!!!!!!!

[William McKinley]

You've been blogged. That is awesome.

[Revenge Of Daffy-Duck]

I challenge this premise as well. If Liberals really think human nature is fundamentally good, how is it that they are so concerned with controlling people?

Forced collectivization, anti-smoking laws, massive burauecracy, speech codes, politcal correctness, forced abortion, brutal repression and mass killing. Those are some of the things that have been imposed on "fundamentally good" people by leftist regimes around the globe and throughout history.

But if they really think people are basically good, shouldn't they just leave them alone?

It's almost as if their secret fundamental tenet is that not only is man basically vile, but that therefore he must be destroyed!

[Naspino]

I agree with you; but I think you missed the sarcasm in the author's article. Keyword being "evil influences" which is meant to say anything they deem evil like cigarettes or fatty acids -- eventually meat all together.

[Wallace T.]

Liberals see themselves as the enlightened ones, as well as the truly mentally healthy ones. They see their role as part of a dialectic between their thesis of "social progress" and the conservative thesis of "reaction." Through the dialectic, progress toward an egalitarian and levelled society will occur. It is liberals' belief that if and when state power (in their hands) suppresses the forces of reaction, humans will behave in a selfless, community minded manner. In other words, what the Communists of the USSR called the "New Soviet Man."

This is Marxist thinking, of course, and most liberals adhere to it, even if they deceive themselves into believing they are not socialists. Gun control, socialized medicine, universal and mandatory government education, etc., take power away from reactionary institutions and persons, such as families, private enterprises, churches, and white males and grants the power to government bureaucracies staffed by leftists, heavily staffed by females and nonwhites. If pressed, liberals will admit that environmental regulations, smoking bans, etc., do take away choice, but they will also say that people should not have the opportunity to make these "unhealthy" choices.

In essence, modern liberalism is but the iron fist of Communism masked under the velvet glove of "compassion."

[Gorjus]

Liberals, when all the politics is stripped away, believe that people are fundamentally good,...

Actually, this is true but incomplete. Liberals believe that people are fundamentally good, but stupid - except for the annointed shining lights who have a noble duty to protect the masses from the consequences not of evil, but of stupidity.

Therefore, since people are good and deep in their heart want what is best for others - but are too stupid to recognize what's best - the annointed must make all decisions for all stupid, unenlightened masses.

Conservatives, on the other hand, believe most people are reasonably smart, but selfish. They are smart enough to make rational choices on what benefits them - with the proviso that some choose a short-term benefit (like the pleasure of taking life easy) while other people would choose a longer-term benefit (like studying to qualify for a higher-paying job). That the longer-term focus people are typically more successful is not an accident, but it is not free to them. They've had to sacrifice short term benefits to achieve that success.

And conservatives with a longer-term focus believe that it is a continuing benefit to society if the intrinsic selfishness of people is balanced by a moral code that is stable and just.

So, it's true that liberals believe that people cannot be trusted to act selflessly and in the public good - but it's because they're to stupid to see the public good, not because they're inherently bad. That's why we all need the self-annointed limousine liberals to tell us what to think and do. When we do, we'll all be happy because in our hearts, we know they're right and it really is best for us to let those who are smarter lead us. Even if 95% of the people disagree with something the annointed want, they should still be in control because they just simply know what's best.

I mean, it's all so obvious (to the self-annointed) that the only possible explanation for someone disagreeing with the annointed is that the disagreeable ones are mentally unbalanced (as well as stupid).

[EdReform]

Bump & Ping

[Check_Your_Premises]

The author does miss the point.

Liberals think THEY are fundamentally good, and it is their job to "fix" everyone else. It is there messianic duty. And what a wonderful effect that mission has on their egos. Not a coincidence, that is in fact what it is all about.

When they spend other peoples money to buy votes, all that matters is that we see how special they are. When they make stupid speeches (ex. the end of Patch Adams)with superior and enlightened sounding rhetoric, they bask in the idea that we see how wonderful they are. When they protest, they really are just saying, "look at me, look how morally superior I am, look how much I care, look how much better I am than you!!!" Maybe if we just kept telling them how great they are they would go away. That is really all they want. MDP

[Question_Assumptions]

My favorite part of the report is that the switch from claiming that conservatives "accept inequality" to the idea that conservatives "condone inequality". Despite the fact that these comments fail to differentiate between equality in process (which is what conservatives demand) and euqality of results (which is what liberals demand), accepting something is not the same as condoning it.

[Question_Assumptions]

The irony here is that corporations are made of collections of people, institutional racism is racism across a collection of people, talk radio is radio listened to by an audience, which is a collection of people. Liberals think people are fundamentally good except when influenced by people collectives- yet liberals are drawn like moths to the flame of collectivism.

What you need to realize is that liberals think of "the government" as some sort of magical entity that can operate with perfect precision and efficiency. If you create an agency that looks out for the welfare of children, for example, they imagine a magical end to child abuse carried out by perfect liberals who never make mistakes. They won't imagine an agency manned by civil servants who may be lazy, stupid, or corrupt taking children away from decent parents and leaving children to die with abusive parents. It is this leap of faith that allows them to imagine that concentration of power in government is better than concentration of power in corporations or individuals. They don't imagine the real thing. Actually, detachment from reality is pretty much a requirement for being a Leftist.