From time to time I am reminded (and try to remind myself with some frequency) that much of what I write is, of necessity, based on generalizations. For me to talk more specifically about how narcissistic pathology shows up in a patient would clearly be problematic, yet to be specific about someone who is not a patient is impossible; there is no way I can know someone well enough to comment on the organization of their unconscious mind without spending the requisite time with them in the specialized environment of a psychoanalysis or psychotherapy. Further, theory can only offer an outline of a real personality. As with psychology, so with politics; perhaps at times, I too loosely use terms like liberal and left without being specific; some of this is unavoidable. I have attempted to define for myself what it means to be a liberal or a leftist. In my post on Political Religion, I wrote:
I would suggest that most on the left consider themselves to be Secular Humanists. They firmly believe in Evolution, strict separation of church and state, Affirmative Action, Government aid to level the playing field and lift up those who are unable to succeed in the Capitalist System (aka "victims"), and freedom of Speech when it doesn't clash with the Rights of minorities who might be injured by such speech, and that War is almost never justified and can only be conducted under the auspices of an International Coalition (the UN). There is of course more to this, it is not meant to be an exhaustive list, and quite obviously, not every Democrat, Liberal, or Leftist agrees with all of the above. I would further submit that the ultimate arbiter of the Liberal position is the paper of record, the New York Times. This is instructive.
Later in that post I deduced that some core liberal/left tenets (specifically insistence on the non-existence of innate gender differences [radical feminism] versus the primacy of innate gender preferences [in the homosexual community]) were in direct opposition to each other, and concluded that it more closely resembled a set of religious beliefs rather than a coherent political philosophy.
In effect, the meme suggests that there are no inherent differences (Nature) between men and women and all differences in outcome can be attributed to social influences (Nurture). If you have any doubts that this is a religious belief rather than a fact based opinion, do the following thought experiment. Imagine yourself in a room full of Homosexual activists. Imagine yourself giving a talk in which you suggest that Homosexuality is the outcome of a complex interaction between a child's inherent constitutional make up (Nature), including the structure of his brain, and his emotional development in relation to his early childhood and parenting experiences (Nature). The idea that Homosexuality is genetic (any time you read that something is "genetic" take it with a large grain of salt; as I once read, genes encode for proteins, not behavior) is a "given", scarcely more open to discussion than the idea that women and men are not equal.
I have continued to ponder what it means to be a liberal or a leftist, and have engaged in some interesting conversations with friends, colleagues and family to this end; yet, I find myself at a loss. The only consistent pattern I have been able to discern is that to be a liberal means to be in opposition to anything Bush (and by extension) the Republicans want to do, and to be a leftist means to oppose any action by a segment of American society that has any power. To be a leftist is to be a champion of all the victims of America's violence (which can be almost anyone; the left has redefined speech as action, which is then justification for banning, as objectionable speech, anything that hurts the feelings of a designated victim.) I must admit, I remain somewhat confused about liberalism and leftism, and as soon as the New York Times and the Democratic party figure it out, I will be relieved.
One of the reasons this has come up today is a conversation with a colleague this morning. He has always been convinced that the USSR losing the Cold War had nothing to do with Ronald Reagan. He is today convinced that the democratizing wave in the Middle East (spreading to Ukraine, other former SSR's, etc.) is completely unrelated to Coalition troops inhabiting Iraq. He maintains this in the face of comments by the people who live there (Walid Jumblatt, for example); further he suggests if we had only taken all the money we have spent on the Iraq war we could have given every Iraqi $8,000! Unfortunately we were unable to continue the conversation and I remain curious as to how this would have been done and what effect he imagines it would have had. When we parted, he wondered how the two of us could have such different perspectives on t he same data set; I must admit, I wonder the same thing.
For the moment, I will take no position on which of us is more correct in our assessment. What I am struck by is how our political leanings have affected our perceptions. We take for granted that we can see what is right on front of us. Yet even the most superficial consideration leads us to recognize that our perceptions are often distorted, and our memories are amazingly plastic. Lawyers will tell you that eye witness accounts, the gold standard of evidence, are terribly unreliable. Psychotherapists will tell you how susceptible memories are to change and distortion over time. It is a wonder we can truly know anything.
And this brings me to my biggest disappointment with the liberal side of the political spectrum. I am uncertain, and I know I can never be certain, about my own perspective; too much certainty can be dangerous. In the face of terror and existential threats, one can too easily be lead down the path to more and more security, at the expense of liberty. I have been called a fascist more than once for supporting Bush and the spread of democracy and I do not believe that President Bush, or myself, is a fascist. However, I know that history tells us that totalitarianism can creep in slowly and legally. We need a responsible opposition to raise questions. If the ruling party is not confronted and forced to defend their reasoning, they will find it all too easy to slip into simplistic solutions to difficult problems, and we will all lose. We must all rely for "reality testing" on the Democratic Party and MSM, yet both are dysfunctional in fundamental ways. When the Bush administration is called fascistic because they have put a Lynn Stewart into jail for aiding terror, I begin to wonder if my accuser has lost his sense of reality. Fascism is when a Lynn Stewart is summarily decapitated because she is a Jew, not put in jail because she is aiding a convicted terrorist spread terror. When the ACLU sues Donald Rumsfeld (see Narcissism, Malignant Narcissism, and Paranoia: Part IV for some comments I made earlier about the ACLU) in a transparent attempt to legitimize Islamic terrorists, this does not help sharpen our ability to fight terror while safeguarding our rights. When I can no longer find anything surprising to read in the New York Times (the emblem of liberal thinking), when everything is slanted against what the country is trying to do, we no longer have a responsible opposition; we have a knee jerk opposition, and they do not serve their vital function. When I stop paying attention to the Times, the ACLU, defenders of Lynn Stewart, (and I am hardly the only one who feels this way) it creates a serious danger for our government which needs a responsible opposition to maintain their clarity. None of us are immune to the irrational, none of us can be certain our hidden (unconscious) biases and irrationality aren't affecting our perceptions; we need each other to stay sane. From an earlier post, Progressives and Totalitarianism: An Irrational Marriage:
When people do not recognize their own irrationality, their own hidden motivations, there is usually a good reason for this self deception; it is almost always based on poorly perceived threats to the self.
I would argue that only a Democratic system has any hope of finding rational outcomes from the complex interplay of individual and group irrationality.
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