We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
In commercial societies, everybody wants you to buy their stuff.
Even though retailers lose a bit of their profit in their credit card fees, credit cards make it so easy to spend money painlessly and impulsively that, overall, they are a boon to retail commerce.
The average American received 15 credit card mail solicitations last year, so they're making plenty of money on this too. Good for them.
Spending discipline, thrift, saving, and "making do" are traditional American virtues, but, like so many valuable traditional virtues, they seem to be gradually going by the wayside in the face of our prosperity and growth. As David Brooks discusses, Seduction of borrowed money is making U.S. a nation of debtors.
The Frontal Cortex has a piece on Credit Cards and the Brain. Predictably, spending cash and spending via plastic have different impacts on the brain.
Financial suicide is painless. My rule is that all of my credit cards must be paid in full each month.
Advocates for the "disabled," however defined, want them "mainstreamed" and "normalized" while, at the same time, they advocate for special treatment and "accommodations" for the disabilities. How can you have it both ways?
In the UK, the Disabilities Discrimination laws define "disability" as:
‘A physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities’.
Everybody has strengths and serious weaknesses, and deserves respect for their efforts and for their humanity despite their frailities or unappealing characteristics. A nice cheerful young gal with Downs bags my groceries every week at my market. Meanwhile, I have patients with reasonably-controlled bipolar disorder who hire lawyers to help them get on Social Security Disability. (I do not approve of that one bit. I do not approve of "working the system," nor do I think it is good for them: it is terrible for them and for their dignity.)
Anyway, you may read a short essay at Spiked here which addresses these issues.
Editor's note:
Dr. Bliss' post leads to a typically-fine post by David Thompson on modern socialistic ideals titled Details, Details. Quoted by Thompson in his post:
Well, I’m not aware of a British political party that wants to abandon the welfare safety net – the “social state” as Bauman prefers to call it – let alone abandon “human solidarity,” and the arguments I’ve heard tend to centre on whether long-term welfare dependency is a desirable state of affairs for any human being. It’s one thing to rail against the “rule of capitalism” in abstract and fanciful terms; it’s something else entirely to address particulars – such as those of a soused, if amiable, woman drinking beer by the road. Is Bauman suggesting that this woman should be steered away from her morning refreshments? These do, after all, affect her employment prospects, finances and health, and thus make her one of society’s “weakest members”. Or does the professor believe that she should be compensated indefinitely by the state for being an unemployable alcoholic and not terribly bright? How, I wonder, is her life to be brought closer into line with mine or yours? Does she have a say in the matter? Do those of us who would have to pick up the tab?
I do not enjoy picking up her tab, but I would never leave her to die in the gutter. I'd be inclined to give her an educational kick in the butt and a few weeks in a drunk tank. Still, such questions keep life interesting, and force us to clarify our thinking.
However, I have yet to be convinced that government is the best agency for human mercy. Small "d" democratic government is about votes, jobs, money, perks and power - regardless of the virtue or venality of its practioners.
Women often can be heard adopting the passive-aggressive victim posture, and bitching about how easy and good men have it in life. Fortunately, there are plenty of wise women out there who appreciate how tough it is for a boy child to become a man: it is so tough that many never manage to do it.
Think about it: we women have far more latitude in how we can be, and in our respectable choices in life.
Let's bring some politics into this, just for fun. McCain is the Retrosexual: he knows guns, wouldn't back away from a fight and can use his fists, bait a hook, and can mess with an old Chevy carburetor. Obama: pure Metrosexual, with clean nails, probably never used a chain saw or shot a handgun in his life, and probably hires illegal Mexicans to do his gardening. "I'll have a chardonnay spritzer, please, when you have a chance."
Photo: Atticus Finch, a portrayal of a real American man.
Columbia's Brain and Mind Symposium has archived (on online video) a wonderful and relatively non-technical series of lectures by the world's greatest neuroscientists.
These talks were presented in 2004 as a part of Columbia University's 250th Anniversary. (h/t, Neurophilosophy)
Politics is irrational because people are only partially rational, and even less so when it comes to politics and other peoples' money. We recently linked to a piece by Stumbling, who asked:
...what role should empirical evidence have in policy-making? Here’s a theory - very little. Evidence-based policy-making (EBPM) is a sham. I say so for four reasons:
Case in point: The Polar Bear story. An entirely healthy bear population is put on the Endangered List for purely political reasons: Who wants a sound bite out there claiming "He or she refused to protect the cuddly Polar Bears."? It makes you sound heartless and evil, and nobody is going to listen to the statistics. It's about sentiment.
However, many of my central beliefs about life are about sentiment too. My belief in the freedom of the individual from the power of the state and of the collective, for example, represents my emotional attachment to our Constitution, its vision, and its cultural underpinnings. To me, a self-evident truth, but some would claim that Resistance is Futile to the power of the Borg.
Courage to tell the truth is rare in politicians, of course, because they have their sinecures to look after (which is rational, if cowardly). I give McCain credit for telling the truth about Ethanol, but it's going to hurt him in the corn states: they want to stay on that gravy train (which is rational on their part, if venal and ignoble). Thus people can be most rational when self-interest is directly involved, and sometimes most irrational when it is not.
Image: Polar Bear with a fresh seal dinner. Cute, cuddly-looking Polar Bears are believed to kill over 40% of the cute cuddly baby seals born each year in the Arctic regions in which they dwell. They do catch adult seals, too. Polar Bears eat the skin and the blubber, and leave the rest.
Editor's note: There is talk going around that the real reason the bears emerged as an issue was as a sentimental proxy issue for preventing drilling in the Arctic, comparable to the familiar "It's for the children..." The thought occurs to me - would this work as well if the bears were black? Is there a racial subtext here? Inquiring minds want to know.
Each of us has muted incentives to study the facts and issues carefully -- and to reflect upon them dispassionately -- because no one of us is responsible for deciding which policies the government will implement.
But Bryan Caplan explains another reason why each of us as a voter generally exercises less wisdom than we do in our private affairs. This other reason springs from what Caplan calls our "preferences over beliefs." Each of us wants to believe certain things. Each of us gets satisfaction simply by holding certain beliefs firm to our hearts. Just as many of us enjoy feeling loyal to our favorite sports teams, many of us enjoy believing that our favorite political party is an especially wise steward of the public interest.
Many of us enjoy believing that our troubles are caused by foreigners. Many of us enjoy believing that if the rich pay higher taxes, middle-class and poor people will be better off. We resist rejecting these beliefs even if the evidence before us suggests that they are mistaken.
Indeed, people are only sometimes rational, and even less often rigidly logical. We are not computers, or Mr. Spocks. In most things humans do, we engage our souls, hearts and our minds, and it is the challenge of adulthood to monitor, critique, and to balance those things in ourselves. For example, were it not for our hearts and souls, it might make sense for us to vote for a thoroughly pragmatic, efficient, and logical Brave New World.
Wisdom is not the same thing as logic, and logic is not the same thing as virtue.
Therefore I am in favor of a degree of irrationality in voting. And, anyway, who is the Grand Arbiter who gets to define "rational voting"? People like Thomas Frank, who believe that it is "rational" to vote yourself other peoples' money? Or "values voters" like me? Politics, government - and life itself -is messy and complicated, and even more so with freedom.
Books that need to be written:
"The Myth of the Rational Human" (well, Freud covered a lot of that ground already)
"The Myth of the Rational and Virtuous Government"
"The Myth of the Rational and Virtuous Politician"
"The Myth of the Rational and Virtuous Bureaucracy"
The Framers understood that the self-interest which in the private sphere contributes to welfare of society — both in the sense of material well-being and in the social unity engendered by commerce — makes man a knave in the public sphere, the sphere of politics and group action. It is self-interest that leads individuals to form factions to try to expropriate the wealth of others through government and that constantly threatens social harmony. John O. McGinnis, The Original Constitution and Our Origins 19 Harv. J.L.& Pub. Policy 251, 253 (1996).
I know that it is trite to tout exercise, but it is worth mentioning that we keep learning more about its health benefits. I recently attended a talk on breast cancer in which daily exercise compared favorably with several widely-used chemotherapy protocols.
Humans were not designed to sit on their butts all day watching TV or reading ephemeral stuff on the Internets.
Is recreational sex a good thing? Good for whom? And how do I define "good"? Does our pop culture contain any sexual morals anymore? Are women naturally as sexually predatory and opportunistic as some men can be? And what does "natural" have to do with it anyway, since we are humans, not monkeys?
Were I a smarter person, I'd have all the answers.
Of course, our government nudges already in innumerable ways - mortgage deductions, for one. Pension deductions and charitable deductions for more on the plus side, and gas and tobacco taxes on the negative side. I happen to be a flat-taxer, on principle: I will give you 13% of my income to pay you off and to preserve our civilization, and I will do whatever I want with the rest.
What principle? The principle that I do not need or want anybody else to "improve" me: My life is my gift from God and nature. It is my problem, my challenge, my adventure, and presents my own dilemmas, my own choices, my own consequences. That is the core and the meaning of human dignity in a free society, and I expect everybody else in my vicinity to buy into that revolutionary and inspiring idea.
The reason I would not waste my time on the book is that, while I respect Sunstein as a smart guy, I do not generally regard him as wise. In this case, the premise that government or government-acquired or politically-processed "expertise" is something that "we the people" want or need - or wish to pay for with our tax money - is absurd. Are we retarded? Everyone in the world these days gets advice from other people, and can get it from anywhere. From Oprah to my doctor to my pastor to the politicians to the internet, everybody seems to be sure that they know how I ought to live.
We are swamped by the Advice du Jour, which usually turns out to be wrong - whether from the government or from anyone else. For one example, if I followed our government's dietary recommendations, I would weigh 300 lbs and resemble the revolting American happily-overfed blimps at Disney World.
What people want, I believe, is a government that has the humility to stay out of our personal lives. That's the way to grow strong, self-sufficient people who do not turn to the government in a dependent, whining, or entitled manner. God, the internet, the library, and our brains are all that we need to take charge of our own lives. Plus we need to know the laws, so we don't break them, because breaking laws is a bad idea.
The arrogance of the Government-Academic Complex never ceases to amuse and to exasperate.
Does Cass run his life better than I run mine? I doubt it. Are his investments doing better than mine? I doubt it. Does he run more miles per week than I do? I doubt it. Is his marriage more fun than mine? I seriously doubt it. Does he have a more interesting life than mine? I doubt it. Is his worship more heart-felt than mine? Doubt it. Does he view me, his fellow Citizen, as somehow pitifully deprived of the wisdom and knowledge of my betters (despite government schools which are supposed to prepare us)? No doubt.
Government is no font of wisdom, and everybody knows that. Here's my message to the condescending experts:
"Shut the hell up, because when it comes to running a life, we are all on training wheels."
If there is an epidemic of drooling pedophile lechers hanging around the beaches, it's news to me, but maybe Maine is different:
York Police Chief Doug Bracy said the statute would represent a fairly minor change that would help keep the public safer, especially children. He noted that York police respond fairly regularly to reports of public peepers on the town's beaches.
Our editor wants a comment about this insanity in which, as Van Helsing puts it, "the government wishes to regulate your eyeball movements."
People are sexual beings. We are many other things too, but that's one thing that we are. We have been given a strong dose of it, and it isn't seasonal like most animals. Is human sexuality "appropriate"? No, often it is not. Nor is human aggressiveness, nor is human fantasy in general.
That's why we learn to keep fantasy in fantasyland, and to keep our behavior in the real world, where the real consequences happen.
One thing that bothers me about the neo-puritanism of the radical feminists is the disingenuous blurring of sexuality with aggression (the wording of the Maine law is a perfect example of the perverse blurring).
At the risk of sounding perhaps too non-traditional for Maggie's, unconscious and sometimes conscious erotic fantasies know no bounds of gender, age, morality, law, or social appropriateness. Everybody knows this and everybody has experienced this, on some level. Socio-cultural taboos, conscience, mental mechanisms like repression, laws, consequences, judgement, the balance of normal impulses, and conventions prevent most of us from behaving like monkeys. Not to mention the fact that we have other interesting or necessary things to do.
However, people who sexually prey on kids are not so much sick as they are simple criminals. Unlike the ancient Greeks, and for better or worse, we have laws about these things.
Break a law, become a crim. It's your choice. But this Maine law, designed to make it easier to prosecute "peepers" as felons satirizes itself. Obviously, the potential for abuse by paranoid Moms is part of the issue here. How does anyone discriminate a peeper from a looker? Everybody likes to look at cute kids, and that is what the neo-puritans can't tolerate.
Is "looking" an action? Not in my book. If it were, I'd be on death row for all of the visual daggers I have thrown.
Most of our lives are guided by gut feelings (aka "unconscious thought") and not by deliberate logical heuristics: just consider merging onto a highway, making friends, picking a mate, tennis, or shooting - or consider how Spaniels catch frisbees or how Labs mark the distant fall of a Canvasback. Our brains can do Multivariate Calculus even if we got a B in Trig, confuse left with right, and were dropped on our heads by our Moms.
Those of us who know the flaws of our mental autopilot systems have to compensate by deliberate thought. That means work.
Gert Gigerenzer is good, and his speech here is relevant to law, investing, medicine, sports, and to life in general. "Knowing" too much can sometimes be a handicap (and we all know how much "data" can be wrong). It's a bit long for our ADD readers (over 1 hr), but it is a paean to the brilliance of the irrationally rational intuitive human brain and a credit to Gigerenzer's logical mind, and well worth the time:
I read compulsively. I read fiction and non-fiction. I read shrink-related stuff also, but less so than other stuff. I read plenty of history. I read 2 books per week. I do not watch TV because it interferes with my reading and my family, and because TV is idiotic. Yes, I am proudly snobbish about many things, and I happily know little-to-nothing about pop culture.
Do I have a Reading Addiction?
Some of my fellow shrinks seem to want to make a diagnosis out of everything people like to do: Internet addiction. As you all say, Good Grief.
The essay, Are We Really That Ill? (in which the author notes that, according to that Psychiatric diagnostic manual "DSM", half of us are mentally ill) in the NY Sun has been referenced frequently this week. And regrettably so, because the author is a Professor of English and knows little of the practice of Psychiatry. I only have the time to address one of his statements:
With over a million copies in print, the manual is known as the bible of American psychiatry; certainly it is an invoked chapter and verse in schools, prisons, courts, and by mental-health professionals around the world.
Yes, it is invoked often - but it is no bible. No well-trained Psychiatrist uses it as a tool for understanding or treatment. It was designed as a research tool, so that researchers would share definitions. It rapidly became a tool for filling out the "diagnosis code" space on insurance forms so that patients might be eligible for some medical reimbursement.
Many of the "diagnoses" listed are not illnesses in any usual sense: nictotine addiction, insomnia, alcohol abuse, post-traumatic stress, personality disorders, ADD, and "adjustment disorder" are just a few examples of the listed items which are common parts of the human condition, but which are subjects of medical research and which are things for which people often ask for help. But they aren't illnesses - they are insurance codes.
A couple of interesting links. First, Dr. Helen asks "Is therapy the new 21st Century punishment?" It's a refreshing perspective. I cannot tell you how many badly-behaved and obnoxious kids are sent to therapists these days, partly because parents cannot give them a whuppin' anymore or they could end up in jail. The moral the kids learn, of course, is that there are no hard consequences for behavior.
Partially, it's the crusade against Hollywood Rationality, the concept that understanding the rainbow subtracts its beauty. The rainbow is still beautiful plus you get the beauty of physics.
and
It is a Hollywood Rationality meme that "Science takes the fun out of life." Science puts the fun back into life.
Getting as close as possible to reality is what shrinks think about all the time.
That's the sort of thing that Freud, a Neurologist by training, aspired to do, but the data wasn't there at the time and he gave up on the effort.
I know of Dr. Shore, and I will read the book. The reviews are impressive. ("Affect" is a fancy shrink word for emotions.) I think the reason it had not attracted my attention is because I react against any title with the word "self" in it. That word turns me off because it makes no sense to me, and neither do the theoretical constructs referring to it.
This interesting Viamontes essay might be tough sledding for those without some knowledge of the brain, but it is of great interest to those who try to understand people. Neural Substrates of Psychological Change.
In this paper, Viamontes and Beitman consider their concept of the "default brain" which, it seems to me, is relevant to Freud's notion of regression - and the idea of developmental arrest/delay.
The adult executive functions (judgement, information, conscience, decision-making, delaying gratification, learning from experience, weighing consequences, etc.) of the mind, when interfered with, abandon parts of their functioning to their Default Brain, which operates on a more animalistic, gratification-and-survival level.
Many things can interfere with the achievement and maintenance of the adult executive functions: bad genetics, bad wiring, fear, low IQ, personality weaknesses, emotional problems, drugs and alcohol, illness, emotional trauma, lousy role models, plain old human frailty, etc. etc.: it's such a long list that it's always a wonder to me that so many folks function pretty well in life, well-above our inner reptile most of the time.
We re-post this 2006 Dr. Bliss piece on the UCC because Obama's church, much in the news today, is UCC
Reasons to Quit the UCC
Bird Dog just faxed me an info sheet on the United Church of Christ, which his church, like mine in New Hampshire, is considering abandoning. If you aren't familiar with this organization, the UCC is an umbrella organization, created in 1957, which includes many Congregational, Dutch Reform, and German Reform churches. Because of American history, many of these churches are in the Northeast.
The Pilgrims were Congregationalists, and had been welcomed by like-minded Dutch churches when they fled Anglican (now called "Episcopalian" in the US) persecution by the English government in the late 1500s and early 1600s - a very trivial piece of history which resulted in a major consequence - our Constitution included the forbidding of a State-enforced sect. Of Christianity, of course, at the time. (Jews, in England, were tolerated and not subject to persecution, on the whole. Freud, genius that he was, happily termed that kind of thing "the narcissism of small differences" - we are more likely to make a fight with those with whom we have small differences than those with major differences.)
These churches have a unique history - they are bottom-up churches without hierarchy, in which the individual congregation itself choses, by vote, its clergy, its beliefs, its mission, the organizations they support, and its mode of worship. God is the only Boss, and understanding His will is a matter for individual prayer. That makes for a powerful individualistic tradition, and for the direct mankind-God link that we aspire to.
However, like many innocent and well-meaning non-profits, the UCC has been "captured" by theologically "liberal" and politically activist state and national HQs - and that is a very bad thing for many of the congregations that contribute money to the organization. The HQ people appear to have walked away from their theological support mission and done two things I do not like: 1. They have begun constructing dogma and, 2. They have become political operatives with political agendas. In other words, they are seeking power - theological authority and worldly power. That's fine for churches and denominations that wish to do so, but we don't.
For example, believe it or not, the Connecticut UCC actually has a lobbyist in Hartford taking all sorts of radical positions of which most contributing congregations are probably totally unaware, including opposing Charter Schools in alliance with the CT Teacher's Union! You can't find this on the website, nor will it be found in church bulletins. These activities are done in the name of the UCC congregations, on the nickel of God-seeking folk who dutifully, and often sacrificially, put their hard-earned dollars in the basket. (We have tithers in our church - always the old joke - "Before or after taxes?".) It reminds me of what unions do with their dues.
What happens when unwanted leaders try to lead, but no-one follows? Congregations are rebelling, or simply voting with their feet because of the political or just strange positions the HQs have been taking. It seems likely that many will vote with their feet, and form or find another umbrella organization to help with pensions, insurance, and publications.
As you can tell, I am strongly in favor of old family Congregational church's abandoning the UCC's leaky bucket, and it looks like we will. We will pray and vote! And it will not be Left vs. Right - it will be about what the role of a religious support organization is. Which, I believe, is to help mankind connect with God by helping churches with practical problems. The mission of saving souls is plenty big enough! D'ya think? (as my daughter would say).
2008 update: Both Bird Dog's and Dr. Bliss' Congregational churches voted to leave the UCC and to regain their independence.
I was introduced to this book by a lovely but rather innocent and sheltered patient who was seduced away from her husband and three kids by a man who, she realized, lived by the principles espoused in this book. She came to see me for help in rejoining her family, but it was too late for that.
(Dr. Scott Peck wrote one of the best popular books about sociopathy and narcissism, People of the Lie, which has helped many to become alert to some of the personality types one might wish to avoid.)
Of the 48 Laws book, Publisher's Weekly said in 1998:
Greene and Elffers have created an heir to Machiavelli's Prince, espousing principles such as, everyone wants more power; emotions, including love, are detrimental; deceit and manipulation are life's paramount tools. Anyone striving for psychological health will be put off at the start, but the authors counter, saying "honesty is indeed a power strategy," and "genuinely innocent people may still be playing for power." Amoral or immoral, this compendium aims to guide those who embrace power as a ruthless game, and will entertain the rest. Elffers's layout (he is identified as the co-conceiver and designer in the press release) is stylish, with short epigrams set in red at the margins. Each law, with such allusive titles as "Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy," "Get Others to Do the Work for You, But Always Take the Credit," "Conceal Your Intentions," is demonstrated in four ways: using it correctly, failing to use it, key aspects of the law and when not to use it. Illustrations are drawn from the courts of modern and ancient Europe, Africa and Asia, and devious strategies culled from well-known personae: Machiavelli, Talleyrand, Bismarck, Catherine the Great, Mao, Kissinger, Haile Selassie, Lola Montes and various con artists of our century... Although gentler souls will find this book frightening, those whose moral compass is oriented solely to power will have a perfect vade mecum.
In other words, those without a functional moral compass and lacking in human empathy: those for whom people are just tools. Everybody has his dark side, but fortunately most of us are not ruled by it.
Books like this can let people be aware of what sorts of people there are out there in the big world - even if it is not the intent of the book. As I have said, I trust people who pursue money more than I trust people who pursue power because, best used, money gives you power over your own life - not the lives of others.
Lately I have been thinking about the difference between learning things and learning about things.
The difference operates on several levels, I think. In the end, learning things is effortful but rewarding, while learning about things is effortless and much more fun.
I have always held that, if you cannot reconstruct a Chemistry equation from scratch, from pure reasoning, you really do not know the thing at all: You just know about it. (Yes, I am thinking at the moment about the Gas Laws.)
Had I a hundred free hours today, I would go on about the implications for psychotherapy, blogging, education, God, and life in general. But I don't.
Believe it or not, that question has been the biggest controversial undercurrent in modern neuroscience, and it remains an unanswered question among brain researchers, many of whom adopt a hard-core mechanistic view of the brain-mind issue. Like Scrooge, they might view dreams as a result of "a bit of undigested potato," but that does not do justice to the depth of their thinking on the subject.
There are plenty of good books on the subject written by wise and knowledgeable people. I won't write the essay here, but I am convinced that the idea of "mind," "self", "consciousness", and free will are so useful that they must mean something. In normal language, I believe people, or at least most people, have souls. However defined.
The subject arises because of an excellent review by Kenneth Silber of two books in Reason, entitled Are We Really Smart Robots? Mr. Silber has an impressive grasp of an immensely complex subject which involves neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and culture.
One quote from the piece:
"Mind: A Brief Introduction and On Intelligence are thought-provoking and, no less important, anxiety-reducing. By dispelling overstated mechanistic claims arising from recent trends in neurobiology and philosophy, these books serve to combat public fears and forestall a possible backlash against science and technology. Humans can be part of the natural world without being mere machines, and without being outdone by our own machines. "
I recommend his piece to you as an impressive and succinct overview of the issues.
Neoneo takes on Barry Obama's pablum about "sitting down to talk with anybody." A quote:
I think some of the current faith in talk comes from the popularity of “the talking cure”—therapy. Much of the rest of this post will consist of me quoting myself from an earlier piece; no need to reinvent the wheel. As I wrote some time ago:
But even therapists must acknowledge that there are times when talking does no good, when therapy is inappropriate, and when the tools of the trade not only don’t work but can be harmful. But Pelosi and Lantos and so many others [such as Obama] seem to think of dialogue as something magical and universally appropriate [the following is a Lantos quote]:
“…however objectionable, unfair, and inaccurate many of [Ahmadinejad’s] statements are, it is important that we have a dialogue with him.”
Why? Why is it important? In order to feel that we are peaceful and good people? In order to empower him to think that we are fools? In order to allow him to buy time while he develops his nuclear weaponry? In order to give him greater prestige in the eyes of the world? In order to afford him propaganda opportunities and photo ops?
As I understand it, the goal of the management of international relations is to advance the interests of one's nation and of one's allies. If it is anything else, then we Americans should not be paying your salary. That's one reason I am more than dubious about the UN.
The Chinese and the Russians do not give a damn about Western virtuousness. It's nothing but weakness, in the big leagues. Tony Soprano would understand it.
“There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.” - William F. Buckley Jr.
I have read a number of comments and reviews of Dr. Lyle Rossiter's book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. I suppose I should read it, but I wish I had taken the time to write it myself, because the themes of the book seem close to much of what I have posted here about liberty.
"A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity – as liberals do," he says. "A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population – as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation's citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state – as liberals do."
Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:
creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.
"The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."
I know exactly what is meant here, but I have reservations about terming it "neurotic," which implies internal unconscious conflict. I think Dr. R. means "irrational."
When we talk about the beliefs of others, everybody tends to views those who disagree as irrational or uninformed. The fact is that peoples' convictions and attitudes can be based on any mix of emotion, experience, emotional tendencies, fantasy, personality type, logic, self-interest, intelligence and amount of information they have, emotional maturity, and so forth. There are many recipes that end up with a bowl of Chili.
For example, I know some Liberal types who are as benevolent, independent, intelligent, and high-functioning as can be, and who want nothing from the government. And I have met (and often read) Conservatives (and Liberals too) who seem driven, in part, by a paranoid undercurrent and sense of grievance.
Thus I think that the psychology of beliefs is complicated. As readers know, I prefer to use individual liberty as my starting point in political discussion, rather than psychology. Individual liberty is what my ancestors fought, died, and lived for and the realization of it, and the reverence for the idea, is what differentiates the US from the rest of the civilized world. I believe that life in a world of individual liberty is risky, often difficult, often daunting, filled with failure, but offers endless opportunity to pursue the realization of dreams. Still, liberty is obviously not for everybody, as voting patterns indicate. Not even a majority of Americans supported the Revolution.
The failure of modern "Liberalism" to maintain the ideals of personal liberty associated with classical liberalism is discouraging for me. Modern Liberals seem to celebrate leftist dictators, and, as I have posted, How Come Liberals never talk about Liberty? Clearly it is because they do not revere the founding ideas of America. I do revere them as the highest and most noble expression of the human spirit.
Image: Trumbull's painting of Cornwallis' surrender.
For at least 100 years, there has been a slow, steady flow of power from the individual to the state in the US. Despite American history, American ideals, and some parts of the Constitution which have grown weak with disuse, these flows of power have been approved by voters. Both liberals and Republicans have played roles in this trend, and even Reagan was (unwillingly) in the grip of this populist, quasi-socialistic trend which, in my view, amounts in the end in little more than a series of power grabs from people to government, with little to show for what was bought with that bowl of lentils other than more financial security for the poor and the removal of government-supported racial discrimination.
“A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling "Stop!"” - William F. Buckley Jr.
This trend has been driven by Leftist populism, and opposed, especially in the past 30 years, by Conservative populism. (Both populisms are interestingly discussed here in the WSJ.) Populisms sell dreams, usually with an "us vs. them" theme as an emotional hook. Paul at Powerline takes a gander at Obama's populist dream-marketing (my highlighting).
It goes without saying that Barack Obama will end the hardship and "struggle" in our daily lives. Under the Yes We Can Man, folks (other than conservative bloggers) will be able to quit their second jobs, the price of gasoline will plummet, and Ivy League grads will never again have to work for hedge funds to pay off their college loans.
Nor does Obama's magic end at our borders. Last night, he said he would solve our immigration problem in part by improving the economy of Mexico to the point that illegal immigrants will have no need or desire to enter the paradise Obama will create here.
Most magically of all, Obama will fix Mexico's economy even while refusing to trade with Mexico unless it complies with U.S. labor and environmental standards.
I know the competition is fierce, but Obama may turn out to be the most intellectually dishonest Democratic presidential nominee of my lifetime.
As the nurse-anesthetist said to me before they put me out for my last colonoscopy, "Pick a dream." My dream for America is to reclaim the best of our pre-60s, pre-1930s historical character and ideals. But, OK, I am rambling, and posting truisms. I'll stop for now, and close with this:
“I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.” - William F. Buckley Jr.
In commercial societies, everybody wants you to buy their stuff.
Women often can be heard adopting the passive-aggressive victim posture, and bitching about how easy and good men have it in life. Fortunately, there are plenty of wise women out there who appreciate how tough it is for a boy child to become a man: it is so tough that many never manage to do it. 
Columbia's 
Politics is irrational because people are only partially rational, and even less so when it comes to politics and other peoples' money. We recently linked to a piece by Stumbling, who asked:
Donald Boudreaux considers his colleague Bryan Caplan's much-discussed book, 
Is recreational sex a good thing? Good for whom? And how do I define "good"? Does our pop culture contain any sexual morals anymore? Are women naturally as sexually predatory and opportunistic as some men can be? And what does "natural" have to do with it anyway, since we are humans, not monkeys?
It's about "nudging," and our blog friend 
Staying in the 
If there is an epidemic of drooling pedophile lechers hanging around the beaches, it's news to me, but maybe Maine is different:
Reasons to Quit the UCC
Neoneo takes on Barry Obama's pablum about "sitting down to talk with anybody." A quote: