We don't hear much these days about how conservatives are mentally disturbed or perhaps just dumb. That line of assault seems to have dissipated somewhat, perhaps because the target has shifted to fiscal conservatism as an ideology.
Nevertheless, turnabout is fair play, and it's refreshing to read an interview with Lyle Rossiter on the liberal mind. He's the clinical and forensic psychiatrist who wrote "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." The interview can be read at Part 1 and Part 2, and it's worth reading if you're frustrated with the path down which Democrats have taken the country and perhaps questioning why so many people find that desirable.
Liberals might find his words offensive, but sometimes the truth hurts. Here are some excerpts. To explain the appeal of liberalism, he says:
The left trades on a villain/victim/hero paradigm, on envy, on injustice collecting, on indulgence of primitive appetites for dependency and revenge, and on childlike longings to be excused from personal responsibility. The left appeals to the needy and potentially spoiled child in all of us, but not to the potentially competent adult in all of us.
The left thus incentivizes all of the wrong goals for a successful society, such as self-indulgence and moral and financial irresponsibility, and fails to incentivize the autonomy, initiative, industry, integrity and mutuality essential to a good life.
As for the root cause, he says this:
Yes, the radical liberal is an angry, envious, needy and spiteful person who acts out his neurosis in the theaters of global politics. He has these problems because he was deprived, neglected or abused as a child, or in some cases indoctrinated by collectivist parents or caretakers, a form of abuse in itself.
The radical liberal rejects freedom because lack of control over others frightens him.
Oh man, that rings so true. I've often speculated in private that many of today's liberals are lashing out at the people they see as the extended versions of the kids in school who out scored them, bullied them, or who otherwise enjoyed more of the social rewards that that our future liberal did not have the skills to get.
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