THE UNABOMBER GOT IT WRONG ABOUT LEFTISTS

From time to time people claim that my account of Leftist psychology is similar to that put forward by the well-known "Unabomber". I generally ignore such comments as they result from a pervasive confusion in modern psychology about the nature and benefits of self-esteem -- which for a time was almost idolized. As I say elsewhere:

"The self-esteem gurus would no doubt argue that Hitler had to have LOW self-esteem to perpetrate his anti-social evils. If, however, the self-proclaimed "leader" (Fuehrer) of the "master-race" (Herrenvolk) was short of self-esteem, what meaning could the concept have? If Hitler had low self-esteem, how would we ever recognize high self-esteem? We would need some pretty circular definitions, I suspect.

This does however highlight the seeming paradox that many of those who seem to have very high self-regard also often seem to a have high need for that self-regard to be reinforced. The person with excess ego also seems to have a high ego-need. This is hardly surprising, however. There is much in the world and in life that tells each of us about our inadequacies, failures and mistakes so any person who has a high level of self-love has a lot of attacks on that self-love to fend off, counteract and defend against. The higher one's self-love, the more there is to attack and the more one will have a need to get it justified in some way. Humility would make life a lot simpler and realism a lot easier. It is no wonder that the inflated ego of the Leftist makes him/her an habitual denier of reality.

My account of Leftist psychology concedes that Leftism can arise from a number of causes but highlights the above "big ego" syndrome as dominant among Leftist intellectuals and ideologues. So my claim is that Leftists have BIG egos -- i.e. they think extraordinarily well of themselves. They think they are beneath any requirements of proof for what they say etc. But I also point out that this will ordinarily be a large disjunction from reality so the Leftist will need a lot of propping up for his ego. Nasty things like evidence contradicting his theories will lead to irrational denial and abuse of anybody mentioning the inconvenient facts.

The Unabomber, by contrast claimed that Leftists have LOW self-esteem. I quote:

"The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call "feelings of inferiority" and "oversocialization." Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.

By "feelings of inferiority" we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strict sense but a whole spectrum of related traits: low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among minority rights advocates"

So as far as I can see, the Unabomber theory is exactly the reverse of the truth!

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ELSEWHERE

An Australian senator has just given a speech in parliament in which he lists innumerable examples of bias on the part of our major public broadcaster -- with biased treatment of stories about Israel and Iraq being the most prominent of course. America's PBS has to some extent been reined in recently but the Australian equivalent is still a Leftist propaganda machine. Give the Senator some feedback. He needs it, and he appreciates it. His email address is senator.santoro@aph.gov.au

A GOP President doesn't veto GOP legislation: How surprising!: "Like pardons and executive orders, vetoes are among the cherished privileges of the Oval Office. Ike liked them. So did presidents Truman and Cleveland - and both Roosevelts. But apparently not George W. Bush. In fact, well into the fifth year of his presidency, he has yet to issue a single veto. It's a streak unmatched in modern American history"

A very unfree country: "On Monday, May 9, a man named Mike Fisher, from the town of Newmarket, New Hampshire, performed an act for which he will pay dearly under penalty of law. He engaged in a consensual commercial transaction with another willing individual. He performed a manicure. Mike Fisher, outlaw, enemy of the realm, planted himself outside the state Board of Cosmetology, invited his customer to join him, and committed the unpardonable sin of performing a manicure without a license granted by the very agents who work inside... He had already been "spoken to" by state Attorney General Kelley Ayotte the week before. When Ms. Ayotte asked him not to perform his "stunt," Mike nicely said he fully intended to provide the service to anyone who was interested in hiring him. When he kept his word, he was promptly arrested by the Concord, New Hampshire, police. Mike spent the night in jail, because he was unwilling to pay for either the license or the mandatory "training" required to get it. Instead, he studied and trained himself, advertised to others that he was going to offer his services at a low price, and willingly accepted a customer, under the watchful eyes of agents of the Granite State".

Mentally deficient TSA screeners: "Infants have been stopped from boarding planes at airports throughout the U.S. because their names are the same as or similar to those of possible terrorists on the government's 'no-fly list.' It sounds like a joke, but it's not funny to parents who miss flights while scrambling to have babies' passports and other documents faxed. Ingrid Sanden's 1-year-old daughter was stopped in Phoenix before boarding a flight home to Washington at Thanksgiving."

"Anti-ACLU" fights for religion in public life: "For years, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have fought to remove any trace of religion from government and public life, and for years they've won. Now the ACLU is facing a challenge from groups such as the Alliance Defense Fund, one of several Christian law firms formed in the 1990s. From its base in Phoenix, the ADF says its goal is to defend religious liberty, the sanctity of human life and the traditional family against any person or group who attacks those principles."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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