Leftism and hate


I often point out the hate motivation that drives lots of Leftists. That does appear to upset some conservatives. Leftists are so constantly accusing conservatives of hate that some conservatives seem to think that it is not genteel to use similar language. "We should not stoop to their level" seems to be the thinking. Or maybe they hope that by not speaking about hate they will make all talk of it go away.

But that is exactly what preachers of Leftism want conservatives to do. Leftists know full well how much hate and anger burns in their own hearts but they also know that public awareness of that would discredit them. So they do all they can to prevent awareness of their motivations from rising to the surface -- by loud cries of good intentions, shallow arguments that what they want is all "for your own good" AND by accusing others of being what they really are -- using "projection", as psychologists call it.

And projection is a very effective and very old strategy for deflecting attention from your own weaknesses. Even Jesus was aware of it when he admonished people to get the beam out of their own eye before worrying about the speck in someone elses' eye (Matthew 7: 3-5).

We can see this hate of everything that is about them most clearly in the case of extreme Leftists. Communists and their ilk openly preach revolution -- destruction of the entire "system". And in their various campaigns in democratic societies they are often calling for something to be "smashed". I remember a time in Britain when "smash Maggie Thatcher's government" was a popular Trotskyist slogan.

And their chronic anger explains why Leftist policies are so uniformly boneheaded and fail to take account of all the factors involved. When you are angry, you haven't got the time or energy for calm and mature contemplation. You just seize on the simplest available alternative to whatever it is that you hate. And you don't really care if the alternative isn't a good one. All your energies are focused on attacking the status quo.

What it is that makes the Leftist so burnt up inside could be many things -- from being born ugly to a feeling that they are not getting the recogntion that they think that they deserve for their talents. And I should stress here that I am talking about the preachers of Leftism, not necessarily the poor schmucks who get conned into voting for them.

The Leftist hatred of the existing system can show up in all sorts of ways. Even I was a little surprised to see some freaky-looking female poindexter on the Leftist "Alternet" site getting all excited by some recent egghead pronouncement to the effect that the English language as we know it is dying out(!). The claim is that English will become fractionated into mutually unintelligible dialects in the next few hundred years. The Leftist lady comments:

"Although I am the daughter and granddaughter of English teachers and spent many years in an English department earning a PhD, I relish the prospect of my language changing and becoming incomprehensible to me. Maybe that's because I spent a year learning to read Old English, the dominant form of English spoken 1,000 years ago, and I realize how much my language has already changed. But my glee in the destruction of my own spoken language isn't entirely inspired by knowing language history. It's because I want English to reflect the lives of the people who speak it. I want English to be a communications tool"

"Glee in destruction". That's pretty clear, isn't it? And it's all an absurdity. First the printed word and now the broadcast media are making English more uniform. Far from fractionating into different dialects, English worldwide is becoming standardized on the usage of the world's largest English-speaking community: popular American usage. I myself used an Americanism above that would so far be not be generally understood in my own country of Australia: "poindexter" (meaning a geek or what the British would once have termed a "swot").

I am in fact a native speaker of a form of English that meets a lot of incomprehension in America. When I am writing and when I am overseas generally, I deliberately do not use the full range of Australian expressions -- but even then I quite often get tripped up. I use expressions which I think are standard but which are not. However, much as I love my native Australian language, it is constantly borne upon me that young Australians have lost a lot of their old Australian idioms and use American expressions instead (using "guy" instead of "bloke", for instance). English is quite plainly progressing towards worldwide uniformity, not fractionation into mutually unintelligible dialects.

So our sad Leftist lady will have to put up with something important NOT being destroyed. And note the characteristically pathetic rationalization she uses for her pervasive hatred of the status quo: She wants English to be "a communications tool". As if it isn't already!

Update:

An interesting email from an American reader:

"The internationalization of English doesn't come just from the spread of Americanisms. Last week I saw "gobsmacked" used by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit. I first learned the term reading British blogs. I've also heard youngish Americans use "bloke." We've come a long way since the American distributors of Mad Max decided they would have to have the film dubbed into American."

A PROPHETIC POEM



One does occasionally hear the term "The white man's burden" as a mocking reference to the claim that the British and other empires were good for the native peoples whom they dominated. I wonder how many people are aware that the term was originally the name of a poem and that the poet was Indian-born British poet Rudyard Kipling? Some, no doubt. But I would not at all be surprised to hear that NOBODY reading this was aware that the poem concerned was inspired by the deeds of a famous American "Progressive". Let me explain:

Right into the 1960's, the American Left (e.g. JFK) was patriotic and nationalistic. Nowadays they mostly make only a shallow pretense of patriotism. Getting the votes of minorities is their desperate aim these days and glorifying America does not serve that aim very well. And with Obama, even the pretense seems to be fading.

And the most nationalistic icon of the American Left in history was undoubtedly TR (Theodore Roosevelt), founder of the "Progressive" party. TR was the first Fascist leader of the 20th century -- where Fascism is conceived of as Leftism plus nationalism. He glorified war as a purifying force for the nation, built lots of battleships and invaded and took over three countries. And on the home front he attacked big business. Fascist enough? His conquests were in fact in the last few years of the 19th century but his Presidency of the USA continued into the early 20th century.

The British empire had however never been Fascist. It was run by conservatives most of the time and when the Left came to power they were much more inclined to wind it down than expand it. And, as the saying goes, the empire was mostly acquired "in a fit of absence of mind". It was not acquired as the result of any deliberate expansionist policy but rather as the byproduct of pursuing other objectives -- such as containment of the French. And if anyone doubts the humane impulse that formed British policy of the time, just reflect that it was in 1807 that Britain became the first major country to abolish slavery. And, unlike Abraham Lincoln many years later, the British both attacked it outside their own domain and abolished it at home. Lincoln's war "against slavery" was fought while permitting slavery in the North! Lincoln's war was really a power-motivated war with slavery as a thin pretext.

And India is an excellent example of the non-imperialistic origin of the British empire. The British first came to India as the representatives of a private company, the British East India company, and the aim was trade, not conquest. The company encountered various attacks on its operations, however, so gradually built up a private army to defend itself (perhaps a bit like the security guards employed by Halliburton in Iraq today). And when Indian princelings took on the company in battle, the company tended to win -- meaning that it eventually had large parts of India under its private control. At that stage, the British government got a bit concerned that the company was not treating the natives well and took over the company's military and rulership operations. So the British government in a sense "inherited" India rather than invading and conquering it. The history I have just given does of course simplify much for the sake of brevity but that is the essence of it.

And the humane thinking (mostly of Christian origin) behind British policy is spelled out in Kipling's poem. Kipling saw the British as having a civilizing mission and saw that mission as one of replacing savage values with humane and Christian ones. And he persuaded himself that TR had such values too. He wrote his poem as a commentary on the American takeover of the Philippines. He saw America as joining Britain in the mission of civilizing savages.

And what he wrote was very prophetic. And it was good prophecy because it was based on experience -- British imperial experience. He prophesied that the gift of liberty and humaneness that America would give to other nations would not be appreciated and would instead lead to resentment of America. And that was long before the liberation of France from the Nazis and the liberation of Iraq from Saddam! Here are some excerpts from a wonderful and idealistic poem that is now almost always misrepresented:

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;

By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--

That's amazingly good prophecy by my lights. Very wicked of him to mention skin color judged by today's hysterical political standards but Britain and America WERE largely white countries at the time, and still are.

If anybody is wondering why I have suddenly started to blog about poetry, the story is here (or here).

A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT GERMANY YESTERDAY AND TODAY


The last two centuries of German history is a subject that I have taken a particular interest in. Given that two enormously influential Germans emerged during that time (Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler) who brought great woe on the world, I think it behooves us all to seek what understanding we can find of how all that happened

A small reflection on Prussia, the home of German militarism

Prussia was originally the most Eastern tentacle of the German states, although it no longer exists as a legal entity. It is best known for its militarism and a certain Asian influence. I was once married to a fine woman of Prussian descent and she had the distinctly Asian high cheekbones and the faint impression of Asian eyes that one associates with the old East Prussia, in particular. A legacy of the Mongol hordes, one imagines.

Military strategists worldwide to this day study von Clausewitz -- the best-known Prussian military strategist and theorist. And it was, after all, the Prussian Gneisenau's insight that won the battle of Waterloo (OK. Nobody else has ever told you that but look it up). And we won't talk about Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein and the many other brilliant Prussian generals. And, largely because of its military prowess, Prussia did eventually take over most of Germany. And the part that Prussia did not take over -- Austria -- was essentially ALLOWED to remain independent by Prussia.

And the dominant figure in Prusssia was the nobleman -- the Junker (pronounced "yoonker", where "oo" is as in "book"). The Junker was a landowner with a pedigree stretching back into the mists of time. And a Junker was usually a military man in some capacity -- even if only as a reservist. And the iconic image of the Prussian Junker was a man in military uniform wearing the Prussian Pickelhaube (spiked helment).



So why in heaven's name was the above Prussian Junker in spiked helmet depicted prominently on a U.S. government site until recently? (You can still find a small version of the picture about halfway down here). It is because the man depicted there is one of the most famous Prussians of all time -- Prussian Kanzler (Prime Minister) Prince Otto von Bismarck -- the man principally responsible for uniting Germany under the Prussian crown and the man principally responsible for the great Prussian military victory over the French at Sedan in 1870.

OK! What's the joke? you are saying. That is NO reason for putting the guy on a U.S. government website! You are right. Everything I have said about Bismarck is correct but what I have left out is that he is also the man who was principally responsible for inventing social security! Yes: The modern welfare State was invented in Prussia for Prussians by a Prussian militarist! Those dastardly Prussians were also welfarists! Enough to blow the simple mind of any Leftist! Reality is far more complex than any of the guff that you learnt off Leftists during your education.

Hitler was also a socialist (welfarist) and a militarist. He was not a Prussian himself but Germany's Prussian traditions helped make what he did respectable (and indeed honorable) in the Germany of his time. No Leftist would tell you that welfarism often goes with militarism but it does in the real world -- as distinct from the Leftist dreamworld.



Hitler was in fact appointed as Reichskanzler (Prime Minister of Germany) by a Prussian Junker -- Marshall Paul von Hindenburg -- and Hitler made the most of that in his propaganda. See the 1930s Nazi election poster above. In translation, it reads: "The marshall and the corporal fight alongside us for peace and equal rights". Peace and equal rights! Where have I heard that before? It wouldn't be from modern-day American welfarists, would it? What surprising company welfarists keep! Not only Adolf Hitler but even Prince Otto von Bismarck!

The "mercenary" option for America

The very extensive deployment of reserve and National Guard troops to Iraq is a stark confession that the regular U.S. army troops and Marines are not remotely up to the tasks that have recently been demanded of them. And even the creation of more vacancies for regular troops in the armed services seems highly likely to run up against recruitmnent difficulties.

In the circumstances, various people (See e.g. here and here) have drawn attention to the fact that the US armed forces are already not wholly comprised of U.S. citizens. There are, in particular, large numbers of Hispanics serving and not all of them are "documented". And there are already provisions for "undocumented" troops who have served their time to be given accelerated access to full U.S. citizenship. So the suggestion is that more should be done along those lines -- that foreign troops be actively recruited -- with U.S. citizenship being offered as one of the rewards for service.

I am sure my thoughts on the matter are as politically incorrect as they are realistic so I have hesitated to enter that fray but I can resist no longer: The proposal goes close to hiring mercenaries and the track record of mercenaries is not good overall. So should it be done? I am inclined to think that it might be OK if strict selection criteria are applied and numbers are kept to (say) no more than a third of all U.S. troops.

One reason why I see merit in the idea is that it might draw into U.S. service a significant number of Germans and other Northern Europeans from countries with a distinguished history of military competence. Historically, Germans are probably second only to the Japanese when it comes to warrior virtues (lots of people TALK about fighting to the death but only the Japanese have ever done it) and it would seem that many Germans are natural-born warriors.

Germany today is both very anti-military and very anti-American but that is only a broad generalization. There are sure to be a significant minority of Germans who are both pro-American and genetically the same fierce warriors that the Teutons have been for over 2,000 years. And I am sure that any Germans with the old genes in them would just LOVE to get their hands on America's cutting-edge military hardware! That alone would be a big reward. As a former army psychologist, I have some idea of how the military mind works.

America might even get some capable military commanders out of it all. Germans seem to just sprout able generals (Rommel and the incredible von Manstein being the best known recent examples) while Anglo-American forces are notoriously short of them. Just look at the appalling record of American military command in Iraq. It almost makes the British look competent! And when America did at last find someone who knew what he was doing there, he was Dutch by immediate ancestry -- General Petraeus.

And Germans and other Teutons tend to fit into Anglospheric civilization so seamlessly that their origin soon ceases to be noticed by all but the acutest observers. And high educational requirements for recruits would of course let Germans in as easily as it would keep the less-compatible third-worlders out.

More on the Fascist element in Obama's appeal

"Alles muss anders sein" (Everything must be different) -- Hitler's briefest summary of his policies

History never repeats itself but sometimes it comes close. Obama is NOT a Fascist insofar as the Fascists were patriotic and Obama is the sort of America-hater that is now typical of the Left. Right up to JFK, the American Left was patriotic. It no longer is. And sometimes Obama doesn't even bother to pretend -- as we see below:



But in matters other than patriotism -- the appeal for unity, the preaching of "change", the vague but inspiring rhetoric and the automatic turning to government as the solution to every problem -- Obama is quite Fascist.

That does not mean that he would turn America into a Fascist nation if he became President. Because he doesn't seem to have thought things through, I think he would make a very ineffectual President, in fact. But the main reason why America will remain the Great Republic is that its political institutions, traditions and customs are very strong. F.D. Roosevelt was a strong and determined leader with a legendary base of support throughout the country who openly admired Mussolini and who did his best to put the Federal government in charge of just about everything in America -- but he failed. America is not easily changed by one man. Because Americans think that it is inconceivable for America to be anything but a democracy, it is highly likely that America will always remain a democracy. As judge Learned Hand notably said: "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it."

And Obama is no FDR. But identifying where Obama stands in history might just do a little to prepare people for the adventurism and reductions in individual liberties that he is likely to move towards if he gains office. The amazing revelations of what Obama is like without a teleprompter reveal him as having all the anger and hate of the Fascists too.

I mentioned vague but inspiring rhetoric. Here is the shouted climax of one of Hitler's impassioned speeches at the 1934 Nuremberg Parteitag (party rally), speaking particularly to the Hitler Youth:

"Vor uns liegt Deutschland, in uns marschiert Deutschland. und hinter uns kommt Deutschland" ("Before us lies Germany, in us Germany marches and behind us comes Germany").

The translation erases the cadences of the original German so why it got thunderous applause and inspired many may not be immediately obvious. Hitler is notoriously impossible to translate fully so you need to understand German and see a film of the original speech to really "get" it. But what exactly did it mean? It is rather absurd considered logically but as an emotional declaration of unity it was very powerful. I doubt that Obama will ever convey that message as powerfully -- but it is a very similar message to his.

And note another famous appeal for unity, unity in the State: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato" (Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State) -- the words of Benito Mussolini.

Or how about G.W.F. Hegel, the German philosopher who started it all? (Translation only)

The state, which is that form of reality in which the individual has and enjoys his freedom; but on the condition of his recognizing, believing in and willing that which is common to the whole

And as far as Obama's "change" religion is concerned, see the quote at the head of this post and also note the following policy description:

A declaration of war against the order of things which exist, against the state of things which exist, in a word, against the structure of the world which presently exists" -- again the words of Adolf Hitler, from the "Philosophy and Organization" chapter of Mein Kampf

And Hitler also described his movement as having a 'revolutionary creative will' which had 'no fixed aim, no permanency, only eternal change'

It's amusing how Leftists love to see imaginary similarities between GWB and Hitler but will never in a million years see the real similarities between Obama and the Fascists that I have set out in detail. "Bush=Hitler" gives them a feeling of righteousness. "Obama=Hitler" gives me a feeling of sadness. That Fascism has huge and enduring appeal is a very hard thing for a libertarian to swallow. And as for personal popularity, let the picture below speak for itself:



My previous comments on the similarities between Obama and the prewar Fascists are here and here and here

MORE ON THE FASCIST RESONANCES IN OBAMA



I note that someone else has seen the similarities between Obama's campaign and the campaigns of Adolf Hitler. See here. So I thought I might put up a few more quotes about Hitler's appeal that sound very much like Obama's:

As this writer noted:

When brainwashers spoke to Germans after the war, as part of efforts to "psychoanalyze" the Nazi experience, they found few remembered any specific content in Hitler's speeches. Almost all could remember being part of the experience, if they were in attendance, and most remembered the "excitement" in listening to them on the radio. The words 'hypnotic" and "mesmerizing" were the most used to describe the Fuehrer's voice. Even some people who professed to have disagreed with the Nazis grudgingly claimed that Hitler was a "a spellbinding speaker."

And note this comment:

"It was a sincere Hitler that they knew, whose words burned into the most secret recesses of their minds and rebuked them for their own shortcomings. It was the Hitler who would lead them back to self-respect because he had faith in them. This fundamental conception of Hitler made a beautiful foundation for a propaganda build-up. He was so convincing on the speaker's platform and appeared to be so sincere in what he said that the majority of his listeners were ready to believe almost anything good about him because they wanted to believe it.

And a few short quotes from The German dictatorship by K.D. Bracher (Weidenfeld, 1971, pp. 146-148):

"The youthful following, attracted by the romantic radicalism and emotional appeal of the "movement" became a significant factor" ... "Youth was indignant over the difficult and frequently unfair conditions of life, the manifold limitations of the times. The "movement" provided them with an outlet" ... "They protested against the seeming inertia of the politicians of the older generation..." "It was a truly religio-psychological phenomemon. Just as the concept of "belief" occupied a central place.." "Hitler appeared as the exponent of a new sense of life"

I imagine that many people reading the above will just not believe how similar Obama's approach is to Hitler's. They will feel that it is easy to tell the difference. If so, try this quiz. While there are Leftists there will always be Fascists.

And anybody who thinks Fascism belongs firmly in the past should ponder Putin's Russia. One of the most powerful Fascist States the world has ever seen is right with us now. Putin is wildly popular (in Russia) too.

Appeals to authority

It is the nature of intellectuals to think that they know better than anyone else. So they rarely defend the status quo. They mostly want to change it in some way that would suit themselves -- mostly to get the money away from those dumb capitalists and channel it in a direction that will be better for intellectuals. In short, intellectuals usually lean Left to at least some degree. Conservatives can take the status quo or leave it, depending on what the particular status quo happens to be. But a loathing of the status quo is intrinsic to Leftism -- so much so that they may often oppose a status quo that they themselves have been instrumental in creating -- with the now-common Green/Left opposition to windfarms (a shout-out to Ted Kennedy here) being one rather amusing example.

One outcome of all that it that Leftists generally find much comfort in the outpourings of intellectuals -- with G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx being early players in that field. So an appeal to authority often suits Leftists. They say, in effect: "All these wise men say we need to change the way we do things so that must be right." The most notable tendency of that today is of course the constant Greenie claim that there is a "consensus" among scientists about the human origin of the slight degree of global warming observed in the late 20th century (but which has been conspicuously absent since 1998). The Greenies luxuriate in having so many authorities on their side and they do their best to discredit the many experts who reject the Warmist view.

Sadly, of course, authorities can often be wrong. Even the smartest of intellectuals can make big mistakes when speaking outside their own field of expertise. Albert Einsten had clearly Marxist views on the economy, for instance. You can read his now mostly archaic thoughts on the matter in the old Marxist publication Monthly Review. And the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein, admired Communism so much that he actually emigrated to Russia. He lasted three weeks there and came back with distinctly modified views. Albert at least was wise enough not to put his money where his mouth was.

And experts can even go wrong when speaking WITHIN their field of expertise. Almost all of my academic career was devoted to exposing the flaws in the Leftist theories conventional among political psychologists. I was repeatedly able to show that the reigning consensus was contradicted by the facts. I don't believe I changed anybody's views, however. Ideology is not easily knocked off its perch by mere facts. But for anybody willing to look, I think I was able to show very clearly that the consensus within my own field of expertise was just plain wrong. You can see therefore why I regard ALL appeals to authority as very third-rate thinking -- as a rather pathetic substitute for looking at the actual evidence.

Given that the Green/Left have so conspicuously hitched their wagon to appeals to authority, however, it does on occasion become necessary to reply in kind. If a Leftist says: "All the experts say... " one needs to reply: "But THESE experts deny ..." if one is to have any hope of making a persuasive case. In other words, although appeals to authortity have little objective merit, they do have considerable persuasive power for many people and one has to recognize that and fight back by questioning the authority concerned -- and an easy way to do that is to quote OTHER authorities with different opinions. And I do that often on my Greenie Watch blog.

It is is also because of the Leftist authority-orentation (an orientation which makes it all the more amusing that Leftist psychologists constantly brand conservatives as "authoritarian") that I occasionally make mention of my academic background and the fields wherein I can speak with some authority. I would much rather discuss ANY issue on the basis of the facts but if a Leftist insists on personalized arguments in a field where I happen to be an authority, then I feel that I might as well take the easy way out and squash the Leftist using his own hammer. It might just conceivably teach him something about the inherent inconclusiveness of relying on arguments about persons rather than on arguments about the facts. I do however draw the line at claiming any GENERAL authority. Leftist academics very often do implicitly claim that. They get credit for pronouncements made outside their own field of expertise. A linguist like Chomsky, for instance speaks on all sorts of topics outside of his field and Leftists seem to get great comfort from his "authoritative" misrepresentations. They are fools do do so. Arguing from an irrelevant authority is in fact what logicians refer to as one of the informal fallacies.

I was rather amused recently, however, when a very skeptical reader asked for my list of academic publications. He evidently thought that I must be the sort of fraud one so often finds on the Left. When he was referred to a full list of the relevant citations, he lost that battle but as a comeback complained that many of my publications were quite short. He seemed to think that you could judge the worth of a research article by its length! I am sure that a lot of acadenics wish that were true. Writing reams of waffle seems to come very easily to many of them. If there is any criteriality in the length of a research article, I would tend to think that merit is more likely to lie with short articles. If you know what you are talking about and your results are clear, you don't need to ramble on.

I certainly do strive for succinctness in all that I write. People are more likely to read and understand what one has to say that way. But there are of course some topics that NEED to be discussed at great length -- histories and literature reviews, for instance -- and for my sins I do sometimes write at length in those areas. Most notably so here and here and here.

With my academic background I suppose I could be said to be an intellectual but I sedulously avoid that label. Intellectuals generally seem to me to be a rather miserable bunch who are puffed up with oversimplified theories and who are prone to parasitizing others. By contrast I have always been happy with my lot in life. I have the gift of contentment and "just the facts" will do me fine. And when I do splash out big with money (usually by giving it away. My own needs have always been small), I do it with money honestly earned in business -- not with money ripped off the taxpayer under some pretext. But being someone who has been successful in business as well as in academe does make me an odd bod, I guess.


Update: What is an "intellectual"?

In his usual memorable way, the delightful Dr. Spooner once said: "I have in my breast a half-warmed fish". I suspect that the definition I am about to offer is little better than a half-warmed fish but here goes: I think an intellectual is someone who defends popular ideas in a particularly persuasive way -- which is why the label is usually attached only to people who are much in the public eye. There are many scholars and scientists labouring away at making a contribution to knowledge and understanding but it is only when they get into the public eye that they become "intellectuals". And if the ideas they espouse are complex or difficult to follow they will simply not get into the public eye. The ideas concerned have to be readily comprehended by the intelligent layman.

And one reason why most intellectuals seem to be Left-leaning is that Leftist ideas are the ones most in need of defending. Some Leftist ideas -- such as the belief that you can provide more and better accomodation for the poor by instituting government rent-control -- are so obviously mad that not even an intellectual could defend them (except in NYC of course). But other ideas -- such as the desirability of universal government healthcare -- are attractive enough to warrant defending. And if you have been to a government hospital lately, you will very likely feel that only an intellectual could defend that idea. I am sure that Hillary Clinton goes to private hospitals.

So I think I can safely say that I am not an intellectual. I get no mainstream media exposure at all. Since I would much prefer to be regarded as a scientist or a scholar, however, I feel rather pleased about that. Most "intellectuals" seem to me to be very poor scientists and scholars -- Noam Chomsky, for instance.

More on Obama as the heir to Fascism

Message to Leftists: Bush=Hitler is reasonable but Obama=Hitler is not?

Let's look at some evidence bearing on the above question. I won't spend any time on the first equation above because I think that by any objective assessment Bush is simply a fairly conventional center Rightist who has acted well in accordance with the policies ("compassionate conservatism") that he proclaimed before gaining office. I actually see GWB as more a Christian gentleman than a real conservative.

The Left-dominated educational system has ensured that it is now known only to historical specialists but Hitler, by contrast, gained power on promises that were to a large extent the direct opposite of what he eventually did when he gained office. He actually campaigned on an ANTIWAR platform! See two of his 1930s election posters below. The first one reads: "Mit Hitler gegen den Ruestungswahnsinn der Welt" ("With Hitler against the armaments madness of the world") and the second reads: "Mit Adolf Hitler "Ja" fuer Gleichberechtigung und Frieden" ("With Adolf Hitler "Yes" for equal rights and peace").



There is a fuller picture from which both the above images were taken here. Hitler's British counterpart, Sir Oswald Mosley, of the British Union of Fascists, campaigned on a very similar platform. See below:



Obama eat your heart out!

I am perfectly confident that Obama will never gain the unrestricted power that Hitler did or that he will do as much damage as Hitler did but to place him in an accurate historical context should nonetheless help to predict the directions in which he will move if he gains office as POTUS -- something that is otherwise difficult because of the high generality of what he says in his speeches and his very limited voting record as a political office-holder.

I have previously pointed out how Obama's constant calls for unity above all are very much like what Hegel, Hitler and Mussolini preached. As I said on that occasion:

In fact, with his constant inspirational calls for national unity, Obama is eerily reminiscent of the Fascists. If he spoke German he might well be inclined to adopt as his slogan Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer -- as Hitler did ("One nation, one government, one leader")....



Put very briefly, the Fascists were (following Hegel) the "one big happy family" Left while the Communists were the deeply embittered "class war" Left. Hitler only hated the Jews. Marx, Trotksy, Lenin and Stalin hated just about everybody -- Marx particularly so. You can readily see why the two types of Leftist despised one-another.

And presenting oneself as the man of the "middle way" -- which Obama does -- is also of course classic Fascism. It was a major theme of Mussolini's. So there are good reasons to compare Obama to the prewar Fascists. And it is therefore also no surprise that this sounds VERY much like a common reaction to Hitler's speeches among pre-war Germans:

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.

The other great leaders I've heard guide us toward a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

Hitler's speeches had a similar effect. As Elie Wiesel noted:

"The fact is that Hitler was beloved by his people - not the military, at least not in the beginning, but by the average Germans who pledged to him an affection, a tenderness and a fidelity that bordered on the irrational. It was idolatry on a national scale. One had to see the crowds who acclaimed him. And the women who were attracted to him. And the young who in his presence went into ecstasy.

So, once again we see that Fascism is not dead. It is now called "Progressive" -- as indeed it always was.

But Obama is a warm and kindly figure, you might say -- not a madman like Hitler. To say that is to ignore history, however. A warm and kindly figure is exactly how most prewar Germans saw Hitler. See here for instance. It's just snake-oil skillfully sold by someone who is very good at it.

So what do I predict if Obama gains office? I predict a maximum attempt to extend the reach of government into all aspects of American life. So the only hope that remains for what is left of America's freedoms (and it is a hope with reasonable prospects) is that the Senate will thwart him. SCOTUS could also be of some help but nobody would want to rely on it.

Gottfried on Goldberg

Paul Gottfried is a very grumpy conservative who spends most of his time attacking other conservatives. His own stance seems to be somewhere between paleoconservatism and libertarianism but no doubt he would be grumpy about that characterization too.

So it is no surprise that his short review of Jonah Goldberg's book is grumpy too -- apparently accentuated in this case by the fact that Gottfried has himself written to similar effect but has has not got nearly as much publicity as Goldberg. So amid the gloom, one reads a few quite good comments:

"Italian Fascism, until Mussolini unwisely threw in his lot with Hitler in 1936, enjoyed immense support among socialists in the U.S. and Western Europe. For many foreign partisans of Mussolini's corporatist experiment, fascism looked very much like socialism. And since fascists talked about "national revolutions" and condemned market capitalism, they seemed to the editors of The New Republic, and many others, much like those standing on the left side of History.

Well into FDR's first term, he and his Brain Trusters looked to the Italian model as a usable blue print for "mobilizing" the American people in the face of the Depression. Massive subsidies to reactivate the work force and to carry out public works programs of all kinds were aspects of the New Deal that had already been tried out by the Italian Fascist state. And unlike the Nazi regime, which came to power in 1933 just before FDR's inauguration, Mussolini did not oppress Jews or impose anything resembling Nazi race laws until after his shift into Hitler's orbit. As late as 1935, he was the most outspoken and vigorous enemy of Hitler on the European continent."

Gottfried probably has picked up a few minor errors in Jonah's book -- such as just where Carl Schmitt fitted into the Nazi regime -- but there are also major points on which he is plain wrong. He says:

"Fascism was a movement of the anti-libertarian Right. What made it a force of the Right, to repeat my point one last time, was its emphatic rejection of the principle of equality and its search for social models in antiquity-as opposed to the Left's vision of an ideal future that might be extended to the entire human race

The claim there -- that the Left differ from Fascists in that the Fascists to a degree looked backwards for inspiration -- entirely ignores the love-affair between the Greens and the Left that we see today. The current Left generally do their best to facilitate the Greenie push to return us to a romanticized and idealized past. Think of Al Gore! Modern-day Leftists are just as reactionary as Hitler and Musso were -- maybe even more so. Hitler and Mussolini were in fact clear precursors of the Greenies. See here and here.

Secondly, Gottfried's claim about "rejection of the principle of equality" also ignores Hitler's central slogan: Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer. Hitler wanted all Germans to be one. The slogan means "One people, one government, one leader". Hitler DID want all Germans to be equal -- though of course he wanted himself and his henchmen to be the wise leaders who would guide the masses (The Fuehrerprinzip). But how is THAT different from the Leftist spokesmen of today? In Orwell's memorable phrase, both the Fascists of yesteryear and the Left of today believe that "all pigs are equal but some are more equal than others". That the modern-day Left are more circumspect about saying as much is the only difference. Both believe in their own superior wisdom and try to impose their tyrannies however they can

Gottfried also seems to be quite out of touch when he says this as evidence of the difference between Fascism and Leftism:

"Fascist government did nothing of significance to change productive forces or to redistribute wealth. It made owners, managers, and workers into contributors to an overarching Fascist order; and it required industrial leaders to consult with Fascist mediators before "releasing workers from their duties." Workers were then given unemployment compensation"

Sorry but that seems like a pretty good description of (say) the British Labour Party government of today -- with its unfair dismissal laws and its abject failure to close Britain's notorious social class gaps. And the red-tape with which British industry has been burdened does seem to me to have "made owners, managers, and workers into contributors to an overarching Fascist order". Their degree of autonomy shrinks year by year.

Gottfried thinks he is so much wiser than Jonah but he shows precious little evidence of it.

NON-LEFTIST ETHICAL NATURALISM:

A coherent alternative to moral relativism



By John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D. -- article originally written December, 2003 but subsequently expanded -- up to 2007)

In moral philosophy the view that "ought" or "is right" statements are ordinary statements about the world (empirical statements) rather than having some privileged and peculiar "moral" quality is termed "ethical naturalism". Like all positions in moral philosophy it has its difficulties but I believe that such difficulties arise from a misunderstanding of how moral statements arise.

In fact, I do not think that the nature of "ought" or "is right" statements is very problematical at all.

It seems to me that statements such as "X is right" (or "X is good" or "You ought to do X") can be unpacked in only four or perhaps five basic ways:

1. I like it when people do X
2. Doing X generally leads to widely desired results
3. It is the will of God that you do X
4. X has an eternal, inescapable, universal "moral" quality.
5. X is the prevailing rule around here (though if the person was asked why that rule exists he would almost certainly reply by referring to some version of one of the preceding three statements).

I think most people would agree that "You ought" statements can mean 1, 2, 3 or 5 above. I do. You might dispute the truth of any of them but you would understand what is being said and understand that it is a factual claim. I would for instance dispute an "ought" statement that is unpacked as 3 above because I am an atheist but I accept that the person making the claim is trying to make a statement of fact that can be proved or disproved in some way.

Interpretation 4 above however is untestable, undemonstrable and hence gibberish -- though it does seem to be widely believed. But lots of clever people believe in global warming so beliefs are neither any proof of anything nor any cause for surprise. Now isn't that simple?

Not everybody agrees that it is simple. A famous objection is the objection by David Hume. David Hume contends that there is an unbridgeable gap between "is" and "ought" statements -- so that you cannot justify "ought" statements by "is" statements. Yet that is precisely what people normally do. An "ought" statement always commends some course of action and when people ask WHY that course of action is commended the reply is often in terms of "is" (empirical) statements (e.g. the commendation of X can be explained as: "X leads to generally desired consequences" or "X leads to consequences that you would like" or "I like X" or "X is the prevailing rule in this culture"). So in my view the fact that an "ought" statement can be explained in that way shows that it is an empirical statement to begin with. Statements in general have all sorts of influences on people (for example, if someone said to me: "Your son has just died", it is clearly an empirical statement but it would also have an enormous influence on me if true. It would cause me to take many actions that I would not otherwise take) and an "ought" statement is an empirical statement with what is expected to be one particular sort of influence -- a commendatory influence. So an "ought" statement is often simply a shorthand (compressed) "is" statement that can be promptly expanded if desired.

A major way in which I differ with many philosophers, however, is that I accept that "ought" statements are used in a variety of ways rather than in one single way and I do not try to make sense out of ALL the ways that they are used. And I have SHOWN that usage of moral language differs from person to person by way of psychological research. As I see it, "ought" statements always commend but they are not always empirical statements. Sometimes they are in fact very incoherent statements (at best pseudo-empirical statements) and I think Hume's difficulty arose out of a determination to find meaning in incoherent uses of "ought" statements (i.e. when "ought" statements are elaborated as being or emanating from timeless and universal rules that are "known" only in some mysterious and untestable way -- typically expressed by saying "X just IS right", with no further explanation given) and I simply regard that quest as a fool's errand. The world is awash with incoherent gibberish and baseless assertions so there is no reason to be either disturbed by it or interested in it when such assertions occur in moral discourse. When I encounter it, my usual response is to point out its incoherence and untestability and then refuse to have any further truck with such things (as I did here).

Being primarily a psychologist, I am of course interested in WHY what I have called incoherent uses of moral terminology arise and I find the explanation given by philosophical psychologist John Maze persuasive: That they are a conscious or unconscious attempt at fraud -- an attempt to persuade by saying that immutable and peculiarly moral properties exist and that they have some claim on us because of that. Maze's work is not online but if you have access to a university library, you can find it in: Maze, J. (1973) "The concept of attitude". Inquiry, 16, 168-205. Maze also had a book published in 1983 called The Meaning of Behaviour which I have not read but which almost certainly would contain similar arguments. I have summarized Maze's arguments at somewhat greater length in my academic paper on the present topic.

Many people -- Roman Catholics in particular -- are nonetheless very attracted to the view that some moral statements just ARE right, regardless of time and place. They say that killing babies is ALWAYS wrong for instance. If one objects that killing babies was perfectly normal and perceived as "right" in the most brilliant civilization of ancient times -- Greece -- they are quite unmoved and just say that the Greeks were wrong. But how do they KNOW? What is their authority or source of information about the "wrongness" concerned? Basically, they cannot tell you. Their only authority is a "gut reaction" and different people in different times and in different places have many different "gut reactions", of course. Pro-abortionists, for instance, seem to have the gut reaction that killing babies is OK as long as the baby is young enough. So "gut reactions" simply reduce to "in my opinion". What starts out looking like a very authoritative statement turns out to have no authoritativeness at all.

Leftists make great hay out of that. They popularly refer to such views as "moral absolutism" (a philosopher would say "ethical non-naturalism") and assert a version of ethical naturalism which is popularly referred to as "moral relativism". They reject what I have called meaning 4 above and say that only meaning 5 is possible for "ought" statements. In other words, they say that right and wrong is only what is accepted behaviour in a given society at a given time. And I in part agree with them. I too believe that there is no timeless and forever fixed right and wrong and that what is right and wrong varies from society to society. That does NOT mean, however, that all ways to live are equally wise -- which is the extension of moral relativism that Leftists usually glide into without people noticing. Leftists normally seem to ignore totally what I have called above meaning 2 for "ought" statements: that some ways of living lead to generally desired outcomes and some do not. Such claims are simple empirical propositions for which there is much evidence. Most people, for instance, desire material prosperity but only some ways of living lead to that. Laziness, for instance generally does not lead to prosperity so laziness is generally unwise, or, in shorthand, "bad" or "wrong". So there is no need for anybody to be embarrassed into abandoning talk of "right" and "wrong". Such terms do have real and important meanings -- even if you are an ethical naturalist.

And at least from Edmund Burke onwards, conservatives have taken the matter one step further. That some value is merely the custom of a given society is taken by Leftists to imply that the value concerned is NOT worthy of respect or continuation. Conservatives draw precisely the opposite conclusion. That some custom has evolved through trial and error over a long period of time is seen by conservatives as indicating that it is probably a wise and valuable custom that should not be abandoned except for very strong reasons. The custom may not be "right" in any absolute, immutable or unimprovable sense but it may still be very wise and valuable in enabling a civil and healthy society to function and give its members what they desire -- such as peace, security and prosperity. In that sense, courage, honesty, democracy and the rule of law are "right". Countries where such values are widespread generally have more peace, security, freedom and prosperity than countries where such values are not widespread. Values and standards of behaviour are very important matters indeed.

Amusingly, however, Leftists are very prone to using the language of right and wrong (which they claim not to believe in) when it suits them. They will claim that things like Apartheid or "racism" are WRONG without batting an eyelid. The moral relativists suddenly become moralists. They will happily say things that they do not remotely believe in if it suits their ends of gaining power and influence. I did some research into the dishonest Leftist use of moral language which is reported here. And when Leftists do use moralistic language, it is rather fun to use the arguments of moral relativism to show how shallow their arguments are -- as here.


Addendum

It may be that some see a contradiction between my statement above that gut instincts are not authoritative and my statement elsewhere that most morality is instinctive.

There is however a large distinction to be made between the truth of a statement and a person's motivation for making it. What I said above was about truth claims, not about why that claim is made. One hopes that there is usually some connection between the truth of a statement and why people make the statement concerned but that there is no obvious or necessary connection is all too obvious.

2007 ADDENDUM

Some 2007 research by Haidt would seem to be of considerable interest in connection with the above. Haidt argues that the basis of morality is instinctive but that conservatives display greater cognitive complexity in dealing with moral questions. Given the frequent Leftist assertion that "there is no such thing as right and wrong", that is not inherently surprising. Although they often use moral talk in an attempt to influence others, Leftists would seem, on their own admission, to have no serious interest in or committment to morality of any kind. That does make the invariable brutalities of Communist regimes rather understandable.

Part of a summary of Haidt's research:

"Haidt argues that human morality is a cultural construction built on top of -- and constrained by -- a small set of evolved psychological systems. He presents evidence that political liberals rely primarily on two of these systems, involving emotional sensitivities to harm and fairness. Conservatives, however, construct their moral understandings on those two systems plus three others, which involve emotional sensitivities to in-group boundaries, authority and spiritual purity."

There is a longer account of Haidt's research here


Click here for a list of all John Ray's comments on moral philosophy


FINIS

THE SKEPTICS HAVE SOLD OUT



By John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)


It is sad to see a voice of reason fall silent but exactly that seems to have happened over at "The Skeptical Inquirer". They quite rightly say that limitless skepticism leads nowhere. To be precise it leads to solipsism -- doubting everything but your own existence -- but the means they propose to limit skepticism are astounding.

They seem to want to decide scientific truth not on the facts or on the balance of the probabilities but by majority vote! If you had taken a majority vote among the learned men of Galileo's day you would have "discovered" that the sun rotated around the earth. And you would be WRONG!

The example they give is instructive. They say that because 2500 "scientists" signed a document saying that mankind is causing global warming therefore it must be true. No weighting to the degree of expertise of the "scientists" involved is given nor is any account taken of how many of them stand to lose their research grants if the theory is disproven. But above all, no weighting is given to the many discordant FACTS -- such as evidence that global warming is occurring on Mars too. Did mankind cause THAT? Or did solar variability do it? Many people might therefore want at this stage to rename them "The Credulous Inquirer".

And if majorities win, what about the many scientists who reject the claim of man-made global warming? There is a 19,200 name long petition here -- signed by "17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees... Signers of this petition so far include 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists..who are especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth's atmosphere and climate. ..(and) ..5,017 scientists whose fields of specialization in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and other life sciences". The petitioners are a much more numerous group than the group favoured by the magazine and they REJECT the view espoused by the magazine.

There have of course been attempts by environmentalist true believers to sabotage the petition drive. However the organisers have, to their credit, made efforts to ensure its validity. "Of the 19,700 signatures that the project has received in total so far, 17,800 have been independently verified and the other 1,900 have not yet been independently verified. Of those signers holding the degree of PhD, 95% have now been independently verified. One name that was sent in by enviro pranksters, Geri Halliwell, PhD, has been eliminated. Several names, such as Perry Mason and Robert Byrd are still on the list even though enviro press reports have ridiculed their identity with the names of famous personalities. They are actual signers. Perry Mason, for example, is a PhD Chemist. "

So even by their own ridiculous "majority rule" criterion, "The Skeptical Inquirer" was showing no skepticism at all.

But it gets worse again: It really looks like they were not credulous but straight-out dishonest in their support for the global warming theory. They depicted their favoured report on global warming as the outcome of a standard scientific peer-review process. As this report from Stats.org notes, it was nothing of the sort. What was published was a totally distorted version of what the scientists had said:

Frederick Seitz, former president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, claimed that he had "never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer review process than the event that led to this IPCC report." Seitz went on to charge that nearly all of the editorial changes made by the report's lead author, Benjamin Santer, "worked to remove hints of the skepticism with which many scientists regard claims that human activities are having a major impact on climate in general or global warming in particular." Others, including the independent but industry-backed Global Climate Coalition (GCC) went so far as to claim that the report had been "scientifically cleansed" in a political effort to emphasize alarm about global warming while deleting references to uncertainty.

And the second report that the Skeptics quoted also said nothing like what they claim:

"Last week the National Academy of Sciences released a report on climate change, prepared in response to a request from the White House, that was depicted in the press as an implicit endorsement of the Kyoto Protocol... As one of 11 scientists who prepared the report, I can state that this is simply untrue. For starters, the NAS never asks that all participants agree to all elements of a report, but rather that the report represent the span of views. This the full report did, making clear that there is no consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends and what causes them."

Clearly, the Skeptics have been taken over by Greenie propagandists, with their characteristic disregard for the truth. Sad indeed. I think a lot of people might now want to rename them as "The Dishonest Inquirer".



Update:

The above words were written in 2003 and resulted in a short correspondence with the magazine. By 2007 the credulity had deepened -- as we see here. The Skeptics had become evangelists in fact! An average temperature rise of a fraction of one degree across the entire 20th century got them panicked! NO skepticism there whatsoever.


FINIS

POLITICS: ONE DIMENSION OR TWO?




By John J. Ray (M.A.;Ph.D.)


Describing the entire domain of political attitudes in terms of a single Right/Left dimension does have its problems. Libertarians in particular are always promoting a two dimensional description of political attitudes. The political compass and the "World's Smallest Political Quiz" are popular applications of such theories. Below are two examples of such a description:





Unfortunately, though I am a libertarian, I am also an academic who has specialized in surveys of political attitudes and I regret to report that we seem to be pretty stuck with the old Left/Right schema. So let me give you a quick tour of the academic literature:

Academics have been talking about this for a long time. Various authors (e.g. Eysenck, 1954; Rokeach, 1960; Kerlinger, 1967) have proposed that an adequate description of world politics really needs two dimensions. They propose, for example, that the Left-Right dimension be supplemented by an Authoritarian/Permissive dimension. So that democratic Leftists and Rightists are Permissive Leftists and Rightists whereas Communists and Fascists are Authoritarian Leftists and Rightists.

Although such proposals have considerable intuitive appeal, they do not, unfortunately, seem to coincide with how people's attitudes are in fact organized when we do surveys of public opinion. It is very easy to find people's attitudes polarizing on a Left/Right dimension but nobody has yet managed to show in a satisfactory way any polarization of attitudes on the postulated second dimension (Ray, 1980 & 1982 -- online here and here).

The summary from my 1982 paper published in The Journal of Social Psychology reads as follows:

The Eysenck/Rokeach/Kerlinger theory that social attitudes are two dimensional suffers from disagreement about what the second dimension should be called and how it should be measured. The present work tests the proposal that there is a dimension of libertarian/authoritarian attitudes orthogonal to radicalism/conservatism. A set of items designed to maximize the likelihood of such dimensions appearing was administered to a random postal sample of Californians. No real evidence of the proposed second dimension appeared. It was concluded that authoritarianism is a personality variable only.

"Orthogonal" is statistician-speak for "unrelated" or "at right-angles to". The correlations observed in the data showed that people who agreed with one conservatism statement, no matter how it was conceived, tended to agree with all other conservatism statements. Similarly for expresions of Leftist views. But "authoritarian" or "libertarian" statements did not cluster together at all. Your being a libertarian on one issue did not mean that you would tend to be libertarian on other issues. So it is solely the Left/Right dimension on which people in fact polarize.

The account of Left/Right attitudes given in my monograph suggests why this is so. For a start, the assumption that Fascists or Nazis are Right-wing is false. Hitler himself energetically claimed to be a socialist and Mussolini (the founder of Fascism) was a lifelong Marxist. The evidence for this has been summarized at great length elsewhere so will not be elaborated here.

Historically, the core of conservatism has always been a suspicion of government power and intervention and conservatives therefore accept only the minimum amount of government that seems needed for a civil society to function. So it is no wonder that there is no authoritarian version of conservative ideology. If it were authoritarian it could not be conservative.

Leftism, on the other hand, IS intrinsically authoritarian and power-loving and will always therefore tend in the direction of government domination. It is only non-authoritarian to the extent that is thwarted by external influences (such as democracy) from achieving its aims. Leftists in democratic societies do of course commonly deny authoritarian motivations but that is just part of their "cover". Deeds speak louder than words.

It may be worth noting that one researcher (Goertzel (1987) did manage to derive two personality measures that seem to correspond fairly closely with the usual proposals for what underlies political orientation. He called his two measures "tendermindedness-toughness" and "intuitiveness-consistency" and the latter was certainly very reminiscent of conservatism. So how did these two personality measures correlate with a range of political beliefs? Negligibly in all cases -- see his Table 4. Once again we see that a two-dimensional account of what underlies political orientation just does not work out empirically.


References:

Eysenck, H.J. (1954) The psychology of politics. London: Routledge
Goertzel, T. G. (1987) Authoritarianism of personality and political attitudes. J. Social Psychology, 127 (1), 7-18.
Kerlinger, F. N. (1967). Social attitudes and their criterial referents: A structural theory. Psychological Review, 74, 110-122.
Rokeach, M. (1960) The open and closed mind. N.Y.: Basic Books.






A TECHNICAL CAVEAT

As conservatives characteristically know and as Leftists characteristically deny, reality tends to be peskily complex -- and the present subject is no exception. I wish therefore to point out now some of the complexities not mentioned above.

The dimensionality of political attitudes was a topic of great interest to me throughout my research career and many of my published papers bear on it. I attempted an answer to the dimensionality question in the second paper I ever wrote, in fact -- written in 1968 and published in 1973. So I hope I can be forgiven if I lapse somewhat into technicalities in what follows:

The summary of what I want to say is this: While two robust orthogonal dimensions cannot be extracted from normal political discourse, two strong oblique dimensions can routinely be extracted.

To elaborate: There is a way to divide up normal political discourse into two dimensions but those two dimensions tend to be correlated. They are not independent. Knowing a person's position on one dimension will give you a weak prediction of his/her position on the second dimension. Ferguson in fact published such a solution in the 1940s, though he forced orthogonality (independence) on his solution.

And the dimensions identified by Ferguson can always be found and they are in fact rather familiar. They are the religious/moral dimension and the economic dimension. In other words, it is perfectly possible for people to be conservative on religious and moral matters but at the same time to be socialistically inclined on economic matters. For an extended discussion of just that combination, see here. There IS a religious Left who favour all sorts of government intervention in economic matters. As Waldman says: "Actually, in 2000, at least 10 million white "evangelical Christians" voted for Gore".

Some attitude combinations are more common than others, however, and it will be no news to anybody to hear that the PREPONDERANCE of religious conservatives also support conservative (non-interventionist) economic policies.

What is surprising, in fact, is how weakly the two attitude clusters are associated. In one of my 1973 papers, I found, for instance, a correlation of only .24 between economic conservatism and social conservatism. It was this weakness of association that enabled Ferguson to force an orthogonal solution (i.e. a picture of independence) on his data.

It would appear, however, that this weakness of association stems from areas of discourse that are less central to overall political orientation -- as, in a 1984 paper, I found that moral issues lay at the centre of all conservatism/Leftism issues. See the second Appendix in the paper. It is no wonder, then, that religious conservatives figure so prominently in America's Grand Old Party at the beginning of the 21st century. It shows, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the most personal issues are also the most important in politics.

In summary, then, religious/moral conservatism and economic conservatism are distinct but related -- and the more important the issue is the more highly they become related. It is perhaps encouraging that psychological research from many years previously in Australia predicted so well what was happening in American politics in the early 21st century.

Reference:

Ferguson, L. (1941) The stability of the primary social attitudes. J. Psychology, 12, 283-288.


FINIS

ACADEMIC FAKERS


By John J. Ray

FrontPageMagazine.com | August 27, 2003

Like most college and university teachers in the social sciences and humanities, academic psychologists are overwhelmingly Leftist in their orientation. So it will be no surprise to hear that at least since the 1950's psychologists have been doing their best to find psychological maladjustment in conservatives. To anyone with a knowledge of history the results have been quite absurd (See here) but psychologists rarely seem to know much about history so that has not disturbed them.

I spent 20 years from 1970 to 1990 getting over 200 articles published in the academic journals of the social sciences which subjected the various politically relevant theories of psychologists to empirical test. The only test that psychologists normally give to their theories is to seek the opinions of their students on a variety of issues and present THAT as evidence about how the world works. My consistent strategy was to do the same sort of test among random samples of people in the community at large. I found that people in the community at large are not nearly as accommodating to the theories of psychologists as psychology students are!

My non-conformist behaviour in actually doing a serious test of these theories won me no kudos, however. I appear to have had far more articles on political psychology published in the academic journals than anyone else and so would therefore -- by conventional academic criteria -- normally be considered the No. 1 world expert on the subject but in fact my writings have always been comprehensively ignored. My findings did not produce the RIGHT CONCLUSIONS, you see. In fact my findings showed the theories concerned to be wrong in almost every respect.

So it was no surprise to me at all to read the latest effort in the long line of attempts by psychologists to discredit conservatives. The article "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition" was published recently by John Jost and his collaborators at Berkeley in The Psychological Bulletin -- one of the premier journals of academic psychology. The "powers that be" at Berkeley were so pleased with this article that they put out a press release that was designed to publicize the findings of the article as widely as possible.

The result was great derision from conservative political commentators. The study was so obviously one-eyed that it was very easy to deride. Their claim that Stalin was Right-wing, for instance must be some high-point of twisting the evidence. If the most prominent Communist of the 20th century was Right-wing, who on earth would be Left-wing? Black might as well be white. Here is what Jost and his crew actually said:

"There are also cases of left-wing ideologues who, once they are in power, steadfastly resist change, allegedly in the name of egalitarianism, such as Stalin or Khrushchev or Castro (see J. Martin, Scully, & Levitt, 1990). It is reasonable to suggest that some of these historical figures may be considered politically conservative"

It is hard to know where to start in commenting on this breathtaking statement. To say that the instigator of huge (and disastrous) changes in almost everything in Russian life resisted change is incomprehensible. And to call Communists of that era conservatives is equally perverse. One has to say that "conservative" obviously has a pretty strange meaning in the ivory towers of Berkeley. In their world even Stalin can be blamed on conservatism.

Apparently as an attempted explanation of their perverse definitions, they go on to say that the worldwide legion of Communist tyrants that they allude to are not typical of Leftists. The fact that Communists at their height controlled nearly half the world is not apparently enough to get them counted as typical Leftists.

The reason they get themselves into this awful muddle is that they have no idea what conservatism actually is. To define what it is, they consulted dictionaries and social science encyclopaedias and their fellow Leftist writers but they do not appear to have consulted a single conservative! And they have certainly studied no political history. They have fallen into the simplistic trap of equating conservatism with rejection of change. It is of course true that conservatives DO reject some changes -- the foolish changes advocated by Leftists in particular -- but it is also true that conservatives WANT change -- change that will get the government off their backs in particular. If Jost and his colleagues had talked to almost any conservative they would have found out very rapidly that there are a HEAP of things about our present society that conservatives would like to change. It is only Leftists talking to one another who think that conservatives are motivated only by a rejection of change.

If anybody would like to look at what has historically defined conservatives, a summary of the history concerned can be found here. Briefly, however, conservatives have always resisted attempts to curtail their rights and liberties -- particularly from the incursions of tyrannical governments. THAT is what has often made them resist change -- as governments do have a habit of trying to curtail the rights and liberties of the individual. But to say that conservatives resist change for its own sake is something that only a Leftist would believe. Conservatives believe in liberty. Leftists believe in the State.

So the Jost group in effect fell at the first hurdle. If they could not get straight what conservatism is, the chances of their saying anything reasonable about it were pretty slim. But let us look a little further at what they did say anyway:

The first thing to note is that the article concerned is not in any sense new evidence about anything. It is just a summary of what other Leftist psychologists have said on the subject over the years. And as computer people have always warned: GIGO (Garbage in, garbage out). And it is a very strange summary at that. Although the authors express some pride that they "cast a wide net" in looking for articles to include in their summary, they in fact leave out practically everything that does not suit them. They look only at articles that they like. It is NOT in any way a comprehensive, objective survey of the literature on the subject. For instance, how many of my articles did they cite? Just two. So just in ignoring the great bulk of my articles on the subject they ignored half the relevant literature. But Leftists always have been good at ignoring evidence.

So they say that their Leftist approach to the study of politics "has withstood the relentless tests of time and empirical scrutiny" and go on to cite 13 articles that support their approach as evidence for that assertion. If they had been fair and objective, they could also have quoted 100 articles of mine that upset that assertion. But in good Leftist fashion it is only people who support their views that they cite. No tolerance of ambiguity there!

Their ignorance of what conservatism is also shows in the means they use to measure it. Psychologists measure traits by use of "scales" (sets of interrelated questions). The more "conservative" statements you agree with, for instance, the more conservative you are said to be. The big hitch, of course, is in deciding what is a "conservative" statement. And psychologists have arrived at some strange conclusions in deciding that. Two of the most popular scales that psychologists use in studying conservative politics are the 'F' scale -- put together in the late 1940s by the (Marxist) Adorno and his group -- and the RWA scale put together by Altemeyer. Yet in general population samples Leftist voters are just about as likely to get high scores on both scales as Rightist voters are! (See e.g. here) So once again we have psychologists seriously telling us that a lot of Rightists are Leftists. Apparently Stalin is not so atypical after all!

That their measures of "conservatism" do not correlate with anything of current political relevance was even acknowledged by one of the authors of the scales concerned -- the RWA (Right-wing Authoritarianism) scale. Altemeyer, on p. 239 of his 1988 book Enemies of Freedom makes the bald statement that "Right-wing authoritarians show little preference in general for any political party". So in what sense are the statements in the scale "right-wing" if right-wingers are no more likely to endorse them than Leftists are? Leftist psychologists are like something out of Alice in Wonderland where words can mean anything that they say they mean. I myself do think that the F and RWA scales measure some sort of conservatism (though what sort would be hard to say) but it is certainly not political conservatism. My best shot so far at guessing what they measure is an old-fashioned outlook -- but note that both Leftist and Rightist voters are equally likely to be old-fashioned in the sense concerned.

But you would never guess from what the Jost group say that their scales are so hopelessly invalid ("invalid" = "does not measure what it is supposed to measure"). Of the RWA scale, for instance, they say "Scores on the RWA Scale have been found to predict a broad range of attitudes and behaviors related to social, economic, and political conservatism as defined in the general culture at the time. For instance, the scale has correlated reliably with political party affiliation" Weasel words! They do not even seem to have read Altemeyer himself. The shred of justification they have for that statement is that among SOME people (e.g. politicians) those identified as conservative are slightly more likely to get higher scores on the RWA scale. But it still remains true that in the community at large Leftist and Rightist voters are roughly equally likely to get high scores on the thing.

The central weasel word above is of course "reliably". Psychologists have the strange habit of taking a correlation seriously as long as it is "statistically significant". But ANY correlation will be statistically significant if the sample size is large enough! So we have the weird phenomenon of correlations as low as .15 (meaning that there is only a 2% overlap between two groups of people) being taken as proof of something ( See e.g. here). What this means in practice is that if 51% of voters for the conservatives get a high score on the RWA scale and 49% of voters for the Leftists get a high score on it (which is roughly what happens), psychologists say: "Aha! We told you so! This scale measures conservatism!"). And if that happens often we get statements such as the one that the RWA scale "reliably" measures conservatism. That roughly half of their "conservatives" vote Leftist does not seem to bother anyone at all!

Leftist beliefs are obviously so rigidly held to among psychologists that any evidence at all will do to support them.

I could go on to point out many, many more holes in this caricature of serious research (e.g. by pointing out that Hitler was a socialist, that Mussolini was a Marxist, that scores on the Dogmatism scale are meaningless and that intolerance of ambiguity is a "unicorn" concept) but I think that it would be flogging a dead horse to do so. I have written a fair bit more about it on my blog for those who want to look a little further and if anyone wants to look at the academic issues involved in detail there are all my published academic journal articles on the subject to refer to. They are all now online.

One of my academic colleagues -- Prof. James Lindgren -- has also been looking closely at the Jost work. He has gone to the trouble of finding out what the public opinion polls reveal about conservative voters. A sample of his findings is here. He does however have in preparation a point-by-point refutation of the Jost claims. Practically everything the Jost group claims about conservatives on the basis of what students say turns out to be the reverse of the truth according to the public opinion poll data. When Prof. Lindgren has his work ready I will of course publicize the link on my blog.

Post publication addenda

I understand that Prof. Lindgren has decided to report his research in the form of a book but that it has not yet been published.

There have been lots of subsequent uncritical mentions of the Jost et al. pseudo-meta-analysis but a widely read one appeared in "Psychology Today". A brief comment on the article concerned is therefore offered below. Below that is offered a brief comment on another article much relied upon in the "Psychology Today" article -- a quite ludicrous article by that old warhorse of the field, Jack Block.



YESTERDAY'S PSYCHOLOGY TODAY

Psychology Today has put out a big article on the psychology of politics. It purports to explain why people hew to the Left or the Right.

It bases its conclusions, however, on research that has no scholarly worth whatsoever. The two main pieces of research it relies on to support the differentiations it proposes are by Jost et al and Block et al. Both pieces of research are within my area of academic specialization so the gaping flaws in both are more evident to me than they might be to others. I have some time ago pointed out how intellectually discreditable both studies are -- reproduced above and below. I was actually one of the authors whose research the Jost et al. article purported to summarize!

Jost et al. showed vividly the usual Leftist talent for ignoring large bodies of evidence that did not suit their preconceptions. Their article must in fact rate as one of the most dishonest meta-analyses ever reported. They were very clearly guilty of "motivated cognition" -- exactly what they accused conservatives of. Leftist projection and leftist denial do usually go hand in hand.

Michelle Malkin and Jim Lindgren note the absurd "sampling" in the Block study. It seems unlikely that there were any actual conservatives among the individuals studied! That is not the first time Leftist psychologists have perpetrated such an absurdity in their mendacious claims to "explain" conservatism, however. See, for instance, here.

Given the very dubious basis of the generalizations offered in the Psychology Today article, the generalizations offered by the article should detain no-one. Whether any of the statements made are true is simply unknown.

Sadly, many in the blogosphere have assumed that there is some respectable evidential basis for the article. Cinnamon Stillwell and Fausta sum up some of the blogospheric reactions. Iron Shrink also has a detailed debunking of the Jost et al. study.

For an account of the psychology of conservatism based on the actual history of conservatism, see here.



THE BLOCKHEADED BLOCK

Starting in 1950, psychologists have been trying to prove that conservatives are psychologically maladjusted --an effort that was summarized by Jost et al. and demolished above. They never give up trying, however, and the study of 95 children from Berkeley, California by Jack Block and his wife is the latest episode. It's a bit like shooting fish in a barrel to demolish the "research" concerned so I will just mention a few basics.

What the authors found was that Berkeley children who were rated as unhappy in their kindergarten years turned out as adults to be conservatives. So what do we conclude from that? Do we conclude that conservatives are intrinsically unhappy people? Hardly. The opinion polls repeatedly show conservatives to be the happiest (e.g. here). So what DO we conclude? How about saying that conservatives in ultra-Leftist Berkeley feel uncomfortable in that environment and pass on some of that discomfort to their children? But the children (as most children do) grow up to share their parents' politics so they turn out conservative in later life too. So conservative parents who were SITUATIONALLY unhappy have conservative children -- big deal!

But that is actually putting the best face on the study. It is not nearly as good as that:

1). The children concerned were not a representative sample of any known population. They may not even have been representative of Berkeley, let alone anywhere else. And if you don't sample, you can't generalize.

2). The correlation between personality and ideology was often very weak (e.g. .27 or 7% shared variance for the rating "Is self-reliant, confident") so there were nearly as many confident children who turned out Rightist as Leftist. The reported correlation could in fact have turned on the responses of just one child. That certainly weakens ALL causal inferences from the study. And many of the stronger correlations involve obvious value judgments. For instance "Is visibly deviant from peers" is said to characterize conservatives but why not turn the value judgment around and conclude that conservatives tend to be independent?

3). The measure of conservative ideology is suspect. Block does not list the actual attitude statements he used but, as I have shown above, Leftist psychologists in general don't have a blind clue what conservatism is -- and what they regard as a measure of conservatism is usually a caricature of the real thing -- generally a collection of ignorant and aggressive statements that very few real-world conservatives would assent to. That it was a caricature in this case is suggested by the fact that it showed conservatives as less intelligent. In the general population it is Leftists who are less intelligent.

I could go on to mention the Rosenthal effect etc. but what's the point?


AN INSTRUCTIVE CONTRAST TO ALL THE ABOVE

Conservative commentators sometimes return the sort of compliment offered above by writing swingeing analyses of Leftist psychology. You can find one example here by forensic psychiatrist Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr, MD.

What a contrast! The article above about Leftists is based on what actual Leftists actually do — a vast difference from the Leftist psychologists who failed to interview any actual conservatives — and who certainly did not base their observations on what conservatives actually do, as distinct from what they say. And no psychologist should need to be told that attitudes are a poor guide to behaviour and it is behaviour that counts.


FINIS