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Location: St. Louis, Missouri, United States

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Response to The Mad King

Here are some thoughtful e-mails I received over my piece ``The Mad King and the Crazy Left``:

I just read your excellent summation over at the American Thinker (referred by larwyn). I have been writing on my blog about many of the same issues, but from my own Psychoanalytic/Psychiatric pov. The idea that the liberal mindset derives from the need to replace God by man and its derivative, that reality is constructed, is right on target. You might find Howard Schwartz's book, The Revenge of the Primitive of interest on the roots of political correctness. I recently posted Part IV of my series on Narcissism, Disintegration, Suicidality & the Fall of the West, The Death of the Father. My series is describing how the culture (and cult) of narcissism, the "I" being all that counts, is undermining our ability to fight and win the war on Islamic fascism. This part, in particular, was directed toward how man has murdered God and, of necessity, replaced him with himself. Here's a bit of it:

Pure rationality had come to demand that God be treated as if he didn't exist (an effort that is continuing today via the legal system, a topic for a later post) and many were and are all to happy to comply. By denying the existence of a transcendent God, the rationalists were paving the way for man to take his place. I have described elsewhere ( W(h)ither Religion, Political Deification) the disastrous consequences of the death of God for a society as well as the existence of an unconscious need for a God to exist; if we have murdered God, as some insist, then something merely human will have to be found to take its place. Whether we are talking about one's faith in overt Atheism, Communism, Secular Humanism, Multiculturalism, or some other -ism, we are describing the use of human structures to replace a transcendent God with a profane object of worship. We are now halfway to disaster.
....
By destroying God as a civilizing influence, the rationalists put themselves into the position of needing a replacement. Fascism was tried and found wanting; communism was tried and found wanting (and untold millions had to die in the attempts); today a more reactionary form of Utopian fantasy ideology is in play in Islamic fascism, which will certainly be found wanting as well, though there is no way to know how many will have to die first.

This may all seem far removed from discourse on narcissism but the connection is a powerful one. Religion has been one of the most profound and useful ways to civilize those who were unfortunate enough to grow up without the requisite parental guidance and available sources of identification. Religion helps young men, especially, to channel their passions, and behave in socially acceptable ways. The Conscience, an important part of the Superego, has two parts; it offers proscriptions (Thou shall nots) and prescriptions (Thou shalls). As any parent knows, "Thou shall not" works best when there is a clear punishment available to enforce compliance. If God can no longer be invoked, the only reason to obey the law and inhibit one's own drives is fear of human authority, which at the best of times is highly corruptible and inconsistent, two attributes not ordinarily attributed to God.
If civilization depends on young men, especially, taming their instinctual drives and inhibiting the free expression of such drives and their more harmful derivatives, then we can see that our civilization has been consistently stripping away vital layers of protection, while at the same time encouraging our young people to act out their impulses; this is not a stable structure.

The rest of the post is here.

Part of the glory of the blogosphere is the way we can find other who advance our ideas and thinking. Your article was thought provoking and I hope my posts would do the same for you.
Regards,

ShrinkWrapped




Hi Tim,

I've read a number of your articles and in my opinion, this is your best work. Not many people connect Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche, then go on to connect Spencer and Sanger. I've always thought the links between Soviet Communism, Eugenics, Nazism, Abortion, Chinese Communism and Democratic Socialism were obvious. It amazes me how well the liberal elite manage to cover these links, but then their objective has always been to teach what to think instead of how to think.

Over a decade ago, I visited the National Women's Museum in Seneca Falls, NY with an Australian College Professor who was a Doctor of Philosophy (don't ask I how I managed that trick). We were both startled to find that Sanger's past history with the Eugenics and Nazi movements was entirely missing. You'd think that the National Parks Administration would have insisted on historical accuracy.

Before Darwin, there was the Reverend Thomas Malthus who wrote the "Essay on the Principle of Population." Darwin accepted the reasoning of the "Malthusian Doctrine" and made it part of his reasoning for natural selection. The truth is that the confrontation between those who believe in the material nature of reality and those who believe in god(s) and religion dates back at least as far as the Greek Philosophers Epicurus and Aristotle (who rejected the materialistic nature of reality).

Newsweek published an article in the early 1990's about a startling scientific breakthrough. Taking advantage of the latest in medical technology, researchers had discovered that men and women physiologically used their brains differently during the acts of thinking and problem solving. Considering Socrates had reached the same conclusion by just asking questions centuries before the birth of Christ, it didn't seem to be a startling breakthrough to me. Unfortunately, at that time, everyone knew that men were superior to women, so Aristotle concluded that the fact that women thought differently than men proved men were more intelligent. In a way, this is similar to Darwin discovering some of the Laws of Nature and concluding that this disproved any intervention by Nature's God.

I became a believer in Intelligent Design when neither Al Gore nor John Kerry evolved to become President of the United States. The truth is that Darwinism, as a theory, died a number of years ago and the liberal elite refuse to bury the stinking corpse because of the damage it will do to all their pet agendas. Their defense of Darwinism is comical when you consider that Harvard has committed $1,000,000 annually to, as David R. Liu, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, explains "reduce this to a very simple seriesof logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention." But didn't Darwin's theory already do that?

The liberal elite refuses to debate issues such as Abortion and Intelligent Design because actual reality and truth are easier to understand and recognize than their convoluted versions.

Don't get too upset. In July, before your "The case against Darwin", I emailed Thomas Lifson a heads-up on an article in the New York Times by Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna explaining that the Catholic Church did not accept Darwin's theory. This had been a creation of the media and others for a good number of years. Although, it was interesting that the Church had finally clarified its position, the fact that the article had been written by a Cardinal from Austria led me to believe that the Vatican and possibly even the Pope wanted to open a debate on Darwinism.

Frankly, if it had not been for your article, I would have written one for American Thinker and, to use Lifson's term, it would have been harsh. Fortunately, since only Thomas actually knows who I am, his neighbors from Berkley would have been at his door with pitchforks and torches.

As I said in my last email to you, Darwinism is DEAD.

It is a scientific fact that the fossils found in the Canadian Burgess Shale are a record of when most modern phyla appeared during the start of the Cambrian period. This is proof of an explosion in complex life without evidence of a gradual rise of more complex life leading up to the Cambrian period. This is not a case of a missing link, but a case of a missing evolution of species.

Darwin admitted that if a blind incremental process could not explain a natural phenomenon, his theory would be proven false. The flagellar motor found in e-coli and other bacterium is a natural phenomenon that can not be explained as a blind incremental process. The motor and its parts could not have been a result of the gradual rise of complex life to more complex life.

Nobel prize winning biochemist Francis Crick who took part in the discovery of the helical structure of DNA recognizes that the first cells cannot be explained by a design-free evolution. Crick's non-evolutionary solution to this problem is the belief that intelligent aliens seeded life on earth. Oxford Zoologist, Richard Dawkins' solution to this problem is an irrational belief in the power of chance to the point that the probability is so infinitesimally small that it is mathematically and theoretically unlikely to have occurred by random chance.

The real Big Bang may be the sound of scientific agnostics falling off their mountain of delusions and landing on the path between Intelligent Design and Prime Mover.

Supposedly, Einstein was once asked how he had developed his theories. His response, with a wink, was that he tried to look into the mind of God. The people there, at the time, thought he was just kidding. What if he wasn't? His most controversial statement is that there must be a set of basic principles which govern both the vastness of the universe and its smallest element. Philosophically, a God would be a Perfect Being and a Perfect Being could not be inconsistent. More than one set of basic principles would be inconsistent.

A little food for thought,


Keep up the good work!

Tom Joseph


(His website is here.



Finally, thanks to our good friend Aussiegirl from Ultima Thule we have a (mostly) positive discussion at Lucianne. Below are some of the posts:


Comments: (by Aussiegirl)
Everything you ever wanted to know about liberals, and more. Fantastic
rundown of what makes liberals tick and their historic origins.
Deconstructing the deconstructionists.

Reply 1 - Posted by: woofwoofwoof, 12/10/2005 1:41:56 PM
Oh, I dunno, I'd nitpick this on many issues, for one thing Britain was
already a strong constitutional monarchy and the fault was at least half
the Parliment's.
Is the left really that much crazier today than thirty or sixty or two
hundred years ago? Well, I agree, maybe a little, but they were pretty
crazy then, too.
Did the left maintain its power thru information and journalism? I know
Rush goes on about that, and he makes many valid points, but the left
equated itself with the Enlightment view of Progress. I think just
perhaps those two ideas are now breaking loose - it was the Republicans
who were pro-technology even in 1850!
Yada yada.

Reply 2 - Posted by: 49 Ford, 12/10/2005 2:01:54 PM
This goes to the heart of matters and is a keeper. Thanks for posting.

Reply 3 - Posted by: GeneSmith, 12/10/2005 2:04:00 PM
I loved the bit about Gasbag Teddy plunging off the bridge of sanity and
into the sea of madness!

Reply 4 - Posted by: cap MarineTet68, 12/10/2005 2:06:24 PM
Thanks and a snifter clink to poster. This is a keeper. Which means I'll
be distributing it.

Reply 5 - Posted by: craige, 12/10/2005 2:08:52 PM
For those interested in the liberal mindset:
http://home.att.net/~resurgence/
Steve Kangas did an excellent job explaining liberalism. As a
libertarian (ie Consitutional constructionalist), I would have enjoyed
debating him. Unfortunetly, he commited suicide in Las Vegas in 1999.

Reply 6 - Posted by: Douglas DC, 12/10/2005 2:12:23 PM
What I saw was the Left's love of self as gods.They give themselves
divine right because they are so much smarter than us unwashed, ignorant
believers.Yet, the only way to explain the nature of man is through the
fall.We are all sinners,we cannot come to be gods,and to the Holy
Creator we are as filthy rags.We think with those rags too,The Liberals
hate the idea of an external,eternal,God-and they want to
be their own god....

Reply 7 - Posted by: jglas, 12/10/2005 3:14:26 PM
The best point he makes is that liberals believe in the fundamental
goodness of all people. That's what enables lefties to believe that
''from each according to his ability, and to each according to his
needs,'' is a viable structure for society. We will all be one giant
loving family, kumbaya, and nevermind that it has never worked in a full
century of trying. Conservatives know you can't trust everyone.
There's a lot of truth to the ''liberals lack God'' point, but it's not
that strong. Plenty of liberals believe in God, and plenty of
conservatives are atheists (or at least, skeptics). Religions vary so
much in what they condone (from pro-war to anti-war, from sin easily
forgiven to sin never forgiven, from pro-wealth to anti-wealth, from sex
big thing to sex no big thing), that any political view can find a
welcoming religion. Laws have to be constructed on a most common
denominator scheme (e.g. murder is wrong), not relativistically (e.g.
it's OK to kill your wife if your religion condones it). Right is right,
and wrong is wrong, but not all wrong has to be universally illegal.

Reply 8 - Posted by: Photoonist, 12/10/2005 3:29:03 PM
Liberals aren't only insane but are walking contradictions. If the
believe man is inherently good then why do they spend so much time in
creating new regulations and trying to take away guns?

Reply 9 - Posted by: ForNow, 12/10/2005 3:33:56 PM
The leftists' will to relativism twisted relativity theory to their
ends. The speed of light through a vacuum does not vary relatively to
various observers. In ordinary language, it is an absolute. Motion may
be relative, but (a) you can't put the center of gravity arbitrarily
wherever you want it, and (b) it's not a purely arbitrary question which
picture is simpler and more natural than another. Those two facts are
why we say the Sun is at the solar system's center.
It's also true that leftists blame reality for not being as it "should"
be, and often think that a satisfying interpretation trumps any possible
disconfirmation. Would Newton have blamed gravity if apples fell upward?

Reply 10 - Posted by: cap MarineTet68, 12/10/2005 3:37:32 PM
The response to #8 is one I received to that very question on campus
earlier this year: "Well, you see, we *ARE* all basically good. Except
for the fact that the horribly repressive religions, by attempting to
squash our natural desires, have created a "pressure cooker" inside of
us, and we blow off steam; some more so than others. When we finally all
get enlightened, and can exercise our rights the way we want, our
desires will not be suppressed by the horrible religious structures and
there will be peace."
It is a variant of the stupid line that, "the only reason socialism has
not succeeded, is that has not been properly implemented."
Yes, friends and neighbors, the barking moonbats would have us believe
that government officials, who are quite adept at bringing us $600
hammers and $800 toilet seats and NASA and "affirmative action," and,
regardless of party, spends our money like drunken sailors, can be
trusted to run a socialistic system.
Pah! Ptooie! Evil people!

Reply 11 - Posted by: ForNow, 12/10/2005 3:42:12 PM
Also, in leftist mouths, the claim that "people are basically good"
takes on the same razor's edge of ambiguity as in the phrase "To Serve
Man" in the famous Twilight Zone episode. The State tends to
anthropophagy.

Reply 12 - Posted by: Mushroom, 12/10/2005 4:21:56 PM
Quit with the $600

Reply 13 - Posted by: ar15, 12/10/2005 4:32:21 PM
To crush us physically and spiritually would take an army of stout souls
grounded in reality. Unfortunately for the rats , their battalions of
barking moonbats and paper mache Generals just don't have the gravitas
neccessary for utopia building.

Reply 14 - Posted by: Mushroom, 12/10/2005 4:43:22 PM
Quit with the $600 hammer . It was an accounting trick. Oh, and the
aircraft toilet seat was $640

Reply 15 - Posted by: Delakat, 12/10/2005 6:27:40 PM
Excellent word picture, ''To Serve Man,'' and another is ''Battlestar
Galactica.'' It also reminds me of Wiley E. Coyote and the Roadrunner,
the Left being Wiley. No matter what scheme they dream up, they'll never
catch the Roadrunner!
The Left denies reality and thinks they can negotiate with anyone. They
tolerate anything and everone, except intolerance and those who believe
in absolutes. They are blind to the reality that is the Global War On
Terror (tm) and think that we are the cause of international
Islamo-fascist terrorism and that if we only get out of Iraq that the
terrorism would go away. Leftists never seem to learn from history - it
doesn't fit their material dilectic.
Civilization is at stake and all the Left can say ''It's the wrong war,
at the wrong time, at the wrong place.''
All I can say is...silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!

Reply 16 - Posted by: valleystorm, 12/10/2005 6:37:38 PM
the collective mental breakdown of the Liberal Movement
For once I wish the Left complete success in reaching end of the path
they've set themselves upon.

Reply 17 - Posted by: usmcsarge, 12/10/2005 7:31:18 PM
Unfortunately, the article opens with a gross error. George III suffered
from a physical ailment (can't recall the technical name) which caused
his mental lapses. This has been documented widely. It is not in
dispute.
Anyhow, the LDotters who enjoyed this piece should ake a peek at,
"Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism" by Joshua Muravchik. A
very fine read which covers much of what is in this article in greater
detail. Then, of course, there is "Intellectuals" by the always fabulous
Paul Johnson.
Old Marine Sarge

Reply 18 - Posted by: valleystorm, 12/10/2005 9:14:17 PM
A really great article!
If you believe hard enough, it will come true. The Left, much like
Dorothy in Oz, need merely click their collective heels three times and
chant "there's no place like home" and they will be magically
transported to Washington.
This is magical thinking on the level of a three-year-old's development,
which is why, I guess, liberals seem so childish, refusing to mature
beyond adolescence, if that.
Until they are properly civilized, little kids and adolescents can be
cruel, and adults functioning on that level are vicious and violent,
which we see in the liberals so often.

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