The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind.
~ Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter Jr., M.D., "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness" (2008)
Are liberals clinically mad? This controversial question has been proposed and written about by many political pundits and conservative intellectuals, most notably, Dr. Michael Savage, a visionary radio talk show host from San Francisco, in his 2005 book, "Liberalism is a mental disorder." However, Dr. Rossiter, brings a solid background as a psychiatrist and non-partisan, and years of clinical experience dealing with mental disorders of every conceivable type – making his findings singularly unique, objective and difficult to ignore.
For 25 years, I myself have studied and written about political liberalism, which traces its origins to the 16th and 17th century and the Age of Enlightenment; particularly the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Kant, Diderot, Jefferson and others.
Political liberalism continued to modern times in the politics and political writings of William James, Walter Lippman, Herbert Croly, Woodrow Wilson, FDR and LBJ, among others. I have also studied liberalism in all of its permutations and presuppositions, including democracy, natural law, natural rights, humanism, Marxism, utilitarianism, socialism, communism, progressivism, pragmatism, moderates, neoliberalism, conservative liberalism, the welfare state, etc.
While neither Dr. Rossiter nor myself postulate that all liberals are ipso facto clinically mad, there are many characteristics of liberalism that are associated with the classic symptoms of madness, including:
creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.
At Savannah State University, where I teach American government, international law and American judicial process, I am constantly waging intellectual warfare against my college students to forsake dependent, slavish ideologies rooted in emotivism, like liberalism, socialism, welfare statism and feminism, and instead to embrace critical thinking in all of their intellectual pursuits.
Recently during a mock presidential debate I had organized where I played Sen. John McCain (as if he were a true conservative), I even slammed my fist on the table and in the spirit of Justice Clarence Thomas' grandfather, who told young Clarence as a child, "The damn party's over!" I reacted to the SSU students openly praising FDR statism and the virtues of socialism or forcibly taking money from one group of people (produces) and giving it to another (non-producers). While the TV camera was rolling, I emphatically told the students at that debate to "Get off the damn plantation!"
The students, administration, faculty and staff were perhaps shocked at my characterization of the welfare state and its inimical effects on the black family, but I thought it had to be said so that we don't loose another generation of black students to failed, genocidal policies of the past.
Dr. Rossiter conveyed those same sentiments but in a much less emotive tone when he wrote: "Like spoiled, angry children, they [liberals] rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."
Whether you have a Ph.D. or a GED or fall somewhere in between, any government system or political philosophy based on taking trillions of taxpayer dollars and giving it to some lazy bum who didn't earn it and doesn't deserve it in my opinion is sheer madness – as is any political organization like the Democratic Party that achieves and seizes power by seeing people not as the Constitution's framers saw people, as individuals ("We the People"), but uses them as a cynical means to an unholy end – using Machiavellian, Marxist and Alinsky tactics, divide people into warring factions: men against women, blacks against whites, Jews against Muslims, proper against the perverse, handicapped against able-bodied, workers against employers, straight against homosexuals, "the haves vs. the have nots."
It's all madness. Objectively speaking, liberalism is national genocide!
Let's apply Rossiter's theory that liberalism is a psychological disorder to today's politicians, Barack Obama and his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton, two unashamed, big-government socialists. Rossiter writes:
A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity – as liberals do … A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population – as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation's citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state – as liberals do.
The key phrase is "human nature." There is a profound ignorance and loathing in the political philosophy of liberalism against human nature. Where it is discussed in polite company it is done so in context of casting maledictions, ridicule and contempt upon Christians, Christianity and their belief in the synthesis of legality and morality; an idea adopted by the framers of the Constitution and held as absolutely indispensable to the survival of America's republic.
To your average liberal intellectual or humanist academic, the Founding Fathers and the Constitution's framers were the lowest, vilest, murderous hypocrites on the face of the earth and only deserve our utter condemnation. We see this displayed daily on the liberal media, in the judicial system, in the Democratic Party, in its leadership, its committees and the policies they champion, both domestic and foreign. Virtually every word uttered, printed or recorded by liberals is a dishonorable, unbroken litany of treason against America's laws, economics, culture, society and her most sacred values.
Rossiter said that liberalism is "based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions; modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded."
Using legal logic and deductive reasoning, if, as Dr. Rossiter brilliantly delineates, liberalism is a psychological disorder tantamount to political madness and America just elected Barack Obama, who according to the National Journal is the most liberal member of both houses of Congress, who ran on a socialist platform of resurrection of the welfare state of FDR, then what does that say about our American citizens who have elected these people to have Stalin-like control over every aspect of our lives from cradle to grave?
Can you say UAA, United Asylum of America?
Ellis Washington, currently a professor of law and political science at Savannah State University, former editor at the Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute, is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history, political philosophy and critical race theory. He has written over a dozen law review articles and several books, including "The Inseparability of Law and Morality: The Constitution, Natural Law and the Rule of Law" (2002). See his law review article "Reply to Judge Richard Posner." Washington's latest book is "The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust."
~ Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter Jr., M.D., "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness" (2008)
Are liberals clinically mad? This controversial question has been proposed and written about by many political pundits and conservative intellectuals, most notably, Dr. Michael Savage, a visionary radio talk show host from San Francisco, in his 2005 book, "Liberalism is a mental disorder." However, Dr. Rossiter, brings a solid background as a psychiatrist and non-partisan, and years of clinical experience dealing with mental disorders of every conceivable type – making his findings singularly unique, objective and difficult to ignore.
For 25 years, I myself have studied and written about political liberalism, which traces its origins to the 16th and 17th century and the Age of Enlightenment; particularly the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Kant, Diderot, Jefferson and others.
Political liberalism continued to modern times in the politics and political writings of William James, Walter Lippman, Herbert Croly, Woodrow Wilson, FDR and LBJ, among others. I have also studied liberalism in all of its permutations and presuppositions, including democracy, natural law, natural rights, humanism, Marxism, utilitarianism, socialism, communism, progressivism, pragmatism, moderates, neoliberalism, conservative liberalism, the welfare state, etc.
While neither Dr. Rossiter nor myself postulate that all liberals are ipso facto clinically mad, there are many characteristics of liberalism that are associated with the classic symptoms of madness, including:
creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.
At Savannah State University, where I teach American government, international law and American judicial process, I am constantly waging intellectual warfare against my college students to forsake dependent, slavish ideologies rooted in emotivism, like liberalism, socialism, welfare statism and feminism, and instead to embrace critical thinking in all of their intellectual pursuits.
Recently during a mock presidential debate I had organized where I played Sen. John McCain (as if he were a true conservative), I even slammed my fist on the table and in the spirit of Justice Clarence Thomas' grandfather, who told young Clarence as a child, "The damn party's over!" I reacted to the SSU students openly praising FDR statism and the virtues of socialism or forcibly taking money from one group of people (produces) and giving it to another (non-producers). While the TV camera was rolling, I emphatically told the students at that debate to "Get off the damn plantation!"
The students, administration, faculty and staff were perhaps shocked at my characterization of the welfare state and its inimical effects on the black family, but I thought it had to be said so that we don't loose another generation of black students to failed, genocidal policies of the past.
Dr. Rossiter conveyed those same sentiments but in a much less emotive tone when he wrote: "Like spoiled, angry children, they [liberals] rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."
Whether you have a Ph.D. or a GED or fall somewhere in between, any government system or political philosophy based on taking trillions of taxpayer dollars and giving it to some lazy bum who didn't earn it and doesn't deserve it in my opinion is sheer madness – as is any political organization like the Democratic Party that achieves and seizes power by seeing people not as the Constitution's framers saw people, as individuals ("We the People"), but uses them as a cynical means to an unholy end – using Machiavellian, Marxist and Alinsky tactics, divide people into warring factions: men against women, blacks against whites, Jews against Muslims, proper against the perverse, handicapped against able-bodied, workers against employers, straight against homosexuals, "the haves vs. the have nots."
It's all madness. Objectively speaking, liberalism is national genocide!
Let's apply Rossiter's theory that liberalism is a psychological disorder to today's politicians, Barack Obama and his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton, two unashamed, big-government socialists. Rossiter writes:
A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity – as liberals do … A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population – as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation's citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state – as liberals do.
The key phrase is "human nature." There is a profound ignorance and loathing in the political philosophy of liberalism against human nature. Where it is discussed in polite company it is done so in context of casting maledictions, ridicule and contempt upon Christians, Christianity and their belief in the synthesis of legality and morality; an idea adopted by the framers of the Constitution and held as absolutely indispensable to the survival of America's republic.
To your average liberal intellectual or humanist academic, the Founding Fathers and the Constitution's framers were the lowest, vilest, murderous hypocrites on the face of the earth and only deserve our utter condemnation. We see this displayed daily on the liberal media, in the judicial system, in the Democratic Party, in its leadership, its committees and the policies they champion, both domestic and foreign. Virtually every word uttered, printed or recorded by liberals is a dishonorable, unbroken litany of treason against America's laws, economics, culture, society and her most sacred values.
Rossiter said that liberalism is "based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions; modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded."
Using legal logic and deductive reasoning, if, as Dr. Rossiter brilliantly delineates, liberalism is a psychological disorder tantamount to political madness and America just elected Barack Obama, who according to the National Journal is the most liberal member of both houses of Congress, who ran on a socialist platform of resurrection of the welfare state of FDR, then what does that say about our American citizens who have elected these people to have Stalin-like control over every aspect of our lives from cradle to grave?
Can you say UAA, United Asylum of America?
Ellis Washington, currently a professor of law and political science at Savannah State University, former editor at the Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute, is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history, political philosophy and critical race theory. He has written over a dozen law review articles and several books, including "The Inseparability of Law and Morality: The Constitution, Natural Law and the Rule of Law" (2002). See his law review article "Reply to Judge Richard Posner." Washington's latest book is "The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust."
unctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w
oNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w
ther; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> This article means nothing in the academic world. It's a hack attempt by a right wing nut job to make a splash. His definition of "liberal" is inconsistent at best, historically confused throughout, and a gross and dangerous conflation of opposing and contradictory terms in an attempt to synthesize the concept of "liberal" in such a way that he can sell books. Machiavelli and Rousseau were not liberals. Rousseau, in fact, made his living diagnosing the problems of liberalism. Machiavelli was born at least two-hundred years before Liberalism came to have any meaning whatsoever. Then, of course, there's the problem with the confusion of small l liberal and big L Liberal. Capital L Liberalism is a subset of modern political party politics. Its antipode is Conservatism. Both Liberalism and Conservatism are subsets of liberalism (small l). The tenets of liberalism, though certainly not set in concrete, are generally taken to be: 1) primacy of the individual; 2) Government as instrumental; 3) individual rights 4) universalism. Recently (say the past 250 years) liberalism has also come to mean private property and popular consent of the ruled, but liberalism in its historical forms needn't necessarily contain these elements. Liberalism as a political orientation is shared by all modern, industrialized nations. It is the founding principle of the United States of America and every other modern democracy.
