09/26/10
Comments:
I have not been following the debate between Miguel and Doug T at all, because I have not read anything Doug T. has written for the past couple of weeks, for the reasons given when I said I was going to ignore him. Others should, of course, if they wish.
I myself agree with Don Doumakes' comments of 9/23 and 9/24.
Don, I congratulate you for trying the "getting to know me" experiment. You seem like just the right person to do it. Let us know how things seem to be going. (Incidentally, you may have a positive effect even if it isn't obvious. People tend to change their outlooks by degree.)
To Ursus Indomitus: I don't know where to start with your comments. So I won't. But if you'll identify which of them is the one you think is most powerful, I'll give you my response to that.
That is, if you ever read this message. My experience over the past four years has been that when people post a comment like yours, it's "hit and run." They seldom come back to see what anyone has said in response. So if you do come back, please indicate it. If you don't come back, we'll notice it.
Doug T. is the very notable exception to the "hit and run" generalization. He really needs to have a fight. And I sincerely hope he keeps making extensive postings here. Better here than someplace where he might convince someone.
09/25/10
Comments:
And since its so obvious that conservatives are the ones who truly value individual freedoms and protection from government intrusions into our personal and financial lives, it was easy to spot the liberal anouncer of this old video made by Charles Keating (of S&L Scandal fame) whose rant to promote government interference in our private lives shows how its always been them trying to increase the size of government with liberals like this who try to tell freedom-loving right-wingers how they should think and behave right here in our own country!
"An unintentionally funny film about the evils of pornography narrated by George Putnum, a leading right-wing newscaster of his day---kind of a proto-Limbaugh. It was financed by Charles Keating, who went to jail in the 80s for pertpetrating a gigantic S&L fraud that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions. Needles to say, the tone is semi-hysterical and the "facts"
bogus and unattributed. I've always been struck by the obsession right-wing moralists seem to have with sex. Maybe the prevalence of Republican and conservative "Christian" types among those caught up in sex scandals these days is no accident. While they were reaerching this film (assuming there WAS any research), Putnam and Keating should have asked one of the psychiatrists they cite as authorities to explain the concept of "projection."
http://www.archive.org/details/Perversi1965
OOOoops! (just an exception I'm sure, right?)
09/25/10
Comments:
Yeah, its so oppresive having to trust that you'll continue to be awakened on time every morning by alarm clocks powered by electricity networks that the US Department of Energy has kept flowing yo my houxse without fail for decades. Then that shower with clean water provided by the municipal water utility makes me want to commit suicide before ive even had breakfaxt most days.
After that, its all I can do to turn on the TV and flip to a FCC regulated channels so I can see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has determined will be the weather at work. They use satellites designed, built and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration which I can also use as a guide for how to dress once I leave the house. I watch this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food I need to take with the meds I need to live \nd which also have been determined safe to consume by the Food and Drug Administration.
At just the right time...time that is regulated by Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology stationed at the US Naval Observatory.... I leave by getting into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile then set out to work on roads built by the local, state and federal departments of transportation. I make such good time I can usualy stop and purchase additional fuel of a quality determined safe by the Environmental Protection Agency.
So I pay using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door, I can give any mail I have to a clerk who sends it out via the US Postal Service. I do it all just in time to drop the kids off at the public school before the morning alarm goes off.
After work, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to a house which has not burned down in my absense because of state and local building codes and fire marshals inspections, and which has not been plundered of all its valuable thanks to the local police department.
I then log on to the internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums so I can rant and rave about how all that socialized medicine will ruin everything because we know how the government can't do anything right. (right?)
09/25/10
Comments:
What typical moonbat one-sidedness. You want to talk authoritarian? Look at the communitarian administration currently in power:
Who tells you what to smoke or not smoke (With a president who hypocritically is a smoker)
Who tells you what to eat? Who tells you what to drink? Who tells you what to drive? Who tries to supress what you say? Who tells you to march in lockstep with the U.N.? Whose cabinet is chock full of admitted communists, eugenicists and criminals?
I could go on, but life calls.
Get some objectivity, or your rant is moot. Leftists are the problem WORLD WIDE.
09/25/10
Comments:
There appears to be an element pf psychosis in the pathology. Perhaps that warrants further study.Unfortunately most of the Authoritarians I've dealt with seem to be averse to treatment, in the same way they are averse to self assessment and alternate view points. I think part of this is again the fear of learning that everything you believe in is wrong. Ranging from black helicopters, to hidden Socialist agendas, to GPS brain chips, to One World Order, to the fact that your leaders may be doing bad things. Or that perhaps being gay, or having recreational sex or smoking some marijuana is not a sin.
Oddly the same people who scream about personal responsibility and personal sovereignty seem to be those most likely to try to impose their own moral structure on others. Again I think it's a fear that if they see others doing it it will mean that they might do the BAD thing.
09/25/10
Comments:
Gary and Don,
I just had to laugh... Typical...
Let's summarize... (You need to use a '30s gangster voice to enjoy the following.)
Ok... see... Looksee... Here's what were goin' to do... Find all the RWAs we can and round 'em up... We'll take 'em to the "social center" and re-educate 'em. Ya.. Thats's it!.. See... We can make 'em into good Janes and Joes if we just round 'em up..
(You can stop the gangster voice now.)
It is so typical that you feel a need to try to round up particular groups, label them, and feel the need to educate their bias away from what you perceive as a problem.
Please discuss the need to set-up impromptu re-education camps as a RWA tendancy.
Don, how about you get a grant from Obama to get an army of good socialists. You can administer Dr. Altemeyer's RWA test to the entire population. Everyone above a certain score gets to be sent to one of your re-education camps. Oh, what a utopia you could build...
09/25/10
Comments:
Re; your project. Sounds interesting since I too have been wracking my brains trying to think of which particular RWA traits might be used to compel a favorable response to an effort at reducing that insufferably high level of self-righteousness.
Dr. B believes it plays a big part by supplying the permission they need for doing violence against another.
It seems to me that its also what they used for permission to dismiss any criticisms of their beliefs, especially should they come from from one of the minority groups they also deny having high numbers who believe is inferior due national origin, religious tradition, sex, sexuality, etc. So this seems like a good place to start trying to develop ideas that might have an effect on what seems like people who place more value on what one believes about something than whether that belief is in turn actually grounded in fact.
Is it Need For Certainty that again makes them so willing to believe something about somebody, yet being unconcerned over its truth? Is content secondary to a need to clear up an unknown? Does a dangerous tendency like this also show up in much higher numbers within law-enforcement, prisons, and the military due the attractive nature of the regulatory focus and power they provide? We know they are more attracted to these careers than others, so that must mean we now ignorantly arm RWA-SDOs then send them off to use good judgdement on matters of who to kill or not. How...by any acceptable measure of right and wrong....continue to leave them unmolested despite everything we know about them?
Cops feel compelled to arrive at a quick solution to the culprit responsible for x. y and z. Yet thewy aldso tend to adopt beliefs without respwect to whether they are true or not. In legal terms that translates to any frame-up that targets someone so shady nobody will doubt their guilt. It happens with great regularity in especially conservative states. Now we know why. And also we know the solution.
09/24/10
Comments:
Gary,
I make the same suggestion to you as I did to Miguel: don't feed the troll. He's not here to have a discussion, he's here to make this forum useless (as evidenced by the fact that he's led you both off topic). Responding just encourages him, and doubly so if you prove him wrong.
I was particularly taken by some of the suggestions in the book for addressing the fact that our neighbors (mine anyway) are high-RWA. Just socializing with them in some civic organization, for example, might reduce their certainty that they have all the answers. (And mine.) I'm looking into starting a community organizing project with just that in mind.
09/24/10
Comments:
Miguel.
Am I afraid of socialism... Are you afraid of capitalism?
Are you afraid of people making decisions on their own?
Its very typical that whenever recent relevant events occur, the mentality of the liberal can only pick out events from over 100 years ago.
Do you really want to keep score of events of 1000 years ago? Do you really think that slavery in Canada occurred because Canada was capitalist? How about slavery of aborigional people by other aborigional people? Keep adding these up, and you can quickly see that the evil capitalists that you fear accounted for very few slaves throughout humanity.
How many things are wrong in your last post... This really shows your lack of ability to understand reality....
-The US owns very very little means of production. Some military hardware, spacecraft, but very few products are made by the US government. Please name a product they produce, not just contract to a private company.
-Mineral rights are owned privately in the US on private land. The OCS' and federal lands' rights are owned by the government.
-The FCC regulates, not owns airwaves.
- The federal government does not have domain over intrastate commerce, such as electricity generated and consumed in a state. The NERCs and FERCs were the same as before in CA.
-Cuba and Sweden are both giving up on socialism, btw.
-Somalia does have a federal budget, spend money for a military and educational system.
-Tally up all your dead and the stack won't be as tall as the dead from the atheist socialsist of the last 100 years.
Thanks for the name calling... It suits the mentality of a liberal quite well.
And yes, everything I believe is true. And the mis-information in your post shows your lack of respect for the truth.
Did you find an example of a product I can buy made by the government yet? Maybe an Impala? Hmmm. The space shuttle, that's it...
09/24/10
Comments:
Doug...Actually in Sweden the central government DOES own some of the means of production...much like in the US the government owns most of the oil, all of the airwaves, and has complete regulatory control over electricity (well except for that little thing in California...remember that?).
As to Socialism, you are scared of something that never existed, that no one REALLY thinks will work and that even Cuba is giving up on. The fact is that ALL societies that are NOT anarchical (like Somalia) are socialist to one degree or another. If you live in the USA you use roadways that are owned, operated, repaired, and funded by the government through taxation. If you want to live in a totally NON socialist society you might try the failed states...because that what it means.
There is a scale of economies...ranging from total anarchical capitalism (as seen in places with no effective government like Somalia) and Complete Socialism...interestingly there is no requirement that Socialism be atheistic...I refer you to the Church owned lands of Feudal Europe, or Pharonic Egypt, where all the means of production were controlled by the church.
as to you comment to me... Talley up the 100 years war as a % of the total population, killed by Jihad, The Crusades, the indigenous populations of the US and south America, The Troubles, factor in the dark ages and the suppression of science and the resulting 1000 year blank in the progress to vaccines, consider the conflict in Pakistan, the Jihadi attack...NOW add in the number of people killed in preventable industrial accidents, the number of people killed by the tobacco industry, the number killed in Bhopal...add in the slave trade, THEN you start to understand the evils that pure capitalism and fundamentalist religion can create.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions...and a dogmatic refusal to recognize when you are being an asshole.
Again you miss the point... The term "right wing authoritarian" is correctly opposed with the term..."I'm not sure if I am right...perhaps we aught to think about this" NOT "left wing authoritarian".
The fact that you focus on terminology just shows your need to denigrate that which challenges your world view. Not everything you believe is true Doug. When was the last time you really examined what you believed in the light of contradiction. Constructed an argument, understanding your starting positions, and then extended those positions to other things?
09/24/10
Comments:
Gary.
Why the heck do you think I include sources... I'll post again, but likely you will disregard the evidence.
Socialism is an economic theory, is compared to capitalism, another economic theory. Atheism compared to theistic societies.
It has been suggested by many, including many communists, that there have never been true communist states (pure communism or stateless communism) as Marx describes. We can call systems such as PRK, China, USSR, Cuba, etc. as state-socialism. Marx's utopia of no state interaction (stateless) communism has not been reached. Socialist states have never achieved pure communism.
Which countries do you put forward as your socialist ideal. Sweden, France, UK - Last I checked, people owned businesses in these countries, so that's not socialism, as socialism is defined as state ownership of production means. How about North Korea, Vietnam, China or Cuba - More likely a better example of socialist states. Which of these four do you speak highly?
The fascists were statist or corporatist, the Nazis were statist/corporatist and had socialist roots. Mussolini was Italian and therefore not a Nazi. Statism/corporatism is not capitalism, but has some similarities as socialism (gov't control, enslaving the masses, etc.).
I'm sorry that you didn't learn economic history in secondary school...
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/PERSONAL.HTM
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
09/24/10
Comments:
@Doug T
Errrrr...are you ever going to settle on a single number of deaths you claim resulted from socialism (???) (dont you mean communism?). So far I think youve listed 120 million, 150 million, now were up to 250 million! And the amazing thing of it is....you will not be able to find numbers anywhere near even the lowest one in a reputable reference text or website. So please.....give me a breakdown of those numbers using actual reference material. (peer-reviewed, or Encyc. Britt. , a dictionary, etc.)
You confuse communism with socialism and totalitarianism with such ease that I'm sure you have never bothered to look up any n a dictionary.
Whats laughable is that Ive little doubt whatsoever that you did not conflate socialism with communism at any time prior to the last 5 years.... tops. While there's been extremists rewriting history to suit their purposes all along, its only these last couple years Ive seen a concerted effort by fairly "mainstream" conservative voices who now seem so desperate for the old status quo that they'll say anything to dispatage Obama.
FYI, every nation that has it, loves it, and no guv anywhere is in jeopardy of revolt by the people wanting to get rid of it.
And if you bothered to look at the ranking of nations based on happiness, economic and political freedom, etc you will see that the US lags behind many nations on many indices. Of the nations ahead of the US, every one I checked also happened to have socialized medicine.
The facts are easily checkable. You simply refuse to acknowledge reality because that would mean you had listened to liars for most of your life.That you don't look to see simply adds to the evidence re:what Dr. Bob says about RWAs.
Prove me wrong. Show me , in reputable references texts, how 250 million people were killed by "socialism". Or failing that, show me a post older than 5 years where you make this same claim about it.
You can't because its not your own idea. Rather its your own reiteration of TP rhetoric. You read it on a Freeper , Newsmax type website therefore you do not....cannot critically analyze it for all the reasons spelt out in The Authoritarians, and by virtually every other researcher I could find using Google Scholar to search on terms "conservatism, authoritarianism, liberalism". (what the hell is with that Ray kook? He, much like DT here, is reduced to simply repeating the same findings back while reversing the attributions...as if he was in a Looking Glass world AND an echo-chamber! Very unsettling even, trying to lurch around through that kind of a mind, looking for signs of the intellect used to gain his doctorate).
Btw. Is Hitler still considered a left-winger among your crowd? Or did things just get too difficult trying to explain away quotes like Mussolini's "Fascism is the opposite of socialism" ?
You will become as much an old fossil, crazily hanging onto tired old beliefs about the purity and goodness of the capitalist system in much the same way that those old defenders of the Soviet Bloc and Stalin now booze away their last years in a haze of stubbornness...extolling the vastly exaggerated virtues of communism. One that only fools and the most rabidly conservative communists believed even at the height of the USSR, nevertheless today.
You both dream of what wasn't really, and still have no conception of what either system might have been were it not for the self-interested types who came to dominate both economic hemispheres. People like you.
@ Don D.
How interesting! I hadn't yet heard of that DD effect. "Seizing and freezing", needs for certainty (NFC) , avoidance of ambiguity....even their relatively poor integration of related ideas.... all these seem like ways to avoid having to learn things that might force one to rethink, review, reinterpret and reintegrate new information. And apparently do so because it could threaten their present state of certainty over who is good, bad, right, wrong, evolution, big-bang, etc.
A world composed only of black & white oversimplifications would also provide a world where most solutions also seem clear and obvious. They can lull themselves into a belief that they know whats best for the world, and know the solutions (if only those damned leftists weren't obstructing them all the time!) for the worlds most pressing political, economic, ethical issues......but sadly they are in fact stunted in a way that leaves them without any real way of realizing how most of these issues are much more complex than they can ever possibly conceive.
And so it is with this DD thing. Falsely believing oneself highly competent is connected to the idea they are more adept at the task than others. They provide the rationale he needs for dismissing to himself whether their criticism of him might be true. That seems essential to the RWA because learning new ways of doing old things raises the specter of their also being confronted with ideas that conflict with their preconceptions.....about the most horrible thing possibly lying in wait for them, judging by the lengths they go to to avoid facing uncomfortable facts.
Why? My new theory. :-)
When we learned to socialize with other kids we also learned empathy and other, more advanced, complex thinking skills and abilities. Left without these skills it seems apparent from the RWA example that we are left simply accepting the word of others on most important matters.
It does seem as though the danger of being misled apparently occurs to them at some point. Perhaps this is at least part of why they take such extraordinary efforts to reduce those they'll listen to down to a small, very select circle. Only this group will they allow to recommend to them who can be believed to give them the straight goods. These them serve as their leaders and provide them with their views on topics they themselves are incapable of conceptualizing for the period needed to come up with rational ideas on it on their own. The RWA now thinks they've been careful enough about selecting this leader that its safe for them to do what they need to do to get through life......throws themselves open to them, accepting whatever these leaders claim they know something about. (Of course, these leaders are the Rush Limbaugh, FOX types who make their living looking for people gullible enough to take their own fears and hysterics seriously)
.
The complicated stuff is left to these leaders to instruct them on. They repeat it as their own thoughts on matters currently in vogue among their in-group. Social behavior is determined by them, not by weighing rights and wrongs against each other, rather by conflating an acts legal status as a means to decide whether its ethical or not.
Codified laws, military orders, religious dogma, patriotic slogans.... all offer the intellectually lazy prefab answers they use throughout life as substitutes for the original thoughts the rest of us feel compelled to do whenever matters are raised that have bearing on our ability to maintain a credible self-image as an ethical, well-meaning person.
This wholesale acceptance of other peoples or institutions thoughts on life's most important matters is what they do as a result of an incomplete intellectual-socialization phase of childhood development. The need to keep things simple results in their adoption of a variety of epistemological -cognitive "shortcuts' (NFC, RWA). A side-benefit of cherry picking simple info for processing is that hey can simultaneously avoid data that will likely conflict with the beliefs they adopted in childhood. They cannot see how very wrong they are nor why the ability to change ones beliefs will most often result in an overall favorable disposition.
09/24/10
Comments:
Miguel.
You really need to pay attention. I have given specific claims as to the extent of the destruction of human life due to the atheist-socialists as compared to the religious-capitalists. The evidence is that the only thing that socialism is good at is the murder of humans. They are very proficient in this respect. It's probably 5:1 to 10:1 for the number of murdered humans due from atheist-socialist countries compared to religious-capitalist countries. With less than half the world's population under their influence, atheist-socialists have murdered 5 to 10 times more humans. I contend that the authoritarians who committed these murders in the promotion of atheism and socialism are the ideologues that Altemeyer warns us.
So, again back to the politically-skewed terminology "right-wing authoritarianism"... This is a politically-biased mis-characterization. Pure and simple - the only reason Altemeyer chose the phrase is to demonize someone with whom he cannot understand, for reasons he cannot elucidate. The anti-intellectuals who believe his conclusions are obfuscated with similar bias against the political right of the Americas. For them, its all about simple labels that you can use to create opprobrium against a group of people, namely the conservatives.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM
09/23/10
Comments:
Sorry...I filled in the wrong field.
You probably a closet socialist... Please select some programs THAT YOU USE that you want eliminated.
09/23/10
Comments:
There has never been a completely socialist society...unless you count feudal Europe.Sweden is a pretty leftist socialist society... WAY to the left of the US, you are scared of something that doesn't and has never existed.
You might look at how efficient theocracies and capitalism are at destruction before deciding that secular socialism is all bad.
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