Reference book:     "The sociopath next door : the ruthless versus the rest of us" by Martha Stout. New York : Broadway Books, 2005.

According to Martha Stout, 4% of all people are born sociopaths/sciopaths/psychopaths.   There is no cure because it is caused by a part of the brain simply being missing.   A written test, the MMPI [Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory] can identify sociopaths before they cause destruction.

Everybody should have to take the MMPI in high school.   Psychopaths should be barred from CEO positions and high political offices.   Most CEOs and politicians are probably psychopaths.   Who is a psychopath should be public knowledge.

The Tea Party is the creation of Koch Oil Company.   ["Koch" is pronounced "Coke."] The Koch brothers, David H. and Charles are worth $21.5 Billion EACH.   5 years ago they set up a front-creating organization called Americans for Prosperity [AFP].   They hired a political operative named Tim Phillips to generate fake grassroots political movements.   Fake grassroots political movements are called "Astroturf."   The tea party is completely under the control of the Koch brothers.   They also set up a number of other astroturf groups to work against the working people while pretending to be or represent working people.

If you joined the Tea Party thinking that the Tea Party was going to help you get even with the billionaires, you have been duped.   So far, the fossil fuel industry has spent about half a Billion dollars on false advertising and lobbying to fool you.   Since they have hired the best advertising firms and psychologists, you needn't feel bad.   

But Taki Oldham infiltrated an AFP meeting with a concealed camera.   The movie is on Youtube.   It shows David Koch in charge of the AFP meeting where they talk about how well the Tea Party is working in carrying out the agenda of the billionaires and frustrating ordinary Americans.   They got you to vote against yourself.   They also set up astroturf groups to tell you lies about Global Warming, Global Warming legislation [energy "tax"], medical insurance legislation, union votes, oil drilling, the stimulus plan, etc.   The video is at:

http://climateprogress.org/2010/10/14/video-proof-david-koch-the-polluting-billionaire-pulls-the-strings-of-the-tea-party-extremists/

and at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JjQxPJOAfg&feature=player_embedded

In Reply to Veronica:

I also see the political spectrum as more circular than linear....once you go so far left you come back around to the right.

This is a silly, tired, old cliché that gets repeated a lot; I guess that's why it's a cliché. It's not based on any serious analysis. Is there such a thing as too much freedom? Too much Democracy? Stalin, for example, was no Leftist. I don't care what he claimed. I could say that I'm the King of Siam or Napoleon reborn, but it doesn't make it so. As the eminent French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre noted in his theory of Existentialism, basically you are what you do. Despite what one claims, if one is engaged in brutal, anti-democratic behavior that is a mockery of true Socialism, then that person cannot be a Socialist, period. The above pithy phrase; however, is useful to those from the affluent classes to denigrate any truly egalitarian movement.

yet I strongly endorse social safety nets

Why? How about we go a bit further and take away the shame? Let's advocate and work toward total worker emancipation; i.e., worker self-management, democracy on and off the job, worker-run cooperatives with absolutely no hierarchies. Not in favor of this? As I've noted before on this very site, liberal is not the same as Left; it is centrist at best and, in fact, I consider it to be a center-right / moderately conservative political ideology.

Don't believe that Socialism can work? Albert Einstein thought so. He outlined his thoughts in his essay, “Why Socialism?” Although it was written over 60 years ago, it is more relevant today than ever. Find it here:

http://prolecenter.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/why-socialism-by-albert-einstein-part-1/

In Reply to Dave:

Like your example of extreme PETA members, I have read about similar types who were extremist environmentalists, who burned down ski lodges or tried to blow up oil derricks, etc., without regard for loss of life. I see the exact same type of personality as those who burn abortion clinics or kill doctors: basically sociopathic types who are attracted to violence and extreme views--of any kind.

As someone here said, “I think it's going to be a long, long time before reason alone can bridge the gulf between Them & Us.” Are you sure the “extremist” environmentalists had absolutely no regard for human life? I haven't heard of any fatalities as a result of any of these actions, but then again, I don't follow this issue very closely. Furthermore, unless you think anthropomorphic climate change is a hoax, then in a few short decades the human race could be facing extinction or failing that, a massive catastrophe. What's more extreme? Fully participating in the rush toward oblivion for the entire species (and many others) or using small-scale violence, in contrast, to stop it? Malcolm X said, “by any means necessary”, and he was right. Even JFK, far from a radical, said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Get with the program! The more people who join this revolutionary movement, the less violent it will have to be. No one would be more delighted than me, to see this happen without bloodshed.

Robert Pare has done great work in identifying a higher percentage of sociopaths in the upper echelons of business than in the rest of the population

Shocking revelation! Leftists have been saying this for almost 200 years.

Dave and Veronica:

Good idea torrent you have going on. I would offer, though, that Bob's book is mostly about RWA followers, not their leaders. In any group of people there are going to be a handful of intelligent, manipulative sociopaths. But as Bob says, their influence remains small if they don't attract the attention of a huge herd of RWA followers. And in this context, Hitler and Stalin have more on common with the charismatic preacher who starts a megachurch-- or with a dynamic party whip in the US Congress.

There's another really good book about such people: David R Simon's 'Elite Deviance'. The core concept is that as power and influence concentrate, a person can find himself to be literally "above the law". In fact he may be the guy who writes the law. And human nature indicates that he's that much less attentive to personally being subject to the law. These people commonly run untrammeled until some egregious incident brings them low. I recall a senator from one of the Dakotas who habitually drove around town and state at 90-100 mph. For years, he'd never get a ticket. He was too important for such trifles. Then he broadsided someone one night at a four-way stop. And he finally fell into the clutches of the law.

The milieu at the upper levels of society is such that the culture encourages elite deviance. Currently it's easy to see on Wall Street, where people suck billions of dollars out of the street-level economy, leaving that much less for the rest of us to share. Remorse? They don't even have any understanding that this might be seen as a problem. The "little people" for them are an abstraction, invisible. Everyone they know, everyone who matters, is rich. And all worship market forces that are amoral in their action, but that favor those who already have a handsome head start in life. It's the natural order of things that they use the world as their resource base.

So they cut corners, because they can. And they apply double standards to themselves and to those little people, because they can. Society is complicit in this. Even a jury consisting of blue collar, low to middle income people will allow far greater benefit of the doubt to a rich defendant than they might to a minority or other humble person. So that above a certain level, the rich are hardly ever found guilty. And below, in the depths, almost all are considered halfway to being guilty as a matter of birth.

Interesting that most middle income or even moderately poor people are scrupulously honest in their dealings. They want to belong to a society of honest people. Below that level, the desperately poor abandon honesty as being a failed strategy. And above, at society's upper reaches, a different set of rules applies. Whatever works keeps you in the game. Hesitate, and you fall from grace. The other wolves eat you and take your place.

David, I'm reading your June 14 comment (regarding the problems free thinkers and authoritarian followers currently have in sharing a nation in common) that "Communication will be key to healing this divide".

I despair of this ever being the case. I've made a lengthy study (over the past five or six years now) of this issue by frequently joining into the discussion on two well attended RWA forums: the now-defunct TCSDaily and the currently active Mises.org (from which, unfortunately, I have been banned).

In these forums I've tried to interject reasonable fact-based counterarguments into discussions that mostly consist of dogmatists agreeing with one another. And I've persisted at some length to get someone, anyone, to agree with very obvious, demonstrable realities. To no avail. I'm met with increasing rigidity. If I persist, it becomes open hostility.

I don't think it's my manner. I don't suffer fools gladly, it's true. But I try to be unfailingly polite and to always address the other person's comments respectfully. And with these people I hit a brick wall, virtually every time. (There are, it's true, a small number of intellectual liberals even on these sites, people who consider reasonable argument for the moment, but who still end up believing what they believe. But such people are rarely encountered.)

I did gain one piece of insight, however. The arguments being offered at Mises (a site full of seeming economic sophisticates) often depended on the distinction between deductive and inductive reasoning... with the approach being offered that deductive reasoning (based purely on the Truth of the foundational constructs and the soundness of the logic) was in every way superior to inductive reasoning, with its sloppy inference from observable facts. So I was derided for bringing up what they considered to be flimsy fact-based arguments... which they most commonly parried with quotations, standing unsupported by observation, from their pantheon of Respected Authorities.

That is, they assume all their axioms to be correct, and consequently every conclusion that follows from these axioms must necessarily also be correct. Ergo no observation from nature can be correct if it conflicts with these eternal truths, accepted as handed down from on high. Reality is, in such cases, mistaken. It's kind of a hard position to dismantle.

It's very like the arguments offered by those whose thinking is religion-based (or, for that matter, the arguments proferred by orthodox Marxists). For these people, observed data doesn't stand a chance when confronted with merciless logic based on a priori beliefs.

I think it's going to be a long, long time before reason alone can bridge the gulf between Them & Us. Just my experience.

(BTW, Webmaster, I'm having a problem with your formatting. Every line in the comments section runs about three feet long. My screen is only about 13" wide. So I'm having to do quite a lot of scrolling sideways, to read the comments. Any suggestions?)