Are Liberals Solipsist? (UPDATED 02/17/08: Dr. Lyle Rossiter Confirms that Liberals are Clinically Nuts!)

2 Responses to “Are Liberals Solipsist? (UPDATED 02/17/08: Dr. Lyle Rossiter Confirms that Liberals are Clinically Nuts!)”

Trackbacks

Comments

1. Ron on February 18th, 2008 11:23 am
   

   That certainly explains a lot! I’ve often wondered how anyone could so doggedly stick to such irrational positions. Now I know.
2. Frances M. on February 20th, 2008 1:37 am
   

   Boy, I sure do hate it when anybody tries to lump all Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, righties or lefties–into one big undifferentiated blob. As a writer and a storyteller, I guess I just balk at any kind of typecasting; nothing reads less believably (nor more tediously) than a one-dimensional, stock character, whether you’re depicting a mother or a janitor, a political junky or the President of the United States. Their occupations may include certain typical props (the janitor must have his mop), but as people, there’s nothing typical about any of them.

   Last year Robert Altemeyer, an associate professor at the University of Manitoba, published his well-known book “The Authoritarians” on his own website (it’s Googelable if you’re interested).

   Based on his own lengthy research, Altemeyer proposed a view of right-wing conservatives as a continuum of authoritarian “types:” what they typically think, how they typically behave, how they came to be the way they are, and so on. I scanned a chapter or two, but it wasn’t long before I abandoned the effort in disgust. His thesis really pissed me off–in my opinion, it’s really irresponsible–not to mention plain mean-spirited–for anyone, particularly a respected writer and thinker in a position of no small influence, to encourage an approach one’s fellow earth-dwellers not as individual human beings but as psycho-sociological types. The far-righties I know–like all human beings with hearts and minds and individual personalities–defy categorization; each has a distinct way of being and thinking, as different from one another as they are from me or anybody else I’ve known.

   Of course Altemeyer is far from the first educated twit to take it upon himself to objectify and reduce flesh and blood human beings to mere psychopolicial, pathological types–bugs on microscope slides. Our bookstores and libraries (and especially our scientific journals) are loaded with this junk; evidently there’s a market for this poison, but personally I have no use for it. One would have to be very arrogant indeed to objectify ANY group of people this way, diminishing–no, completely zeroing-out–every human uniqueness, every concrete, in-born difference that makes each one of us so wonderfully, beautifully, who we are. People (libs, cons, janitors, moms, dads, heads-of-state, etc.) are people–there’s not one person alive who can be reduced to pure type. Please don’t let anyone–of any ideological stripe–tell you otherwise. Don’t buy it!–it only serves to diminish us all.

   As for your question, are liberals solipsists: can you guess my answer? I’m quite sure some liberals are. I imagine some solipsistic apoliticals might be identified as well. Surely there’s a libertarian solipsist or two, and I bet we could even locate an independent who’s waxed solipsistic at least once in his or her lifetime.

   Oh look, here’s an example of a conservative (gasp!) having a remarkably solipsistic moment (see http://www.cs.umass.edu/~immerman/play/opinion05/WithoutADoubt.html for the full article):

   “The aide [a senior Bush advisor] said that guys like me [referring to the himself, the writer of the article, Ron Suskind] were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’ ”

   Well. That’s quite a pronouncement. This fellow sure had some far-out ideas floating around his head THAT day. But I hardly think he speaks for all conservatives–then or now–and by no means would I assume that I know anything about what’s going on inside the heads of any other conservatives based on one conservative’s solipsistic musings way back in 2002.

   This fellow Rossiter you quoted is Bob Altemeyer’s opposite political number: two peas–red and blue–in a single, divisive, mean-spirited pod. I have no idea what motivates people to write books like these, but I can tell you this: they’re not doing you or me or America–or humanity in general–any favors. On the contrary they’re actively harming us. If by some random chance you and I were to sit down and talk, our political differences might well come up, but I doubt we’d have any trouble conducting a mutually respectful, possibly even productive and lively, conversation. But if I came to the table predisposed to believe that you, a conservative, must be some wild-eyed authoritarian wingnut, scheming every minute to bend me to your will–and you were unshakably convinced that I, a liberal, must be a total mental and moral imbecile, narcissistically incapable of acknowledging that other people exist outside my own head–then, I dunno, I have a feeling the odds of our having ANY kind of civil conversation might drop off somewhat. I won’t presume to speak for you, but for me, that would be a real shame.

   My question to you, then: why in the world do we do this to each other?

   Cheers.

This comment section is for the readers of Ft. Hard Knox, a place for political conservatives to share information about online activism. We are not "fair and balanced," and we aren't refereeing a "free speech zone." Intelligent, funny, and on-topic comments are welcome. Trolls, spam, and liberal propaganda are not. We may occassionally approve a comment with an obvious lefty-slant so that we can amuse ourselves by making fun of it, but most will be deleted. (Why? Because we're busy, we have lives, and when we want to talk to you we'll go visit you on Digg or the Daily KOS.)

This is a private blog, and we reserve the right to make up our own rules as we go along. The few comments which manage to squeak by our censors reflect the opinion of the commentator, and not necessarily the staff of Ft. Hard Knox.

...and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!