Study discovers Conservatives see things in "Black and White" : Utah IMC

Researchers help define what makes a political conservative
Kathleen Maclay, July 22, 2003

BERKELEY – Politically conservative agendas may range from supporting the Vietnam War to upholding traditional moral and religious values to opposing welfare. But are there consistent underlying motivations?

Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

- Fear and aggression
- Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
- Uncertainty avoidance
- Need for cognitive closure

Terror management
"From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination," the researchers wrote in an article, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," recently published in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin.

Assistant Professor Jack Glaser of the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and Visiting Professor Frank Sulloway of UC Berkeley joined lead author, Associate Professor John Jost of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and Professor Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland at College Park, to analyze the literature on conservatism.

The psychologists sought patterns among 88 samples, involving 22,818 participants, taken from journal articles, books and conference papers. The material originating from 12 countries included speeches and interviews given by politicians, opinions and verdicts rendered by judges, as well as experimental, field and survey studies.

Ten meta-analytic calculations performed on the material - which included various types of literature and approaches from different countries and groups - yielded consistent, common threads, Glaser said.

The avoidance of uncertainty, for example, as well as the striving for certainty, are particularly tied to one key dimension of conservative thought - the resistance to change or hanging onto the status quo, they said.

The terror management feature of conservatism can be seen in post-Sept. 11 America, where many people appear to shun and even punish outsiders and those who threaten the status of cherished world views, they wrote.

Concerns with fear and threat, likewise, can be linked to a second key dimension of conservatism - an endorsement of inequality, a view reflected in the Indian caste system, South African apartheid and the conservative, segregationist politics of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-South S.C.).

Disparate conservatives share a resistance to change and acceptance of inequality, the authors said. Hitler, Mussolini, and former President Ronald Reagan were individuals, but all were right-wing conservatives because they preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some form. Talk host Rush Limbaugh can be described the same way.

This research marks the first synthesis of a vast amount of information about conservatism, and the result is an "elegant and unifying explanation" for political conservatism under the rubric of motivated social cognition, said Sulloway. That entails the tendency of people's attitudinal preferences on policy matters to be explained by individual needs based on personality, social interests or existential needs.

The researchers' analytical methods allowed them to determine the effects for each class of factors and revealed "more pluralistic and nuanced understanding of the source of conservatism," Sulloway said.

While most people resist change, Glaser said, liberals appear to have a higher tolerance for change than conservatives do.

As for conservatives' penchant for accepting inequality, he said, one contemporary example is liberals' general endorsement of extending rights and liberties to disadvantaged minorities such as gays and lesbians, compared to conservatives' opposing position.

The researchers said that conservative ideologies, like virtually all belief systems, develop in part because they satisfy some psychological needs, but that "does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false, irrational, or unprincipled."

They also stressed that their findings are not judgmental.

"In many cases, including mass politics, 'liberal' traits may be liabilities, and being intolerant of ambiguity, high on the need for closure, or low in cognitive complexity might be associated with such generally valued characteristics as personal commitment and unwavering loyalty," the researchers wrote.

This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes, the researchers advised.

The latest debate about the possibility that the Bush administration ignored intelligence information that discounted reports of Iraq buying nuclear material from Africa may be linked to the conservative intolerance for ambiguity and or need for closure, said Glaser.

"For a variety of psychological reasons, then, right-wing populism may have more consistent appeal than left-wing populism, especially in times of potential crisis and instability," he said.

Glaser acknowledged that the team's exclusive assessment of the psychological motivations of political conservatism might be viewed as a partisan exercise. However, he said, there is a host of information available about conservatism, but not about liberalism.

The researchers conceded cases of left-wing ideologues, such as Stalin, Khrushchev or Castro, who, once in power, steadfastly resisted change, allegedly in the name of egalitarianism.

Yet, they noted that some of these figures might be considered politically conservative in the context of the systems that they defended. The researchers noted that Stalin, for example, was concerned about defending and preserving the existing Soviet system.

Although they concluded that conservatives are less "integratively complex" than others are, Glaser said, "it doesn't mean that they're simple-minded."

Conservatives don't feel the need to jump through complex, intellectual hoops in order to understand or justify some of their positions, he said. "They are more comfortable seeing and stating things in black and white in ways that would make liberals squirm," Glaser said.

He pointed as an example to a 2001 trip to Italy, where President George W. Bush was asked to explain himself. The Republican president told assembled world leaders, "I know what I believe and I believe what I believe is right." And in 2002, Bush told a British reporter, "Look, my job isn't to nuance."

See: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml

from "The Free Market - The Mises Institute monthly"
December 1995
Volume 13, Number 12

Schools and Judicial Tyranny
William J. Watkins, Jr.

...Neighborhood schools, with a maximum local control, offer parents an opportunity to take an active role in their children's education. For those who are unable to homeschool or send their children to private schools, local control of public schools makes the best out of a bad situation.

A return of local control would mean a REPUDIATION of the statist, centralizing, and egalitarian principles of BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION. But that is exactly what is needed to end judicial control, return to fiscal responsibility, create coherent communities, and reinvigorate an educational system that works for students and parents.

----------------------------------------------------
The Ludwig von Mises Institute is the research and educational center of classical liberalism, LIBERTARIAN political theory, and the Austrian School of economics. Working in the intellectual tradition of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Murray N. Rothbard.

See: http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=211

More political propaganda out of of that stench-hole of a University.

If I were alumni of that school, I'd not send them a penny, and I'd certainly never send my children to be educated there.

Those liberals wouldn't know the differences between "black" and "white" if someone conked them over their empty skulls with a concrete block.

Which is exactly what someone should do; bash their leftist skulls in with industrial masonry construction materials.

Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception
Jim Lobe, AlterNet
Many neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz are disciples of a philosopher who believed that the elite should use deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant masses.

**********
Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception

By Jim Lobe, AlterNet
May 19, 2003

What would you do if you wanted to topple Saddam Hussein, but your intelligence agencies couldn't find the evidence to justify a war?

A follower of Leo Strauss may just hire the "right" kind of men to get the job done – people with the intellect, acuity, and, if necessary, the political commitment, polemical skills, and, above all, the imagination to find the evidence that career intelligence officers could not detect.

The "right" man for Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, suggests Seymour Hersh in his recent New Yorker article entitled 'Selective Intelligence,' was Abram Shulsky, director of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) – an agency created specifically to find the evidence of WMDs and/or links with Al Qaeda, piece it together, and clinch the case for the invasion of Iraq.

Like Wolfowitz, Shulsky is a student of an obscure German Jewish political philosopher named Leo Strauss who arrived in the United States in 1938. Strauss taught at several major universities, including Wolfowitz and Shulsky's alma mater, the University of Chicago, before his death in 1973.

Strauss is a popular figure among the neoconservatives. Adherents of his ideas include prominent figures both within and outside the administration. They include 'Weekly Standard' editor William Kristol; his father and indeed the godfather of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol; the new Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone, a number of senior fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (home to former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and Lynne Cheney), and Gary Schmitt, the director of the influential Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is chaired by Kristol the Younger.

Strauss' philosophy is hardly incidental to the strategy and mindset adopted by these men – as is obvious in Shulsky's 1999 essay titled "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)" (in Greek philosophy the term nous denotes the highest form of rationality). As Hersh notes in his article, Shulsky and his co-author Schmitt "criticize America's intelligence community for its failure to appreciate the duplicitous nature of the regimes it deals with, its susceptibility to social-science notions of proof, and its inability to cope with deliberate concealment." They argued that Strauss's idea of hidden meaning, "alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception."

Rule One: Deception

It's hardly surprising then why Strauss is so popular in an administration obsessed with secrecy, especially when it comes to matters of foreign policy. Not only did Strauss have few qualms about using deception in politics, he saw it as a necessity. While professing deep respect for American democracy, Strauss believed that societies should be hierarchical – divided between an elite who should lead, and the masses who should follow. But unlike fellow elitists like Plato, he was less concerned with the moral character of these leaders. According to Shadia Drury, who teaches politics at the University of Calgary, Strauss believed that "those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior."

This dichotomy requires "perpetual deception" between the rulers and the ruled, according to Drury. Robert Locke, another Strauss analyst says,"The people are told what they need to know and no more." While the elite few are capable of absorbing the absence of any moral truth, Strauss thought, the masses could not cope. If exposed to the absence of absolute truth, they would quickly fall into nihilism or anarchy, according to Drury, author of 'Leo Strauss and the American Right' (St. Martin's 1999).

Second Principle: Power of Religion

According to Drury, Strauss had a "huge contempt" for secular democracy. Nazism, he believed, was a nihilistic reaction to the irreligious and liberal nature of the Weimar Republic. Among other neoconservatives, Irving Kristol has long argued for a much greater role for religion in the public sphere, even suggesting that the Founding Fathers of the American Republic made a major mistake by insisting on the separation of church and state. And why? Because Strauss viewed religion as absolutely essential in order to impose moral law on the masses who otherwise would be out of control.

At the same time, he stressed that religion was for the masses alone; the rulers need not be bound by it. Indeed, it would be absurd if they were, since the truths proclaimed by religion were "a pious fraud." As Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine points out, "Neoconservatives are pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers."

"Secular society in their view is the worst possible thing,'' Drury says, because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, precisely those traits that may promote dissent that in turn could dangerously weaken society's ability to cope with external threats. Bailey argues that it is this firm belief in the political utility of religion as an "opiate of the masses" that helps explain why secular Jews like Kristol in 'Commentary' magazine and other neoconservative journals have allied themselves with the Christian Right and even taken on Darwin's theory of evolution.

Third Principle: Aggressive Nationalism

Like Thomas Hobbes, Strauss believed that the inherently aggressive nature of human beings could only be restrained by a powerful nationalistic state. "Because mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed," he once wrote. "Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united – and they can only be united against other people."

Not surprisingly, Strauss' attitude toward foreign policy was distinctly Machiavellian. "Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat," Drury wrote in her book. "Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured (emphases added)."

"Perpetual war, not perpetual peace, is what Straussians believe in," says Drury. The idea easily translates into, in her words, an "aggressive, belligerent foreign policy," of the kind that has been advocated by neocon groups like PNAC and AEI scholars – not to mention Wolfowitz and other administration hawks who have called for a world order dominated by U.S. military power. Strauss' neoconservative students see foreign policy as a means to fulfill a "national destiny" – as Irving Kristol defined it already in 1983 – that goes far beyond the narrow confines of a " myopic national security."

As to what a Straussian world order might look like, the analogy was best captured by the philosopher himself in one of his – and student Allen Bloom's – many allusions to Gulliver's Travels. In Drury's words, "When Lilliput was on fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace. In so doing, he saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but the Lilliputians were outraged and appalled by such a show of disrespect."

The image encapsulates the neoconservative vision of the United States' relationship with the rest of the world – as well as the relationship between their relationship as a ruling elite with the masses. "They really have no use for liberalism and democracy, but they're conquering the world in the name of liberalism and democracy," Drury says.

Jim Lobe writes on foreign policy for Alternet. His work has also appeared on Foreign Policy In Focus and TomPaine.com.

Looks like those fine folks at Hormel have been to the indymedia board today.

No more for me thanks. I'm feeling a bit bloated.

From the article above, seems to fit smashtheleft to a T

Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the **resistance to change** and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

- **Fear and aggression**
- **Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity **
- **Uncertainty avoidance **
- Need for cognitive closure

Press Statement of Youth League
Pyongyang, August 20 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Central Committee of the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League issued a statement to the press on August 19, expressing the belief that the south Korean youth and students will take the lead in the undaunted struggle to sweep away the group of the Grand National Party and other right-wing conservative forces and defend the gains of the struggle for democracy attained with blood. The statement fully supported an appeal to all the south Korean brothers and sisters published in joint name by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland and the National Reconciliation Council, considering it an appeal calling the south Korean youth and students and people to the struggle for democratization of the society and the peace and reunification of the country.
If the GNP and other right-wing conservative forces come into power again, south Korea would be turned into a theatre of fascist rowdyism and this land, the land of life, into a sea of war fire, so that the hope and dream of our youth and students to live as masters of a reunified country may not be realized.

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11th Anniversary of Pomchonghakryon Observed
Pyongyang, August 20 (KCNA) -- A rally was reportedly held at the playground of Kyunghee University on August 16 to commemorate the 11th anniversary of the National Alliance of Youth and Students for the Country's Reunification (Pomchonghakryon). At the rally an address was made by Jong Jae Uk, permanent chairman of the South Headquarters of Pomchonghakryon who is also chairman of the south Korean Federation of University Student Councils, and solidarity messages from the North Headquarters and the Overseas Headquarters of Pomchonghakryon were read out. And a congratulatory speech was made by Ra Chang Sun, chairman of the South Headquarters of the National Alliance for the Country's Reunification.
Read out at the rally was "a resolution of a rally for commemorating the 11th anniversary of Pomchonghakryon taking the lead in defending peace against the U.S. and war holding high the banner of "By our nation itself".
The resolution condemned the U.S. for obstinately resorting to its hostile policy toward the north and the anti-national, anti-reunification forces for intensifying wholesale suppression of the pro-reunification patriotic forces with the approaching of the six-way talks for a solution to the issue of the Korean peninsula.
The resolution called upon all the youth and students to come out in the struggle to defend peace against the U.S. and war under the banner of the June 15 joint declaration.
The resolution called for developing the solidarity movement of youth and students still further amid the struggle to defend peace against the U.S. and war and the struggle to do away with the GNP and the anti-reunification forces.

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KCNA Slams U.S. Talk about "Early Inspection"
Pyongyang, August 20 (KCNA) -- The United States is preposterously asserting that an inspection team should be formed with five countries to participate in the six-way talks to make an "early inspection" of the DPRK's nuclear facilities and verify the dismantling of its nuclear program, to begin with. This goes to prove that the U.S. is becoming more undisguised in its foolish attempt to put international pressure upon the DPRK to scrap its nuclear program before dialogue in a bid to totally disarm it and bring it to its knees.
Explicitly speaking, the U.S. demand for an "early inspection" of the DPRK nuclear facilities is absolutely unacceptable as it is a blatant interference in its internal affairs and an infringement upon its sovereignty.
The U.S. has misused the verification through inspection pursuant to the Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency as a leverage to stifle the DPRK. It is still working hard to force the DPRK to dismantle its nuclear deterrent force under the pretext of verification.
The U.S. insists that the DPRK accept the "demand for scrapping its nuclear program before dialogue", shunning the latter's proposal for concluding a non-aggression treaty. This is a brigandish logic urging the DPRK to appear bare-handed before the U.S.
If the DPRK had have any intention to accept the U.S. demand for "scrapping its nuclear program before dialogue" it would have already done so in 1994 when the DPRK-U.S. Agreed Framework was published. It is self-evident that the DPRK can not accept such assertion under the tense situation where the U.S. further stepped up its policy to stifle the DPRK with nukes than that time and there is the real danger of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula.
The U.S. is forcing the DPRK to accept its absurd demand for "dismantling of its nuclear program before dialogue" and "an early inspection," shelving its commitments. This is little short of demanding the DPRK surrender to it.
Surrender means death.
The U.S. call for an "early inspection" of a sovereign state would only spark a conflict.
The DPRK is approaching the issue of inspection with the highest degree of vigilance. It can discuss the issue of verification through inspection only after the confirmation that the U.S. has dropped its hostile policy towards the DPRK and stopped posing a nuclear threat to it.
As unanimously declared by the world public, inspection is just like a detonating fuse and a prelude to a war.
The Iraqi war proved that consenting to disarmament through inspection does not help prevent a war but sparks it.
It is the height of folly for the U.S. to force the DPRK to accept its demand for an "early inspection", considering it as Iraq. This act would be little short of opening Pandora's box.
The U.S. should give up its absurd attempt to convince the international community of the justice of its demand for an "early inspection" with a lip-service that it "has no intention to invade" the DPRK. It should make an early U turn in its hostile policy toward the DPRK and respond to its proposal for concluding a non-aggression treaty.

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Indian Embassy Officials Visit Middle School
Pyongyang, August 20 (KCNA) -- Ambassador Rich Pal Singh and staff members of the Indian embassy in Pyongyang Tuesday visited DPRK-India Friendship Pyongyang Wasan Middle School on the occasion of the 56th anniversary of the independence of India. They were briefed on the great successes made by the school equipped with modern educational equipment and facilities, while making a round of classrooms, hobby group rooms, experimental and practical training rooms with deep interests.
Then they saw an art performance given by pupils of the school.
The ambassador said he was deeply pleased to visit the school on the occasion of the 56th anniversary of the independence of India and he would work hard to further develop the friendly relations with the DPRK in the future.

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Clear Expression of Patriotic Will and Magnanimity
Pyongyang, August 20 (KCNA) -- The DPRK which values the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration decided to send its players team and supporters group to Taegu, the venue of the 22nd Universiad, prompted by the desire to boost inter-Korean relations and realize national cooperation in the basic spirit of the declaration, says Rodong Sinmun today in a commentary. The news analyst further says:
This is a manifestation of the DPRK's warm patriotic will to achieve reconciliation and unity between compatriots in the north and the south and independent reunification.
The group of the Grand National Party and other ultra-right conservatives held what they called "August 15 people's rally" in the plaza of the Seoul City Office to kick up a frantic anti-DPRK racket.
As regards the never-to-be-condoned anti-DPRK rowdyism, the north called the south Korean authorities to account for this and urged them to make an apology and take a measure to prevent the recurrence of similar incident and made clear its stand to strictly deal with the travels of people of the north to a dangerous place where the security and dignity of the fellow countrymen are violated in broad daylight and the issue of sending the players and supporters groups to the Universiad due in Taegu for the present.
National cooperation is the current of the national history.
The players and supporters groups' participation in the Taegu Universiad proves that no desperate efforts of the anti-reunification forces in south Korea can ever stem the current of the national history toward the reunification of the north and the south of Korea.
All the Koreans and humankind will see the north and south Koreans working hard together for reconciliation, cooperation and reunification in Taegu instead of competing with each other for victory as they did in Pusan last year.

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For Spanish-speaking people

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En Pyongyang delegacion de Surcorea a simposio Norte-Sur
Pyongyang, 19 de agosto (ATCC) -- Llego el dia 19 a esta capital la delegacion de la parte Sur al simposio Norte-Sur para corregir la notacion inglesa del nombre del pais. La delegacion es presidida por Kang Man Gil, rector de la Universidad de Sangji de Surcorea e integrada por Kim Yong Hwan y Kim Song Ho, miembros de la Asamblea Nacional y las personalidades de los circulos cientificos y de prensa. En el aeropuerto la acogieron con un sentimiento fraternal Mun Yong Ho, director del Instituto de Filologia de la Academia de Ciencias Sociales y otros funcionarios.

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Equipos de jugadores y de hinchas de RPDC iran a 22a Universiada Mundial de Taegu
Pyongyang, 19 de agosto (ATCC) -- El vocero del comite por la Reunificacion Pacifica de la Patria (CRPP) hizo publica el dia 19 una declaracion para anunciar que la parte Norte decidio enviar el equipo de jugadores y el equipo de hinchas a Taegu de Corea del Sur donde se efectuara la 22a Universiada Mundial al considerar afortunado el hecho de que hoy la parte Sur expreso una lastima con un claro sentido de disculpa por el alboroto anti-RPDC del colectivo de opositores a la reunificacion de Corea del Sur ocurrido el 15 de agosto en Seul y dio promesa de prevenir su repeticion. La declaracion senala:
Esto es una clara expresion de nuestra gran magnanimidad y voluntad patriotica de apreciar la Declaracion Conjunta Norte-Sur del 15 de Junio y realizar la cooperacion nacional conforme al espiritu fundamental de ella.
De hecho, tomamos esta decision partiendo del unico deseo de ir hacia la reunificacion mediante la reconciliacion y la unidad de nuestra nacion homogenea aunque el "Partido Hannara" y otras fuerzas conservadoras ultraderechistas de Corea del Sur impidieron el camino hacia el Sur de nuestra delegacion deportiva.
Tal decision refleja el caluroso sentimiento patriotico de los habitantes de la parte Norte de la Republica hacia los compatriotas hermanos de Corea del Sur.
Nuestro presente camino hacia el Sur demuestra a las claras que es imposible detener la tendencia de la historia nacional a ser uno solo el Norte y el Sur, por muy desesperadas que sean las maniobras a que recurran las fuerzas opuestas a la reunificacion de Corea del Sur.
Nos esforzaremos por hacer que como en los juegos Asiaticos de Pusan del ano pasado, tambien la presente Universiada Mundial de Taegu sirva de un importante motivo que manifieste a todo el mundo el verdadero aspecto de nuestra nacion mancomunada hombro con hombro con los compatriotas hermanos del Sur en vez de disputarnos por la victoria.
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It will provide conclusive evidence that liberals are obfuscating, prevaricating morons.

So George, how do you feel about your mom and dad?

Psychologist Oliver James analyses the behaviour of the American president

Tuesday September 2, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1033904,00.html

As the alcoholic George Bush approached his 40th birthday in 1986, he had achieved nothing he could call his own. He was all too aware that none of his educational and professional accomplishments would have occured without his father. He felt so low that he did not care if he lived or died. Taking a friend out for a flight in a Cessna aeroplane, it only became apparent he had not flown one before when they nearly crashed on take-off. Narrowly avoiding stalling a few times, they crash-landed and the friend breathed a sigh of relief - only for Bush to rev up the engine and take off again.

Not long afterwards, staring at his vomit-spattered face in the mirror, this dangerously self-destructive man fell to his knees and implored God to help him and became a teetotalling, fundamentalist Christian. David Frum, his speechwriter, described the change: "Sigmund Freud imported the Latin pronoun id to describe the impulsive, carnal, unruly elements of the human personality. [In his youth] Bush's id seems to have been every bit as powerful and destructive as Clinton's id. But sometime in Bush's middle years, his id was captured, shackled and manacled, and locked away."

One of the jailers was his father. His grandfather, uncles and many cousins attended both his secondary school, Andover, and his university, Yale, but the longest shadow was cast by his father's exceptional careers there.

On the wall of his school house at Andover, there was a large black-and-white photograph of his father in full sporting regalia. He had been one of the most successful student athletes in the school's 100-year history and was similarly remembered at Yale, where his grandfather was a trustee. His younger brother, Jeb, summed the problem up when he said, "A lot of people who have fathers like this feel a sense that they have failed." Such a titanic figure created mixed feelings. On the one hand, Bush worshipped and aspired to emulate him. Peter Neumann, an Andover roommate, recalls that, "He idolised his father, he was going to be just like his dad." At Yale, a friend remembered a "deep respect" for his father and when he later set up in the oil business, another friend said, "He was focused to prove himself to his dad."

On the other hand, deep down, Bush had a profound loathing for this perfect model of American citizenship whose very success made the son feel a failure. Rebelliousness was an unconscious attack on him and a desperate attempt to carve out something of his own. Far from paternal emulation, Bush described his goal at school as "to instil a sense of frivolity". Contemporaries at Yale say he was like the John Belushi character in the film Animal House, a drink-fuelled funseeker.

He was aggressively anti-intellectual and hostile to east-coast preppy types like his father, sometimes cruelly so. On one occasion he walked up to a matronly woman at a smart cocktail party and asked, "So, what's sex like after 50, anyway?"

A direct and loutish challenge to his father's posh sensibility came aged 25, after he had drunkenly crashed a car. "I hear you're looking for me," he sneered at his father, "do you want to go mano a mano, right here?"

As he grew older, the fury towards his father was increasingly directed against himself in depressive drinking. But it was not all his father's fault. There was also his insensitive and domineering mother.

Barbara Bush is described by her closest intimates as prone to "withering stares" and "sharply crystalline" retorts. She is also extremely tough. When he was seven, Bush's younger sister, Robin, died of leukaemia and several independent witnesses say he was very upset by this loss. Barbara claims its effect was exaggerated but nobody could accuse her of overreacting: the day after the funeral, she and her husband were on the golf course.

She was the main authority-figure in the home. Jeb describes it as having been, "A kind of matriarchy... when we were growing up, dad wasn't at home. Mom was the one to hand out the goodies and the discipline." A childhood friend recalls that,"She was the one who instilled fear", while Bush put it like this: "Every mother has her own style. Mine was a little like an army drill sergeant's... my mother's always been a very outspoken person who vents very well - she'll just let rip if she's got something on her mind." According to his uncle, the "letting rip" often included slaps and hits. Countless studies show that boys with such mothers are at much higher risk of becoming wild, alcoholic or antisocial.

On top of that, Barbara added substantially to the pressure from his father to be a high achiever by creating a highly competitive family culture. All the children's games, be they tiddlywinks or baseball, were intensely competitive - an actual "family league table" was kept of performance in various pursuits. At least this prepared him for life at Andover, where emotional literacy was definitely not part of the curriculum. Soon after arriving, he was asked to write an essay on a soul-stirring experience in his life to date and he chose the death of his sister. His mother had drilled it into him that it was wrong when writing to repeat words already used. Having employed "tears" once in the essay, he sought a substitute from a thesaurus she had given him and wrote "the lacerates ran down my cheeks". The essay received a fail grade, accompanied by derogatory comments such as "disgraceful".

This incident may be an insight into Bush's strange tendency to find the wrong words in making public pronouncements. "Is our children learning?" he once famously asked. On responding to critics of his intellect he claimed that they had "misunderestimated" him. Perhaps these verbal faux-pas are a barely unconscious way of winding up his bullying mother and waving two fingers at his cultured father's sensibility.

The outcome of this childhood was what psychologists call an authoritarian personality. Authoritarianism was identified shortly after the second world war as part of research to discover the causes of fascism. As the name suggests, authoritarians impose the strictest possible discipline on themselves and others - the sort of regime found in today's White House, where prayers precede daily business, appointments are scheduled in five-minute blocks, women's skirts must be below the knee and Bush rises at 5.45am, invariably fitting in a 21-minute, three-mile jog before lunch.

Authoritarian personalities are organised around rabid hostility to "legitimate" targets, often ones nominated by their parents' prejudices. Intensely moralistic, they direct it towards despised social groups. As people, they avoid introspection or loving displays, preferring toughness and cynicism. They regard others with suspicion, attributing ulterior motives to the most innocent behaviour. They are liable to be superstitious. All these traits have been described in Bush many times, by friends or colleagues.

His moralism is all-encompassing and as passionate as can be. He plans to replace state welfare provision with faith-based charitable organisations that would impose Christian family values.

The commonest targets of authoritarians have been Jews, blacks and homosexuals. Bush is anti-abortion and his fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible would mean that gay practices are evil. But perhaps the group he reserves his strongest contempt for are those who have adopted the values of the 60s. He says he loathes "people who felt guilty about their lot in life because others were suffering".

He has always rejected any kind of introspection. Everyone who knows him well says how hard he is to get to know, that he lives behind what one friend calls a "facile, personable" facade. Frum comments that, "He is relentlessly disciplined and very slow to trust. Even when his mouth seems to be smiling at you, you can feel his eyes watching you."

His deepest beliefs amount to superstition. "Life takes its own turns," he says, "writes its own story and along the way we start to realise that we are not the author." God's will, not his own, explains his life.

Most fundamentalist Christians have authoritarian personalities. Two core beliefs separate fundamentalists from mere evangelists ("happy-clappy" Christians) or the mainstream Presbyterians among whom Bush first learned religion every Sunday with his parents: fundamentalists take the Bible absolutely literally as the word of God and believe that human history will come to an end in the near future, preceded by a terrible, apocaplytic battle on Earth between the forces of good and evil, which only the righteous shall survive. According to Frum when Bush talks of an "axis of evil" he is identifying his enemies as literally satanic, possessed by the devil. Whether he specifically sees the battle with Iraq and other "evil" nations as being part of the end-time, the apocalypse preceding the day of judgment, is not known. Nor is it known whether Tony Blair shares these particular religious ideas.

However, it is certain that however much Bush may sometimes seem like a buffoon, he is also powered by massive, suppressed anger towards anyone who challenges the extreme, fanatical beliefs shared by him and a significant slice of his citizens - in surveys, half of them also agree with the statement "the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word".

Bush's deep hatred, as well as love, for both his parents explains how he became a reckless rebel with a death wish. He hated his father for putting his whole life in the shade and for emotionally blackmailing him. He hated his mother for physically and mentally badgering him to fulfil her wishes. But the hatred also explains his radical transformation into an authoritarian fundamentalist. By totally identifying with an extreme version of their strict, religion-fuelled beliefs, he jailed his rebellious self. From now on, his unconscious hatred for them was channelled into a fanatical moral crusade to rid the world of evil.

As Frum put it: "Id-control is the basis of Bush's presidency but Bush is a man of fierce anger." That anger now rules the world.

· Oliver James's book They F*** You Up - How to survive family life is published by Bloomsbury, priced £7.99.

http://www.counterpunch.org/norris09202003.html

September 20, 2003

Stage Zero
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
By CAROL NORRIS

If George wasn't driving the world down the road to extinction with his wars, his environmentally disastrous choices and world alienating policies--"Look at me, ma, no hands" he says while sitting behind the wheel of our children's future--I'd think he was almost fascinating.

Fascinating the way one who is steeped in myriad psychological issues is.

I'm a psychotherapist. And, having never seen George in therapy, despite my open invitation, it would be unethical for me to make an official diagnosis of him. So, I won't. But, I can kick some thoughts around.

Remember Tom Hanks' movie, "Big," when the kid, by an accident of fate, finds himself turned into an adult, playing grown-up roles he is not developmentally ready for? This is George. I don't mean this maliciously or satirically; I really mean it. I think developmentally speaking George is a big kid. Lots of people are. The difference is they don't have the means to bomb human beings into "pink mist," obliterate the infrastructures of countries, and poison the world with coal and pesticides and carbon dioxide and depleted uranium and napalm, as they play grown up.

Nowhere was George playing grown-up more conspicuous than his staged re-election photo op on the USS Lincoln. When I saw him all dressed up pretending to be a naval aviator, I kept waiting for him to pull out his GI Joe doll with karate action, sit down and start playing: "Bring 'em on. We can take 'em. Huh, Joe? Take that--heeeyah," while making Joe do a big karate chop as the real soldiers look on, saluting their Commander in Chief.

And now KB Toys has come out with an Elite Force Naval Aviator Action Figure to immortalize George's "historic" day of pretend play. And with that, in a moment of unintentional, yet brilliant psychological mindedness, they have placed George, the pretend combat-ready naval aviator, exactly where he belongs--in the make believe world of the 10 and under set.

In short, George is stuck.

Without getting into too much psychobabble, in human development terms this means he had some significant issue or trauma at one stage in his development that precluded him from advancing to higher stages. Again, theorists would argue that we all have developmental issues to one degree or another. And we do. But, again, most of us are playing out our intrapsychic havoc in the battlefields of our minds, not the battlefields of the world. Our casualties, disastrously enough, are often our relationships, not the lives of U.S. soldiers and civilian mothers and children bombed out of their homes in far away neighborhoods.

There are many ways to think about human development. One could explore cognitive, psychosexual or psychosocial development. I suspect George is developmentally stuck in many ways, so we could look at any of these.

But perhaps more than any other president I can think of, George evokes pure morality as a rationale for his policy decisions. This, as opposed to choices based on reason and facts and evidence informed by morality. [Example: George's rationale for going to war were WMD's that were an imminent threat to the U.S. Oops. No WMD's. Now George says in essence, "Yeah, well, so? Saddam is bad. Really bad. And we're good. So, us being good and Saddam being bad justifies all the lying and misleading about this illegal war."]

So, while I don't psychologically assess people from a moral perspective, it makes sense for George. You have to meet people where they are.

A preeminent theorist on moral development is Lawrence Kohlberg, a famous Harvard professor, who demonstrated through his scientific studies that people progress in their moral reasoning (i.e., in their bases for ethical behavior) through a series of levels. He delineated three levels, further broken down into six stages.

The first is "the Preconventional Level," where one usually finds oneself in elementary school. The first stage of this level is where George, I believe, makes his home. It's called: Stage Zero.

Kohlberg writes: "Stage Zero: Egocentric judgment. The child makes judgments of good on the basis of what he likes and wants or what helps him, and bad on the basis of what he does not like or what hurts him. He has no concept of rules or of obligations to obey or conform to independent of his wish."

I know! It's uncanny.

We saw George's egocentric judgment during his college years as he publicly argued for the right of his fraternity, DKE, to use cruel hazing rituals, such as branding, on its pledges. After all, George said, "the resulting wound is 'only a cigarette burn.'" (New York Times, November 8, 1967).

We saw it in AWOL George, who didn't see the need to fulfill his obligations, his promised duties in the National Guard because it didn't align with his wishes.

And we have seen unprecedented self-serving judgment time and time and time again during Bush's tenure as president.

One example among thousands: The current administration is seeking to create legislation that will make some 18 year old kid who wrongly downloads a song off the Internet without permission a felon. A felon. Such a label will dog her and impede her for the rest of her life. This, as Kenneth Lay, who robbed countless families of their life savings is not held accountable, but is running free, living not off his wife as he pretends, but off the fruits of his manipulation. So, what's the moral here? Rob a corporate buddy of George's of a buck fifty and, because it's technically illegal, you're forever bad. Run a corporation, be a buddy of George's, rob your employees of thousands upon thousands of dollars and, although it's illegal, you're still good.

A summation of George's egocentric philosophy might very well be his words to Bob Woodward: "I am the commander, see. I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they need to say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

What a profoundly childlike thing to say (not to be confused with childish). It sounds to me like a kid trying desperately, yet transparently, to convince people he is fit for a role he secretly is unsure he can fulfill and discuss.

An appropriate response by Woodward to George's subtext might've been, "Such a big boy, Georgie! Yes you are!!"

I'm not a big Clinton fan, believe me, but can you imagine those words coming out of his mouth during the absurd Lewinsky debacle?

An interviewer asks: "But didn't you say you did not have sexual relations with that woman?"

"I am the commander, see. I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president...I don't feel I owe anybody any explanation."

Now, we all know many a president has lied and distorted the truth in office. But, the difference is they kept in mind the concept of rules and obligations that they had to at least pretend to obey and conform to. Not just George, but this entire administration has completely flouted what every other administration previously has not--the need to pretend to play by the rules. The rules are forever changed, they tell us. Remember 911!

Speak brashly and carry a big photo of Ground Zero is their new philosophy. And Remember 911! is the battle cry that drowns out any dissenting skirmish this administration finds itself in. Remember 911! Is the catch-all response that replaces any obligation to account for their actions. It is the cozy, protective cloak that has made the Bush administration all but impervious to questioning and doubt.

And not can they be heard crying, Remember 911!, but Beware The Terrorist Hiding in Your Underwear Drawer! Code Orange. Code Orange. Duct tape at the ready! Of course, a terrorist attack could absolutely happen again. We'd be foolish to think otherwise. But, this in no way negates the fact that the Bush administration has brilliantly and unabashedly exploited our post-911 apprehension. There is no greater fuel for righteous indignation and the resulting lack of critical thinking than fear. And the Bush administration is fanning the flames of fear every chance it gets.

So, through our post-9.11 eyes, many of us have very understandably come to see the radical (yes, the Bush administration is not conservative, it is radical) egocentric judgment of the Bush administration as truth. And in many cases, it has become law. The Patriot Act is the radical, egocentric judgment of a few, turned law.

And it is from the same Stage Zero mindset that a plethora of alarming legislation is being passed as hard fought civil liberties are being overturned. It is from Stage Zero that John Ashcroft and the proposed "Patriot Act II" will be enforced. Ashcroft's egocentric judgment--the same judgment that spent $8,000 of tax payers' money to cover a stone breast apparently too titillating for John's libido--is going to determine who is a terrorist and who isn't, who can be expatriated and who can't. It will be Ashcroft, the same man who reportedly thinks Calico cats are signs of the devil, who is the final arbiter of right and wrong, good and bad. And let's not forget that Rumsfeld was reportedly all too recently considered so way out there his colleagues didn't take him seriously.

While the causes of all this egocentric morality are beyond the scope of this article, it is worth saying that, in George's case, it is surely informed by his particularly privileged background that has left him without a realistic sense of how the vast majority of us live and struggle. As he said in a moment of uncharacteristic truth telling to Reverend Jim Wallis, "I don't understand how poor people think."

In addition, his morality and subsequent choices are surely informed and perhaps superceded by his addiction issues and by his deep-seated shame and desperate need for validation.

George's egocentric judgment is also given credibility under the auspices of his religious conviction. I do believe George is a religious man. But, he has in many ways prostituted his religion to serve his true dogma--the advancement of the corporation.

So, for all his touting of religious and moral imperatives, George's policy decisions constitute nothing less than a moral failure. They have nothing to do with God, despite George's fantasy of divine rule, they have nothing to do with compassion, and they have nothing to do with helping you and me in any real way. Intrapsychically, they have everything to do with George's wish to finally be more than what he fears he is--a moral/business/personal failure. And interpersonally, they have to do with paybacks and power jockeying.

I believe George's handlers exploit his insecurities, posing him as an Air Force Naval Aviator here and a Friend of the Poor there, feeding into his need to play those rolls. At the same time, it fills their need to have an affable, malleable front man, willing to please and needy enough to believe the rolls in which he is cast. Karl and Dick and Co., I believe, are to a certain extent manipulating George just as they are trying to manipulate us.

So, why don't we all see through this and call them on it? Because George's handlers and speechwriters and the rest of the gang are very adept at pretending to be at a stage where they aren't: Stage 5.

Kohlberg writes: "Stage 5: The social-contract legalistic orientation. Right action tends to be defined in terms of general individual rights and standards that have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society... The result is an emphasis upon the "legal point of view," but with an additional emphasis upon the possibility of changing the law in terms of rational considerations of social utility...The "official" morality of the American government and Constitution is at this stage."

This is where most of us Americans believe we are, or at least we used to. Because this is much of what our country was founded on. And the Bush administration knows this and they exploit it. They talk the talk of Stage 5 as they walk the walk of Stage Zero.

But such incongruity is crazy making. It's like a mother who beats her child as she tells him she loves him and would never hurt him.

Like the abused kid, many of us want to believe George is telling the truth and is looking after our best interest. He seems like a nice enough guy. We try to contort our sense of morality and reality to fit his, questioning our own. But, while we hear George tell us the economy is recovering, we see thousands upon thousands in our communities laid off with no future job prospects. And we can only contort and deny so long until finally something gives. So now, the facade is cracking and many people are starting to see the real, ugly, self-serving picture behind George's wall of pretty words. And it is through this crack that activists, progressive politicians and those of us concerned about the once unimaginable state of our country must thoughtfully, respectfully and gently enter and begin to mobilize and organize.

The final of Kohlberg's stages is Stage 6. Again, Kohlberg writes: "Stage 6. The universal ethical-principle orientation. Right is defined by the decision of conscience in accord with self-chosen ethical principles that appeal to logical comprehensiveness, universality, and consistency... At heart, these are universal principles of justice, of the reciprocity and equality of the human rights, and of respect for the dignity of human beings as individual persons."

Kohlberg believed many people never truly reach Stage 6. But, I think it is not unreasonable to hope that the man who is running our country and our world should aspire to this stage. Having a Stage Zeroling behind the wheel is a sure sign our world will be driven into an enormous ditch before you can say Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator.

To help clients move through the stages, Kohlberg believed a therapist should present him or her with moral dilemmas to discuss. Never have I considered, nor do I plan on doing therapy with clients this way. But, I think it is my patriotic duty to help our morality-touting Commander in Chief rise out of Stage Zerohood and step into a stage more fitting of his position.

So, again, I invite you, George, to come see me in therapy and work out some of your moral development issues, just as I invited you to work out some of your shame issues a while back.

In the meantime, here is a moral dilemma for you to chew on to help you work your way up the moral ladder. Hope it helps.

Moral Dilemma: You are an exceptionally privileged man who has a long history of personal and business failures. Despite yourself, you find you are appointed to the most powerful position in the land through the help of friends and family in high places.

You say you are compassionate (burning the flesh of others aside). Yet in your short tenure in office, you have instituted public policies and norms that have irretrievably pockmarked the face of the world such as walking away from international treaties, years in the making: The Kyoto Treaty, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the International Criminal Court Treaty, and the Land Mines Ban Treaty, making our world infinitely more dangerous.

You have created the largest federal budget deficit in American history, as you blithely accept the highest unemployment rate in decades, (the upturn of the last economic quarter was mostly due to payments to the coffers of a few defense contractors. So only a few of your friends have seen the benefits of the slight upturn. And the small unemployment decrease was due to people so frustrated they just dropped out of the job market).

And as the US now boasts the highest proportion of children born into poverty in the "developed" world (22%) and 43 million Americans have no health insurance, your administration is slowly but surely gutting all our country's safety nets, which will ultimately add fuel to your privatization frenzy and create a truly vicious cycle.

Through this same privatization, you are pilfering the jobs and futures of millions of federal employees in the name of national security, effectively gutting the Civil Service Act of 1883, dragging federal employment practices back to the good old days of nepotism and cronyism while you do your best to pass a law to cut the overtime pay of hard working citizens.

Your administration reportedly instructed the EPA to lie to the people of New York City about the toxic air they have been breathing since 9.11, which has caused very serious respiratory illnesses. You ask soldiers to continue to die, to expose themselves to higher and higher levels of toxic depleted uranium that promise years of subsequent health problems, as you show a uniquely George-esque brand of "supporting our troops"--ignoring the demands of the family members of active troops who are clamoring for some answers and accountability for this war; trying to block the pay raises of those on active duty; and pledging to veto a bill that would overturn an old law that, in effect, makes veterans pay for their own benefits.

Do you have Laura look up what the word compassionate means in the dictionary and pick a new, more appropriate word like, say, self-interested? Do you have a moral reckoning and become the man you pretend to be? Or, do you forever remain "...a white Republican guy who doesn't get it..." as you said to Reverend Jim Wallis and, true to your pervasive pattern, continue to pull an Orwell and tell us War is Peace, Occupation is Liberation, and Self-Interest is Compassion? Discuss.

Carol Norris is a psychotherapist, freelance writer and member of CODEPINK: Women for Peace. She can be contacted at writing4justice@planet-save.com.

For more info about Code Pink, go to: http://www.codepinkalert.org

From Kottke, who got it from The New Yorker, who lifted it from the AP, quoted by CNN:

"[President] Bush said he insulates himself from the "opinions" that seep into news coverage by getting his news from his own aides. He said he scans headlines, but rarely reads news stories. 'I appreciate people's opinions, but I'm more interested in news,' the president said. 'And the best way to get the news is from objective sources, and the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world.'"

No one is going to get the news from ABC, NBC, CBS, CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, NPR, NYT, LA Times, USA Today, or any number of other left-wing rags. You're certainly not going to get the truth on any Indymedia site. I've found the most acurate way to obtain the news on Indymedia is to read the articles and believe the opposite, so in that sense it can be accomidating. So I understand how Bush and many other Americans are starved for news instead of the constant news-with-a-left-wing-slant we are constantly bombarded with on a daily basis.

All the above sources mentioned by "." are right-wing media sources, with MSNBC being ultra-right wing. Also beware of any media source owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is rabidly right-wing

For centrist news: NPR, BBC

For left leaning news, try: Salt Lake City Weekly, Catalyst Magazine (Salt Lake), SLUG Mag (Salt Lake), Alternet.org, Commondreams.org, democracynow.org, tompaine.com, motherjones.com, globalfreepress.org, counterpunch.org, inthesetimes.com.

The above are all left-wing sources, none of which are right-wing.

Right-wing and left-wing are not defined as corporate vs. non-corporate, as much as the Indymedia cronies would like to make it so. The majority of Americans view the Democrats as liberals and the Republicans as conservatives. If you view both parties as being right-wing, it would not be surprising that you would view things as "spin detector" portrays them.

Wording things in the way "spin detector" would have you does not advance your cause. You have yet to realize how you misuse of left-wing and right-wing excludes you from communiting to the working class. Until you begin to phrase things in such a way that the common man understands, you'll never get your message across. The working class does not view right and left as corporate vs. non-corporate, so in your communication with them, you are speaking a foreign language.

Will you ever figure this out, even after just having it pointed out to you? Unlikely.

Huh?

Nearly every true liberal know the democrats have been marching further to the right over time -- there are still a few liberal demos, like Kucinich. If the democratic party were truly representive of the left, the green party would not have the numbers and participation it has today -

Democrats are, in the majority of cases, centrists. Take Clinton. (Now we all know how right-wing wackos use the language that if something isn't totally to the far right, it's labeled "liberal" so that these media or politcians will pull right again in order to look more balanced -- the right has perfected this type of doublespeak bullying, so I won't buy that Clinton is a liberal just because the right labeled him that -- you have to look at his deeds.)

Back to Clinton: Clinton backed a lot of the right -wing agenda items -- welfare "reform", NAFTA, military operations, etc. These are things that the left abhors. He did a few liberal things as well, but they were balanced out by the right wing things he did. Clinton is a CENTRIST. There's a joke running around true liberal circles that "Clinton was the best republican president we ever had".

And what this crap about corporate not being right-wing? How does corporate corruption benefit the left? Here's a short list about what the left stands for and cares about:

1)The environment 2)minority issues 3)women's issues 4)GBLT issues 5)equality amongst all people 5) health care for everyone 6)peace (as in the opposite of war) 7)social safety nets for those who hit hard times, not mutinational super-corps raking in corporate welfare 8) fighting poverty 9) worker's rights and safety 10) seperation of church and state 11)pro-choice 12) controlled growth and wise-use of resources 13) alternative energy sources 14) Fair taxation, where those who earn the most pay the biggest percentage 15)Fair trade as opposed to "Free" trade.

Now from those few examples, how many democrats are liberal? Not too many, with an obvious exception is Kucinich and a small handful of others They may agree or believe in a few of the above, but not all. The democrats USED to be for most of these things, but have since sold out as their repubulican bretheren have to the corporate God. How many demos voted to give Bush war powers last year? How many voted for the Patriot Act? How many voted for the FTAA? These are right-wing agenda items that passed when there was a majority of democrats in congress-- democrats are not necessarily liberals.

Most coporations are against many of the things on the list because they would not allow it uncontrolled growth and profits at the expense of workers, the environment, etc. There's not enough reigning in of the corporate sector so it's become corrupt.

Just follow the corporate cash -- many corps bought out politicians in both parties, but knowing that republicans are slightly more corporate centered than demos, the amounts they gave the republicans were significantly higher.

Now there are a few right-wingers who aren't into the pro-corporate side of the right-wing: there's the religious right-wingers and then there are the uneducated types. That's not a blast necessarily, the left has some uneducated types there as well. I think that the religious right-wingers will probably splinter off the republican party int he next 20 years or so.

While walking down the street one day, George "Dubya" Bush dies. His
soul arrives in heaven and he is met by St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.

"Welcome to Heaven," says St. Peter. "Before you settle in, it seems
there is a problem: We seldom see a Republican around these parts, so we're not sure what to do with you."

"No problem, just let me in; I'm a believer." says Dubya.

"I'd like to just let you in, but I have orders from the Man, Himself
"He says you have to spend one day in Hell and one day in Heaven. Then you must choose where you'll live for eternity."

"But, I've already made up my mind; I want to be in Heaven."

"I'm sorry, but we have our rules." And with that, St. Peter escorts
him to an elevator and he goes down, down, down, all the way to Hell.

The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a lush golf
course; the sun is shining in a cloudless sky, the temperature a perfect 72
degrees.

In the distance is a beautiful clubhouse. Standing in front of it his
dad...and thousands of other Republicans who had helped him out over the years... Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Jerry Falwell.... The whole of the "Right" was there...everyone laughing...happy.... casually but expensively dressed. They run to greet him, hug him, and reminisce about the good times they had getting rich at expense of the "suckers and peasants".They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster and caviar.The Devil himself comes up to Bush with a frosty drink,

"Have a Margarita and relax, Dubya!"

"Uh, I can't drink no more, I took a pledge," says Junior, dejectedly.

"This is Hell, son: you can drink and eat all you want and not worry,
and it just gets better from there!" Dubya takes the drink and finds himself
liking the Devil, who he thinks is a really very friendly guy who tells
funny jokes and pulls hilarious nasty pranks, kind of like a Yale Skull and
Bones brother with real horns.

They are having such a great time that, before he realizes it, it's
time to go. Everyone gives him a big hug and waves as Bush steps on the
elevator and heads upward. When the elevator door reopens, he is in Heaven again and St. Peter is waiting for him. "Now it's time to visit Heaven," the old man says, opening the gate.

So for 24 hours Bush is made to hang out with a bunch of honest,
good-natured people who enjoy each other's company, talk about things other than money, and treat each other decently. Not a nasty prank or frat boy joke among them; no fancy country clubs and, while the food tastes great, it's not caviar or lobster. And these people are all poor, he doesn't see anybody he knows, and he isn't even treated like someone special!

Worst of all, to Dubya, Jesus turns out to be some kind of Jewish
hippie with his endless 'peace' and 'do unto others' jive.

"Whoa," he says uncomfortably to himself, "Pat Robertson never prepared me for this!" The day done, St. Peter returns and says, "Well, then, you've spent a day in Hell and a day in Heaven. Now choose where you want to live for eternity."

With the 'Jeopardy' theme playing softly in the background, Dubya
reflects for a minute, then answers: "Well, I would never have thought I'd
say this -- I mean, Heaven has been delightful and all -- but I really think
I belong in Hell with my friends."

So Saint Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down,
down, all the way to Hell.

The doors of the elevator open and he is in the middle of a barren
scorched earth covered with garbage and toxic industrial waste...kind of
like Houston. He is horrified to see all of his friends, dressed in rags and
chained together, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags. They
are groaning and moaning in pain, faces and hands black with grime. The
Devil comes over to Dubya and puts an arm around his shoulder.

"I don't understand," stammers a shocked Dubya, "Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and a clubhouse and we ate lobster and caviar...

I drank booze. We screwed around and had a great time. Now there's just a wasteland full of garbage and everybody looks miserable!"

The Devil looks at him, smiles slyly, and purrs, "Yesterday we were
campaigning; today you voted for us."

CORRUPTION RULES

No matter who you vote for, the Oligarchy always wins. Democracy is long gone. Corruption rules.

You can have great wealth, or you can have Democracy, but you can’t have both. Until we accept that fact, we will be ruled by tyrants insane with greed and consumed with a lust for power.

Machiavelli repeated that assertion again and again.

No man or group of men can be allowed to acquire so much wealth and power that they be able to subvert the government and will of the people. Such men must be restrained by progressive taxation to preserve the Republic. The richest five per cent of Americans own ninety-five per cent of everything., and yet they want more.

The Oligarchy has an economic and political stranglehold on America. (SELF-EVIDENT TRUTH)

The Middleclass is an endangered species. We are expendable. The Oligarchy can Outsource our jobs overseas for a fraction of what they pay us. They'd like us barefoot, ignorant and desperate for jobs.

Don’t wait until you are standing in line at the Unemployment Office to begin to think.

As far as psychological differences between liberals and conservatives is concerned, that's simple. Conservatives are followers. They either follow the flock or run with the pack. THEY ARE UNABLE OR UNWILLING TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES.

LAST POINT.
MOST CONSERVATIVES I HAVE KNOWN IN SIXTY PLUS YEARS, HAVE BEEN SOCIOPATHS.

http://www.local6.com/news/2876599/detail.html

local6.com
Police: Partiers Injected With Blood At Sex Parties
Syringes Of Blood, Sex Harness Found In Man's Garage
POSTED: 11:18 AM EST February 26, 2004
UPDATED: 2:29 AM EST February 27, 2004

Young men attending sex parties in Orlando, Fla., were reportedly drugged and
injected with tainted blood inside a man's garage, according to a Local 6 News
report.

Authorities arrested Mark Randall, 45, earlier this month for
allegedly trafficking 48 grams of methamphetamine.

After an investigation, authorities determined that Randall was reportedly
having sex parties in the garage of his home at 211 E. Kaley St. and possibly
injecting the men with blood.

According to court records, four witnesses said "Randall lured subjects to his
residence via the Internet for the purpose of sex and once they were at his
residence he would get them high" with drugs.

The report also said Randall had a sex harness in the garage and "once the
subjects were in the harness, Randall and other participants would have sex with
them and videotape them."

Then, "Randall would inject the subjects with the syringes of tainted blood."

Investigators said Randall's garage was wired with video cameras and more than
100 videotapes were confiscated from the structure.

Several syringes were also taken filled with blood, Local 6 News reporter Louis
Bolden reported.

Many of the men lured to the garage were apparently juveniles, according to the
report.

The confiscated syringes are being tested to determine whether they contain
HIV-positive blood, according to the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation.

The U.S. Attorney's office has asked local law enforcement officers not to make
comments to the media about the case, Local 6 News reported.

The top six U.S. male serial killers were all gay:

• Donald Harvey claimed 37 victims in Kentucky;

• John Wayne Gacy raped and killed 33 boys in Chicago, burying them under his house and in his yard;

• Patrick Kearney accounted for 32, cutting his victims into small pieces after sex and leaving them in trash bags along the Los Angeles freeways;

• Bruce Davis molested and killed 27 young men and boys in Illinois;

• A gay sex-murder-torture ring (Corll-Henley-Brooks) sent 27 Texas men and boys to their grave; and

• Juan Corona was convicted of murdering 25 migrant workers (he "made love" with their corpses).

Lesbian Aileen Wuornos laid claim in 1992 to "worst female killer" with at least 7 middle-aged male victims. She singlehandedly topped the lesbian nurse team of Catherine Wood and Gwen Graham, who had killed 6 convalescent patients in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The association between serial murder and homosexuality isn’t recent. Two gays compete for the spot of "world’s worst murderer." During the Nazi reign of terror, Auschwitz executioner Ludwig Tiene strangled, crushed, and gnawed boys and young men to death while he raped them. Though his grand total is uncertain, he often murdered as many as 100 a day. Gilles de Rais (Bluebeard) brutally destroyed the lives of 800 boys. Each lad was lured to his home, bathed and fed. Just as the poor boy thought "this is my lucky day," he was raped, then killed by being ripped or cut apart and either burned or eaten.

A study of 518 sexually-tinged mass murders in the U.S. from 1966 to 1983 determined that 350 (68%) of the victims were killed by those who practiced homosexuality and that 19 (44%) of the 43 murderers were bisexuals or homosexuals.

Well you've proved it -- we should just kill all the Gays and Outlaw the Catholic Church and be done with it.

By the way, did you know that ...

Typical mass murderers are usually conservative, middle-aged, white males from relatively stable, lower-to-middle-class backgrounds. These individuals usually aspire to more than they can achieve, and when they see their ambitions thwarted, they blame others for their failures.

They feel exclusion and develop an irrational, and eventually, homicidal hatred of anyone they consider a hindrance to their own aspirations. Quite often, they choose to die in an eruption of violence directed at these perceived oppressors. Banks fit the profile in some ways. He felt persecuted by society, failures in employment, and yet until he snapped, he appeared to many to be living a stable, if atypical life.

There are three common types of mass murderers: family annihilators, paramilitary enthusiasts, and disgruntled workers. Social areas of dysfunction, such as unemployment, loneliness, a family breakup, or an argument with a supervisor, can trigger their deadly rage.”

from "Profile of a Mass Murderer"