Several years after a Federally funded study found that conservatism was a mental disorder a Right Wing psychiatrist has released a book, timed for the election cycle, claiming the same things about Liberals. Are we to believe that this is a coincidence?
Little known shrink and political hack Dr. Lyle Rossiter has released a new book entitled "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness" that is designed to feed the red meat hunger of Right Wing ideologues at a time when the Conservative movement is on the ropes after seven years of incompetence and corruption under George W. Bush.
Most of its claims are not so subtle reversals of the conclusions reached by four distinguished scholars that were funded by the
US Government in a study to discover the roots of conservatism.
The report "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition" cost $1.2 million and was supervised by the National Foundation as well as the National Institutes of Health. It found that conservatism is essentially a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".
In an article published in the highly respected peer reviewed scholarly journal "Psychological Bulletin" the authors state:
"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes."
Among the sufferers of this heart-breaking malady the researchers studied President George W. Bush and found him to be a "textbook case" of the madness. Among the early warning signs that he exhibits is "his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance." The scientists believe that it was Bush's aversion to shades of gray and the need for "closure" that led him to ignore intelligence that contradicted his beliefs about Iraq's non existent WMD's.
At the time that this report came out conservatives were outraged and dismissed the whole thing as merely the opinion of the scientists involved. It is highly amusing now to watch conservatives fall all over themselves to tout Dr. Rossiter unscientific and undocumented political scree simply because it gives them comfort in the face of their impending humiliation at the polls come November.
