On the bright side, somebody somewhere is falling in love.

On the downside, I happen to know that specific person is falling in love with sheer evil. But as I say, I prefer to focus on the love!!!

On the bright side, cancer doesn't discriminate.

Sara Robinson makes one big point I disagree with: it dunno if that's so, but isn't liberalism/progressivism more built on the basic assumption that human nature is fallible and therefore the worst must be guarded against with checks and balances? It's not so much what assumptions of human nature you make, as much as what you decide to do about it, no?

I agree with En Ming Hee. In fact, rightwingers happily believe that Glorious Leader lacks those flaws which makes humanity, writ large, problematic, and use belligerency and anti-intellectualism as indicia of such virtue. It is because liberals -- true, old-school liberals as the Framers were -- do not trust their leaders that they push so hard for elections.

I defer to no-one in my contempt for the authoritarian mind-set, but that Robinson piece is a really quite awful farrago of expedient psychobabble, replete with examples of the extraordinary ignorance of history, quaint notions about human behaviour, and desperate conflations of vastly different phenomena into an argument-serving splodge that I've come to expect from the social sciences.

Other than that I liked it.

I also think she meant Naomi Klein not Naomi Wolf but I'm prepared to be corrected on that.

yeah, i have to agree with Rob that the Robinson piece was not all there...

Rob & almostinfamous,

Can you expand on what you mean?

Oh, and in the interests of full disclosure:

Social science is bunk.

Rob wins, everybody go home.

Short version: rightwing leaders are evil, not stupid, not ideologically constrained, not pro-progress, not pro-status quo.

This doesn't mean liberals, progressives, or anyone else can't be evil. It doesn't even mean that a person is evil because they spout rightwing propaganda. It just means that if

a) You have lots of power and
b) you abuse that power by employing a rightwing ideology

you're evil. I can safely assume you're the beneficiary of such power's use since self-benefit is the entire point of rightwing ideology.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith

I've never understood the authoritarian mindset, and it's because, as it's traditionally described, it seems like I should fit into it.

I would much rather be a follower then a leader. I prefer jobs where I don't have much responsibility. I'm much happier when somebody else is making the important decisions.

Additionally, I think that almost all people are idiots. Well, that may be too harsh. I certainly believe that almost every one of us is prone to systematically and predictably making bad decisions.

And yet, I am not a Republican, and I am not religious. I'm always told that those authoritarian types get that way because they mistrust other people and want strong leaders. But that doesn't make much sense; I feel the same way, and I highly distrust authoritarians.

I mean, our leaders are people too, right? If all of us are flawed, then surely they must also be prone to flaws and problems.

That's what I don't get; these "authoritarian" types are said to believe that most men are inherently sinners, but that a quite substantial amount, something like 10-20%, are nearly flawless and shouldn't be questioned. That seems like an awfully strange opinion for somebody to hold, if they really think that men are, overall, prone to sin.

It makes me question the whole model, honestly. The "prefers to follow + distrusts mankind = Authoritarian!" model seems to be fairly poor at actually explaining human behavior.

Right wing commentators pontificate endlessly about what liberals really think, and it's clear that none of them have the slightest clue how liberals operate. I'm always worried that I act the same way towards people I disagree with.

I like reading Orcinus, but Sara Robinson's posts there have often rubbed me the wrong way. I thought it was just me.

Could it be that she's just reaching to be a futurist? She's been studying up on the subject.

I disagree with some of the tenets of authoritarianism vs individuality and the way she views them. IMO, a large part of our problem (power structures, environment, energy) tends to be rooted in individualistic actions vs collectivist views.

We need to come to grips that western philosophy and its reliance on free-will, individual liberty, free-trade, etc is destructive and inefficient. Saying that usually rubs people the wrong way just like general redistribution of goodies riles people by default.

Obviously communism isn't the answer, but some sort of benign collectivism is, if only because we live in a closed system; we can't act individually, and assume that we're negligible to end results when 6.5B individuals do it.

The trick is how not to make collectivism oppressive, and I don't think it would be oppressive if it was in my heart -- that I could willingly buy into the concept of government as a tool that enabled limited individual development, and social change control to allow for stability and planned outcomes.

Labiche: If GOD can't make YOU love YOUR neighbor then ANY government sure as Hell can't. (love IS sharing)

ITS SCREWING YOUR NEIGHBOR that governments teach. (there IS a difference)