Thursday, January 18, 2007

Sliding down the slippery slope

Lately there has been a lot of talk on the Left about censoring critics of the AGW (anthropological global warming) theory from Al Gore to US Senators Rockerfeller and Snowe, and even the Weather Channel's Dr. Heidi Cullen (via Hog On Ice) calling for the AMS to withdraw endorsement from any scientist who questions AGW. Free speech advocates on the right side of the fence criticized the senators from as far away as England, but it doesn't really seem to make a dent in their fervent religious belief in AGW.

Then I saw this. Yep, that's right. The academic psychology elite have decided that it's official now. Conservative ideology is a mental pathology. (Do go read it, it's a very good article discussing the much lauded ... ahem ... "study").

Do you see where we're headed? I was discussing this with a well educated and well read friend of mine (who I'll leave anonymous since I haven't asked his permission) ... he had this to say:
There is a striking analogy to a trend in the U.S.S.R. in the decade before its well-earned collapse: what to do about internal critics? The earlier approach under Lenin and Stalin would be to arrest critics, perhaps give them a show trial, and then execute them publicly. More common would be a bullet through the neck in the dark woods. Then the Soviets became more sophisticated: if you held alternative views to Marxist orthodoxy, it must be because you suffered a mental aberration from seeing what was so patently true. Hence the rise of political psychiatry in the USSR, which could result in a "patient" being confined in a sanatorium. Of course, we could turn the same argument around and say that those who espouse Left-Liberalism suffer from uncontrollable delusions and sociopathy.
But we don't (outside of frustrated hyperbole).

Liberals routinely dismiss arguments simply on the grounds that the person espousing them is a "conservative", or that the argument is in agreement with another known conservative, or simply because the argument itself sounds "conservative". It is thus not necessary for the liberal to argue a case on its merits. I mean, hey, it's "conservative". Let's not waste our time, that man needs help! Now we have people actually laying academic groundwork to say this is officially a mental pathology. It's like being schizophrenic.

Not that psychology is even a science, or anything.

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