The Democratic Party has become the party of therapeutic intervention. To be a Democrat, as they conceive of themselves, requires resignation to the plight of having a socially induced, socially-designed, insurmountable psychology.
The cliché is that the Democrats need some big ideas, that they “need to stand for something.” This is actually false. The Democratic Party clearly does stand for something: it stands for the meek notion that psychotherapy and social psychology ought to be the engines behind all public policies. Arthur Brooks even appeals to psychologists to diagnose Republicans as once humorless whiney children. In a word, the Democratic Party has become the party of therapeutic intervention, whereas the Republican Party has become the party of moral and political philosophy. And in light of the Democratic Party’s recent history of political failure, if they genuinely want to change the course of American politics and maybe even win a few elections they probably ought to reject the false gods of psychology, psychotherapy, and all other permutations of such un-testable ultra-soft sciences. Freud, after all, is dead, and DSM diagnoses by committee are absurd by any measure.
Certainly liberal democracies, in the Jeffersonian and Lockean sense, tend to be skeptical of fundamentalist religious doctrines, but liberal democracies nevertheless run contrary to the Democrats’ psychological and sociological notions of accidental sin. To sin, in a true liberal democracy, requires the intent to sin. Republicans sin, plenty. Democrats never do. To sin requires a lapse of reason and a sense of individual honor diminished. Not so for the Democratic Party. For Democrats sin is impossible, there is only mental illness and social despair.
America however is a liberal democracy, and Americans like to be honored for their freely chosen actions. We relish our ability to sin or not to sin, on purpose. We cherish our individual ability to change, even to revolt, if need be. We hold dear that our personal development of character is our individual responsibility and, more importantly, we take pride in our character so developed. We like the notion that we each must make ourselves into the people we will become. Americans, members of a liberal democracy as described by Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man, thrive on their pursuit of Platonic thumos.
Thumos is generally translated as “spiritedness” or the passion of one’s heart for just honor. But it is clearly meant by Plato as the intermediary component of our distinctly human psyche, between animal appetite and human reason. The human psyche loves with progressive sophistication: we love first with our stomachs, then with our hearts and ultimately with our reason. Thumos is that amalgam of reasonably directed passion for personal recognition that drives the guardians of Plato’s Republic to want to fulfill their civic function precisely, honorably. Thumos then seems best understood as one’s personal desire for honor and glory in good accomplishments. There is no mystery that the recognition one receives for a job well done, the social recognition that brings about justifiable pride of accomplishment appeals to our sense of thumos.
We want to succeed. As Fukuyama points out, we “struggle for recognition.” We yearn to be honored for our success. And we actively pursue the glory of a success that is earned. Yet, as Plato describes, the truly just individual recognizes that reason must guide thumos, and thumos must in turn guide appetite. Thumos is then the goal of appetitive desire, and yet thumos without the guidance of reason would be but tyrannical. No just soul wants mere glory; for the love for glory is but a transitory instrument for winning justifiable honor from those whose reason we truly respect. In the end we love the Good beyond even the chest satiated with thumos. The Democratic Party, however, has abandoned this spirited pursuit of honor, thumos. Whereas, at root the American psyche is Platonic, the Democratic Party’s psyche is a Freudian inversion.
Democrats have placed appetite ahead of reason and conceived of reason as a pleading child before a cold patriarchal judge envisioned as some variety of super-ego-induced conscience. So, one must resign oneself to be a Democrat. One must resign one’s self to discontent within civilization. For the Democrats there are imagined giants in our souls like the imagined Anakim (Deut 1:28) that scared Moses into the desert for yet 40 more years. Psychological determinism cannot be beaten; there is no Promised Land of liberty for today’s Democrats, only sighing and recrimination and never ending sacrifice to sociological determinism. To be a Democrat, as they conceive of themselves, requires resignation to the plight of having a socially induced, socially-designed, insurmountable psychology. We are individually helpless. Each of us is but the outcome of the consequences of the forces of history and politics upon our frail bodies and minds. The Democratic Party is the party of Fukuyama’s “Last Man,” that pathetic, shameless, prideless, genderless “person.” These are the “men without chests” (p.11) for whom resolving their socially induced mental illnesses are the only telos (function) left for their forlorn psyches. That is why sadness haunts Democrats so. Their sadness is their last delight.
Reason, for the Democrat, has been reduced to a little ego navigating between the giants of Superego and Id. Their religion of social psychology thus undermines both authentic individual thumos and thereby individual moral character as well. For the Democrat there is no just pursuit of honor, no true thumos, merely a punitive psychosocial conscience and the requisite symptoms their quasi-scientists call ”ego defenses,” neuroses and mental illnesses. And so long as the Democratic Party continues its faithful embrace of their religion of psychology and the concomitant rejection of individual autonomy and individual pride that comes with autonomy, the Democratic Party will remain a party resigned to mental illness over moral autonomy.
On the other hand, so long as Republicans refrain from descending into the social science quagmire and remain true to the big ideas of political and ethical philosophy — the perennial big ideas of the West — Republicans will, over time, continue to defeat the psychological ideologies of the Democrats. The ideas of philosophers like Plato, Locke, and Mill are timeless and pertinent. The trendy ideas of psychologists like Freud, Skinner and neophyte Gilligan have all become laughable anachronisms in but decades or less after their arrival.
The psychological despair of the Democratic Party became palpable for me in October 1991 during the Clarence Thomas hearings. Even as a pro-choice Democrat, I agreed with soon to be Justice Thomas that the Democrats were using Anita Hill as the rope for their “high-tech lynching.” During those hearings the Democratic Party had become something terrifying. This was not the party of individual freedom, as I had supposed. This was the party of paternalism. The Democratic Party had become the Mental Illness Party. They had given up reasoned morality in favor of deception on behalf of mental health. Anita Hill had allowed herself to be convinced that her mental health had been harmed by her brief time working with Clarence Thomas. Her bizarre pubic-hair-on-the-Coke-can story is akin to the sort of unverifiable recovered-memory hogwash psychotherapists regularly evoke and have often used to destroy the lives of innocent men and women.
During the Clarence Thomas hearings it became clear the Democrats had replaced reasoned argument with a dangerous new attachment to the paternalism of psychotherapy. Psychotherapists easily justify both lying and coercion when they deem lying and coercion in the patient’s best interest. For the Democratic Party, Americans had become psychiatric patients. Moral intentionality had been usurped by mental illness. This was not merely a strategy for the Democrats: they bought it. To make their case during the Clarence Thomas hearings, Democrats brought a seething, mentally anguished, downright bizarre Anita Hill to testify. The Republicans brought legal scholars. At that point I became a Republican.
I think the writer is a little unfair to Democrats. The average rank-and-file Democrat is not too much different than anyone else. Perhaps they expect a little too much out of government and hold it in unjustifiably high esteem, and certainly they cast their votes for the wrong people, but the average Democrat works hard at their job, raises their kids to be productive members of society, and cares about their neighbors.
There is a faction of Democrats that does fit the author’s thesis, however. These Democrats think that anyone who disagrees with them are evil, bigots, homophobes, extremists, fundamentalists, etc. They dismiss their ideological opponents with these buzz words, they have the answer to every problem (more government spending), they distrust the ability of the average individual to make their own way in life, they don’t think that people are capable of making smart decisions, and they think that they have the right to tell people what they can eat, what they can say, and what kind of car they should buy.
These kind of Democrats love to do long distance psychoanalysis and pronounce their prognosis having never met the person. They know what people are thinking and label them, categorize them, and recommend remediation of their errant thinking.
They are so confident in their own superiority that they get outraged if anyone disagrees with them. They will never respond to a debate, they will only attack. They will tell their “version” of the truth so often, so loudly, and so insistently that it becomes inviolate “conventional wisdom.”
It is useless to have a conversation with them, for they are so pursuaded of their righteousness. If you happen to disagree, well, you are not just wrong, you are eeeevil, you are a hater, you are narrowminded, you are an oppressor, a censor, a trampler of human rights.
So, a word to my fellow conservatives: Don’t bother debating with one of these types, and there are a few of them who post on this website. Just ignore them. Don’t make the mistake of attempting to be rational or logical with them. It won’t work, and it’ll just make you frustrated.
Rich,
Very well stated. I would only add a few things.
First, the author seems to be tarring the whole Democratic party with a liberal brush. Like you said, that isn’t right. We get enough of that from them and we should know better.
Second, Republicans have their own nutjobs so we should be careful labeling a broad section of people based on the goofy words and actions of a few.
As far as debates are concerned, I’ve seen extremists on both sides too. The far right tends to have a “holier-than-thou” attitude, while the far left has the “I’m WAY smarter than you” attitude. Neither attitude is conducive to any civil exchange of ideas.
The behavior I have observed in the most visible and vocal Democrats leads
me to wonder whether there might not be some mental illness pervading
the party, as the most visible do not engage in intellectual exchange, but
rather demonize and resort to name-calling with all of the maturity, wisdom,
and class reminiscent of a kindergarten playground. The Democrats who
are able to make rational arguments for their convictions for some reason
remain silent, letting their more passionate, less civil colleagues hog the
spotlight. Do they fear that no one will take them seriously if they speak
slowly, clearly, and rationally, without slogans and cliches? I cannot say. But
I do not understand this approach.
I’d like to add that J.D. Carmine’s essay on Democrat mental illness is closer to the truth than he lets on. If we take the typical liberal, it isn’t an exageration to say they are lost in a perpetual state of adolescence. How do we quantify mental illness? Often by saying they have a mental capacity of an 8 year old, or 2 year old; in this case a teen.
A teenager is usually not totally self aware of their own biases; they’re not in control of their emotions or passions; they are in denial most of the time (everything going wrong is someone elses fault); they are grossly misinformed (ignorant) of enough facts to make intelligent decisions on their own; teens resort easily to emotional outbursts of name calling and other non-intellectual methods of arguing (no real dialogue); they are unable to comprehend cause and effect (actions, words have consequences); the list goes on.
Society has not educated its young for enough generations that we may have lost it for good. When we have nearly 1/2 the population who will never grow up it becomes nearly impossible for the founding principles of representative government to work. We the people of the United states, lost in a perpetual state of adolescence are not adult enough for the “contract” with the Lockean “necessary evil” to be anything but null & void.
We train, but don’t educate, excellent doctors, engineers, MBA’s, but they are never taught what it means to be an adult. They complete 16 years of school with good job training but no education. They graduate without having been taught history, economics, scientific theory and nothing of the character of mankind, nor the rise of the West and thus, the adolescent mind will unlikely mature on its own. They cannot tell a good character from a poor one, truth from fiction, myth from reality, hypothesis from theory and thus relativism, multiculturalism and environmentalism ideologies apeal to their deficient adolescent psyches. These voters, lost in their perpetual adolescence are guided more by their misperceptions and contemporary myths, than anything resembling an adult rational interpretation of reality.
I have often thought that the public school system in this country is not
one of education, but of indoctrination. I was lucky enough to attend Pearl
High School in Mississippi, where the teachers were conscientious and
devoted to their students. They challenged us to think, not just react.
Unfortunately, the more I read, the more I think that my high school was
the exception than the rule. Students in public school today are taught what
to think, not how to think. This is the primary flaw of our system, and must be
rectified as soon as possible.
The Democrats are the mental-illness party and the Republicans are the Stupid party…Let us start looking very seriously at the Libertarians and the Constitution Party!!
Their people can’t be any worse, and their platforms and policies can only lead to a TREMENDOUS improvement!
GOD BLESS AMERICA!!
David K. Meller
This article is very much on point. Instead of singing America the Beautiful,
we should be singing “America the Emotive”.
Great article. Its just ironic that some, if not the, most leftist idiots in the public education system are in psychology where they get to spew off rhetoric that appeals to people emotions rather than individuals who where in a free market economic system will respond to accordingly. They often do their mental disorder indoctrination where the “social benefit” comes through above any individual effort to acheive their false notion of utilitariainism. They however are able to brainwash a classroom, or the publics, mindset by so called “rights” that the framers of the constitution and the beginning men of our country KNEW better than and they ceaselessly work to implement these lies in their postitions of power. So called rights often include “right to an education,” “right to health care,” and many other major sources of out life that socialist nations use to bring their country under severe repression and poverty. This destruction combination of the governments ownership over certain areas of the economy added to the counterculture concepts of political correctness, affirmative action, and the overall abolition of class-income, race, sex, creed, religion, and so forth severely limits personal and economic freedom in todays society. This leads to a mental illness of not being able to distinguish right from wrong or fact from fiction and creates an overall dumbed down, falsely educated, demented mindset. Its also ironic that when the left calls certain groups of conservatives “narrowminded and intolerant” that in their twisted beliefs and innaccurate theories they that prove the fact that the radical left is a reigion in itself and nothing else should be listened to, discusses, or debated. In conclusion we seem to be in the current situation of Brave New World meets 1984. Its time for the party of true liberty and objectivism-the libertarians to lead America into the future.
Great article. Its just ironic that some, if not the, most leftist idiots in the public education system are in psychology where they get to spew off rhetoric that appeals to people emotions rather than individuals who where in a free market economic system will respond to accordingly. They often do their mental disorder indoctrination where the “social benefit” comes through above any individual effort to acheive their false notion of utilitariainism. They however are able to brainwash a classroom, or the publics, mindset by so called “rights” that the framers of the constitution and the beginning men of our country KNEW better than and they ceaselessly work to implement these lies in their positions of power. So called rights often include “right to an education,” “right to health care,” and many other major sources of our life that socialist nations use to bring their country under severe repression and poverty. This destruction combination of the governments ownership over certain areas of the economy added to the counterculture concepts of political correctness, affirmative action, and the overall abolition of class-income, race, sex, creed, religion, and so forth severely limits personal and economic freedom in todays society. This leads to a mental illness of not being able to distinguish right from wrong or fact from fiction and creates an overall dumbed down, falsely educated, demented mindset. Its also ironic that when the left calls certain groups of conservatives “narrowminded and intolerant” that in their twisted beliefs and innaccurate theories they that prove the fact that the radical left is a reigion in itself and nothing else should be listened to, discusses, or debated. In conclusion we seem to be in the current situation of Brave New World meets 1984. Its time for the party of true liberty and objectivism-the libertarians to lead America into the future.