Category Archives: Psychology & Pop-Psychology

Updated: Missionaries Cleared (Despite Anderson Cooper's Asininity)

Christianity, Colonialism, Criminal Injustice, Free Will Vs. Determinism, History, Ilana Mercer, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Multiculturalism, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The West

The extracts are from “Anderson Cooper’s Asininity,” the latest WND.COM column:

“The tough tenor toward the missionaries from Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, was set by CNN alpha female Anderson Cooper. The activist anchor and his houseboys in Haiti had been exceedingly hard on the hapless group, whose aim it was to, first, whisk the children to the Dominican Republic and, next, help ‘each child find healing, hope, joy and new life in Christ,” as well as “opportunities for adoption into a loving Christian family.’ …

Thankfully—and contrary to CNN’s self-styled newsman-cum-humanitarian—one Haitian justice was not as eager to see ‘The Americans’ go down for their goodness.

As Reuters reported, the (eminently reasonable) investigating Haitian judge looked for criminal intent in his investigation. He found none. So the Haitian justice concluded that the incarcerated missionaries acted with no malice aforethought.

Mens rea : now that’s a difficult concept for Cooper to comprehend. …

Whatever were [the missionaries’] plans for the children, these were far and away better than what’s in store for them if they remain at home.

Mind you, [now that they’re staying in Haiti], the kids can hope to be caught on camera—Anderson Cooper’s—as they chase him and his crew begging for tasty morsels, while Cooper flexes his muscles, furrows his forehead, and shows just how much he feels their pain.” …

The complete column is “Anderson Cooper’s Asininity,” now on WND.COM.

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

Before purchasing the Second Edition, which features bonus material, ask yourself this: how many column volumes would withstand the test of time with respect to truth and predictability as Broad Sides has? “Chuckie” Krauthammer’s?

Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update (Feb. 13): Robert has verified my contention in the latest column—now on my site and better titled “Anderson Cooper’s Mission Against The Missionaries”—when he asserts: “I have never met a parent that didn’t want their children to have a better future than they did.”

Americans are insular and insulated. They truly think, contra Russell Kirk’s warning, “that all men are brothers, and that all men are equal.”

In some cultures, parents drown their newborn girls before breakfast. And no, this is not reducible to the state’s policies alone. “For the sins of man, hard leftists blame society, and hard-core libertarians saddle the state. The State made me do it’ is how such social determinism can be summed-up.”

To believe that these individuals are acting out of hopelessness or despair alone, rather than acting on their values, is to fall into the Cooper, Robinson, McCain mistake.

No, some people don’t blink before giving ownership of their girls to slave masters and mistresses. Sorry to shatter the Pollyanna perception held in the west that we are all the same under the skin.

I was just reading about an orphanage in Kerala, India, founded by … good whites, for children with cerebral palsy, down syndrome and autism, “who would normally have been killed at birth or rented out to beggars.” I guess, Robert would say that the parent who did the latter wanted more for his kid than the one who chose to off his offspring.

Americans are unable to get into their mushy skulls that indeed these discarded kids I spoke of in the last column, are not “orphanage” in the way we define an orphan. Thei parents have discarded them.

Like the Coopers, Robinsons and McCains of this world, westerners can’t conceive of a reality so removed from their internal world.

Update II: Writing In The Age Of The Idiot

Ancient History, Democracy, Education, Ilana Mercer, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The Zeitgeist

Excerpted from “Writing In The Age Of The Idiot,” this week’s WND.COM column:

“The reasons for addressing readers’ responses to last week’s column, “Paleoconservative Hypocrisy” [not my title], lie not in an exaggerated sense of self-importance, but in a sense of urgency. For some particularly jarring retorts (these have become ubiquitous over the years) are emblematic of the triumph of twiddle dumb and twiddle dumber in American culture and politics. And that’s a problem.

Super smart sorts still predominate in the few professional niches in which advanced skill and aptitude are necessary if bridges are to keep from falling, airplanes to remain airborne, and their human cargo pacified with electronic gadgets. Otherwise, an intellectual underclass has risen to dominate America in almost every field of endeavor.

Once upon-a-time simpletons sought self-improvement. No longer; in the Age of the Idiot they are groomed to be oblivious to their shortcomings—and will proceed loudly and aggressively against those who fail to mirror their mindset. … On encountering someone he might learn from, he unfurls an “untamed Id” and an inflated Ego in all their fury.

So it was that Ivan Poulter wrote to inform me that … although he meant no insult, he nevertheless needed to inform me that I ‘also appear as some kind of dumb-ass in [my] exaggerated intelligence.'”

Believe it or not, but one Founding Founders forewarned of the “Idiocracy,” although not quite in those words. More in the column “Writing In The Age Of The Idiot,” which can be read on the weekends on Taki’s too.

Update I (Oct. 9): George Pal’s comment hereunder about the association between democratic mass society and mass stupidity is an important one. I wanted to include this observation, plus a reference from a “dumb-ass with an exaggerated intelligence”—can’t recall if it was Hoppe or Huntington—but I dropped the idea. Too many ideas in one column might have caused a riot.

Update II: Regarding Clay Shirky (whoever he may be, posted by anon): the man belongs to the postmodern tradition—a “tradition” that has managed to almost completely dismantle one of the greatest achievements of Western Civilization: the intellectual discipline. (Hint: this is why you “study” so-called “social sciences” o “cultural studies” in secondary and tertiary schools and not history.)

“Intellectual disciplines were founded in ancient Greece and gained considerable impetus from the work of Aristotle who identified and organized a range of subjects into orderly bodies of learning. … The history of Western knowledge shows the decisive importance of the structuring of disciplines. This structuring allowed the West to benefit from two key innovations: the systematization of research methods, which produced an accretion of consistent findings; and the organization of effective teaching, which permitted a large and accumulating body of knowledge to be transmitted from one generation to the next.” (The Killing of History, Keith Windschuttle, Encounter, pp. 247-250)

The concept of the intellectual discipline is inseparable from Western canon and curriculum.

Updated: A Windy Carter ‘Breaks News’ On ‘Countdown’

Barack Obama, Journalism, Media, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Race, Racism, Reason

Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed that news media could stoop so low. With his most solemn, commissar-like countenance, thought-crime investigator Keith Olbermann broke news on his Countdown show: The intensity of the animosity toward Barack Obama is based on his being a black man. So said the feeble-minded Jimmy Carter. This, by Keith’s journalistic standards, meant that the libel was true.

Olbermann proceeded to “debate” the ad hominem with the off-putting, effeminate, left-liberal Markos Moulitsas (It’s hard to believe that he served in the armed forces and has fathered children), and before him with Lawrence O’Donnell.

Such speculation amounts to psychologizing—impugning a disputant based on assumptions about his motives, instead of arguing the case based on facts and reason. Even worse: this breaking-news balderdash rested on an argument from authority. A shameless O’Donnell asserted in all seriousness that because Carter had said so, and because Carter was from the South, he ought to know. Therefore, Joe Wilson and Southern Americans must be taken to the proverbial woodshed, i. e., subjected to reeducation in the form of endless discussion about race, conducted by the familiar race hucksters.

Middle America had better stand and fight this one to the end.

Update (Sept. 17): At the time Obama ascended to the throne his approval ratings ran to 70 percent. Are we to believe this senile git Carter that between March and September of 2009 Americans developed a bad case of racism?

Updated: A Windy Carter 'Breaks News' On 'Countdown'

Barack Obama, Journalism, Media, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Race, Racism, Reason

Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed that news media could stoop so low. With his most solemn, commissar-like countenance, thought-crime investigator Keith Olbermann broke news on his Countdown show: The intensity of the animosity toward Barack Obama is based on his being a black man. So said the feeble-minded Jimmy Carter. This, by Keith’s journalistic standards, meant that the libel was true.

Olbermann proceeded to “debate” the ad hominem with the off-putting, effeminate, left-liberal Markos Moulitsas (It’s hard to believe that he served in the armed forces and has fathered children), and before him with Lawrence O’Donnell.

Such speculation amounts to psychologizing—impugning a disputant based on assumptions about his motives, instead of arguing the case based on facts and reason. Even worse: this breaking-news balderdash rested on an argument from authority. A shameless O’Donnell asserted in all seriousness that because Carter had said so, and because Carter was from the South, he ought to know. Therefore, Joe Wilson and Southern Americans must be taken to the proverbial woodshed, i. e., subjected to reeducation in the form of endless discussion about race, conducted by the familiar race hucksters.

Middle America had better stand and fight this one to the end.

Update (Sept. 17): At the time Obama ascended to the throne his approval ratings ran to 70 percent. Are we to believe this senile git Carter that between March and September of 2009 Americans developed a bad case of racism?