Is liberalism political madness? By Dr. Ellis Washington
The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind.
~ Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter Jr., M.D., “The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness” (2008)
Are liberals clinically mad? This controversial question has been proposed and written about by many political pundits and conservative intellectuals, most notably, Dr. Michael Savage, a visionary radio talk show host from San Francisco, in his 2005 book, “Liberalism is a mental disorder.” However, Dr. Rossiter, brings a solid background as a psychiatrist and non-partisan, and years of clinical experience dealing with mental disorders of every conceivable type – making his findings singularly unique, objective and difficult to ignore.
For 25 years, I myself have studied and written about political liberalism, which traces its origins to the 16th and 17th century and the Age of Enlightenment; particularly the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Kant, Diderot, Jefferson and others.
Political liberalism continued to modern times in the politics and political writings of William James, Walter Lippman, Herbert Croly, Woodrow Wilson, FDR and LBJ, among others. I have also studied liberalism in all of its permutations and presuppositions, including democracy, natural law, natural rights, humanism, Marxism, utilitarianism, socialism, communism, progressivism, pragmatism, moderates, neoliberalism, conservative liberalism, the welfare state, etc.
While neither Dr. Rossiter nor myself postulate that all liberals are ipso facto clinically mad, there are many characteristics of liberalism that are associated with the classic symptoms of madness, including:
- creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
- satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
- augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
- rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.
At Savannah State University, where I teach American government, international law and American judicial process, I am constantly waging intellectual warfare against my college students to forsake dependent, slavish ideologies rooted in emotivism, like liberalism, socialism, welfare statism and feminism, and instead to embrace critical thinking in all of their intellectual pursuits.
Recently during a mock presidential debate I had organized where I played Sen. John McCain (as if he were a true conservative), I even slammed my fist on the table and in the spirit of Justice Clarence Thomas’ grandfather, who told young Clarence as a child, “The damn party’s over!” I reacted to the SSU students openly praising FDR statism and the virtues of socialism or forcibly taking money from one group of people (produces) and giving it to another (non-producers). While the TV camera was rolling, I emphatically told the students at that debate to “Get off the damn plantation!”
The students, administration, faculty and staff were perhaps shocked at my characterization of the welfare state and its inimical effects on the black family, but I thought it had to be said so that we don’t loose another generation of black students to failed, genocidal policies of the past.
Dr. Rossiter conveyed those same sentiments but in a much less emotive tone when he wrote: “Like spoiled, angry children, they [liberals] rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave.”
Whether you have a Ph.D. or a GED or fall somewhere in between, any government system or political philosophy based on taking trillions of taxpayer dollars and giving it to some lazy bum who didn’t earn it and doesn’t deserve it in my opinion is sheer madness – as is any political organization like the Democratic Party that achieves and seizes power by seeing people not as the Constitution’s framers saw people, as individuals (”We the People”), but uses them as a cynical means to an unholy end – using Machiavellian, Marxist and Alinsky tactics, divide people into warring factions: men against women, blacks against whites, Jews against Muslims, proper against the perverse, handicapped against able-bodied, workers against employers, straight against homosexuals, “the haves vs. the have nots.”
It’s all madness. Objectively speaking, liberalism is national genocide!
Let’s apply Rossiter’s theory that liberalism is a psychological disorder to today’s politicians, Barack Obama and his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton, two unashamed, big-government socialists. Rossiter writes:
A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity – as liberals do … A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population – as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation’s citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state – as liberals do.
The key phrase is “human nature.” There is a profound ignorance and loathing in the political philosophy of liberalism against human nature. Where it is discussed in polite company it is done so in context of casting maledictions, ridicule and contempt upon Christians, Christianity and their belief in the synthesis of legality and morality; an idea adopted by the framers of the Constitution and held as absolutely indispensable to the survival of America’s republic. 
To your average liberal intellectual or humanist academic, the Founding Fathers and the Constitution’s framers were the lowest, vilest, murderous hypocrites on the face of the earth and only deserve our utter condemnation. We see this displayed daily on the liberal media, in the judicial system, in the Democratic Party, in its leadership, its committees and the policies they champion, both domestic and foreign. Virtually every word uttered, printed or recorded by liberals is a dishonorable, unbroken litany of treason against America’s laws, economics, culture, society and her most sacred values.
Rossiter said that liberalism is “based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions; modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded.”
Using legal logic and deductive reasoning, if, as Dr. Rossiter brilliantly delineates, liberalism is a psychological disorder tantamount to political madness and America just elected Barack Obama, who according to the National Journal is the most liberal member of both houses of Congress, who ran on a socialist platform of resurrection of the welfare state of FDR, then what does that say about our American citizens who have elected these people to have Stalin-like control over every aspect of our lives from cradle to grave?
Can you say UAA, United Asylum of America?
Last 3 posts by Dr. Ellis Washington
- Israel: Fight like your forefathers - January 6th, 2009
- The canary in the mine - January 3rd, 2009
- Egalitarianism, sports and rewarding failure - December 28th, 2008
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Comment by Clay Bowler on 16 November 2008:
Dr. Washington, the article that I applauded you on was titled “DuBois vs. Washington: Old Lessons Black People have not Learned.” You helped me with a thesis that I was developing on who was better for blacks after slavery. We both agreed that W.E.B. DuBois radical approach set blacks back, and the lessons Booker T. Washting to eloquently wrote of was the best course not just for blacks, but for all men.
Comment by Wade Moises on 16 November 2008:
@ Emily:
I think the problem is perspective. I believe who you are describing are human beings in general. The label of Liberal or Conservative, Demoocrat, Republican, Facist, Anarchist, Nihlist (spelling?)all describe…People! Human Beings…Black, White, Blue, Red, Green, Female, Male, short Tall. Symptoms of madness, paranoia and pathos are seen throughout spectrum of Humans and I really don’t see how some one can place a label people with a certain Political ideals as insane…That only would Apply if you truly believe that each and every “liberal” thought exactly the same. Do all conservatives think Exactly the same? what ya have here is a little old fashioned pigion holing, predjudice. The whole idea of a democracy is to discuss solutions to problems that benifit the greater good. The fact that people have different ideas is good and shows that at least we have ideas. Obtuse concepts such as dividing a country in two by political beliefs has to do with the media needing something to get you to tune in to and see some commercials. Honestly do you think that all liberals want a welfare state? Most PEOPLE just want a responsable, ACCOUNTABLE and honerable government that doesn’t make them look stupid. Unfortunatly this can never be the case because we all want something different as individuals. Perspectives have so much to do with all of the missives hurled between people. The only reason we use such broad terms is that we must be able to choose someone to lead our country from only two parties. The names liberals and conservative, and all the rest are all just instruments of divide that will keep our nation off balance. In history misguided predjudice as lead down a nearly inhuman trail and I hope that our country never takes one step in that…oops…too late…
Comment by Emily on 15 November 2008:
How about the symptom of pathological lying? I have been told by many liberals that it is okay to lie, and I don’t know of one liberal who does not lie easily and without concern or conscience.
Secondly, how about their ability and effort at total denial to reality? Most of them refuse to hear or look at anything which could educate them as to another viewpoint or the reality of a situation. They simply refuse to HEAR. Most refuse to LISTEN in the first place, but if they listen, it’s as if you said nothing as they repeat the same talking points after you finish.
There are other symptoms, but I’ll save them for my own article which I’m working on. Liberalism is indeed a mental disorder when you really examine the totality of the “symptoms” all liberals demonstrate.
Comment by Clay Bowler on 15 November 2008:
Dr. Washington, if I remember right, we shared ideas over e-mail a few years ago. I enjoyed your commentary. I forget the article we discussed, but I remember it was brilliant.
I enjoyed this article as well. I lived in Chicago for many years where I met many of my liberal friends. When they are in public, they act as you described. One friend in particular rants he is a victim of the Bush environmenal policies. He says time is limited because of global warming as he rushes around the city in his sports car burning fossil fuels. (My college thesis was on the fraud of global warming, and no matter how many times I have presented to him evidnece the earth goes through natural cycles, he still points the finger at Detroit and other industries. I received an A from a liberal professor by the way.)
He is also a victim of the ‘oppression’ of the Christian church. He believes the church prevents him from excelling. He believes in positive vs. negative energy. He fails to understand that God is the ultimate form of positive energy as taught in the Bible. What oppression?
What amazed me, as I sat in a Waffle House talking about several political issues (global warming not one of them) with him, is that his some of his core views are conservative. It’s as if he was wearing a mad blue mask and when I took that mask off, explaining to him the cost of extreme taxation and the reasons for a failing federally influenced education system, you could see him waving the red states flag for a brief moment.
It’s as if his Chicago environment has nailed these beliefs on a piece of particle board inside his head. In time, the psuedo crisis heat warped the particle board just enough to let those core beliefs out for a few minutes.
I found my breakfast fascinating. I believe now the core beliefs that were taught to most , still resonate underneath the particle board of victimization, guilt, entitlement, and dependence. Unfortunately, I believe deprogramming involves removing these people from comforts like a big city. That’s the tough part.
Comment by Wade Moises on 15 November 2008:
odd…
our “conservative” president bush and our media has re-inforced our feelings of victimization from 19 terrorists and their backers to two once soverign nations.
President bush also tells us that he was entitled by GOD to get the reparations in form of blood and oil for our being attacked by people whom his father once supported and helped to arm and train.
our government and media have also Augmentented our feelings of envy for what those nations contain (oil and the route for piping more)by telling us that we need those things to survive.
All of this lead to the rejecting of the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government by usurping the constitution through illegal wire tapping and monitoring of citizens, out sourceing terror and then backing corporate greed by privatizing war and allowing it to be come a profitable enterprise to send our poor to die for? freedom? or is it money to line the pockets of Haliburton, Blackwater, Bectel and about 100 others? Basically you can spout all the Psycho-babble you want but the words liberal and conservative are nothing but something used to polarize our nation to keep the power at the top stable. Maddness is not noticing that the constitution is not followed by the conservatives or the liberals and not doing something about it…call me stupid, crazy or paranoid. Facts are Facts, IS is IS, just because you point a finger and say “Terrorist” doesnt make it so, Point the finger and say “liberal madness” doesnt make it so, point the finger and say “religious nut” doesnt make it so. Ones actions do make it so.
Comment by Dale on 15 November 2008:
There are at least as many kinds of liberalism as there are of conservatism. You’ve done so much cherry picking and straw man erection, it’s hard to know where to start, but let’s just look at this one set of “characteristics of madness”.
1. Creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
Throughout the election Republicans never took responsibility for their faults, but always cast themselves as the victims of a hostile press. Post-election Republicans continue with the victimization card, with Rush Limbaugh, for example, claiming they have been victimized before the new President has even taken office.
2. Satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
The most fervent detractors of a progressive income tax are Republican trust fund babies who never earned a dime in their lives.
3. Augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
The entire Republican way of life is dependent on feelings of envy, hence their propensity for extravagant consumption and chants of “Drill, baby drill!”
4. Rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.
For 8 years, Republicans have been ratcheting up the power of the government over the individual and have managed to create the most expensive government in the history of mankind.
You might be right that some forms of liberalism are madness, but it’s clear that some forms of conservatism are also madness.