For years I listened to Michael Savage every evening while driving home from San Francisco to Novato. It wasn’t that I am a big fan of his, but rather that he was basically the only option. Mr. Savage is an interesting character and sometimes he is very good at making his point. One of his favorite lines was that he believed Liberalism was a mental disorder. His theory was based on the incredible ability of liberals to completely ignore facts and common sense to arrive at their conclusions. Ronald Reagan said that liberals are not bad people; they just believe a lot of things that are not true. Now we learn that Harvard has discovered a gene that explains liberalism. Ironically they describe it as follows:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8093089/Liberal-gene-discovered-by-scientists.html
dopamine receptor gene called DRD4
Dopamine seems like a really good description of the liberal thought process.
But there is good news in the study. It turns out that even people with this defect don’t necessarily turn out to be liberal, unless they hang out with the wrong friends. In other words liberalism can be cured, either by early association with non-liberals or by the simple aging process, although some liberals obviously never figure it out.
A reforming liberal friend of mine said he used to think a conservative was a liberal who had been mugged. He now says that a conservative is a liberal who got a 25% increase in his health care premium because of Obamacare.
I have to admit I am frequently astonished at the thought process of liberals. If I am having a discussion with someone and they say I have my facts wrong, I always pay attention. I might not admit it to them, but I will usually do some research and at least evaluate their facts. To me the truth is very important. What sense does it make to believe in something that is based on things that are not true? But often I have discovered that liberals are not interested in facts. They “feel” they are right, so to them facts are irrelevant.
Perhaps the best example of this is the liberal view of Dick Cheney. The facts are that Dick Cheney was well liked and respected by people in both parties before he became Vice President. He didn’t become “Darth Vader” until after the 2000 election. With help from the mass media, Dick Cheney is widely considered to be a mean and vicious person with little regard to anyone else. Yet the records show that Dick Cheney is one of the most giving politicians ever. In 2005 he made $8,819,006. He and his wife donated 75% of that, or $6,869,655 to charity. In the same year, Joe Biden donated $395. In 1997 when Al Gore was Vice President he reported income of $197,729 and paid a whopping $353 to charity. Yet if you ask a liberal today who is more generous, Al Gore, Joe Biden or Dick Cheney, they will laugh derisively that the evil Dick Cheney would even be mentioned in the same breath as these two saintly individuals.
Ultimately, this is why liberalism is destined to failure. When you are making decisions based on assumptions that are not true, your chances of making the correct decision is very low.
But, now I am more understanding of liberals. Harvard has shown that these people are not deliberately wrong, they are just mentally ill as the result of a defective gene. I will try to be more understanding by recognizing they probably can’t help themselves. Of course, as with any other mental illness, we should avoid putting such people into positions which require decision making. That would be cruel.
TDM