Rules of Engagement: Dissect, Dissect and more Dissect for your reading pleasure

Rules of Engagement - Part II Knowing what makes your opponents tic(ks) is called learning to look at the gooey stuff without throwing up. photo of Dr.Ray.

This guy can take a subject and worry it to bits. Reminds me of me.

The following are quotes from various papers of Psychologist Professor Dr.John Ray of New South Wales University. Emphasis are mine.
 1) Leftists/liberals do nonetheless dislike neo-liberal (pro-market) change because it threatens their access to power. The old Soviet system showed that, once they have gained power, Leftists suddenly become very opposed to change. Change is just an instrument they use to gain their ultimate goal of power. And why is power sought so single-mindedly? Why the single-minded egotism? At its deepest level, Leftism appears to be psychopathic -- with the psychopathic disregard for all norms, morals, standards and ethics in the ruthless quest for personal praise and satisfaction.
 2) Leftists do in general like to engineer change as a way of making themselves look good but if any given change does not do that and in fact moves power further way from them, they with perfect ease go into reverse gear and do exactly what they otherwise have always accused conservatives of doing: They defend the status quo both at home and abroad.
 3) Leftists can defend any status quo if it suits their power needs -- as indeed they also do when they defend their welfare empires from conservative attempts at cutbacks and welfare reform.

 4) Another amusing example of Leftist moral imbecility and lack of any real principles to go with the proclaimed ones is Will Hutton. Will Hutton, Britain's foremost critic of capitalism and an outspoken advocate for affordable social housing, is married to a property developer who has made a fortune out of selling and renting inner-city properties, often at rates which local council housing officers describe as exorbitant. 
5) There does seem to be a divide there of considerable potency and generalizability and the demise of that great icon of Leftism -- the Soviet Union -- seems to have had little impact on the division concerned. Leftists may no longer have Communism to point to as a possible alternative system but they remain Leftists all the same. The banner proposal of Leftists since Karl Marx -- State ownership of the means of production or "socialism" no longer seems reasonable to all but a handful of diehards but Leftists are still Leftists and Rightists are still Rightists and never, it seems, the twain shall meet.
 6) A doctrine that flows very directly from Leftist change-orientation, however, is their usual rejection of the idea of human nature. Leftists are usually emphatic that there is no such thing as an inherited, unchangeable human nature. Since Leftists want to change more or less everything, anything that is unchangeable is anathema to them.
 7) Leftists simply reject what does not suit them -- regardless of the enormous evidence in favour of inherited characteristics. The entire academic discipline of behaviour genetics should not exist from a Leftist point of view.
 8) Conservative (and scientific) rejection of the Leftist idea that human beings are infinitely malleable does of course pose a major threat to the Leftist's assumptions, theories and programmes and it is one that the Leftist cannot really rebut so the usual Leftist response is simply some sort of ad hominem nonsense such as claiming that conservatives are less "compassionate" (As if Leftists in power such as Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were "compassionate"!). Abuse takes the place of argument.
9) A Leftist realizes that it is pretty vacant simply to be against the status quo. He has to have something a bit more substantial to say than that in order to get any attention at all. But his best attempt at finding something substantial to say is still pretty pathetic. What he says is: "All men are equal" and "The government should fix it". The proverbial Blind Frederick could see that all men are NOT equal and anybody who thinks that governments are good at doing things can only be pitied. Nonetheless, "Equality" is the Leftist's claimed ideal and government action is the way he proposes to bring it about. So given his slender intellectual and rhetorical resources, the Leftist has to make up for their emptiness by advocating them both blindly and vigorously.
 10) Whatever Rightists might want, however, wanting to change the existing system is the umbrella under which all Leftists meet. Even at the height of British socialism, for instance, British Leftists still wanted MORE socialism. That permanent and corrosive dissatisfaction with the society they live in is the one thing that clearly identifies all Leftists. That is the basic thing that they all have in common. Unquote

 That's it for "fun" news for today folks as I have to now go wade through some of the ZZZzzzzzzzzzz Leftist mantras for a possible write-up tomorrow.

 Thought I would leave you with this quote from Confucius: "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."