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The Mystery of Chief Justice John Roberts

by Dr. Mark Dillof July 14, 2012October 20, 2018

Often the best way to understand a person is by contrasting him with someone who faced a similar type of crisis. Consider Sir Thomas More, who lived during the early part of the Sixteenth Century. He was, in addition to being a writer and philosopher, the Lord Chancellor of England, which meant that he was head of the judiciary and thus not too far afield of the position, here in America, of Chief Justice. More didn’t contend with the president of the United States, but rather King Henry the Eighth of England.

Sir Thomas More

King Henry wished to have his marriage annulled by the Catholic Church, so that he could remarry, with the church’s official approval. Thomas More was the one who had the power to do so. President Obama, on the other hand, wished to have his health care law deemed constitutional. As fate would have it, Roberts cast the deciding vote. More knew that if he opposed the king, he could be in mortal danger, whereas Roberts was merely in danger of being criticized and vilified by those on the political left.

More was courageous till the very end, as the executioner’s axe beheaded him. Roberts, on the other hand, weaseled out of his duty to defend the Constitution, by a kind of legalistic sophistry — hatching that monstrosity which we might call an “un-sales tax,” a tax based on what we choose not to purchase — thus suffering no ill-regard from the President and his minions.

Sir Thomas More succeeded in defending the Catholic Church from the intrusion by the overreaching dictator. Chief Justice John Roberts, on the other hand, failed to defend America from the intrusions of an overreaching and dangerous demagogue. Thus, in upholding Obamacare, Roberts eviscerated the Constitution, violated his oath of office and betrayed the American public. Even those who are in favor of Obamacare would have to admit that Robert’s decision was not a product of judicial reasoning. Rather, it was politically motivated and likely made under duress.

Despite the obvious differences between these two situations, we therefore see that the fundamental scenario is the same: A man is given the responsibility to defend the law — whether it be a set of religious commandments or the Constitution — but in doing so he runs afoul of the ruler of the land, whether monarch or president. Duty demands that he leave aside the comfort and security of his position for the sake of justice.

King Henry VIII

We shouldn’t be too harsh on John Roberts for, in truth, were the President of the United States screaming in our ear and the press firing poison arrows at us continuously, most of us would crack under the pressure, as did John Roberts. Who, then, would be so heroic to put his neck on the line, either literally or figuratively, for the sake of principle, as Sir Thomas More had done? Only a person who loved, adored and revered the law, as it finds embodiment as the Torah, the Magna Carta, the constitutions of Great Britain the Unites States or other free peoples, or in any other of the laws other myriad expressions. He would have to love, adore and revere the law to the point of regarding it as the guiding light of his existence, indeed as holy. Only then would he be willing to lay aside his personal happiness, if not his life.

It might seem odd that something as impersonal as the law could be loved. And yet a devoutly religious Jew kisses the Torah, which he regards as God’s law. An American can have an equally fervent reverence for the Constitution. Although it isn’t God’s law, but rather the creation of the Founding Fathers, it shares in divinity, if indirectly so. That is because it embodies a certain set of eternal values, namely the notion that a republic should be governed so as to respect each of it’s citizen’s autonomy, which means infringing on their liberty to a minimal degree, under the rule of law. Behind the reverence for liberty, and the political arrangements that derive from it, is a belief in the dignity of man, for only he or she who is not enslaved, but free, possesses dignity. The state motto for New Hampshire is “Live free or die.” Liberty is worth dying for because enslavement is ignoble and wretched.

There are many people who are fascinated by the law; it’s certainly an intellectually stimulating subject. But they would no more be willing to sacrifice their happiness, and if necessary their life, for the law than would a person who really enjoys the game of bridge or listening to the music of Bach. A person who devotes his life to a subject may be intrigued by it, as is Roberts by the law, but doesn’t necessarily love, adore or revere it. After all, a person who loves something doesn’t betray it when it’s expedient to do so.

We might add that a true lover doesn’t seek to change who or what he adores, but loves it for what it is. That is why the liberal notion of a “living constitution,” which changes the law to accommodate those who have a social and political agenda — invariably one that derives from the fetish for equality at the cost of liberty — bespeaks an underlying contempt for the Constitution, as if it were merely an obstacle in the way of their “progressive” plans for the reformation of America.

Intellectual or Philosopher?

Roberts is an intellectual, a scholar. A philosopher, by contrast, is a lover, i.e., a lover of wisdom. Like Socrates, centuries before him, More was willing to die for philosophy. Apparently, then, Roberts finds the American Constitution to be intellectually stimulating, as does many a lawyer and judge, and a nice source of income, which is why he has devoted his life to it, but he doesn’t love it to suffer for it.

What gives backbone to character is a loving devotion to a set of ideals. How is it that those who vetted Roberts could have been deceived into thinking that Roberts was devoted to conservative ideals? Their fallacy consisted in conflating a conservative temperament with an adherence to conservative values. Even one of the giants of conservative thought, F.W. Hayek, in his book, “The Constitution of Liberty,” denied that he was a conservative, if by conservative we mean someone who clings to the status quo when an unpleasant, if not unendurable, situation demands change. In that sense, those American colonialists, who sided with England, the Torreys, were conservative, but there was nothing admirable about them. They were merely fearful.

Thus Roberts revealed that he was conservative, but only in temperament, not in a principled way, when he fearfully went along with the status quo. In this case, the status quo consists in the fact that Obamacare is a law now on the books and is in the process of being implemented. Roberts clung to it even though it violates the Constitution, which is his duty, as Chief Justice, to protect. We mentioned cowardice and sophistry, but there might be a certain cynicism here, as if Roberts was saying to the American people, “You elected the dictator, so you deal with him. I got my own problems.”

The Essential Question

And so, when John Roberts was vetted, they never asked him the essential question: “What do you think of Sir Thomas More? Do you admire him? Do you believe that you would have done what he did? Are you too a ‘man for all seasons’?” They might have then discerned whether John Roberts was a true lover of the law and whether he had the intestinal fortitude to fight and suffer for his principles. Then, again, there is no need to refer to ancient history; they might have asked John Roberts what he thought of Sheriff Will Kane, in the western “High Noon,” or the thousands of other heroes, both fictional and real, that have inspired scores of Americans to set aside their own comfort, safety and happiness, so that they might aspire to a life wedded to higher ideals.

July 14, 2012October 20, 2018 4 comments

Harry Reid and the Imp of the Perverse

by Dr. Mark Dillof March 29, 2010October 20, 2018

written by Dr. Mark Dillof

A news story that appeared last Friday made me and a lot of other people chuckle. But it also made me pause for thought. In CNN online, it was entitled: “Reid casts wrong vote on health care for second time.”

Believe it or not — on the floor of the US Senate — the majority leader Harry Reid, voted against the healthcare bill. After his fellow senators burst into laughter, Senator Reid realized his mistake. He then quickly changed his vote to “Yes,” affirming that he was in favor of the healthcare bill.

It’s doubtful that Senator Reid made a simple mistake — once in December and again the other day — for there was too much at stake for him. What could have prompted his error? There is something akin to a Freudian slip at play here. More specifically, it is a strange psychological force called “TheImp of the Perverse.”

In his famous essay, Edgar Allan Poe explores this odd phenomenon. As Poe describes it, the Imp of the Perverse consists of a certain self-destructive impulse. He employs the image of a person standing before a dangerous precipice:

“We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss – we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness, and dizziness, and horror, become merged in a cloud of unnameable feeling… And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge… If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.” (“The Imp of the Perverse,” by Edgar Allan Poe)Justas a personhas a desire to plunge into the abyss, so it is that he may feel compelled to say exactly what heknows one shouldn’t. Poe offers the example of a man who commits the perfect murder, but then some inner demon compels him to blurt out a confession. Why does the murderer make this confession? Out of guilt? Out of a desire for punishment? A need to brag about his crime? An inability to keep a secret? A longing for self-destruction? Maybe all of the above, but maybe something else as well. There is certainly a certain obsessive-compulsive quality dimension to performing the very action that we know we shouldn’t perform. But that still leaves us wondering as to the cause of these compulsions.

The Roots of Self-Destruction

I suspect, that at the root of this self-destructive compulsion, lies a mad desire for freedom and wholeness, a desire to demolish anything that appears before one as a limit. So strong is this desire that the one thing that appears to be an obstacle to freedom, namely oneself, must be obliterated.
The desire to violate limits, even if its means one’s own doom, is as old as the story of Genesis, from the Bible. As soon as God prohibits eating from a certain tree, there arises a desire to eat from that very tree. Thus do Adam and Eve fall to their doom.
Sexuality also comes to mind as an example of an instinct that is simultaneously creative and destructive. Indeed, all forms of self-transcendence involve a certain self-destruction, for if that self-destruction wasn’t there, nothing new could emerge. In the case of sexuality, what of course emerges is a baby. One’s ego interests are negated to further the development of another being. So it is that Thanatos, the death instinct, is inseparably blended with Eros, the life instinct.
Another example of this blend is capitalism, which the economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative self-destruction.” So is that the dying of one industry makes possible the emergence of new industries.
That form of Tourette’s Syndrome, in which a person feels compelled to blurt out foul and obscene curses, may also be an example of this self-destructive compulsion. Here, again, it consists of a desire to violate limits, in this case one’s that feel socially imposed.
Harry Has a Fleeting Moment of Conscience
Could it be that an unsettling thought emerged from the shallow recesses of Senator Reid’s mind? Might he have entertained the notion, if only for a fleeing second, that he may be wrong about imposing — upon the unwilling American public — the particular version of universal health care that was up for a vote? It would be hard to believe that his act of political hubris didn’t cause at least the shadow of a self-doubt.
Perhaps Senator Reid had a brief moment of clarity and conscience, a moment of lucidity in which he looked in the mirror and saw himself, in all his arrogant wretchedness. And so, it came to pass that the Imp of the Perverse got a hold of Senator Reid causing him to plunge into the abyss. I.E., the imp made him blurt out the truth of the matter, which he voiced, before the Senate, as a “Nay.”
But no sooner had the imp or the doppelganger spoken then Senator Reid recovered his insanity. And so, he corrected himself, voted “Yea,” and gave voice to a lie.

March 29, 2010October 20, 2018 0 comment

Everyday Symbolism Mysteries Politics The Zeitgeist

Reflections on Davey Crockett

by Dr. Mark Dillof March 24, 2010October 24, 2018

written by Dr. Mark Dillof

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“Born on a mountain top in Tennessee
Greenest state in the Land of the Free
Raised in the woods so’s he knew every tree
Kilt him a b’ar when he was only three.
Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the wild frontier!”
— The Ballad of Davey Crockett

The Davey Crockett TV show — which was launched in 1954, by Walt Disney — spawned a huge fad. Indeed, it was as powerful as the arrival of Elvis. Forty million people watched every week, which was an enormous number, in those days.

Fess Parker played the part of the legendary American frontiersman, congressman, champion of Indian rights, and hero of the Alamo. He did so both on the weekly TV show and in a number of Disney films. He was great as Davey Crockett. (He also played Daniel Boone, but let’s not get sidetracked.) Mr. Parker died the other day, at the age of 85.

Thanks to Mr. Parker’s portrayal, millions of boys came to idolize the frontiersman, sporting all sorts of Davey Crockett paraphernalia, especially coonskin caps. And I, growing up in Brooklyn New York, was one of them. Through a kind of mythic childhood identification, I imagined myself to be the heroic American frontiersman. I even insisted on my mother calling me Davey.

Davey Crockett and the Mystery of the Bears

According to the TV show’s theme song, Davey Crockett, killed him a b’ar (bear) when he was only three. As to whether he actually did may be dubious, but mythically understood the legend makes sense. This is because the bear is a mother symbol. We might recall, in this context, that the bear is the symbol for “Mother Russia.”
Freud might have thought that the song is about a conflict with one’s actual mother. But Jung might, more perceptively, contend that the bear symbolizes not one’s actual mother, but the mother archetype. More specifically, the bear symbolizes what Jung’s student, Eric Neumann called “The Great Mother.”
But the bear symbolizes the mother, not as kindly and beneficent, but as dangerous and maleficent. The real danger of the mother, to the young man, is her lure. He is seeking to become independent, but he is still lured to dependence. It’s not the fault of actual mothers, but of the inner archetype. So, killing the bear symbolizes overcoming the lure to be taken care of, when the time comes to become independent.
Interestingly enough, I was three years old when I heard the song, the very age when Davey Crockett, as the song alleges, killed a bear. I distinctly remember being very much afraid of bears. My parents sought to comfort me by explaining that there aren’t any bears in Brooklyn, New York (well, actually there were some residing at the Prospect Park Zoo, not that far away from our apartment house in Coney Island.)
But my parent’s assurances did not serve to comfort me, for it was not really bears, but what they symbolized, that I feared. So, I set out to protect myself by sharpening sticks, of all sorts, into weapons and kept them next to my bedside, for it was when the sun set that the bears came out. And there were nights when I could have sworn to have seen them. I’ll get back to the bears in a moment, for the fear, strangely enough, turned out to be justified.
The Mystery of a Fur Cap
By the time I was seven or eight, I’d all but forgotten about Davey Crocket. Fast forward, over half a century, to March 21, 2010. That’s when I came across an obituary photo of Fess Parker, dressed in a coonskin cap. As I gazed upon the photo, I was jolted by a kind of epiphany. On some deep unconscious level — I was still seeking to be Davey Crockett!
To be more specific, several years ago, I had purchased a winter hat made of coyote fur. “Why am I spending $135. on hat?,” I asked myself. I answered my question by replying, “Well, if I’m going to be living in chilly Binghamton, New York, I may as well dress right. And being that I’m balding, I all the more need to protect my skull on cold days.”
We often seek a practical excuse to rationalize a symbolic activity. This is not to deny that the hat is really warm and comfortable on frigid winter days, but I could have purchased a wool cap for a good deal less. Obviously, there was something symbolic about the coyote hat that appealed to me.
And so, when I gazed upon Fess Parker’s photo, it dawned on me that my interest in wearing a coyote hat was my unconscious channeling Davey Crockett, my childhood hero. I was not, essentially, interested in Davey Crockett himself, but rather in the values that he embodied, including rugged independence, bravery, and patriotism. And I admired him for being a killer of bears.
Every Man and Woman a Davey Crockett
For the past several winters, I would wear the hat everywhere. Probably, the most crowded store, in the Binghamton area, is Wegmans Supermarket. When I would wear it there, people would invariably compliment it. They would often will ask me questions about the fur hat, for there was something about it that intrigued them.
I doubt that they think of Davey Crockett. After all, his hat was made of coon fur and mine of coyote. And besides, the hat in conjunction with my beard probably makes me look more like a Russian fur trader than an American frontiersman. [See photo.] But I have an intuitive sense of what I look like to them, or at least to some of them: a visitor from an earlier age, from a time when America was younger, tougher, nobler, and more confident about itself.
This is not to say that I embody that ideal. I don’t live in the woods, hunting my next meal. Rather, I live in a warm apartment and get my food from Wegmans Supermarket. But the ideals that the frontier symbolizes — on a deeper level — have always been my guiding star. And whenever I have lost my way in the darkness, those ideals have reoriented me again.
Davey Crocket in the Age of Obamacare and What it Has to Do with Bears
There exist, in many of us, an ambivalence. We have a childish longing for security, but we also have an adult longing to be independent.
In regard to the former longing, we wish to be taken care of by the government. The emergence of the “nanny state” — derives from that puerile longing. The original function of government was to have it protect us from each other, and from foreign nations. But over the years the function of government has changed. Now it is there to protect us from ourselves. Now, if we are improvident, government supplies us with funds for our old age. It makes us wear a seat belt and may soon penalize us if we don’t eat the approved of diet. Since the founding of America, we have been slowly but surely drifting in that direction.
We have been moving, in other words, towards statism, towards socialism. Obama’s universal health care constitutes a giant step in that direction. It entails a fundamental shift in our relation to government, from being citizens to being subjects. As subject, we have rulers telling them how to live. Actually, under Obamacare, we become wards of the state.
That is why Obamacare constitutes a shift from liberty to tyranny. It is destructive to our values and ideals and to the American sense of self, of the grit, the moxie and the daring, which expresses itself in a life of rugged independence. It is one hell of a psychological regression, spawned by a narcissistic villain, by a ruthless tinpot tyrant, by a well-dressed thug from the gutters of Chicago, and his repulsive minions. And so it has come to pass, that the fear of the bear, who consumes everything in its sight — American prosperity, independence, hardihood, and liberty — is not groundless at all, for the mother bear, for the regressive longing for dependency, now takes the form of socialism.
But here is where we are ambivalent beings, for just as we have a longing to be protected by “Leviathan,” by the state, so it is that we long to be rugged individualists. That longing is never lost, despite our nation’s current drift to puerility and weakness. The frontier is still part of every American’s collective unconscious, even if — as the historian Frederick Jackson Turner pointed out — the ending of the end of the frontier was a decisive event in American history and perhaps in the American character.
Thus does the site of a fur trapper’s hat evokes memories of a lost age and its values. May those dormant values reawaken. There will always be inner frontiers to conquer, and there will always be bears to engage in battle. They are no less dangerous than actual ones. Indeed, America is now in mortal danger, for it is being strangled by a deadly bear hug. Let us, then, remember the heroes of Alamo, our spiritual ancestors and derive faith and courage from them. We shall need it for the battles that lie ahead. Viva Davey Crockett!

March 24, 2010October 24, 2018 0 comment

Mysteries Politics The Zeitgeist

The Anxiety Underlying Global Warming Hysteria

by Dr. Mark Dillof December 16, 2009October 20, 2018

written by Dr. Mark Dillof

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Why is it that the overwhelming majority of people who fear “global warming” are politically left of center? The obvious answer is that the left is critical of business and industry, which they regard as the major producers of “greenhouse gases.” But the left has had an animus towards big business long before they became preoccupied with environmental fears. We won’t explore, here, the origins of their anti-business bias. Suffice it to say that this animus is only part of the reason anyway. There is something deeper going on that is the real source of their environmental fears. Let us explore what it is.

Leftwing thought is really a certain species of the humanistic worldview. Humanism has its origins in the Renaissance, when the shift from religious to secular interests and concerns first began. A humanist believes that the future is not in God’s hands, but in our own. Thus it is solely up to us to make and shape our world and our future. Since God plays a vastly diminished role in the humanistic worldview, humanists easily slide from theism to deism and then finally into atheism.

This worldview has produced remarkable achievements in culture and civilization. It has freed the mind of dogma and granted us the independence to think for ourselves. Kant encapsulated this enlightenment of the mind, when he wrote: Sapere aude! (Dare to be wise!) Alas, every worldview has its limits and those limits register in us as certain types of anxiety. As we shall see, the fear of global warming reflects the type of anxieties endemic to secular humanism.

To understand these anxieties, we must remember that those who no longer believe in God always find other objects of worship, for everyone craves the absolute and the eternal. Instead of seeking Heaven, as religious people do, humanists seek to create a heaven on Earth. Thus do they make an idol of the nation-state, believing that it can become transformed into something wonderful and glorious. Their Utopia invariably reflects the puerile longing that everyone be equal economically.

When humanism takes on a utopian political agenda it easily transforms into fascism, socialism and communism, for these are utopian creeds with a plan of action. So it is that humanists, today as always, usually harbor views that are left of center. We shall now consider what this worldview has to do with environmental fears.

Humanism: A Burdened and Anxious Way of Being

There is no denying that human beings can damage the planet and that they should seek, as much as possible, to conserve its beauty and to ensure that it remains a salutary and livable place. It’s quite another thing, though, to dread the cycles of hot and cold that naturally occur, but rather to insist that they are solely the fault of man, despite ample scientific evidence to the contrary.

These fears derive from the anxiety of inhabiting a godless universe, thus having the fate of the world solely depend upon us. Consequently, we fear that if something is not done immediately to gain control over the environment, we are doomed. What a burdened and anxious thing it is to be a humanist, believing that it is up us human beings, in all our fallibility —this “crooked timbre of humanity,” as Kant called us — to be the caretakers of the planet. It also creates a mood ripe for demagogues. Thus do we so often hear, from the saviors of the political left: “We, from big government, can save you! We shall punish those evil polluting corporations!”

Paradoxically, through a curious dialectic, contemporary humanism often transforms into a kind of anti-humanism, which agues that human beings are the one thing on the planet that is unnatural and, therefore, a plague upon the innocence of nature. This anti-humanistic naturalism makes a fetish of the natural, viewing human beings as violators of pristine nature. Their solution, then, is to curtail the actions on human beings, in so far as they impact the natural world.

This leads to a terrible dread that nemesis is on the way, for man’s Promethean hubris in seeking to master nature. (It is also paradoxical that those who claim to be free of religion still retain this carryover of religious consciousness.) When people are driven by apocalyptic anxieties, they lose all sense of balance and proportion. In other words, they become extremists — in this case environmental extremists.

Anxiety also leads to paranoia and then to cult thinking, with its us/them view of the world and its demonization of one’s opponents. It also leads to massive propaganda efforts to convert people to one’s cause. Thus we find that the true believers in global warming have mounted an insidious campaign to indoctrinate grade school children with their belief system. The main tool at their disposal is fear. Children now are as anxious about the future of the planet as are the fanatics. Thus do they rob childhood of any of any of the joyful insouciance that it once possessed.

Faith in God, Nature and the Universe

The opposite attitude to the humanist’s anxious insecurity about the future of the world is at attitude of faith, a belief that there are larger forces that are the ground of our existence. Whatever we call it — God, Nature, the Universe — we are kept alive by its grace. In a brilliant passage, two Zen Buddhists express this faith…

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December 16, 2009October 20, 2018 0 comment

Mysteries Politics

The New Ugly Americans: from Being Hated to Being Despised

by Dr. Mark Dillof September 18, 2009October 20, 2018

written by Dr. Mark Dillof

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Would you rather be hated or be despised? They are not synonymous. Hate is often an amalgam of other emotions — such as loathing, wrath, fear and envy. To be despised, on the other hand, is to have other people feel contempt and condescension towards you.

You might invite contempt for your faults. If they were serious enough to be sins — and if your actions adversely affected the lives of others — you might even be despised. People might look down on you condescendingly, perhaps even with a certain degree of pity, as one might for a weakling, a coward, a fool, a degenerate, or a person bereft of moral compass. What’s key here is that they would feel morally superior to you. Many a politician has been despised for this reason.

If, on the other hand, you lived a life of goodness and virtue, some people would like and admire you. But other people would — out of fear, envy and feelings of inferiority — hate you. Socrates, for example, was feared for the power of his unsettling questions, for questions can cause a person to fall into self-doubt. And Socrates was envied for the life he led. After all, a life spent in the pursuit of truth is a blessed life. Consequently, the Athenians hated Socrates enough to condemn him to death.

It is, therefore, the case that you are despised for your sins, but hated for your virtues. As with people, so it is with nations, which leads to our tale of America’s recent transformation under President Obama’s foreign policy…

High Noon for America

There is no truer account of America’s destiny among the nations than the Western, High Noon (1952). In that iconographic film, the freed convict, Frank Miller, arrives in town, on the noon train, with the intention of killing Sheriff Will Kane. In a particularly telling scene, the puerile deputy sheriff, Harvey Pell, tries to convince Sheriff Kane to leave town, supposedly out of concern for Will’s safety. Harvey even saddles Will’s horse for him. But when Will decides to remain in town to face Frank Miller, Harvey violently attempts to force him to leave.

What is the real reason why Harvey is so eager to have Sheriff Kane leave town? Harvey is cowardly, but he would like people to believe otherwise. The townspeople see through Harvey and his girlfriend mocks him for not being a man, unlike Sherriff Kane, whom she admires. Kane, who is truly heroic, is making Harvey look weak and pusillanimous. Indeed, Sherriff Kane is making most of the townspeople look like cowards.

It is also clear that many people in town would be only too glad to see Sheriff Kane gone and to have the villainous Frank Miller run the town. The spiritually weak welcome dictators, for dictators — and demagogues too — promise to take care of their material needs, and to give their shabby lives meaning and direction.

Correspondingly, the spiritually weak hate those who possess goodness, courage, and honor, for it castes into bas-relief their own wretched lives. And they hate them all the more vehemently when they offer them the heavenly gift of freedom, for freedom can only be a torment to a demon-possessed soul. For one thing, newfound freedom requires remorse over the wretched life one has been living, coupled with an anxious venturing into an unknown terrain. Apropos is Kierkegaard’s notion of “dread of the good.” (That’s right, rather than dreading that which is bad or evil, we can according to the perceptive Kierkegaard, dread what is good!) In any case, High Noon, is not just about a western town. It is about America among the nations. One might say that it’s always high noon for America.

America is sometimes despised for its supposed imperialism, but other nations that have actually been imperialistic — such as England, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Russia, Japan, China, and Germany — have never been hated with the degree of venom reserved for Americans. There is a reason for this: While America may be despised for her sins, she is truly hated for her virtues. Like the Jews, Americans are held to an impossibly high moral standard, for the American spirit has, at its core, an idealism unparalleled among the nations. That is why there is a parallel between antisemitism and anti-Americanism.

America’s efforts to promote human rights, democracy, law, and liberty, are invariably viewed with cynicism by her foes who — with the jaundiced and paranoid eyes endemic to conspiracy theorists — claim that they see only self-interest, concluding that American foreign policy is all really about oil, wealth, and hegemony.

Like any nation, America has its economic and political interests. How could she not? But what is maddening to many foreigners, as well as to those on the political left, is that a supposedly idealistic nation should have any economic and political interests. These cynics are akin to spoiled adolescents, who angrily accuse their struggling parents of not being the angels they childishly demand them to be.

It is, therefore, understandable that the Americans often find themselves criticized by the miserable refuse that can be found in every nation of the world, by those forever in flight from themselves and from God. What the world needs now is exorcists, i.e., those skilled in casting out demons.

Unfortunate Addendum: No Longer Hated, but Now Despised

Recent changes in American foreign policy have been transforming America’s role in the world. Our meddling in the affairs of a tiny democracy, Honduras, is a telltale sign of bad things to come. The effort of the Obama administration to reinstate Honduras’ deposed leftist leader and would be dictator, Manuel Zelaya is, indeed, a national disgrace. So is President Obama’s betrayal of America’s allies, such as Israel, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, President Obama has befriended the brutal thug of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and pursued a policy of appeasement towards aggressor nations, such as Iran and Russia.

President Reagan stated that “The United States remains the last best hope for a mankind plagued by tyranny and deprivation.” If we continue to support dictators, that last best hope will be but a sad memory. When America ceases to stand for liberty, her days as a nation will be numbered, for there are too many enemies that wish to destroy her. It is no exaggeration that the ship of state is foundering and in serious peril.

It is a major foreign policy objective, of President Obama, that America not be hated. No more shall we be viewed as the “ugly Americans.” That is why, in his first months of office, he traveled around the world apologizing for our nation’s history. If President Obama succeeds with his foreign policy objectives, America will — having lost her status as both a superpower and beacon for freedom — no longer be envied, feared and hated. Instead, America will be intensely despised, both by her enemies and by her former friends, whom she betrayed. Yes, this transformative presidency has transformed hatred into contempt. It will increasingly imperil the security and freedom of America and the world.

September 18, 2009October 20, 2018 4 comments

Mysteries Politics The Zeitgeist

Socialism’s Incestuous Relation to the Mother

by Dr. Mark Dillof July 22, 2009October 20, 2018

written by Dr. Mark Dillof

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A nation with a socialized economy is aptly called a “nanny state.” Like an overly protective mother, it stifles self-reliance, individual initiative, and ultimately liberty itself. The Leviathan that socialism creates invariably infantilizes us. We are to forsake our status as citizens to become subjects, under the aegis of various ministers, or czars, who administer to our needs.

As our dependency on government increases, we become, in effect, wards of the state. Yes, governmental “smother love” is a pernicious thing, which leads one to wonder: why would anyone crave the degraded, ignominious form of existence wrought by socialism? Here lies a mystery!

Socialism Versus Capitalism

Consider, by way of contrast, capitalism. It financially rewards hard work, ingenuity, risk taking, and individual achievement. The downside is that we are must pay the price for our errors. But accepting responsibility for our actions is intrinsic to being a mature adult. Socialism, on the other hand, promises to protect us from the negative consequences of our actions. For example, if we fail to save money for a rainy day and disaster strikes, the state steps in to protect us. It does so by robbing, i.e., taxing, Peter to pay Paul for his poor judgment. In that sense, the lure of socialism is a regressive wish to forsake the burdens of adulthood.

Socialism also appeals to the longing for equality. Socialists contend that any distribution of goods, based on achievement, is intrinsically unfair. The implication is that life is a zero-sum game, and that one person’s gain is another person’s loss. As a solution, Karl Marx advocated the philosophy — and the call to action — that lies at the heart of communism: “From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.” Implicit here is the view of the state is a large family, with only so much food to go around. If some of the family members have large portions, then the rest of the family will have less. Of course, this metaphor is absurd, for the world is not a large family, even if many Utopian socialists believe it to be so. (Nor is it a village, as Hillary Clinton implied in her book “It Takes a Village.”)

We have mentioned two of the appeals of socialism, the wish not to have to take responsibility for one’s errors and the craving for equality. There is a third appeal of socialism, one that is never stated, perhaps because it initially seems counterintuitive. It is to create a world where one no longer needs to be charitable towards other people. This may sound rather surprising. After all, those on the political left pride themselves on their compassion. Alas, their compassion really consists in forcing those who are affluent to give to those who have less. Apropos is Aristotle’s reason for rejecting socialism. He contended that charity is good for the soul, and under socialism there is no need to be charitable, for the state gives us all that we need.

There exists, then, on the part of the socialist the desire to create a world where no one need ever be charitable. And so why the desire to create such a world? It is because the socialist knows that to give to others contradicts that desire that is at the heart of socialism, the wish to stay to be given and not have to give, i.e., the wish to stay as a child. In such a world, the soul withers and dies.

Pa is to Blame for Everything

Let us consider socialism and capitalism in terms of Jungian archetypes. The mother does not require that her children accomplish anything to receive a piece of the pie. They all receive an equal portion. This matriarchal mode of distribution is the ideal of socialism. Now consider the father, in his many archetypal forms — including one’s personal father, God, one’s pastor, one’s teachers, and anyone else in authority. Unlike the mother who, out of unconditional love, makes no demands, the father divvies up the pie based on individual merit.

Socialists rail against the father’s manner of distribution, accusing him of favoritism and bias, of lacking compassion, of being altogether unfair. Their accusations towards the father cloak their true animus: socialists hate and resent the father for requiring that they become responsible adults. They similarly hate that the father’s love is conditional, in that respect. In the language of Freud, they hate the father for forcing them to renounce the pleasure principle and to accept the reality principle. For in truth, socialism, like all Utopian creeds, is a flight from reality.

Certainly there are injustices in the world, but most often the accusation of unfairness is a puerile protest against the demands of adulthood, a protest that is often darkened by a baleful dose of envy of those who have more. They claim that if it wasn’t for the father, everyone could have an equal piece of the pie. The revolution that socialists wish to foment is one that would kill the father, and put the “mother” in charge of the world.

This patricide can take many forms, from a contempt for culture and tradition to anti-Americanism, from atheism to antisemitism. In regard to the latter, the Jewish people have always embodied the morality of God, the father. Even if particular Jews embrace socialism, and even if particular Jews renounce morality, the Jewish people as a whole are forever branded those, among the nations, who have chosen God, the father.

Socialism and the Oedipus Complex

All cultures have an incest taboo. They realize that a violation of this taboo can have grave results, for the individual and for society. Freud referred to the dynamic, by which the child’s incestuous longings are punished, as the Oedipus Complex. As we have been suggesting, socialism is essentially a longing for the mother. In other words, socialism is the creation of those who — despite the guilt engendered by the Oedipus Complex — have refused to renounce their longings for the mother. (The consequence of ignoring one’s Oedipal guilt is a diminished sense of self, but that is another story for another essay.)

The original version of the film, The Manchurian Candidate (1962) evokes this noxious connection between communism, i.e., socialism taken to its logical conclusion, and the mother. In that nightmarish story, a POW, named Raymond Shaw, is brainwashed and turned into a political assassin, by the Chinese communists, during the Korean War. The film suggests that Raymond has an incestuous relation with his domineering mother. (The book, by the same title went much further down that road.) A casual remark by the protagonist of the film, Major Marko, suggests a parallel between Raymond’s relation to his mother and difficulties that Orestes had with his mother, Clytemnestra.

Raymond’s mother — although apparently a virulent anti-communist, right-winger — is really in league with the communists, who have brainwashed her son. What triggers the hypnotized Raymond to obey a command is the site of a certain playing card, the queen of hearts. That card, of course, represents his mother. In any case, we mention this film because it evokes the connection between socialism in its final form, i.e., communism, and an unresolved Oedipus complex.

Marx famously wrote: “A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism.” Were Marx psychologically astute, he would have realized that the real specter haunting Europe, the US, and the rest of the world, is the mother archetype, or what the Jungian Erich Neumann called “the Great Mother.”

The Swinging of the Pendulum

As Hegel’s dialectic reveals, when the pendulum of history swings to one extreme, it will invariably swing to the opposite extreme. What, then, lies on the opposite extreme of socialism? The other end of the pendulum’s arc is radical Islam. It is concomitantly a fanatical faith in the father (Allah) and a violent rejection of the mother.

Islamists perceive that both the socialistic and the capitalistic nations…

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July 22, 2009October 20, 2018 8 comments

Everyday Symbolism Mysteries Politics

Why Obama Eats Egg Whites for Breakfast

by Dr. Mark Dillof January 20, 2009October 20, 2018

written by Dr. Mark Dillof

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Everything we do, no matter how minor, reveals who we are. That is why a good film director might have an actor perform some small but telling gesture. The actor might sit in a chair or smoke a cigarette, but the way the action is performed reveals his or her character. Also revealing are our tastes, including the foods that we like to eat and how we like them prepared.

Of course, it is one thing to see a family member or friend perform an action, eat a certain food, wear something, etc., and then to say to him or her: “Ah, that is so you!” It is a far more difficult task to discern the deeper meaning of what he or she is doing. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote how it was the task of philosophy to illuminate the meaning of our everyday being in the world. We shall follow his lead.

Which brings us to a recent news item: President Barak Obama likes to eat fried egg whites and bacon for breakfast. Some have suggested that it’s because the yoke is high in cholesterol, but the addition of the bacon would rule out that theory. It must, instead, be for a deeper psychological reason, one that is being expressed, symbolically, in the language of food preferences. We shall return to Obama’s eggs, after an important detour.

Obama’s Identity Crisis

“It proved necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses…” — “My Father’s Dreams”

President Obama is a man with an unresolved identity crisis. As others have pointed out, his crisis derives from the fact that his mother is white and his father black. Being a mulatto felt to him like he had no definite identity. Identity crises, of this sort, can be positively resolved, and often are. The black conservative historian, Shelby Steel, who also has bi-racial parentage, clearly has found himself. But, as Steel argues in a recent book, Obama has not. The problem is that Obama fell victim to a false sense of selfhood, one founded on racial identity. Only a person who does not know himself resorts to defining himself in racial terms. As Obama’s autobiographical books indicate, the route that he took — in an effort to resolve his identity crisis — was to decide that he was a black man.

But, Obama knew how successful and privileged his life had become in white society. And so — from Monday, through Saturday — he lived the life that black liberation theology would condemn as the bourgeois life of white people. But on Sunday he sat in a black church, listening to angry and venomous sermons by his black pastor, Jeremiah Wright. He remained a parishioner for twenty years, for he needed those Sundays to be a weekly catharsis from the other six days of the week, when he felt that he was losing his identity, as a black man. So, here he is, with his identity not on a sure footing.

OK, So What’s Eggs Got to Do with It?

To feel defiled is to feel that our identity has become infected by that of which we come into contact. On the symbolic level of human consciousness, to come into physical contact with a slimy substance is to feel slimed. According to Sartre, the experience has a quasi-moral quality to it. After all, we say of a person with no character that he is slimy.

Eggs are, of course, among the slimiest of things. For Obama, to have the white and the yellow mixed in the bowl, blended together, is to have both white and yellow become slimed. The horrible result is that both, the yoke and the albumin, have lost their separate identity.

The part of the egg with which Obama identifies is the white (The color of his skin is irrelevant here.) The yellow, of course, is rich, fatty, and tasty. Eating the yellow represents living off the fat of the land, living a self-indulgent life. It therefore seems immoral. Not everyone experiences eggs this way. We are not arguing, as Freud did, for a universal symbolism. We are just suggesting what we discern to be Obama’s relation to eggs, and to who he is.

Thus it is that Obama — who has desperately sought to preserve his black identity — unconsciously identifies with the purity of the white part of the egg, the albumin. It is neither rich and fatty, like the yellow, nor nearly as tasty. But he gets to have the fat back again, in the form of the bacon strips. The bacon is acceptable, for it does not, as would the egg yoke, defile the purity of the white egg albumin. After all, the egg white may be on the same breakfast plate, but they do not lose their distinct identities. Thus Obama sees his struggle as one of staying pure, i.e., undefiled from those impurities that would sully his sense of himself as an idealistic black man.

Yes, it is very unsettling that the leader of the free world does not really know himself. (Of course, it is far from being the first time that this has happened.) The problem is that a leader who does not know himself is unlikely to have a clear understanding of the world he inhabits, for self-knowledge and worldly wisdom often go hand it hand. When it’s lacking, it can result in foolish, if not disastrous, policies and decisions. We can only hope that President Obama will rise to the occasion — that he will quickly find himself, grasp the fundamental values that have made America great, and serve our nation with wisdom. That, though, would require a shift in his sense of self from Afro-American to just American. That’s the real hope that we would like to believe in.

January 20, 2009October 20, 2018 0 comment

Mysteries Politics

John McCain’s Fatal Flaw

by Dr. Mark Dillof October 29, 2008October 12, 2018

written by Dr. Mark Dillof

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“Virtue would not go to such lengths if vanity did not keep her company.”
~François de la Rochefoucauld

Would you rather be right? Or would you rather be president? Senator McCain would rather be right. There is no doubt that he is a person of high ethical standards. But here is a terrible irony: as the ancient Greeks warned, an excess of virtue can become a vice. Being too insistent that she was right led to Antigone’s downfall, as it can for anyone. A virtue becomes a vice when self-knowledge — which leads to moderation — is lacking. This fault might be called “ethical hubris,” the blinding egotistical pride about doing what one deems to be the right thing, no matter what the circumstances. Alas, it is Senator McCain’s fatal flaw.

The term “ethical hubris,” may seem like an oxymoron, for morality would appear to be the opposite of egotism. But a person can become puffed-up about anything. Hubris, in all its varieties, is terribly blinding and is bound to have tragic consequences. Unfortunately, the fatal flaws of kings and presidents — and senators too — can have tragic consequences for an entire nation. It is likely to result in McCain losing the election. And it may lead to the transformation of America, under the leadership of his opponent, Senator Obama, from “the land of the free and the brave” into a socialist disaster.

McCain’s ethical hubris appeared early on in the election. Some of his supporters created a TV commercial about Senator Obama’s notorious racist and anti-American pastor, the Reverend Wright. Out of a sense of honor and propriety, McCain insisted that these commercials no longer be shown. McCain saw himself as too noble-minded to engage in negative campaigning. McCain’s hubris blinded him to the obvious: the negative commercials were, contrary to McCain’s opinion, entirely appropriate. After all, the character of Reverend Wright, Obama’s pastor for twenty years, bared upon both Obama’s character and his worldview.

Furthermore, McCain has failed to realize that it is not his campaign. An entire nation has an enormous stake in his winning. It is his job to win, and the job of other people to help him to win. They nominated him to be a candidate, not to act as the Republican Party’s pope. The consequences of McCain’ s poor decision are very serious. Running the ads about the Reverend Wright might have given McCain the momentum to win the election, just as the Swift Boat ads were instrumental in President Bush winning against Senator Kerry.

McCain’s ethical hubris also prevented him from stating a simple truth about Obama: he is a socialist. Indeed, early on in the campaign, McCain was asked if Obama was a socialist. He lamely answered: “I don’t know.” On a later occasion, he stated that Obama’s wish to redistribute wealth is one of the tenets of socialism. But he would not do what he really needed to do: accuse Obama, in front of the millions of people who viewed the debate, of being a socialist. Doing so would have been beneath McCain’s gentlemanly, senatorial dignity. In failing to deliver the decisive blow — out of his blindly egotistical sense of personal pride — he let America down.

There have been other instances as well. In response to the financial crisis, McCain initially canceled his debate with Obama, to return to the Senate, to work on the bailout deal. Perhaps McCain saw himself as being virtuous, but he ended up getting himself into a chaotic mess beyond his control. Consequently, many people saw him as feckless and foolish. Here, again, McCain considered it more important to save the world than to keep his mind focused on winning the election.
Senator McCain is at it again. There is a grave danger that the Democrats will obtain the needed votes to obtain a filibuster-proof supermajority. Then they will be able to pass any and all sorts of leftwing legislation, and appoint very liberal justices to the Supreme Court. Thus every election counts. But Senator McCain is now insisting that Senator Ted Stevens, from Alaska — who has been convicted by a federal grand jury of ethical violations — resign. But doing so would mean that the Democrats come one vote closer to obtaining a supermajority.

Party loyalty has never been important to McCain. He views it as beneath his dignity. After all, as he has reiterated in the debates, he is a uniter, a nonpartisan; he prides himself on reaching across the aisles to the Democrats. But when President Reagan ran for office, he didn’t need to reach across the aisles. Instead, waves of Democrats reached across the aisle to vote for him. He even won New York in the electoral college.

Of course, we cannot completely blame McCain if he loses. His opponent is, after all, a very skilled politician, indeed a ruthless demagogue, with far more funding than McCain. And then there is the very unfortunate fact that the economy has gone into a nose dive, leading people to blame the Republicans, and to want to vote them out of office. In one sense, then, it is to McCain’s credit that he has done as well as he has done. Furthermore, he has displayed both intelligence, courage, and boldness, in many instances, such as when he chose Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

But, there is no doubt that if McCain possessed a greater degree of self-knowledge he would now be at least tied in the presidential polls. Unfortunately, his tragic blindness may soon become America’s tragedy.

October 29, 2008October 12, 2018 0 comment

Mysteries Politics The Zeitgeist

The Secret to Defeating Demagogue Obama

by Dr. Mark Dillof October 23, 2008October 20, 2018

written by Dr. Mark Dillof

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(Getting political, as I am in this post, might mean that I alienate and lose half of my readers, which probably comes out to about four or five people. Oh well. I did, by the way, send a copy of this to the Republican National Committee. They haven’t gotten back to me about it. So, I think that at this point my essay has more intellectual than practical value, for the election will soon be over.)

“I promise you. We won’t just win New Hampshire. We will win this election and, you and I together, we’re going to change the country and change the world.” — Senator Obama

Ordinary politicians make specific campaign promises. They pledge, for example, to repair a city’s infrastructure, to achieve victory in a war, to lower taxes, and to provide jobs. The charismatic demagogue, on the other hand, promises to transform the world.

Consider Senator Barak Obama’s slogan: “Change you can believe in.” For as long as he could, Obama remained vague, not stating what he meant by change. Left indeterminate, his slogan hooked into a fundamental human longing: the desire for a new life. There are a great many people who wish that a savior would emerge, someone able to transform their lives of quiet desperation into something new, hopeful, and glorious. Social, economic, and political changes cannot, of course, effectuate a personal transformation. Nor can they transform this “vale of tears,” into a utopian paradise. But a charismatic and cynical demagogue will exploit such fantasies.

Obama has neither the competence, nor the character, nor the moral compass to lead our nation. If he gets elected, the miasmic fog of socialism will envelop America. With less than two weeks till election time, it may very well be too late to do anything, but for what it’s worth, here is my further analysis and my remedy.

Obama’s Worldview

Over time, Senator Obama’s past has emerged. And despite his initial efforts to remain vague about what he means by “change,” his political views have also emerged. Senator McCain now has a target for his criticism: from Obama’s America-hating, racist pastor to his association with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, from his failure of judgment about the surge in Iraq to his foolish tax policy.

But for McCain’s criticisms to have any real force, they would have to be seen as manifestations of a single theme, translatable into a slogan. Only then, could his criticisms of Obama be graspable and intelligible. For example, the Republicans — focusing on Senator John Kerry’s voting record — reduced their many criticisms to a single word, “flip-flopper.” And Obama, suggesting that he was hip and that McCain wasn’t, said that “McCain just doesn’t get it.”

Is there a theme that can unify all that we know about Obama — from his political past to his current platform? We have been using the word “theme,” but what we are really looking for here is a worldview. The importance of this factor in defeating Obama is expressed by Tom DeLay:

“It hasn’t sunk in yet how radical Obama’s worldview is, because you can’t tie him down to a worldview,” DeLay says, “And I don’t know if anybody who works for McCain understands the whole notion of worldview. And what they ought to be going after is his worldview. Not how he feels about healthcare, or how he feels about energy — what is this man’s worldview?” (Interview with Ronald Kessler, Newsmax, October 2008. P. 48)

Through his past associations, his statements, his voting record and his platform, Obama’s worldview begins to emerge. Obama has simply reached into the trash bin of history, to recycle that failed nostrum known as socialism — the egalitarian redistribution of the fruits of our labors. Socialism involves a regression, from the ethos of individual initiative to that of a family, where all members must be provided for. As Marx put it, “From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.” Individualism challenges people to develop into responsible, hard-working adults. But the communitarianism, that Obama advocates, infantilizes them, stifling individual initiative.

Socialists are often driven by an even darker agenda. They are envious and resentful towards the more affluent members of society. Such feelings lead to a scapegoat mentality and to conflict. One does not need the fiery style of a Fidel Castro to foment class warfare. Obama does it in smooth and dulcet tones. Those who are bereft of historical knowledge — either because they are uneducated or congenitally obtuse — find such millennial hopes to be new and exciting. It always seems so, at the early stages of a Marxist revolution, before the other shoe drops.

Only recently did McCain finally refer to Obama’s proposed policies as sharing some of the tenets of socialism. But McCain fell far short of doing what he should have done, simply calling Obama a socialist. After all, socialism is not just a theory of economics. It is a secular religion, in which the state is made into a god. The rage for equality is a spiritual disease that finds expression in all aspects of life.

Most socialists are, no doubt, well-meaning. But, like all individuals who harbor a utopian worldview, socialists have a proclivity for violent thoughts, words, and deeds. That is why, there invariably emerges from the ranks of socialists: totalitarians, nihilists, anti-Americans, racists, and antisemites.

What is the connection between socialism and violence? Like all utopians, the socialist — owing to a lack of inner development — has no patience for the give and take, the compromise and the imperfections, that are intrinsic to living in a democracy. When people, who harbor utopian ideas, encounter obstacles, out of frustration, they ferociously try to destroy — those obstacles. And so, it is their impatience that leads them to become violent revolutionaries.

This violence might involve using intimidation tactics to pressure banks into granting subprime loans (as in the case of Acorn), stuffing ballot boxes (also in the case of Acorn), castigating Jews, whites, and America (as in the case of Jeremiah Wright) or domestic terrorism (as in the case of Bill Ayers). It is no coincidence, then, that Obama the socialist surrounded himself with these and other vile individuals. The connection between socialism and violent hatred needs to be made clear to the American public, as does the connection between Obama and socialism.

Anxieties About Losing Autonomy

There are some very real fears connected with socialism, particularly among Americans. There is the fear that the government will legally steal one’s possessions. Furthermore, there is the fear that a socialistic government will do what socialistic governments tend to do: to curtail all of one’s other freedoms, from free speech to the right to bear arms. There is also the fear that it will destroy the moral fabric of America. Finally, there is the fear that our national sovereignty will be undermined.

But, as Freud noted, underlying fear is anxiety. We can flee from that which we fear, but not so with anxiety, for it is intangible. The anxiety at play here is the dread of losing one’s autonomy. It is powerful enough, at least among Americans, to trump Obama’s appeal to change.

How might that anxiety be exploited? In a different context, Apple Computer did so cleverly in their “1984” TV commercial introducing the Macintosh Computer. That commercial — in the science fiction genre — portrayed IBM as a totalitarian dystopia. The implication was that anyone who bought an IBM PC was a brainwashed conformist. Seen by millions of people during the Super Bowl, it was highly effective.

McCain could have run similar ads along that same theme. He might have had ads featuring a classroom of children raising their hand to offer various anti-American opinions, or a giant roomful of hypnotized people chanting “Obama! Obama! Obama!, or ads about America transformed into a gray and grim Eastern European nation. Then, as a photo of Obama appears on the screen the announcer could say: “Socialism: Change you can believe in.” There are infinite other possibilities. If the Republicans have failed deliver an effective message, in a creative manner, it is because they have not really understand their dangerous opponent.

October 23, 2008October 20, 2018 0 comment

Mysteries Politics

Radical Islam’s Theological Achilles’ Heel

by Dr. Mark Dillof May 13, 2008October 12, 2018

written by Dr. Mark Dillof

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Here is an example of a political mystery in broad daylight: our chances of winning the propaganda wars against radical Islam and the military wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, might significantly improve, if we could attack Radical Islam’s theological Achilles’ Heel. Can you guess what that Achilles’ heel is? Read further to find out…

Amidst the turbulence and travail of a military campaign, it is easy to lose sight of the battle of ideas. America has largely neglected the ideological war, but America’s enemies have been relentless in their propaganda campaign. Keeping pace with technology, they seek recruits through Jihadist websites. Some scholars have traced the beginning of this ideological conflict, between political Islam and the West, to the 1950s, particularly to Sayyid Qutb. He was a prolific author of books about the virtues of Islam and the deficiencies of the Western way of life, condemning everything from capitalism to the relations between the sexes in American society. Qutb became the ideologist for a fanatical group called “the Egyptian Brotherhood,” which morphed into Al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden has been profoundly influenced by Qutb. Ideas can have dangerous consequences, especially when young people — who are searching for meaning and fulfillment — are not offered attractive alternatives.

We, in the West, have done an inadequate job championing our values, virtues, ideals, and way of life. Some critics have argued that notions like democracy, free enterprise, and the rule of law lack the utopian-inspired excitement of Jihadism, or holy war. The same had often been said, in the last century, about our values failing to inspire, when contrasted with the revolutionary and millennial rhetoric of Communism. I shall argue, though, that the essential problem lies neither with our values, nor with the fact that we sometimes fail to live up to them. The essential problem, in this war of ideas, is that we lack an adequate understanding of our values.

Why is this lack of understanding a problem? If we do not understand our highest ideals, we cannot believe in our way of life. Then, we lack faith in ourselves. And if we cannot believe in ourselves, we shall lack the fortitude to endure the protracted social, political, and military battles that must be fought for the survival of our culture and civilization. Nor will we possess the enthusiasm and the self-confidence that wins hearts and minds, and inspires people of other lands to emulate our way of life. As our confidence ebbs, the despairing specter of Neville Chamberlainism appears. Then, we are doomed to defeat. That is why understanding our higher ideals is vital to our survival. It has rightly been said that powerful nations are often most defeated from within. They lose sight of who they are and cease to believe in themselves.

I’ll confine my discussion here to the value of freedom, or liberty. What is true of Islamic fundamentalists is true of totalitarians of all stripes: they abhor liberty, on the grounds that when people are free, they are free to act immorally. They see the overt sexuality expressed in American films, the greed of capitalism, and the moral flabbiness of secularism in general, as indicative of the immorality and decadence of the West. Similarly, Qutb saw the West as soulless in its materialism.

What, arguments, then, do we bring to bear, in our defense? We rightly accuse our ideological critics of exaggeration. After all, the worst excesses of Hollywood is not representative of the rest of our nation. We also argue for all the many amazing cultural and scientific advancements that emerge from a free society. But, if we are to win this ideological war, we must, to a large extent, defeat the enemies of freedom on their own terms. We must, therefore, get to the very heart of the ideological and theological issue. I.E., since our enemies argue morality, we must argue morality.

Here, then, is the essential point: a constrained morality is not a true morality. If I refrain from stealing because I fear getting my hands chopped off, and if I do not commit adultery because I fear getting stoned to death, then I am not truly moral. Similarly, if I keep my faith because I know that infidels are hung, then mine is not a sincere faith. Outwardly, it may seem that I am moral and righteous, but the outward is no more than a sham. According to St. Augustine, God made us free, knowing full well that if we are free, we could sin. Even were we to eventually see the light, it might take years of sinning before realizing the errors of our ways. That is the consequence of being free. As St. Augustine stated, God made us free because He did not want to be loved by puppets. Only love freely given is true love.

There is absolutely nothing good or noble about a people who obey the rules because they are forced, by fear of a draconian punishments, to do so. (The same argument can be rightfully levied against those Christian denominations, who preach eternal hellfire for those who sin.) Legislating morality, through the threat of violence, fosters fear, subservience, resentment, a search for scapegoats, antisemitism, a sense of being victimized by other groups of people, and a host of other psychological and spiritual maladies. Forced morality does not produce goodness, for goodness is inseparable from freedom. Naturally, there have been good and brave individuals, who have emerged from totalitarian societies, but they have been the exception. Here, then, is the essential point that must be driven home in our war against totalitarianism, in both its theocratic and secular forms: the seeds of true morality flourish in the soil of freedom.

Only by understanding our highest ideals, can a compelling narrative emerge, a cogent explanation and justification of why we are at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. I am not, of course, suggesting that a war of ideas can obviate the need for a decisive military victory. Quite the contrary, victory on the field of battle lends credence to the superiority of one’s ideology. As the military strategist Carl von Clausewitz argued, when the military and the ideological join forces, there is a powerful synergy.

May 13, 2008October 12, 2018 2 comments

Mysteries Politics

Elliot Spitzer’s Shadow

by Dr. Mark Dillof March 14, 2008October 12, 2018

written by Dr. Mark Dillof

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As is so often the case with people, the source of their enthusiasm and success, paradoxically, becomes their nemesis. The deposed governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer, has been a case in point. The most salient feature of the story is how he vigorously went after prostitution — shutting down several prostitution rings, and seeking to raise the penalty being a John from a misdemeanor to a year in jail — while himself frequently engaging the services of prostitutes. Certainly, he is a colossal hypocrite, but there is something deeper at issue, which explains how he could be blind or indifferent to his own hypocrisy. Here is a case, to use a Jungian concept, of a person not in touch with his shadow, with his own dark side. Consequently, he projected his dark side on to other Johns and to prostitution rings, and then went after them with a vengeance. Of course, he had other favorite targets, such as Wall Street, as well as other politicians. He viewed them as greedy and immoral. They were, though, merely projections of his own immorality. Spitzer cast a very large shadow indeed!

Secondly, there was something quite insane about Spitzer’s recklessness. He did not seriously believe that he could get caught. He was blinded, first of all, by megalomania, by his hubristic belief in his own power. And he was blinded by his contempt for everyone; i.e., he believed that the public not smart enough to catch him.

In regard to his recklessness, some theorists contend that people like Spitzer actually wish to get caught. Why would this be so? To go through life with a vastly inflated ego feels unreal and insane. That is the psychological downside of megalomania. Unconsciously, such a person desperately seeks to come down to earth, and often does in an Icarus-like fashion. They do so by unconsciously arranging their own downfall. Rock stars do it through drugs. Politicians do it through scandal. In regard to Spitzer, paying for sex is itself degrading. Furthermore, Spitzer sought to have unsafe sex with prostitutes. He was unconsciously arranging to be punished by contracting venereal disease.

Spitzer is a man who never knew himself. He never had time to, for his entire life has been a ruthless and determined effort to advance his career. Lack of self-knowledge can often give a person great energy and charisma. Here is another paradox: just as Spitzer projected his dark side on to other people, so it is that those who voted for him — 70% of New Yorkers! — projected their archetype of a savior, who avenges evil, on to Spitzer. Thus, just as Spitzer never knew himself, so it is that most New Yorkers never knew Spitzer, until now that is. So it is that two costly mistakes in life consist in not knowing oneself and not knowing other people.

In his resignation speech, Spitzer vowed to continue to work for the public good. How much better it would have been, for the sake of everyone, if he had vowed to know himself. When public service is a flight from the truth about oneself, it always turns demonic.

March 14, 2008October 12, 2018 4 comments