The Open-Mindedness of Liberals; It's a Dangerous Thing | Eastern North Carolina Now

    In an era when anything goes, that's exactly what we're seeing - everything goes, including one's mind, one's composure, and one's conduct. We've mocked and rejected the immutable laws of Biology. We've destroyed the notion of a stable nuclear family and even the tradition understaning of what a family even looks like. Up until about 40 years ago, a man and a woman planned for marriage so that they could be in the best position to start a family and provide for their children - in every way possible... with a stable home, with the intent for a good education, with some savings for their college, with a mother who nurtures them and a father who provides and protects them. The family stayed together because there were priorities and there were social norms and there was the notion of a life-long commitment for the sake of the family, for the well-being of the children. Now, the traditional family unit is mocked and sex is the reason that couples come together rather than true companionship and a desire to build a life together. And as a result, couples stay together only as long as things are good and each isn't too miserable. Children are born before a walk down the aisle and certainly before the "planning." Without the planning, unnecessary stress is placed on the parents and a marriage is strained. In some cases, children are born just for a government check and a way to opt out of the work force, thus they grow up in a home without a father, without proper structure, and without proper influences and role models. How many women do you see today pushing a stroller and maybe another little one tagging along without a ring on their finger and without a husband? Over 69% of babies born in Greenville, NC are born out-of-wedlock. The statistics show that children raised in single-parent households perform poorer in school, are more likely to drop out of school, to have or cause a teen pregnancy, to have spotty employment records, to go on to live in poverty, have psychological and/or emotional issues, and to experience a divorce in adulthood. In short, children who are not raised in a stable two-parent home have a lesser chance of success as an adult. Again, years ago, the priority for young men and women was to find someone they love and to raise and provide for their children so that they could have even a better life than them.

    A decent, productive society needs its proper institutions and the values that keep them on strong footing. It's just common sense. It's just common sense that taking away the lessons of love and goodness, the traditional norms of right versus wrong, personal responsibility, and acceptable social behavior will only have deleterious effects on the individual and the community in general. Turning the public school system into a social experiment without proper standards leaves a child without a sense of personal boundaries. And allowing and even glorifying conduct that condemns Christians and mainstream America as a bunch of nut-jobs and fanatics while embracing conduct that exceeds the bounds of acceptable behavior and defies historic religious tenets and the laws of Biology leaves them questioning what exactly is right or wrong. They question the authority that defines morality and what is right or wrong. Liberals and progressives have left and are leaving communities in decay because of their lack of values and their outward rejection of common sense. Parents, what happens when you don't establish clear boundaries for your toddlers and young children with respect to conduct and expectations? They become little monsters; they walk all over you, they control you, they are disobedient. And they carry that superior, uncontrolled personality with them into adulthood.

    Liberals and progressives thrive on hatred, jealousy, class division, racial tension, religious intolerance, gender confusion, and the notion that each individual is far more important than he or she really is (in the grand scheme of a community; it pushes socialism of wealth and services but individualism in political issues and in everything else). These are the conditions now in which children are raised and the conditions under which Americans live. We see an increase in the dissolution of the family. We see an increase in drug use, and an increase on dependency in general. We see more people content to live at the so-called poverty level. We also see an increase in aberrant human behavior and in alternative lifestyles and gender confusion, and are told depression runs very high in those circles. Our homes are not safe; our streets are not safe. More people than ever are falling apart and having emotional and nervous breakdowns. Is there any reason that we see an increase in violence? Kelly had issues and certainly had the devil winning too many battles inside his head and heart. I'm not excusing his behavior by any shade of the imagination and I am glad he is no longer with us. But society may have helped create that monster by not providing the support and guidance he needed or emphasizing and re-enforcing throughout his childhood (including in the school system) the lessons that nurture the human heart and shape the human mind.

    In all too many instances, we are seeing individuals feed the wrong wolf. And in a godless society, devoid of morality, and corrupted by the godless and the power-hungry, it is becoming far too easy and commonplace to feed that wolf.

    As we see with liberals, as Mr. Joseph Heath of the University of Toronto writes: "All too often, when we study social problems, there is an almost irresistible temptation to study what we would like the cause of those problems to be (for whatever reason), to the neglect of the actual causes. When this goes uncorrected, you can get the phenomenon of 'politically correct' explanations for various social problems. Many of these explanations trickle down from the Ivory Tower into public consciousness through the media, as well as through direct instruction in colleges and university, becoming the 'conventional wisdom' that shapes our political debates. Most academics (liberals) prefer that the cause of a given social problem be one government can do something about." The excuse or the explanation that liberals give for mass shootings is that it is too easy to get guns. Yet it was a firearm in the hands of a healthy-minded neighbor who shot at Kelly, distracted him, and prevented further carnage. "If only we had gun control, we wouldn't have these shooting." "Another deadly mass shooting because people can get guns." The shooter himself, as a person with free will, is never to blame. They never look to the character, the mind, or the intent of the person pulling the trigger. No, liberals make excuses for him. "It's the gun's fault." They fail to realize that a person intent on killing someone will find a weapon to do so, or weaponize something like a truck or a tank of propane. Most of the shooters, if not all, were left-leaning. Most of the shootings could have been prevented if the government had enforced the laws that are already on the books? For example, in the case of Devin Kelly, the Air Force failed to provide information about his criminal conviction to the FBI database used in the background checks for gun purchases, and as a result, he was able to get the guns used for the shooting. (A recent Air Force review has turned up "several dozen" similar cases where the Air Force has failed to provide such information to the FBI). In the case of the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, although he purchased 33 out of his nearly 50 guns individually (those 33 were rifles; the authorities, ATF, are only notified when there are multiple gun sales - two or more handguns in an individual purchase), the fact that he purchased all of those 33 in less than a year should have set off a red flag. The ATF dropped the ball.

    The rise in mass shootings speaks to the rise in mental health issues and the fact that as a society we are so consumed in not hurting anyone's feelings or making anyone feel uncomfortable or feel less than completely normal that we allow such mental defects to go untreated. Aberrant behavior is excused, marginalized, or even swept under the rug. Being that most, if not all, of the shooters were liberal thinkers or otherwise left-leaning, we have to look at why such individuals become so violently unhinged. Also, the rise in gun violence and mass shootings speaks to the climate of our communities, the low expectations of our citizens, and the pressures on individuals, all of which are the direct result of liberal government policies.

    HIGH SCHOOL LIBERALISM - High schools have become a field day for liberals and for social experimentation

    The open-mind policy of liberals has given us this beauty (true story, although the name of the school and the students are kept anonymous, for obvious reasons): Two high school football players were caught (by many) in the act of sodomy in the school's bathroom, using peanut butter as a lubricant. Students entering the bathroom and others just passing by heard their very loud grunting. One student stood on the toilet in the adjacent stall, and filmed the encounter while other students peered into the stall of the sex-crazed lovers and took videos on their cameras. Finally, teachers arrived and then the school police officer. The officer broke up the coupling and within minutes, news spread throughout the school. My son came home from school and shared all this information with me. Later that night it was corroborated by his best friend, whose mother is a teacher at the school. Teachers and administrators were treated to a recap of the event.

    I asked my son what was going to happen to the students and so he told me he would find out the next day at school or get the 411 from his friend. Well, the next afternoon when my son came home from school, I asked for an update. He started off: "Mom, you're never going to believe this...." Turns out that instead of the students talking about a rightful expulsion of the two football students and the inappropriateness of such an act in a high school bathroom, there were a good many of them who wanted to excuse the incident and instead, use it as an opportunity to promote the equality of homosexuals and teach about homosexual sex in school. Now, one could have used the opportunity to talk about acceptable conduct as a teenager, or the morality of teen sex, or abstinence, or sexually-transmitted diseases, or the appropriate uses of peanut butter. But only individuals whose minds are so open that they are incapable of common sense or rational thought (ie, liberal-thinking) could think this conduct is acceptable or that it is a teachable moment on inclusion OR Biology. Years ago, students would be traumatized over such an incident, and they would run home to their parents and tell them. The parents, of course, would hurry over to the school and camp out in front of the principal's office, if need be, to get a favorable promise of how the incident would be handled and what policies and courses would be put in place to make sure that it did not happen again. Years ago, teens were taught right from wrong and taught morality at home, by their parents, according to the dictates of their conscience. Today, thanks to liberal policies, the public school system teaches them what and how to think about sensitive issues. And so they think, just as these 14-18-year-olds did, from the most liberal point of view.

    CONCLUSION -

    Make no mistake, Liberals are destroying the United States with empty-headed logic and policies.... They suffer from a mental defect that renders them incapable of allegiance to and accepting of the values and principles of liberty that the country was founded on and on which the country was once great.

    In 2005, famed radio personality Michael Savage wrote a book entitled Liberalism is a Mental Disorder. You can guess what point he was seeking to make. And in 2011, Dr. Lyle Rossiter, Jr., a board-certified clinical psychologist, wrote a book entitled The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness in which he diagnosed the ideology of the left as a tangible mental illness. In The Liberal Mind, Dr. Rossiter writes: "The Liberal Mind is the first in-depth examination of the major political madness of our time: The radical left's efforts to regulate the people from cradle to grave. To rescue us from our troubled lives, the liberal agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and other-pity, fosters government dependency, promotes sexual indulgence, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, denigrates marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship. Through multiple entitlements to unearned goods, services and social status, the liberal politician promises to ensure everyone's material welfare, provide for everyone's healthcare, protect everyone's self-esteem, correct everyone's social and political disadvantage, educate every citizen, and eliminate all class distinctions. Radical liberalism thus assaults the foundations of civilized freedom. Given its irrational goals, coercive methods and historical failures, and given its perverse effects on character development, there can be no question of the radical agenda's madness. Only an irrational agenda would advocate a systematic destruction of the foundations on which ordered liberty depends. Only an irrational man would want the state to run his life for him rather than create secure conditions in which he can run his own life. Only an irrational agenda would deliberately undermine the citizen's growth to competence by having the state adopt him. Only irrational thinking would trade individual liberty for government coercion, sacrificing the pride of self-reliance for welfare dependency. Only a madman would look at a community of free people cooperating by choice and see a society of victims exploited by villains."

    Others, on the other hand, have characterized liberalism not so much a novel mental disorder, but rather as special class of illness already widely studied since the late '60s - narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Rusty, in the "Political Insider," writes: "The Mayo Clinic defines NPD as 'a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration.' This seems in tune with the fact that liberals - along with their degenerate offspring asking for 'safe spaces' and hiding from chalk - believe their policies and platforms fall in the majority - or the 99% if you will - despite being outnumbered by conservatives in 47 of 50 states." There are other symptoms that define NPD and the left alike... For example, liberals ignore the first rule of nature, that only the strong survive, and instead, want their kind treated differently, like victims or like snowflakes, offering a long list of reasons for their failures and situation and blaming others (such as "white privilege" or the "greedy wealthy"). Ignorance obviously plays a central role in their wholesale claims of racism and "white privilege." Indeed, ignorance on various levels, defines a liberal.

    Liberals also like to rebel against social norms; they don't believe they need to be confined by them. As Dr. Rossiter explains: "Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded..... Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave. A social scientist that 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." Liberals have no conscience when they see how others are harmed - robbed (ie, overtaxed), regulated, silenced, vilified, punished (punished for being white - a non-protectable overly-broad racial group; punished for being successful, punished for having a job, punished for scoring well on the SAT, etc) - when they act out or to further their goals.

    Liberals are notoriously intolerant (even though one of their "issues" is tolerance) and sanctimonious. They love to claim moral superiority. Sadly, although they love to argue their points, they abhor facts and have no stomach for robust debate on the merit of issues. Rather than pursue a real discussion, they try to insult the other side with foul language and name-calling or by discrediting with any one of their "isms"(racism, fascism, etc) or "phobes" (homophobes, islamophobe, etc). Or they may simply try to shut the other side down with their common phrase "white-privilege" (thus showing which group of people see nothing else about a person except skin color !!) Liberals - this is the group that stalks on social media, hides behind dozens of fake Facebook profiles, and shows up at rallies, speeches, and presentations NOT to respectfully offer an alternative viewpoint, but only to shut that event and that speech down with the conduct of a 2-year-old brat or a gutter rat. They loudly and brutishly impose and vomit their non-existent set of self-righteous morals on the world from every conceivable soap box they can find. The only reason racism still exists (and perhaps is now even on the rise) is because of liberals emphasizing all-too-loudly and all-too-often the differences between the races, exaggerating claims, and making mountains out of mole-hills. They took the cue from Barack Obama, who had an uncanny knack of turning every incident into a racial incident. Some might say that they are have an innate ability for applying Alinky's "rules" for radicals.

    And still the list of symptoms of this mental disorder, this derangement syndrome, this NPD (these neuroses) continues. Rusty writes, "Furthermore, they expect constant praise and admiration. This is a staple of college liberals and their constant 'look at me' attitude. The need to feed their pride consumes them, fueling a self-importance that must continue to grow through perpetual media coverage. Protesting sidewalk chalk, protesting topless sunbathing, protesting the right to have a 'safe space,' protesting the First Amendment, etc. And all the while they look for support for their protests, they look for praise, they look for admiration - which the media usually obliges. There is a meme that demonstrates what earned praise back in 1944 and what earns praise today. It reads: '1944: 18-year-olds storm the beach at Normandy facing almost-certain death. 2016: 18-year-olds need safe spaces because words hurt their feelings.'"

    Rusty continues: "The very premise on which the liberal platform of wealth redistribution and social justice are based, is jealousy. They want what others have, and they want it without cost to themselves, either monetarily or based on time. They are envious of those with wealth, health insurance, homes, etc. It is a common attribute upon which all liberal protesters rally around. Is there anything that personified this more than the Obamacare fight? An Obama legacy measure that was opposed by a wide margin, 54-41 percent. Yet it was still rammed down the collective throats of the American people. Why? Because liberals honestly thought that once the plebeians had a chance to see their ideas, they would go along with it. The liberal movement amounts to nothing more than making excuses to legitimize a platform of laziness and entitlements. We've seen these in campus protests, minimum wage protests, anti-Wall Street, anti-capitalism protests, and advocates of perpetual welfare. Their solution to counter corporate greed is to steal from those that have worked hard to attain their level of wealth, and give to those who refuse to reach such a work ethic. 'Tax the Rich' anyone? Money for nothing, or entitlement, seems to be a birthright for the left. All of these symptoms - the narcissism, the righteous indignation, the intolerance, their sense of moral superiority, the ignorance, the need for praise and admiration, the jealousy and sense of entitlement - seem to define an individual who is unable to express their frustration in a rational manner - hence the campus protests. The Mayo Clinic diagnosis of NPD ("In order to make yourself feel better, you may react with rage or contempt and efforts to belittle the other person to make yourself appear better") seems to speak to liberals directly. That's practically a tailor-made diagnosis for Trump protesters these days..... In the end, Savage was right. Liberalism is a mental disorder."

    Some have even characterized progressive liberalism as a religion, albeit socio-political in nature. "For liberals, their sermons are driven by quasi-intellectual discussion prompted by observations made with extreme cognitive bias and uses books such as Rules for Radicals, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (by Peggy McIntosh) and After Hegemony (by Robert Keohane) as their bibles. Their savior, of course, is the Democratic Party, or perhaps Karl Marx." (News24)

    Liberals have gladly and willingly taken the advice of today's college professors: "Keep an open mind." The difference between today's wacko professors and the ones in the mid-20th century, like Professor Walter Kotschnig at Holyoke College and William Allan Neilson of Smith College, is those professors added a "BUT" after that same bit of advice. Today's liberals have rejected any limit as to how open their minds can be, and as a result, their brains have indeed fallen out.

    References:

    Quote Investigator.

    Travis Fedschun, "NYC terror attack suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, entered US through Diversity Visa Program," FoxNews, Nov. 1, 2017. Referenced at

    Children in Single-Parent Families. Referenced at

    Bruce Ashford, "To Anyone Who Thinks Antifa is Good for America," Bruce Ashford blog, August 25, 2017. Referenced at

    James Lewis, "Atifa is Unamerican," American Thinker, August 21, 2017. Referenced at

    IRLI Staff, "New FAIR Study: Illegal Immigration Costs $116 billion Annually," Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), September 27, 2017. Referenced at

    Saul Alinsky's 12 Rules for Radicals, Steel On Steel (News Radio with John Loeffler). Referenced at: https://www.steelonsteel.com/saul-alinskys-12-rules-for-radicals/

    Rusty, "6 Reasons Why Liberalism is a Mental Disorder," Political Insider, May 4, 2016. Referenced at

    "Liberalism: True Political Ideology or Mental Disorder?." News 24, Oct. 22, 2013. Referenced at

    W.W., "Culture of Violence in America," The Economist, June 23, 2013. Referenced at

    David Briggs, "No Time For Crime: Study Finds More Religious Communities Have Lower Rates Of Black, White and Latino Violence," The Huffington Post, Dec. 4, 2013. Referenced at

    Emily Shapiro and Karma Allen, "Texas Church Shooter's Ex-Wife Says He Held a Gun to Her Head," ABC News, Nov 14, 2017. Referenced at