(From: The Australian Quarterly Volume 43, No. 2, June 1971, Pp. 89-97)


ETHNOCENTRISM - ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR



By John J. Ray

Abstract

The account of ethnocentrism given by Adorno et al. has little evidential support. People with Rightist attitudes are not especially sick psychologically or oppressive behaviourally. Anti-Apartheid protestors resemble in their own behaviour the very people they condemn. One must conclude that there is no necessary relationship between attitudes and behaviour. Ethnocentric official ideology regarding other races is congruent with actual behaviour in the case of South Africa but egalitarian official ideology can also give rise to racial oppression -- as in the case of Soviet Russia and the Jews. Avowedly tolerant attitudes combined with intolerant behaviour seem characteristic of much of the modern Left and pose an in principle greater danger to our society than does overt Fascism.

With the scaling down of Western involvement in Vietnam there seems to have been a minor revival of interest on the part of local radical groups in various sorts of racial discrimination (Aborigines, South Africa, Soviet Jewry). The social scientist's value-neutral term for racial prejudice is "ethnocentrism". This term avoids judgment on whether the "prejudice" (a pejorative- term) is justified or not. It simply says a person places an especially high value on his own ethnic origin and culture in relation to others. Thus a Jew who would not let his daughter marry a "Goy' (gentile) would be said to be ethnocentric where it might seem slightly odd to call him racially prejudiced.

It is of course true that ethnocentrism is widely condemned among educated people. In this article it is desired to ask how justified this is. To answer this we shall have to look at theories about the origins of ethnocentrism.

The by now classic account of the origins of ethnocentrism has been given by Adorno et al. (1950). These authors identify ethnocentrism as part of a larger "sickness" (sic) which they call authoritarianism and identify it as a phenomenon of the ideological Right. Their study was in fact basically of extreme Right-wing ideology. The generalization of their condemnatory results to all right-wing ideology was an easy step and one widely accepted (see as a recent example Eckhardt and Newcombe, 1969). The evidential grounds for the findings of Adorno et al. were, however, widely challenged (see the collection of critique in Christie and Jahoda, 1954). One of the central criticisms was that the psychologically disturbed people they interviewed and described could not be shown to be typical of either right-wing people or of ethnocentric people. Moreover, evidence from other psychological studies completely contradicting their account of right-wing ideology as accompanied by personality pathology is now to hand (Eysenck, 1954; Schmuck and Chesler, 1967; Wolfinger, 1965; Schoenberger, 1968; Elms, 1970; Ray, 1971).

If, then, conservatives cannot be shown to be psychologically sick, might it mean that the ethnically prejudiced are not sick either? The answer largely depends on the closeness of the association between ethnic prejudice and conservatism. At least in studies with students as subjects, one does generally find that there is an association between the two. Conservatives do tend to be ethnocentric in attitudes. Even a correlation of .5, however, means that only 25 per cent of the variance is held in common. Therefore it is quite possible for ethnocentrics to be characterized by personality pathology white conservatives are not. Eckhardt (1968) has recently presented evidence, however, which leads to the view that ethnocentrism is in fact not pathological. It is the outcome of a set of cognitive beliefs which could be called a "mythology". An unpublished study by the present author also reveals no association (among 262 university students) between ethnocentrism and neuroticism. Certainly ethnocentrism may be a feature of some types of personality pathology, but to find a person ethnocentric does not allow us to conclude that he is sick. In fact certain types of double-think the public has witnessed in recent times might tempt us to conclude that it is the anti-ethnocentric who is sick. Recently in Australia, anti-apartheid demonstrators saw fit to "raid" Kooyong tennis courts in Melbourne before South African players were due to appear, and to gouge holes in the grass and smear paint and turpentine over the centre courts (1). It seems hard to distinguish this from the members of the Sturm Abteilung, who in the early 1930s smashed windows of Jewish shops. Both groups believed the righteousness of their cause excused the authoritarianism and violence. ( The Nazi's avowed concern was to revenge the honest German citizen who was being "manipulated and exploited by the scheming Jew".) It is all the more incongruous that the same anti-apartheid dernonstrators tuned up next morning bearing placards condemning "Fascism" (2).

The thinking of these demonstrators apparently is: Coercion by South Africans is bad; coercion by us is good. Taken in conjunction with their generally moralistic and presumably pacifistic outlook. this would seem to imply a degree of compartmentalized thinking which clearly an almost neurotic disorder. It might be noted that the targets of the coercion in each case are themselves innocent or unwitting in offence -- the black offends because of his skin colour and the white tennis player offends because of her having been born in South Africa. Neither the
ethnocentric nor the anti-ethnocentric seems psychologically capable of considering others as individuals.

At the same time as the above events were going on, the 1971 conference of British Commonwealth Prime Ministers had just finished in Singapore. At this Britain had been strongly attacked black African States for its inferred intention to sell maritime arms to South Africa. The incongruity in this was that several of the black African States themselves have harshly oppressive official domestic racial policies. This contrasts with an official British domestic policy of notable opposition to racialism. Improbable though it might seem then, we have the phenomenon of racialist countries attacking an anti-racialist country in the cause of racial equality. Perhaps the cartoonist in The Australian newspaper (3) summed it up most aptly by a sketch showing a black African leader declaiming: "The African States will strike a powerful blow against racialism by exporting all Indian residents to Britain!".

From the foregoing it is obvious that a very clear distinction is needed between ethnocentric attitudes and ethnocentric behaviour. It may indeed be the case that people of right-wing beliefs are more ready to acknowledge ethnocentric beliefs but it does not at all follow from this that they are more likely than radicals to engage in ethnocentric behaviour. To refer again to the current political scene, the antisemitism programme in Communist Poland seems to be held up only by a lack of Jews -- most of them having perished under Hitler. At the time of writing, the anti-semitic policies of the Soviet Union are also a subject of worldwide protest. So much for the negative relationship between avowed egalitarianism and ethnocentric practices.

Thus although intellectuals and the highly educated tend to be characterized by anti-ethnocentric attitudes with a consistency that one of their number is moved to characterize as "boring" (4), it does not follow that their actual behaviour would characteristically be any less fascist. Ellis (1970) in fact identified a variant of fascist behaviour to which intellectuals are particularly prone. He believes that others should be accepted simply because they are people. The intellectual who fails fully to accept other people of lesser abilities or intelligence is just as offensive as the Nazi who fails to accept others because of their race.

The present author is not quite as keen as Ellis is to condemn such intellectuals as "fascists" but he does believe that a charge of "bigotry" could be made to stick. As a practicing sociologist he is constantly dismayed by the readiness with which both colleagues and senior students reject such things as "Attitude-Scaling'' or "Behaviourism" (the names of important enterprises from the adjacent discipline of psychology) and then cheerfully admit that they know little or nothing of the rationale and practice of either. And yet it is equally certain that the same people would believe themselves to be paragons of open-mindedness and would condemn bigotry in round terms.

The charge of bigotry is of course a lesser charge than the charge of fascism. The bigot condemns on inadequate grounds what he doesn't like. The Fascist actually attacks it. The student activists who have made "smash Apartheid" their slogan would seem to be good candidates for Fascists. Presumably they have very little information about the sociological and psychological causes of apartheid, and yet they do their best to bring about the goal of smashing it. The fact that a nation of three million ordinary people with genetic and cultural backgrounds closely similar to our own support Apartheid appears to provoke no thought in these adolescent radicals at all. John Vorster or Hendrik Verwoerd may perhaps pass muster as bogeymen, but can we say the same of a whole nation of ordinary people? It is highly arguable that outside attacks on apartheid simply drive the South Africans more into a corner and make them more defensive and oppressive towards the Bantu. How many needless Bantu deaths will be caused by the overseas anti-apartheid movement? A more psychologically intelligent policy for people concerned at the plight of the Bantu might in fact be to allay the fears of the white South African minority by international guarantees for their present and future personal and institutional security. It is argued then that apartheid is an admittedly fumbling attempt to secure this end by domestic policy. This proposal is of course not one that the student radicals might be expected to embrace warmly. Its less dramatic character does not perform for them the task of giving meaning and direction to their lives nearly as well as their present simplistic activities do.

After our second excursion into a consideration of anti-ethnocentrism, let us return to the consideration of ethnocentrism as a psychological disposition.

La Piere (1934) and Titus (1968) have found evidence of what was mentioned earlier as an attitude-behaviour discrepancy. La Piere sent a questionnaire to restaurateurs asking whether they would serve "a person of Chinese or Asian race". When the experimenter actually took an Asian to the restaurants concerned, over 90 per cent of the restaurateurs who said they would not serve an Asian did in fact serve him.

What Titus, the other researcher mentioned, found was that people who agreed with a whole set of statements expressing authoritarian attitudes were not in fact seen by their peers as characteristically behaving in an authoritarian way. Some people with authoritarian attitudes did behave in an authoritarian way but an equally large number of people with authoritarian attitudes did not so behave.

"But what about the White Australia Policy?" someone will say: "Surely attitudes and behaviour go together closely enough there"! To answer this several points need to be made: What has been shown is that a person of ethnocentric attitudes will not necessarily behave in an aggressive or humiliating way towards another person of a different race (La Piere, 1934). Refusing an Asian person service in a restaurant is a clear enough instance of such ethnocentric behaviour, but the same cannot a priori be said of the White Australia Policy. It may be the case that the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" can best be served as part of a policy that includes White Australia. If the ethnocentric person is shown not to be necessarily characterized by racialist interpersonal behaviour and is also shown to be mentally and emotionally healthy (see also below), we must at least acknowledge that his opinion to the above effect is worthy of consideration, and if in a democratic country that opinion is a majority view that it should be implemented.

This is, of course, not remotely to assert that all examples of public racialist policy are seriously thought by their proponents to be justified in terms of the greatest good to the greatest number. The policies of South Africa are obviously justified by the greatest good of white South Africans. The point is not to deny that official ideology and public actions go together in this case, but rather to note that this is only one sub-set of all the examples of oppressive public actions towards minorities or politically weaker racial groups. In other instances we have the same severe repression of minorities combined with official policy and beliefs of an emphatically egalitarian nature (e.g., The Soviet Union).

Having satisfied ourselves of the independence between ethnocentric behaviour and attitudes, we may be moved to ask "what, then, of ethnocentric behaviour? If ethnocentric attitudes are shown not to be psychopathological, are we sure about ethnocentric behaviour?" This is harder to answer. In the absence of correlational evidence it does seem possible that ethnocentric behaviour might be correlated with personality disturbance. Again, however, we must beware of generalizing this belief to public policy. If ethnocentric inter-personal behaviour is a sign of emotional disturbance, it does not follow that the men proposing and supporting the White Australia Policy were or are sick. Was in fact this policy proposed as a product of paranoid ranting or the personal insecurity of some group? The vague fulminations of writers like Bedford (1970) notwithstanding, the documents from that time would seem to indicate that such fears as were expressed around the time of Federation were certainly of a very calmly reasoned sort. Note the following editorial from a N.S.W. newspaper, The Maitland Daily Mercury, 2 January, 1899 (5) (quoted in full) :

A warrant for legislation which undoubtedly in one aspect appears churlish and unchristian is supplied by contemplation of the troubles endured and anticipated in the United States in the presence of a large coloured population. The curse of slavery has indeed, it would seem, come home to roost. Viewing what is happening in the United States, in South Africa and to some extent in Canada, our legislators are justified in maintaining as far as possible the homogeneity of the Australian community as to nationality.

And especially does the position of the Great Republic convey a warning against the admission of coloured peoples except under the strictest regulation. The negroes in the States were, it will be remembered, emancipated by the proclamation of President Lincoln. Subsequent amendments of the Federal Constitution -- that constitution so much more difficult to alter than is the draft Federal Constitution of Australia, which is cast iron in the phrase of its foes -- admitted them to the full rights of citizenship. Constitution makers, however, propose: Public opinion disposes. In some Southern States, where the negroes now constitute a majority of the population, they are denied their legal political rights. Gaining power after the war, they established corrupt governments, and in the reaction against them by the white minority, they were reduced to political subjection by fraud and violence in the first instance, and more recently by new State constitutional restrictions. Other States have not got so far as the constitutional restriction, and violence is still the medium by which a privilege granted by the Federal constitution is withheld from the negro. And the end must be that the equality with whites so conferred will be nullified by State Laws. The condition is really one of civil war, and it is the more aggravated and dangerous that it is a race war of the bitterest kind. On the one side is the contempt which the average white man conceives for dark skinned folk, augmented by a disdain that has never died with which people are regarded whose forefathers were slaves in the land. And on the other side is a vast, largely ignorant, somewhat aspiring coloured population valuing their enfranchisement and disinclined to submit calmly to its withdrawal. As we have said. consideration of the difficulty with which the Government of the Republic is confronted by the negro problem warrants us in carefully selecting, even though the process may seem harsh, the elements of our population.

We must avoid then a simplistic view of the world which lumps everyone who disagrees with us (particularly in politics) as "baddies" and everyone who shares our views as "goodies". Too often one hears everything brutal and oppressive vacuously labelled "fascist" - something that we (self-righteously) would never be. Perhaps the fact that they lost the war puts the Fascist nations in a poor position to suppress accounts of their brutal behaviour. This should not delude us into thinking that brutal behaviour was characteristic of them alone. One man on the allied side who, through extensive travel, did have the opportunity of seeing what actually went on in the second world war was Charles Lindbergh. His accounts of actual behaviour from servicemen of the "egalitarian" societies of Australia and the U.S.A. are worth reflecting on (6):

Australians pushing out Japanese prisoners from transport planes over the New Guinea mountains ... Americans poking through the mouths of Japanese corpses for gold-filled teeth .... Jap's heads buried in anthills to get them clean for souvenirs ..... shin-bones shaped for letter-openers and pen trays .... Japanese prisoners machine-gunned on a Hollandia strip"

It is also a commonplace that the customary source of riots and public violence in our society is the extreme Left rather than the extreme Right. At the height of the political confrontation in the U.S.A. over Vietnam, front-page reports like the following were to be seen regularly in the newspapers (7):

"Thousands of roaming anti-war demonstrators fought running battles with police in New York last night after having been thwarted in an attempt to picket the Secretary of State (Mr. Dean Rusk).

"Police made 38 arrests as the demonstrators surged through Times Square to Grand Central Station and attempted to march on the United Nations building. Two thousand police sealed off the Hilton Hotel -- creating an oasis of calm -- where Mr. Rusk chastised his war critics in an address to the Foreign Policy Association. Outside, the demonstrators disrupted traffic, stoned police, yelled imprecations and waved peace placards. Several police and about a dozen demonstrators were injured in clashes. Yelling crowds of youths, waving fists and carrying placards, surged up the broad Avenue of the Americas leading to the Hilton Hotel two hours before Mr. Rusk was due.

The demonstrators hurled plastic 'bombs' of red paint at police, emptied dustbins, blocked traffic and terrified theatre and dinner-going crowds."

It is customary to explain the left-wing origin of public aggression and violence by saying: "But if they were not in power, it would be the Right who would demonstrate". The truth, of course, is that neither the Left nor the extreme Right is in power. Difficult though it may be for those of genuine Left-wing views to believe, the extreme Right is just as prone to see the President as a "Leftie" as the Left is to seeing him as a "Fascist" (see for example, Elms, 1970).

In fact the partial success of the anti-Vietnam movement in having the U.S. Government officially adopt their policy seems to have made these same radicals not less prone to public violence and displays of aggression but more prone to these. A quotation somewhat later in date than the one given above may serve to illustrate this (8):

"Demonstrators shouting protests against the military thrust into Laos burnt a Government car and beat up a policeman near the University of California in Berkeley yesterday.
"The police fought back with tear gas.
"In other incidents the 16-year-old son of a professor was shot in the thigh at Stanford University, an American flag was burnt at the Boston post office and 3,000 peace advocates clogged New York's Times Square during the rush hour.
In Washington, 400 youths and girls marched on the While House shouting: 'Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh', and 'One, two, three, four, we don't want your ---- war".
In scattered cities across the U.S. arrests were made in outbreaks of violence and vandalism.
This first round of demonstrations against broadening the Indo-China war did not match the intensity of the protests after the American forces moved into Cambodia almost a year ago.
A thousand demonstrators armed with rocks and bamboo sticks and holding aloft Vietcong and Pathet Lao flags, marched for several hours on the University of California campus and nearby Berkeley streets.
They were headed off when they tried to enter down-town Berkeley, scene of costly rioting in previous demonstrations.
The Washington demonstration was peaceful at the start, but when police moved in, a few stones were thrown.
Some protestors ran through neighbouring streets, shouting and breaking windows."

"Pacifism" is certainly no name for this behaviour -- however appropriate it may be as a name for attitudes of the people concerned.

The real reason, then, why the Right does not demonstrate while the Left does, would seem to Iie in the greater respectability of the attitudes or avowed goals of the Left. If the second word war had been less of a fiasco for the Fascist nations, extreme right-wing views might have remained respectable. That it is not so is thus due at least in part to the contingent facts of recent history. Without this supervening public awareness, we might expect both the right and left wings to engage in public behaviour of an intimidatory kind -- as was indeed the case in pre-war Germany and as is the ease in the under-developed world of today -- particularly in Latin America.

To summarize, it is felt that we may assert that right-wing and ethnocentric attitudes are not necessarily pathological or sick, and that anti-ethnocentric, anti-fascist attitudes are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for anti-fascist, unprejudiced behaviour.

In value terms, this does not represent a claim that the person of ethnocentric and right-wing ideology is virtuous. It does, however, represent a claim that he is not less virtuous than the person of unprejudiced and radical ideology. l take it that virtue is to be assessed by deeds, not words. At the outside there might perhaps be a claim for greater virtue on the part of the person of ethnocentric views. The sub-set of conservatives and ethnocentrics who behave in an aggressive way are at least the only group to openly acknowledge this. Unlike the aggressive radical, they cannot be accused of hypocrisy and at least from the behaviour regulation point of view an overt offence seems more manageable and hence less dangerous than a covert one.

If we were to carry this to its logical extreme, we would have to say that we must prefer the Nazi to the Communist -- not because the Nazis were less totalitarian (though this does seem to be true -- see Unger, 1965), but because one openly justifies his use of oppression, coercion and violence while the other hides his deeds under a possibly sincere camouflage of humanitarian intentions. This point can perhaps better be seen with the aid of a more distant historical example -- the Spanish Inquisition. This evil could scarcely have been perpetuated if many there involved had not believed its proceedings to be efficacious in the benevolent end of saving men's immortal souls. Humane intentions can lead to most inhumane actions and the very humaneness of the intentions constitutes the most difficult possible obstacle to abolition of the practice.

--------------------

Notes:

1. "Sunday Mirror", p. 10, 24 Jan., 1971, Sydney, N S.W.

2. "Sun-Herald", pp. 1 and 3, 24 Jan , 1971.

3. 23 Jan. 1971

4. Phillip Adams, "Muggers Minority of One", "The Australian", p. 23, 23 Jan., 1971, Sydney, N.S W.

5. It was thought that a quote from a country newspaper might come closer to representing the sentiments of the people of the time, than would the possibly insincere peroration of a politician.

6. From "The wartime journals of Charles A. Lindbergh". N.Y.: Tudor, 1970

7. An A.A.P. report carried on the front page of the Brisbane "Courier Mail" under the headline "Running Battles With Police Grip New York" on 16 Nov., 1967,

8. Quotation taken from a p. 4 report in the "Sydney Morning Herald" of 12 Feb., 1971.



REFERENCES

ADORNO. T.W., FRENKEL-BRUNSWIK, ELSE., LEVINSON, D. J., & SANFORD, R. N., 'The Authoritarian Personality', N.Y.: Harper, 1950.

BEDFORD, I. White Australia: The fear of others. "Politics", 1970, 5, 224-227.

CHRISTIE, R., & JAHODA, MARIE, Studies in the scope and method of "The Authoritarian Personality". N.Y.: Free Press, 1954.

ECKHARDT, W. Prejudice: Fear, hate or mythology. "J Hum. Relat.", 1968, 16, 32-41.

ECKHARDT, W., & NEWCOMBE, A. G., Militarism, personality, and other social attitudes. "Jnl. Conflict Resolution", 1969, 13, 210-219.

ELLIS, A., Intellectual fascism. "Journal of Human Relations", 1970, 18, 700-709.

ELMS, A. C. Those little old ladies in tennis shoes are no nuttier than anyone else, it turns out. "Psychology Today", 1970, Feb., pp. 27-59.

EYSENCK, H. J. "The Psychology of Politics", London: Routledge, 1954.

LA PIERE, R. Attitudes and actions, "Social Forces", 1934, 13, 230-237.

RAY, J.J. (1971) An "Attitude to Authority" scale. Australian Psychologist, 6, 31-50.

SCHMUCK, R. & CHESLER, M. Superpatriot opposition to community mental health programs, "Community Mental Health Journal", 1967, 3, 382-388.

SCHOENBERGER, R. A., Conservatism, personality and Political extremism. "American Political Science Review", 1968, 62, 868-877.

TITUS, H. E. F scale validity considered against peer-nomination criteria, "Psych. Record", 1968, 18, 395-403.

UNGER, A.L. Party and state in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. "Political Quarterly", 1965, 36, 441-459.

WOLFINGER, R., et al. America's radical Right: Politics and ideology. In: Apter, D. (ed.), "Ideology and discontent". N.Y.: 1965.

FINIS

Understanding Women: An Australian view




By J.J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)

ADVICE FOR MEN

One of the commonest things said by men about women is that women are completely inexplicable and unpredictable. Many men come to accept that their women have different motives from them but very few ever get to understand why. Part of the problem is that women do not normally like men to understand them too well. They like to outsmart men. They like their motives to be a bit of a trade secret.


The view from evolution

The first thing to understand is that the main motivating force behind a woman's behaviour has very little to do with the present. It goes back millions of years. You need an evolutionary perspective. Both women and men are very much a product of a long evolutionary past rather than of anything in the present. And women have a much more narrowly-specified biological role than men -- which in fact makes them easier to predict than men (if you have the key). Their major role has always been to bear children and then bring their children through childhood to adulthood. That is HARD. They need a man to help. Just keeping the children from harm and feeding them is task enough without having to gather the food too. Women do traditionally gather some food but they need men to provide the high-grade protein (game). But they do not need just any man. They need two things in a man: Reliable support from him over many years (because children take so long to grow up) and he must have the strength and vigour to be able to protect his family from the more severe threats (mostly other men). All women to this day seek that sort of man despite the fact that civilization has made the need for such qualities less urgent.

The big problem is that the two sets of qualities do not necessarily go together. Any woman can have a man who will devote his life to her if she is prepared to accept a wimp or a loser. But such a man falls down on the protection-capacity front. On the other hand she can team up with a highly competent livewire and find him unreliable in the long term. If he is attractive to her he will be attractive to other women so she may lose him in full or in part to other women and thus could be left high and dry with her kids.

The view that men are naturally polygamous and women monogamous seems to fit in from an evolutionary point of view. The more women a man makes love to the more kids man is likely to have. This is sometimes called the "fruitfly strategy" as it is even more true of fruitflies, who do not need to care at all for their young (eggs hatch or they don't). As man is a social animal, kids do tend to get cared for to some extent anyway and more are likely to survive than a monogamous strategy would entail. Women, however, are not highly likely to have more children by changing partners and new partners might be hostile to the young of other men. So the "interests" of men and women are different and to an extent opposite. Men may give their genes the best chance of survival by having many different women but women do best by sticking to one partner.

So for many women the choice is between exciting (powerful or vigorous) bastards and reliable wimps. Many women dislike that choice so much that they never marry or have children (and many men are so bad at meeting such requirements that no women ever choose them). Attractive women, however, can wait for a "right" (reliable and strong) man to come along but other women (e.g. overweight women) may have to take any offer that comes up or go without entirely. By the same token "right" men (capable men who are nice to women) can wait for a "right" (attractive, capable and good-hearted) woman to come along as they know that many women will show interest in them.

Since attractiveness is related to health and vigour (e.g. carrying around a load of useless fat is generally maladaptive and uncompetitive in all sorts of ways) the outcome is that healthy, capable and socially-skilled people are (or were) most likely to reproduce. In the days of the welfare state almost anyone can reproduce, of course. Genetic engineering may one day restore selectivity, however.

So what is the outcome for understanding everyday female behaviour? The most noticeable outcome is that women worry about what men see as "silly" things. Giving women flowers on special occasions seems to men most pointless but to women such things show whether or not men are besotted with them. Besotted men are more reliable, you see. And if you are out with one woman and are more attentive to other women, the first woman will get a big message from that. She will conclude that the man is not committed to her and will see it as just about the end of the relationship. Women know that men are "difficult" in terms of their aims so need a lot of reassurance about how highly men regard them as individuals. Women, in other words, are always looking for things that men do not even remotely have in their minds! No wonder men goof! On the other hand, women know men well enough so that men who fawn on them (seem totally preoccupied by them) will most likely be seen as either hypocrites or wimps. As in so many fields, you have to strike the right balance.

Striking that balance is hard to teach. One hint: Being a good listener is a good start. And as you listen do take seriously what the woman says (though you need not always believe it). Everyone likes a good listener. Chatterboxes and blowhards are always tedious and tend to be disliked as they obviously think that what they have to say is more important than what anyone else has to say: Not clever!

Giving women occasional small tokens of esteem (small gifts, dinners out) always helps a lot, too. And remembering (with a gift) birthdays, anniversaries etc is always a "real bottler" (big winner) in terms of its good effects! Amusing, but there it is! Another good idea is to compliment a lady on her appearance. But it must be an observant comment. To say: "Your hair looks nice today" when it is the same hairdo she has had for a month will rightly cause her to think you are a bit of a drongo (fool). If, however, you say: "Your new hairstyle suits you" and say it on the very first occasion she has turned up with that hairstyle, you really win points -- not mainly because of the compliment but because you noticed -- something men often do not. If you noticed she will take it as an indication that she is important to you. If you don't like her new hairstyle you can say "I liked your old hairstyle better" and still win the same sort of points -- possibly more because it shows you are honest and everybody likes honesty.

So the key to understanding women is to realize the inherently difficult dilemma they are in. They have to try to predict the behaviour of a male for at least 15 years ahead. If you were faced with that dilemma you might take exaggerated notice of small things too!

When first meeting women, touching them and putting your arm around them should also be done as soon as at all possible. Women tend to be into all things non-verbal so touching them tends to make them feel that you are a real person who finds them attractive. If they react badly to it, it means that they are either very nervous or that they don't like you at all but in any case it does no harm and will usually be a good start towards finding out what a lady thinks about you.


When similarity is not preferred

One thing that has clearly emerged in the research on the topic of human mating is the contrast between what people in general like and what people like where selecting a mate is involved. The two are very different. We generally prefer similarity in one-another but in selecting a life-partner "opposites" sometimes attract. As sex researcher Glenn Wilson points out, what counts is whether the behaviour, attitude or personality concerned is sex-role-typical or not. Putting it crudely, men like not women who are mannish but women who are feminine. Surprise! And, despite the best efforts of feminism, lots of women still like men who are masculine.

It is perhaps fortunate that similarity is not all that attracts us in one-another. Since men and women are very different and even have characteristically different recreations (what man does knitting, for instance?), it would be very hard to find compatibility at all if compatibility simply equalled similarity.

So should we stop worrying about similarity altogether and just seek sexual attraction in one-another? A basically lustful relationship does have a lot to be said for it but is certainly not enough by itself.

It seems that one needs both similarities and complementarities PLUS physical attraction. The complementarities (i.e. the "opposites" that "attract") will usually be in the areas where men and women have obvious evolutionary differences -- which will generally mean areas where men and women are traditionally complementary: e.g. the man should be more aggressive and dominant (good in hunting and defending) and the lady should be more pleasant and subtle (good in childrearing and relationship maintenance). This is not to say that such a pattern would be sought at the conscious level. Men often wish women had more male virtues and women often wish men had more feminine virtues. So a lady, for instance, might deplore aggression in a man at the cerebral level but nonetheless respond well to it in other ways.

So ideally, it seems that one should seek a life-partner with a complementary personality but with at least some similar interests and cultural background.

Seeking is not the same as finding however so some people no doubt end up with either no-one at all or someone from way out of left field.


On Being a Listener

Another exception to a rule that occurs in male-female relationships concerns the rule that everyone likes a listener. To be a good listener is something of a guarantee of social success. If you mostly listen in conversations people will tend to think what a nice sensible (and intelligent!) person you are. This only applies up to a point when a woman is evaluating a man, however. If a man does little more than listen to a woman she is likely to perceive such behaviour as weak, vacant and wimpish. So with women, men need to spend at least some time advocating their own case and doing it vigorously! But the man should obviously also make sure that he does plenty of listening as well.


Women and dominance

A difficult and very touchy issue to deal with in connection with male-female relationships is dominance. Virtually no woman will say that she likes being dominated but a lot in fact like it very much. What almost all women say is that they like a man to be "strong". Being dominant, however, is part of being "strong" so what it boils down to, at least in part, is that women like to be dominated "nicely". This means that they like to know that the man is the boss in at least some respects but like the man to give them their head on anything that is not really important and to appreciate them generally. They like to be able to trust the man with at least some decisions and appreciate the man leaving other decisions to them.

In case anybody gets carried away, it should be said that nothing said so far here implies that all women like being subjected to sadism in sex (though to varying degrees some do, of course).

The women who have something of a problem, then, are the naturally dominant ones. Because they are dominant it does not mean that they cease to be women. They still want a man to dominate them to at least some degree. But such women make it hard for the men. It is hard to dominate a dominant woman. Is it only very dominant men that can do it. So such women spend a lot of time trying to find the right partner. They seldom succeed. So if such women do marry, they tend to settle for next best -- They marry a weak but very "nice" and reliable man whom they do not love but consent to use. It is a bit sad but if both parties are happy with such an arrangement, who are we to criticize?


Women in the U.S.A.

Sexual relations in the U.S.A. seem to have really broken down. American women very often despise American men. "The men are no good", they say. The reason why is that many American men are dreadful liars (at least with women) and cannot be trusted. They really believe in that reprehensible motto: "All's fair in love and war". It sure leads to a messed-up society. Australia is infinitely better off in that regard.

History is a great help in understanding how the dreadful American situation evolved. It all goes back to the arrival of affluence. Australia, of course, became affluent long before the United States. Around 1875 the average Australian was 70% better off than the average American. A larger amount of gold and land per head is the main reason but Australian technological innovation (in agriculture) and lack of religious obsessions played a part too.

The arrival of affluence brings leisure and options generally. So what do men seek after they are warm, dry, secure and fully-fed? Sex, of course. But sex with the wife is not enough. Sexual variety is even better. But when Australia became affluent it was in the middle of the Victorian era. Moral strictness at the time ruled out any large scale philandering. So Australian men substituted: with alcohol and "mateship". They "left" their women not for other women but to spend time in company with their male drinking friends. They chose friendship and booze instead of sex. To this day what Australians see as moderate drinking seems like alcoholism to Americans. This pattern became fairly well-entrenched in the Australian ethos. The men tend not to stray sexually so have no need to lie to their women but their women just don't see much of them. The women stay home with the kids and the men go to the pub ("bar", in American) and yarn with their "mates" (male friends, "buddies") for much of their free time. Knowing where someone drinks is almost like an address for many Australian men. The women do not really like this but at least they do feel that their men are very predictable and reliable and they certainly feel "on top" of the men. Women feel superior to men in a way that they might feel superior to their children. Perhaps it is still like that in much of small-town America too. The American big cities are in many ways behavioural cesspits but small-town America can be really nice (perhaps in part because they are more religious).

Anyway, when America became affluent times were different. It was early this century and the Victorian influence was on the wane. So American men chased sex. But getting ladies into bed can be hard. So what did American men do to solve that problem? Because they believe in the utterly immoral and quite Hitlerian doctrine that "All's fair in love and war", the answer was simple: "Tell 'em whatever they want to hear" If women wanted to hear that the man loved them, "Tell 'em that!" If women wanted to hear that the man would always be true, "Tell 'em that!" American men resorted to lies, in other words. America became a psychopathic culture -- at least in relations between the sexes. No wonder many American women have become mistrustful shrews! They are so bitter that many an American woman would respond to my above analysis of female motivation by describing it as "a handbook on how to rip off women". How bitter can you get! The end result is that American men have to put up with very bitchy women in general. Unless he is religious, the God of the average affluent American male is his penis. Many of them would not even understand the censure implicit in that comment. "What else is there?", they would say. Family values are a mystery to such people.

One way the women of America adapt is to become very dominant and demanding. (Read some of Ben Stein's articles in The American Spectator). Only by keeping men under their thumb do they feel any security. That can be pretty rough on the men. "Men are second-class citizens in this country", American men have often said to me. Bitter, bitchy, emotionally empty women and lying, oppressed men. What a mess! There are some ways in which America is not a success.

American men who come to Britain or Australia, of course, have a ball. The women believe them! The women concerned pretty soon learn their mistake, however. It is probably one source of the bad image Americans have outside America. They are seen as "Smooth talkers", con-men, in other words. Distrust of American accents is wise. In Britain things are more like in Australia -- but for the opposite reason: Britons are still not yet generally affluent. They can't afford to philander much.

So I would sum up my advice to men as follows: Be your own man with your own goals, values and ideas and don't be afraid to express them. Be polite, observant and considerate but don't let women boss you around and don't pander to their every whim. They will respect you more that way. And, boringly old-fashioned though it may seem, honesty is also the best policy in the long run.


ADVICE FOR WOMEN


Female Physical Attractiveness

Attractiveness is, of course, a topic of no small interest to both men and women. The merest glance at the men's magazines on sale in any newsagency will strongly suggest that men are generally turned on by big breasts, slim waists and long hair. From a biological point of view, among homo sapiens an "hourglass" figure marks femininity and is hence a key to sexual attraction. Other features do a similar job in other species (e.g. the famous behinds of Mandril monkeys).

Women with an hourglass figure are, however, a small minority in the female population at large so there is some competition among men for such women. Men pander to them.

So ladies with good figures become accustomed to social success because men defer to them and this either gives them confidence or makes them more relaxed in various ways. They also then tend to acquire the values that relaxed and confident people generally tend to have. They tend for instance to become outspoken about what they think and are able to trust. They do not fear the opposite sex or intimate involvement with them. They see relationships as basically rewarding.

Women who are less physically attractive, by contrast, have more adverse experiences with men and tend by their 40s and 50s to have become very defensive and hyper-alert against being ripped off by men. And confident, capable men just seem risky to such women. Such women often seem to conclude therefore that they should only contemplate taking on a weak and less desirable man -- because it is only such a man whom they can control or to whom they can appear irreplaceable. They also have learned to be as self-sufficient as possible and are often unable to admit weaknesses or frailties of any kind. They are often all tensed up and heavily into defensiveness and denial. Physically attractive ladies, however, CAN admit to weaknesses, can be relaxed and can let themselves find confidence and competence in men attractive.

The greater confidence and more relaxed attitude of physically attractive women can have rather paradoxical effects at times. Take the way women react to a man who has many good qualities but who is not physically attractive. Women generally ARE interested in the looks of men but what they like in looks is much more variable than what men like. So who do the less good-looking men end up with? Generally speaking, with less good-looking women. BUT, what about the special case where the less good-looking man has a lot of desirable qualities outside the looks department? Surprisingly, such a man seems quite likely to end up with a good-looking woman. Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti would have to be the best-known example of that. The good-looking woman often seems to feel that she has looks enough for both and can thus be strong enough to overlook appearances and end up with a really good man.

So we seem to have happening something like what Christ described in the parable of the talents. As Christ said there, "To him that hath, more will be given him, and to him that hath not what little he hath will be taken away". In other words, less attractive women tend by their behaviour to lessen their chances of finding happiness and making a good match rather than taking realistic steps to make the best of what they have.

And there is in fact much that they could do to help themselves if they wanted to. Having a slim waist and long hair is in fact perfectly under every woman's control. But so many women fail to give themselves those advantages. I suspect that there is no man alive who has ever found a "perm" (permanent wave) attractive yet so many women in later life waddle around in fat bodies with a silly little "perm" of short tight curls sitting on top of their heads. Such women have for all intents and purposes given up on forming a new relationship. And that does tend to mean giving up on love. Since many of the women concerned are quite fine women in other respects, that does seem a pity.


Female Friendships

Women these days quite routinely hold their friendship structure up as an example to men. They say that females have supportive friendship networks that men lack and that they are emotionally stronger for it. They see men as incapable of the intimate friendships that women have and see this as a weakness that explains many of the problems that men have. They say how much they value their friends, how often they talk to their friends and relate how helpful friends have been to them in times of crisis.

This is in fact, however, only one side of the story and overlooks both the different evolutionary role of men and the full reality of female friendships. In her book Lip Service, American feminist author Kate Fillion notes part of the downside in female friendships: The difficulty women have in being honest with one another. If a woman's friend is wearing a ghastly dress or hairstyle that does not suit her at all, it is almost impossible for her friends to tell her that. The nearest the friend can go is to say something like: "You're looking well today". The friend is supposed to note that she and not the dress was complimented and draw the conclusion that the dress is awful. As nobody wants to receive or believe negative messages about themselves, however, the import of such extremely indirect criticisms is often missed and woman carry on gaily looking awful when honesty might have helped them. So emotional support is given but realistic help is witheld. Men, by contrast, are much more used to giving and receiving criticism and have nothing like these severe barriers against it.

Another problem with female friendships that seems often to be conveniently overlooked is that female "friends" can often be extremely bitchy. If one female seems to be getting ahead of the pack in any way, that female will tend to be put down. If, for instance, she is a sexually attractive older woman who dresses in a way that shows her attractiveness, she will be told that, "You don't want people to say that you are mutton dressed up as lamb, Dear", in an endeavour to get her to dress in a more dowdy way. Great stuff! Really helpful!

The bitchy and trivial-minded nature of female friendships seems to be the major reason why there is in fact a considerable minority of women who have little in the way of female friendships and prefer the company of men. Attractive women, in particular, often remark that they prefer the company of men as they get much more ready acceptance there and much less trivial conversation.

There are however undoubted differences between men and women in their emotional makeup. Men do have their "mates" (Australia) or "buddies" (USA) and these friends do help in emotional crises. They do so differently, however. They do not try to help by listening for hours to a repetitive outpouring of problems, for instance. If a man is "having troubles with his Missus" his mates will, for instance "take him fishing to get his mind off it". Men are interested in solutions to their problems. They seldom find it helpful just to talk about their problems. This appears to be connected with differences in the male and female brains. Recent work in brain physiology suggests that a much larger proportion of the female brain is devoted to emotional processing. Male emotional processing, on the other hand, tends to be connected to "fight or flight" brain centres. So emotional problems will first be worked on in a practical way but if that is not successful, the problem will be dealt with by the man "leaving the field" (either physically or emotionally) rather than by worrying further. So males and females find different things emotionally helpful but that is about all you can say about it.

It does seem true, however, that many men do have few or no close male friends in later life. This is due to the different sex-role specializations that men and women have. Women are the socio-emotional specialists (specialists in emotional relationship maintenance) as part of their biological role as mothers and men are much more task-oriented as part of their biological role as providers and protectors. In later life, these roles are well set for men because they have by then committed much of their life to their generally competitive role as breadwinners. In an endeavour to provide for their families they have developed the competitive side of their nature and neglected their emotional relationships -- in the expectation that the woman in their life will look after that side of things. This is a perfectly normal example of specialization of roles -- and it is role specialization that is mankind's great trick, a trick that is a large part of the advantage mankind has over the other animals. At times of marriage breakups, then, it is little wonder that many men in later life suffer much more emotionally than women do. The specialization of women tends to leave them with friends whereas the specialization of men does not.


The Female Mid-Life Crisis

Almost all male-female relationships require compromise. Partly because men and women are in general different, we almost all have to tolerate in a loved-one some things that we would wish were otherwise. It seems, however, that the cessation of the childbearing role that sets in around the 40 years of age mark has a big effect on what women will tolerate. The "difficult" aspects of their husband that they tolerated in their earlier, potentially reproductive, years become no longer tolerable. So around the 40 mark is "trade-in time" for marriages. Both men and women have a tendency to leave their spouses at that time but women do more of it. Two thirds of all divorces are initiated by women.

Part of the reason why women around 40 tend to dismiss imperfect husbands is that the women seem to undergo quite profound psychological changes at that time. They seem to experience a rapid inflation in self-esteem and become very "independent".

As a result, amazingly praiseworthy attributes are routinely claimed by women over 40 who advertise in the "Personal" columns of newspapers or on the internet. This is perhaps some evidence that the inflated claims older women generally make about themselves are not deliberately deceptive. They really believe that they are wonderful people!

Divorce and its associated events are however almost inevitably a traumatic experience for all concerned and the one "lesson" that many women learn from it all is: "never again". New relationships with men will sometimes not be contemplated at all but if a new relationship is sought, the woman is very definite that the next man has to be "Mr Right". Even though she couldn't find him before, she is determined to wait as long as it takes to find him this time.

This fierce determination to settle only for "Mr Right" that characterizes women in their 40s does have its comical side. All the generally desirable men are of course well and truly married by that age -- to desirable women. All that is left are other women's rejects. Faced with this rather obvious fact, some women say: "But a man who is not right for another woman may be right for me". Really? What woman is NOT seeking a man who is good-looking, tall, sensitive but strong, open, generous, faithful, understanding etc.? If there is a treasure like that out there, some other woman will be hanging on to him for all she is worth and if she IS silly enough to let him go, he won't stay single for much more than five minutes. A wise woman would surely be looking only for "Mr Possible" at that age.

Unattached women in their 40s do perceive in a way that the waters in which they are fishing are pretty fished-out. They often say: "Where are all the men?" and express the firm belief that for some reason there are a lot more single women around at that age than there are single men -- ignoring the fact that a lot of singles parties in fact have a majority of men present and ignoring the fact that census statistics show roughly equal numbers of men and women in all age cohorts up to age 65. I have heard women over 40 utter their plaintive cry about the "shortage" of men even while they are at a function where there are present roughly equal numbers of men and women. When I point out that there are in fact quite a lot of men around them, they say, "Not THOSE men". The males of roughly their own age around them are just not real men, it seems. In other words, such women are looking for a population of ideal (and probably younger) men to choose from rather than being interested in the imperfect and ageing men who are actually available to them.

The women concerned generally explain their unrealistic selectivity by saying that they have been burned in the past by men and that they therefore want to be sure that they are not burned again. This may indeed be true. Or it may be only a red-herring or at best a small part of the story. In favour of the latter view it might be noted that divorced men quite often have bitter complaints about women but that does not generally seem to cause such men to become uncaring about whether they have a woman in their life or not.

It always saddens me to see so many fine women in their 40s so heavily defended against love. Love is trusting. It is incompatible with fear and caution but fear and caution seem to be powerful motives for lots of single women in their 40s. The women concerned may often claim to be happy alone but one wonders how that self-deception feels on many a lonely night. Human beings are social animals, not loners.

Since, however, Australian women of their own age are generally uninterested in them, it is no wonder that so many divorced Australian men in their 40s go to where they can find younger brides -- the Republic of the Philippines. It is nice that the men do have an alternative but it does rather leave the Australian women to stew in their own juices.

Around ten years of waiting, however, is generally enough to make even the most determined woman give up on her hopeless search for the ideal mate. She then either retreats into eccentricity or radically changes her tune. She is 50. She has had something like ten largely lonely years for nothing. So now she generally starts looking seriously for a mate. This COULD be related to the menopause (which happens about then) but it would be simpler to say that women of around 50 who once professed to despise men but who now actively seek them out are motivated by a realization at that time that they face an increasingly enfeebled old-age alone. They fear that and to avoid it they once again seek out those with whom they have in the past had the closest connections -- men.

Unfortunately, of course, their choices are much reduced by this stage. Many men who were available to them in their 40s have now married -- generally to younger women (including younger Filipinas). It does all seem rather a pity.

So I would summarize my advice to women as follows: Accept your biological nature and realize that the closest relationship you will ever have will almost certainly be with a man. Once you have accepted that, look for Mr Possible not Mr Right. And don't ever think you have all the time in the world to find him. And if you want a better class of Mr Possible, you have to be a better class of Ms Possible -- in other words, what MEN want, not what women or feminists say you should be. And I am afraid that, boring as it is, a slim waist and long hair are the most generally useful places to start.


FINIS

Why I am a libertarian conservative


By John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)

In my various writings, I normally mention my own political outlook only in passing. I am more interested in understanding what is happening in the world about me than I am in proposing my own grand theories. And in that respect I think I am a mainstream conservative. Conservatives don't like grand theories. I do however find libertarian ideas a very useful framework for thinking about problems. I think that most of society's problems are caused by governments usurping choices that could better be made by individuals and that government is just about the worst way of doing almost anything. So libertarians normally have a good answer to most social problems -- allow more freedom for individual choice. Libertarians have ideas and concrete proposals with a clear rationale and persuasive precedents. And that is a great contrast with the dismal Leftist reflex of solving everything via ever more pervasive coercion. And libertarian proposals in most spheres are normally congenial to conservatives too.

Where libertarians normally part company with conservatives is over moral issues. Conservatives want less regulation than Leftists but they do want some regulation. Exposing part of a black woman's breast (the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction") at a major sporting event upsets some conservatives dreadfully, for instance. I am afraid that I remain a total libertarian on such issues. What people do with their own bodies seems to me to be supremely their business. And all arguments that some idea or claim should not be uttered or made known simply suggest to me that the idea or claim concerned is a powerful one that cannot easily be opposed. I would not go so far as to say that any censored idea or claim is automatically correct but I think there is a strong presumption in that direction. So the argument that sexual restraint should be fostered by censorship of sexual expression suggests to me that the arguments in favour of sexual restraint are weak.

Where I part company with many libertarians is that I find them too doctrinaire. I DON'T believe that there is one simple recipe that solves all problems. That to me is a Leftist outlook. As conservatives generally do, I see the world as infinitely complex and as not reducible to any simple rule. And in fact many libertarians agree with that. The extreme form of libertarianism is anarcho-capitalism -- the idea that NO government is needed for any purpose. I know all the arguments in favour of that view but see them as contrary to all human experience. Man is a social animal who has always throughout history felt at least some need for a government to perform certain tasks and I am perfectly confident that that will always be so. So as far as I can tell, most libertarians are not anarcho-capitalists. They are Minimal Statists. They believe that there are certain functions (such as defence) for which a government is needed. I am one of those.

So the distinction between Minimal Statists and Conservatives is one of degree. Conservatives have always wanted to limit the size and power of the State (I document 1500 years of history to that effect here) but they still want a much bigger State than Minimal Statists do. And I am a pretty minimal Minimal Statist. I think the USA could abolish its whole alphabet soup of government agencies (FDA, EPA, DEA etc) to great net advantage (for instance).

Where I appear to be in a minority among libertarians, however, is over the issue of immigration control. I am in favour of control. I am far from totally alone in that view among libertarians but I think it is pretty clear that a majority of libertarians believe in open borders. I think that is naive. Not all people are equally compatible with one-another and if a householder has a right to say whom he will welcome into his house then I think nations have an equal right to say whom they will welcome into their nation. Fortunately, I live in one of the few advanced countries in the world (Australia) that does effectively control its immigration. And my views on that matter make me very much a mainstream Australian. A huge majority of Australians agree with our government's policy of control.

Another way in which I depart from most libertarians but am very much in harmony with conservative traditions is that I do believe us all to be limited in various ways by human nature. Libertarians have no obvious place in their thought for the concept. They know it is a factor but see it as simply one of the many mysterious factors that determine people's preferences. For them only the preferences matter. What determines those preferences is for them unimportant. But conservatives think human nature is VERY important. They think it greatly limits what we do and can do and use it to explain WHY collective action is to be avoided where possible. They give reasons for preferring liberty, instead of simply asserting the desirability of liberty, as libertarians usually do.

That is not to say that libertarians have the same view of human nature that Leftists do. Leftists normally insist that human nature does not exist and that therefore any human being can in theory become anything he wants to be or can be "educated" into being. Libertarians, by contrast, are simply uninterested in whether that is true or not. Leftists think little boys can be "educated" into preferring dolls to trucks as playthings whereas conservatives think they cannot. A libertarian, by contrast, simply says that little boys should be given a choice of what to play with and who cares what they choose. Unfortunately, however, a lot of people do care so the conservative argument does have to be made. I personally agree with the libertarian policy in the matter but I think that policy does normally have to be backed up with conservative arguments about human nature to get it implemented.

Conservatives also have to make more of an issue of individual differences than libertarians do. That people are different and should be allowed to make different choices is axiomatic to libertarians but they normally take that as given rather than arguing for it. With their perennial "all men are equal" doctine, however, Leftists are always trying to deny or minimize individual differences. Conservatives believe that doctrine to be disastrously wrong and argue vigorously against it. Conservatives believe, for instance, that some people work harder and smarter and therefore rightly get more money for what they do. Leftists however think (or claim to think) that all men are equal so unequal rewards must be unfair and the work of a flawed system. So whether or not individual differences are important is a major Left/Right issue -- but libertarians simply assume it away without debate. I spent most of my academic career researching individual differences so I am obviously in the conservative camp there.

And one way in which I differ from almost everybody these days is that I say out loud that there are some differences between the major races and nations of mankind and that some (but only some) of those differences are important. Up until the middle of the 20th century just about everybody believed that but the fact that Hitler used arguments of that general sort in justifying his deeds has made such arguments generally unmentionable in the modern world. I am however a psychometrician by trade. My expertise is in measuring psychological differences between people. I have had over 200 papers published in the academic journals reporting research in that connection. And perhaps the most solidly proven and replicated finding in psychometrics -- a finding that has always emerged in around a century of research -- is that people of African ultimate origin do have much lower average scores on general problem-solving ability (IQ) than do people of European ancestry and that variations in IQ are largely genetic. So, knowing what I know from my own field of expertise, I HAVE to say that the Leftist approach of treating blacks and whites as intellectually equal is doomed to failure. Somebody has got to say that the emperor has no clothes and I am prepared to be that person when required. Most people seem to think that makes me a "Right-wing extremist" or a "white supremacist". I think it simply makes me an honest scientist.

FINIS

The psychology of anti-Americanism

By John Ray (M.A.;Ph.D.)

Some scene-setting quotations:

"They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet... in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks"

(The much-acclaimed Michael Moore's opinion of his fellow-Americans)

"I knew that the wave of anti-Americanism that would swell up after the Iraq war would make me feel ill. And it has. It has made me much, much more ill than I had expected.

My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world.... I hate feeling this hatred."

(Quote from English novelist Margaret Drabble from May, 2003)


"If one is not at least a serious doubter of the legitimacy of the state of Israel (never mind the policies of its government) and if one does not dismiss everything American as a priori vile and reactionary, one runs the risk of being excluded from the entity called "the left." There has not been a common issue since the Spanish Civil War that has united the left so clearly as has anti-Zionism and its twin, anti-Americanism. The left divided, and divides, over Serbia, over Chechnya, over Darfur, even over the war in Iraq. There are virtually no divisions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and over the essence of the United States.

(The above is a summary -- originally published in the Leftist magazine "Dissent" -- of where Leftists at the beginning of the 21st century stood with regard to America and Israel.)

I have shown elsewhere what great haters Leftists are in general but this is a separate look at perhaps the most obvious example of such hate -- hatred for the USA -- a hatred which is not only ferocious in most of Western Europe but which is widespread in America itself:

Modern-day Leftists fervently proclaim how opposed they are to "prejudice" and "racism" but allow themselves some notable exceptions to that -- with Jews (sorry! "Zionists"!) being the most obvious such exception. Another prejudice that Leftists are allowed to express is however ALMOST racist: Leftists are allowed to be anti-American. It might be objected that anti-Americanism is not racist because Americans are not a race but the essential point surely is that group prejudice and hatred is group prejudice and hatred, however the target group is defined.

Just look at this example of hate at work:

"American students are quitting Queensland universities in the face of hate attacks by Australians angry at US President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. One university has launched an investigation into claims an American student returned to the US after suffering six months of abuse at a residential college in Brisbane. American students have told The Sunday Mail the verbal attacks are unbearable and threatening to escalate into physical violence. Griffith University student Ian Wanner, 19, from Oregon, said abusive Australian students had repeatedly called him a "sepo" - short for septic tank. "It is so disrespectful. It's not exactly the most welcoming atmosphere here," he said. The Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commission has described the abuse as "horrible" and says it could be classed as racial vilification".

And these hate-filled Leftists are presumably the same people who condemn racism as being a narrow and ignorant overgeneralization and tell us that people must not be abused or made to suffer just because they are members of some minority group! Given American voting patterns, about half of the American students concerned probably don't like George Bush very much either but that does not hold back the Left from their narrow and ignorant overgeneralizations.

As an Australian, I see considerable differences between US culture and my own Australian culture -- and I definitely prefer my own. Most people do prefer their own (Park, 1950). What is hard to understand, however, is what the most generous nation on earth has done to deserve the hatred of it that is so routinely poured out in much of the world. How visceral and totally irrational that hatred can be is perhaps best seen in the case of the much remarked Drabble dribble excerpted above. If I were religious, I would be inclined to think that the America-haters were demon-possessed.

And the events of September 11, 2001 surely show that hatred of America (whether by Muslim fantasists, Japanese Bushido fantasists, Leftist fantasists or any other fantasists) can be as malign, mindless and dangerous as any other form of prejudice. And it must be noted that Muslim fundamentalists are very much like the Greens and the Left in their dislike of the modern capitalistic world and in their dream of turning us all back to some sort of an idealized primitive past. No wonder so many Leftists condone Muslim terrorism! And if the Muslim fundamentalists want to return us all to a feudal state, the various Communist regimes actually did. Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung etc were as much God-kings in their time as any Pharaoh of Egypt ever was.

But, as Paul Johnson eloquently points out, the sort of Leftist anti-Americanism we see so much of today is so illogical and counterfactual as to inspire the thought that it is a type of mental illness. Excerpt:

"Like hatred of Jews, hatred of Americans can similarly be described as a form of racism or xenophobia, especially in its more vulgar manifestations. But among academics and intellectuals, where it is increasingly prevalent, it has more of the hallmarks of a mental disease, becoming more virulent, widespread, and intractable ever since the United States began to shoulder the duties of the war against international terrorism.

After all, to hate Americans is against reason. For centuries, and never more so than at present, the U.S. has harbored the poor and persecuted from the entire world, who have found freedom and prospered on its soil. America continues to receive more immigrants than any other country; its most recent arrivals, including the Cubans, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, and the Lebanese, have become some of the richest groups in the country and are enthusiastic supporters of its democratic norms. Indeed, since American society is now a vibrant microcosm of the human race, I would say that to hate Americans is to hate humanity as a whole."

The people concerned are NOT however obviously mentally ill so a deeper explanation for the phenomenon is needed.

The simplest reason behind Leftist anti-Americanism is that America sits at the pinnacle of the existing world power structure and a desire to change or tear down existing power structures -- for whatever reason -- is undisputably at the core of what Leftism is about. Americans are enragingly un-equal. And even Americans can be anti-American. Excerpt:

Antiwar protesters burned and ripped up flags, flowers and patriotic signs at a Sept. 11 memorial that residents erected on a fence along Whittier Boulevard days after the terrorist attacks in 2001 and have maintained ever since.

Or note this comment from an American entertainer:

"This irrational and virulent hatred radiates from elected officials to all those who elected them. I saw a T-shirt in a Palm Springs shop that said, "So many right-wing Christians, so few lions." Hilarious, n'est-ce pas? Nothing funnier than religious believers being ripped to shreds by wild animals in front of cheering pagans.

I'm intrigued by the liberal furor over Karl Rove's remark about the difference in reactions to 9/11. As my old grandfather used to say, "You throw a stone into a pack of dogs and the one that barks the loudest is the one you hit."

Everything Rove said is absolutely true. I entertained at a 50th anniversary party for a well-known feminist leader about 10 days after 9/11. Much of the liberal elite of the Twin Cities was present. I was wearing a little flag pin that elicited considerable mockery. In a post-performance conversation with 3 prominent DFL activists, they all agreed that 1) America had it coming 2) much of the rest of the world cheered the attacks and that was not a bad thing; 3) the attack was purely a "criminal" matter that required the issuing of indictments, but surely not a war, and finally and most horrifically, a direct quote, "At least we got rid of Barbara Olson."

Like racists who feel free to use the "N" word among themselves, these people felt free to be so frank and unguarded because they absolutely assumed that I shared their worldview. I was so upset I couldn't even EAT, and anyone who knows me knows how serious THAT was. I told them I disagreed completely and left. That was the final straw launching me from my lifelong stint as a Democrat to the Republican party."

Many US liberals are routinely critical of almost everything about their country -- a country in which untold millions of people from around the world would love to settle, given half a chance. Some American liberals even seem to see American society as rotten to the core, which, in a generally patriotic world, is fairly surprising. It is however explicable as envy and frustration at the vast influence that American society and the American common culture undoubtedly wield over both individual Americans and the world at large. The American way of life and thinking must be a frustrating behemoth indeed for those who would wish to change it.

That envy of American power and success lies at the heart of most anti-Americanism would also seem to be shown by the anti-Americanism that seems to be rife in SOUTH Korea. Excerpt from a Reuters report of Dec. 17, 2002:

Websites, the media and the street are rife with resentment at South Korea's security ally of 50 years and top trade partner, influencing candidates' stances in Thursday's poll -- a close race which may hinge on how the country's volatile youth vote.... But the anger -- vented in some 50 street rallies that recently have drawn thousands more people than the presidential candidates -- is deep and broad. A recent Pew poll showed South Koreans hold the strongest anti-American views in Asia.

It was only by virtue of thousands of young Americans spilling their blood in the Korean war that South Korea escaped from the horror to their North. One might naively think that this would induce gratitude to America. That it does not shows that there is a stronger force at work. And only envy seems to be a sufficient explanation. What have Americans done to earn the dislike of South Koreans? Nothing of any significance (unless you count this:

A 6th Cavalry Brigade soldier received the Army's highest award for peace-time heroism Dec. 2 for saving a Korean woman's life. Cpt. David A. DeMartelaere, who was S-4 of the 1-43rd Air Defense Artillery at the time of the rescue, was awarded the Soldier's Medal for helping save Lee, Shin-eh, a Korean national, from her burning car in a Dec. 10, 2000 accident. Lee and a friend were driving on Route 1 near Osan Air Base when a drunk driver crossed into their lane and crashed into their car head on. DeMartelaere and Worthington, who were also driving on the road, stopped to help. "Right after we stopped, one of the cars just became a big ball of fire," said DeMartelaere. "The other car was smoking from a fire in the engine. Someone was still alive because we heard the sounds of her choking on the smoke. We knew we had to get her out immediately." The two soldiers were unable to break the windshield, according to DeMartelaere, so they bent the door in half by ripping down on the top of the door. They were then able to pull Lee from the wreckage).

All that Americans have done is to be their prosperous, kindly, confident and successful selves. And envious people hate them for it: So very sad for all concerned.

A good answer to anti-Americanism is this:

"America has its faults as a society, as we have ours. But I think of the union of America born out of the defeat of slavery. I think of its constitution, with its inalienable rights granted to every citizen, still a model for the world. I think of a black man, born in poverty, who became chief of their armed forces and is now Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and I wonder frankly whether such a thing could have happened here. I think of all this and I reflect: yes, America has its faults, but it is a free country, it is our ally and some of the reaction to September 11 betrays a hatred of America that shames those that feel it."

Who said that? The quote is from a larger discussion of Canadian anti-Americanism. It was said by British Labour Party Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Good man!

And what Americans are criticized for is truly amazing. The routine European criticism of Americans seems to be that they are "stupid" -- clueless "cowboys". So how did a stupid people get to be one of the most prosperous on earth? How did a stupid people get to be the world's only superpower? How did a stupid people avoid ever having their cities bombed flat? How did a stupid people produce military equipment so advanced that no-one else can hope to match it? The Iraqi army put up a tenacious fight against the Iranian army but it just went home when a much smaller American military force arrived. How did a stupid people come to dominate the world with its cultural products? Ever heard of Hollywood or American popular music? And even Italians now make "Western" movies. How did a stupid people get to dominate the world with its products and business systems? Ever heard of Coca Cola, McDonald's or KFC? How did America get to dominate the world with its intellectual products? Ever heard of Microsoft or IBM or Intel or all the American Nobel prize-winners? How did a stupid people get to integrate successfully within their ranks large numbers of people from every country in Europe? South America and North America are both large continents well-endowed with natural resouces so how come there is no South American equivalent of the USA? How come prosperity stops at the U.S.-Mexico border? And how come it is Europe that invented both Communism and Fascism and that it was America that had to rescue them from both? Those who call Americans stupid show by doing so how stupid they themselves are.

Leftist motivation generally

But it is not really stupidity at all, of course. Many anti-American Americans are highly intelligent people. To understand the full depth of Leftist anti-Americanism (such as we find in the immensely popular work of Michael Moore) we have to look at what motivates Leftists generally. In particular, we have to discard any assumption of rationality for what they say. We generally treat Leftists with more courtesy than they deserve. We take seriously statements they make that are not at all serious. We assume that Leftism is a set of ideas or even a philosophy when it is neither of those things. Leftism is a posture, not a set of ideas. And as such it can only be understood psychologically rather than logically. The Leftist is not at all bothered by his inconsistencies or failures to recognize reality. So to discover inconsistencies and unreality in his utterances is both easy and irrelevant. A Leftist utterance is not aimed at any sort of serious explanation of the world at all. It is aimed simply at making the Leftist feel good -- and hopefully of persuading others that he is a good guy too.

An August 2002 article by Lee Harris contains an anecdote about the Vietnam activism of the 60's that illustrates that point well:

"My first encounter with this particular kind of fantasy occurred when I was in college in the late sixties. A friend of mine and I got into a heated argument. Although we were both opposed to the Vietnam War, we discovered that we differed considerably on what counted as permissible forms of anti-war protest. To me the point of such protest was simple - to turn people against the war. Hence anything that was counterproductive to this purpose was politically irresponsible and should be severely censured. My friend thought otherwise; in fact, he was planning to join what by all accounts was to be a massively disruptive demonstration in Washington, and which in fact became one.

My friend did not disagree with me as to the likely counterproductive effects of such a demonstration. Instead, he argued that this simply did not matter. His answer was that even if it was counterproductive, even if it turned people against war protesters, indeed even if it made them more likely to support the continuation of the war, he would still participate in the demonstration and he would do so for one simple reason - because it was, in his words, good for his soul.

What I saw as a political act was not, for my friend, any such thing. It was not aimed at altering the minds of other people or persuading them to act differently. Its whole point was what it did for him.

And we see the much same thing in a much more eminent and influential Leftist -- Eric Hobsbawm -- Britain's famous Communist historian. He lived in Germany in the 1930s and comments about that time: "If I'd been German and not a Jew, I could see I might have become a Nazi, a German nationalist. I could see how they'd become passionate about saving the nation. It was a time when you didn't believe there was a future unless the world was fundamentally transformed." That is of course a implicit acknowledgment of how close psychologically Nazism and Communism were in that both offered passion and both offered radical change. But the most interesting thing is what he says drew him to Communism from his early days on. He says that the basis of his Communism was a sense of "mass ecstasy"; "pity for the exploited"; the "aesthetic appeal of a perfect and comprehensive intellectual system - dialectical materialism"; a "Blakean vision of the new Jerusalem"; and "intellectual anti-philistinism". So again we see that the main appeal of Communism was the psychological satisfactions it gave -- "ecstasy" even. Whether it was right or benevolent was incidental.

So the Leftist can quite cheerfully say that there are no genetic influences on human behaviour when discussing IQ and then go on immediately to say that homosexuality is genetically inherited ("the gay gene"). To conservatives that sounds like inconsistency and it is certainly logically inconsistent. But the Leftist isn't really bothered about logic. What he says is psychologically consistent. In both cases he is casting himself in the heroic role of the defender of the underdog.

In the case of homosexuals, the disgust that most normal people feel about homosexuality means that homosexuals will always to some extent be underdogs so the Leftist aims to show how much kinder and wiser he is by defending them. And if "they can't help it" ("the gay gene" theory) seems to be the best defence of them he will say that. But in the case of IQ the idea that there is an inborn disposition to be good or bad at solving most problems implies that people who prosper may be prosperous for a good and just reason. And that conflicts with the Leftist's desire to feel and look kind and wise by championing the poor. So in this case he has to DENY that the poor "can't help it". It sounds a lot better to say that poverty is the result of wicked and unkind people conspiring to keep poor people down. And saying that shows the Leftist as "caring" about the poor and as being so wise as to see causes of poverty that others cannot. So he denies that there is any such thing as IQ, let alone an inherited IQ. He claims that poverty is the result of "oppression" and "injustice", not of lesser ability to make good decisions in life. A century of evidence about the reality, importance and heritability of IQ does not bother him because evidence is not what he is concerned about.

So let us apply that general understanding to Anti-Americanism: Why are Manhattan "liberals" and their ilk so reflexively anti-American? Evan Sayet has a good description of just how compulsive the hatred of their own country is among such people. Excerpt:

"I spent the last week with my Modern Liberal relatives in New York. It was excruciating. What I found was cynicism beyond belief -- and beyond all rational (in fact any rational) thought. The correct answer to all things was whatever the worst interpretation of America and Americans could be.

But Evan tries foolishly to apply logic to their statements when there is no logic there. What he fails to see is that their anti-Americanism is a CLAIM on their own behalf, not a rational proposition. It is a claim to being superior. Like Hobsbawm they are expressing what they see as "intellectual anti-philistinism". They are in effect saying: "We are good and smart and wise -- not like all those other dumb Americans around the place". They knock Americans as a way of feeling better about themselves -- just as Europeans do. And, like Europeans, such knocking shows that they secretly fear that they may in reality be inferior. If they really were demonstrably superior they would not feel any need to put other people down.



There are of course some other groups that Leftists see fit to scorn -- Christians and conservatives in particular. Tim at Random Observations has noted the huge upsurge of hatred against Christians among Leftists in the early 21st century. In part, the phenomenon is of course a response to the tendency of evangelical Christians to vote GOP but there seems to be a passion in the hatred directed towards Bible-believing Christians which borders on insanity at times. It seems much more than dislike of someone you disagree with.

Tim explains the fervid hatred by saying that many people (particularly Leftists) need to feel superior to someone else in order to boost their own ego but Leftists are not supposed to feel superior to lots of people these days (homosexuals, blacks, poor people etc) so Christians are about all that is left as permissible scapegoats. So all their hatred is poured out through the narrow openings that their beliefs allow. So Christians are just about the only permissible targets.

Tim overlooks, however, that Leftists hate all sorts of people -- businessmen, the rich, overweight people, the bourgeoisie, corporate bosses, and almost anybody who is doing well for himself or herself. Nonetheless it is true that the "tolerant" pose Leftists adopt does cut them off from admitting to hatred or dislike of quite a lot of people and since people who consider themselves superior really despise just about everybody, that does leave unfulfilled a big need to put other people down. So the groups that are "permissible" to hate often get a fierce dose of that hate.

So in summary, what I think we need to say to make sense of Leftist hatreds is that Leftists are people who have a huge need to think highly of themselves. But they have an awkward limit to how they express that. Being "superior" can only be relative. Superior to whom? So the Leftist always needs to feel superior to someone or some group in particular. There has to be some group that they don't need to pander to and which they are free to put down and hate. And, at the moment, Christians, Jews, conservatives and Americans are popular candidates for that hatred. Since Leftists these days are often quite affluent themselves, the traditional Leftist ploy of hating "the rich" or "the bourgeoisie" might invite some awkward comments, questions and even requests for donations!

But egotistical beliefs are hard to maintain and are hence vulnerable to disconfirmation in various ways. A big ego is a weak ego. Someone who sees himself as just an average guy (or a Christian who sees himself as just a sinner) will find confirmation of that belief all about him most days of his life. But someone who thinks he is out of the box will be constantly scrabbling for support of that belief. So Leftists are always looking for the praise, for the attention and for the power that they need and that they think they deserve. And they will do anything to get it. They will do anything to bolster their big but fragile egos. Their ego need is far more important to them than any scruple. They will say anything at all that they think will make them look good.

So the fervour of hatred that the Leftists currently pour out towards their particular hate-objects reflects both how big and how threatened their egos are. And with the fall of their much relied-upon Soviet Union having been followed by many other ego-squelching conservative advances in recent years that threat seems unlikely to go away. So we will see much more anti-Americanism yet.

Anyone who doubts that Leftists do see themselves as superior beings should trawl through the achives of my LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS blog for a while. That will set any doubts completely at rest.

There are of course many things that flow from Leftist egotism other than the need to put other people down that I have dwelt on so far. One of the most direct results of egotism is a yen for power. The egotist feels that he/she should rule the roost or at least take part in ruling the roost. But the no. 1 repository of power in almost any human society is the government -- and that is hugely the case in modern economically advanced societies. So it is always on government that the eyes of Leftists are trained. Through government they hope for the power that they seek. So they are always proposing more and more government activism and putting themselves forward as the ones to run and manage the activism concerned. But this too leads to frustration with America: Because America's traditions are fundamentally individualistic and suspicious of government. And America's successes at doing things without the aid of government (or despite the government!) tend to show up the whole idea of government activism as being the folly that it usually is. So what the Leftist wants clashes fundamentally with what is quintessentially American. No wonder therefore that Leftists hate America! Ted Baiamonte formulates it as follows:

"So why do liberals hate America? The answer is simple: America, since the Revolution and before, has been mostly about freedom from gov't and therefore about freedom from Democrats. Throughout American History the Democrats have always been for less and less freedom from gov't despite the hundred million or so dead bodies gov't has caused during that period. It seems fairly obvious that their philosophical illegitimacy is what makes their loyalty so questionable and their style so nasty and, seemingly, treasonous. They want to belong here but the facts always paint them as anti-American. In a way you have to feel sorry for the painful position in which they find themselves

I will conclude with an analysis by Evan Sayet that touches on yet another outcome of egotism: Delight at seeing failure in others. Seeing other people fail is of course immensely satisfying to egotists and Evan finds exactly that love of failure (in others), promotion of failure (worldwide) and hatred of success (in others) among America's Left:

"So why does the Democrat hate America?

The answer can be found in the fact that Democrats see life as a zero-sum game. To them, if someone wins that means it must come at the expense of someone else. Success is thus evil as it causes pain and suffering to others. Since America is successful -- in fact unprecedentedly so -- America, in their eyes, is unprecedentedly evil. Suddenly it makes sense why Democrats continually compare America to the most heinous regimes in history.

The Republican, in contrast, believes the very opposite. The Republican believes that "all ships rise with the tide." To the Republican success, then, is good and should be encouraged at all levels and to the greatest degree. To the Republican America's success -- and the benefits that brings to the rest of the world -- is great.

But that's not what makes America great to the Republican. Success is amoral. To the Republican it is not a persons or a nation's success or failure that defines their goodness but rather it is their behavior. To the Democrat behavior is of no significance. To the Democrat good is defined as anything that fails and evil is defined as whatever succeeds.

The Democrats' hatred of success is not just limited to economics. While America is evil because of our success and corporations are, de facto, evil because they're successful (and the most successful corporation, Wal-Mart, of course receives the most hatred from the left) the same hatred exists for those who are successful in their studies.

It is for this reason that the Democrat designs policy intended always to reward the failed and punish the successful. Thus when children fail to learn to read and write the Democrat seeks to reward them with a promotion to the next grade anyway. They call it a "social" promotion and it includes all of the benefits one receives for working hard, staying home from the party to study and doing one's assignments without having to make any of the effort.

At the same time that the Democrat works to reward failure they pursue policies such as the ones we're seeing on college campuses today where they seek to destroy the valedictorian honor for the best of the best and remove merit as the criteria for awarding the "merit scholarship." Rather than being a reward for hard work and accomplishment the Democrats seek to turn the merit scholarship into just another welfare program.

Since good and evil is defined not by behaviors but by success and failure the Democrat supports every failed regime on the planet no matter how horrific its system and leader or the cause of its failure.

This is why the Democrats (and their ideological brethren in Europe) so hate Israel and so adore the Palestinians. The fact that Yasser Arafat was a corrupt, mass murdering, terrorist dictator who stole his people's money, sent fourteen year old brainwashed children out to blow the skulls off of the infidels in Israel and intentionally kept his people in poverty to be used as political pawns is of no significance to the Democrat. The Palestinians are to be championed for their failure and Israel, a democracy with freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of religion, is to be hated for its success.

There is no doubt that Democrats hate America. There is no other possible explanation for their attempts to turn unpleasant weather conditions in an interrogation cell in Cuba or a couple of pairs of panties on the heads of those sworn to murder all infidels (e.g. Americans) into the equivalent of the regimes of Pol Pot and Adolph Hitler. There can be no other explanation for the Democratic Party leadership giving a standing ovation to what they know to be a lie-filled, hate-filled, anti-American propaganda film -- one that would be used to incite hatred for America and drum up recruits to massacre its citizens. There can be no other explanation for the most hateful demagogic attacks on America's Commander-in-Chief at a time of war especially when that is against those who have not only sworn to bring death to America and Americans but have already succeeded in doing so by the thousands.

No, there is no doubt that Democrats hate America -- and will do so until they can make us fail."

Reference
Park, R.E. (1950) Race and culture. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.

ADDENDUM 1

There may be the odd reader who is historically sophisticated enough to know that there would appear to be one huge gap in the above account. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the Left were up until comparatively recent times highly patriotic. Michael Medved offers a useful summary:

Today's militant leftists not only spread lies about America's present but generate even more damaging distortions about the nation's past and in so doing differentiate themselves from the radical idealists of yesteryear.

Contemporary followers of Noam Chomsky and Ward Churchill view the entire American experience as a disgrace, even a crime. They stress the nation's guilt in committing "genocide" against Native Americans, enslaving millions of Africans, stealing Mexican land, despoiling the pristine environment, oppressing working people everywhere, and blocking progressive change with an imperialist foreign policy. One Jake Irvin of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington recently told the Wall Street Journal: "My political belief is that the U.S. is a horrendous empire that needs to end."

In contrast, the radicals and revolutionaries of the past cloaked themselves in patriotic symbols and proclaimed their desire to call the nation back to its own highest ideals. From Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas to Paul Robeson and Abbie Hoffman, these agitators proudly quoted Jefferson, Lincoln, or Tom Paine, and agreed with the nation's mainstream that Americanism (at least as they defined it) represented the last, best hope of earth. Even the Communist Party USA unblushingly honored national heroes: when they dispatched their fighters to support fellow Stalinists in the Spanish Civil War, the volunteers called themselves "The Abraham Lincoln Brigade" not the "Vladimir Lenin Brigade." Stalin?s personal friend Paul Robeson achieved mainstream popularity with his "Ballad for Americans," treating the Revolutionary War as a heroic struggle not a malevolent conspiracy by greedy slaveholders (as it's often portrayed today).

Despite his personal dalliance with the Communist Party, composer Aaron Copland crafted loving tributes to the American spirit, achieving vast popularity with works from his nationalist period ("Appalachian Spring," "A Lincoln Portrait," "Rodeo," "Billy the Kid"), inventing a distinctive musical language of pioneers and open spaces without nods to multiculturalism or self-pity. Woody Guthrie, another embattled radical, proudly penned "This Land is Your Land" an unblushing love song to his native soil.

So how come? If anti-Americanism is a deep psychological phenomenon among the Left, how come it is so recent?

This is something of a specialist question and is certainly a topic all by itself -- which is why I have relegated it to an addendum -- but the following are a few outline notes:

One part of the answer is plain. Up until World War 2, America was NOT the world-dominating power that it now is. All the excitement, innovation, power and influence was coming from Europe -- Russia, Germany, Britain and Italy, particularly. So to the pre-1945 generation, America was actually a hopeful counterweight to the leading powers in the world. American patriotism was at that time a DEFIANCE of power, influence and success -- just what Leftists want. And it took a little while for Leftists accustomed to being patriotic to change their tune. But by the 1960's most of them had done so and the move into reverse-gear on patriotism was well underway.

But what about Leftists outside America? If (for instance) Britian was a major focus of power and influence before 1939. did that make British Leftists of the day unpatriotic? It did, to a degree. Cambridge University became a nest of spies-to-be for the Soviets (Philby, et al.) and Oxford was also very Leftist. In 1933 (9th Feb.) the Oxford Union debated the motion: "This House will in no circumstances fight for King and Country". The motion was overwhelmingly carried (275 to 153).

On the other hand, pre-1939 Italy and Germany were definitely movers and shakers of the day but accompanied that by new heights of patriotism and nationalism. How does that fit in? It fits in exceedingly well. Fascism and Nazism were both far-Leftist (though not as Leftist as the Soviets -- see here and here) so what we saw there was Leftist rulers encouraging allegiance to their regimes. Leftists love and glorify being IN power as much as they hate being OUT of power. Similarly, American Leftists were much less alienated during the Clinton Presidency, even though Clinton was more a centrist than a real Leftist.

History never repeats itself exactly, however, so comparisons of the pre and post WWII eras need to take lots of differences into account -- particularly in this case the fact that WWII itself undermined the allure of patriotism and nationalism. So emphatic were the patriotic and nationalistic preachings of the Fascists that their military defeat tended to undermine belief in the rightness and wisdom of all such concepts. EVERYONE was nationalistic, racist, patriotic etc before the disaster of WWI and most remained so up until and during WWII but the evils revealed in the aftermath of WWII made such concepts highly debatable. And Leftists of course saw advantage in taking the negative in that debate, even if it meant reversing the position they had held before WWII (as it did in the USA). Their anti-patriotic stance served to distance them from what had come to be seen as a losing ideology (Fascism) and once again put them on the side of the saints.

ADDENDUM 2

The following excerpt from a French writer on anti-Americanism shows some insight:

"As soon as somebody mentions the United States, the best minds leave the realm of reason. In the eighties, Alan de Benoist, a Nouvelle Droite [New Right] ideologue, wrote, "I'd still rather be under the yoke of the Red Army than have to eat hamburgers." In the beginning of 1999, French philosopher Jean Baudrillard showed in Liberation how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Washington had plotted to aid Slobodan Milosevic in liquidating the Kosovar Albanians. In 1991, Le Monde's film critic compared Hollywood movies to Goebbels's Propaganda-Staffel. During the brief Kosovo conflict, the English playwright Harold Pinter, since winner of a Nobel Prize, declared in Liberation, "Here's a definition of American foreign policy: `kiss my ass, or I'll stomp on your face.' Milosevic refused to kiss American ass, so Clinton stomped on the Serbs' face." At the same time, the Trotskyist philosopher Daniel Bensaid rejected both Milosevic and NATO as "two perfectly twinned, contemporary forms of modern barbarism." For his part, the director of the Picasso museum in Paris, Jean Clerc compared Belgrade to Guernica and American aviators to Nazi pilots, indifferent to the populations they were crushing.

The attacks of September 11 also gave rise to some choice bouquets: let's begin with the conspiracy theories started in France by Thierry Meyssan and in Germany by former Social Democratic Party minister Andreas Von Buelow. They "revealed" that the Pentagon itself had launched the airplanes against the towers in order to take power. German writers Guenter Grass and Botho Strauss pointed to the towers' fall as "the amputation of finance's accusing fingers" and to the Afghanistan expedition as "a war of bad guys against bad guys." The prize goes to Baudrillard, who confessed himself fascinated with the "joyous" aesthetic of the attacks, like Nero faced with Rome in flames. He also put the principal antagonists back to back. The American system has so monopolized force, according to Baudrillard, that the terrorists were obligated to respond by a definitive and brutal act: "Terror against terror, there's no more ideology behind this."

In 2003, during the buildup to the second Gulf War, a former socialist minister placed George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden on equal footing (he later denied that he'd done so) and the Nouvel Observateur depicted the head of the White House with all the trappings of the dictator-of Charlie Chaplin playing with the globe-that is to say, they merged Bush with Hitler! Also in 2003, the demographer Emmanuel Todd announced the ineluctable crumbling of the American system and the irresistible rise of Europe in his book After the Empire. It was therefore useless to be anti-American because an America caught up in its militarist delusions would soon be finished anyway. I won't be cruel enough to confront these propositions with the reality of a Europe in tatters and a France in aggravated crisis. But, I repeat, the complexity of the world is the chief enemy of these "theoreticians" who go to their stash of cardboard cutouts to "interpret" the world; that is, annex it to their prejudices. We are no longer in the arena of political analysis but of the religious register, where "anathema" is pronounced.

FINIS

Paper originally written October 2003; published online only


THE KRUGLANSKI FOLLIES: IS A BABY THE IDEAL PERSON?


By John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)

One of the joint authors of the much remarked (for all the wrong reasons) "Berkeley study" of conservative psychology (published in The Psychological Bulletin and called "Political conservatism as motivated social cognition") was one Arie Kruglanski (officially called a "Distinguished University Professor"). He has for a long time been saying that conservatives have a need for a simplistic view of the world. He calls it "Need for Closure" and says that such needs are a sign of psychological maladjustment or weakness. Many other psychologists agree with him (e.g. Kossowska & Van Hiel, 2003). So let us look at the set of statements that Kruglanski (Kruglanski, Webster & Klem, 1993) uses to detect good or bad mental health. For copyright reasons I cannot reproduce them all but a few excerpts tell the story well enough. Here are some of the allegedly "unhealthy" statements:

I find that a well ordered life with regular hours suits my temperament.
I feel uncomfortable when I don't understand the reason why an event occurred in my life.
I don't like to go into a situation without knowing what I can expect from it.
When I am confused about an important issue, I feel very upset.
I usually make important decisions quickly and confidently
I don't like to be with people who are capable of unexpected actions.
I dislike it when a person's statement could mean many different things
I'd rather know bad news than stay in a state of uncertainty.

I would call all of the above statements expressions of normal, healthy, adult attitudes myself. So let's look at what Kruglanski thinks is particularly healthy:

When I go shopping, I have difficulty deciding exactly what it is that I want.
I tend to put off making important decisions until the last possible moment
I would describe myself as indecisive.
My personal space is usually messy and disorganized
I tend to struggle with most decisions

So being a messy, indecisive and disorganized ditherer is healthy! Clearly, capable confident, can-do people are what Kruglanski dislikes and babyish, helpless people are his ideal. I suppose the more babyish we are the easier it is for others to push us around and make our decisions for us -- and Leftists like that. There is another critique pointing out that Kruglanski does not know what he is doing in Neuberg et al. (1997) and my demolition of the Jost et al (2003) study is here.

One point I might also mention here is that Jost, Kruglanski & Co were much enamoured in their Psychological Bulletin article of Glenn Wilson's 1973 book, The psychology of conservatism. I actually wrote chapter 2 of that book so I know a bit about it. The theory Glenn put forward at that time was that conservatives have a greater fear of uncertainty than Leftists. So one would think that conservatives would be more fearful overall. There is, after all, a lot of uncertainty in this world. The EVIDENCE is, however, that conservatives are no more fearful overall than anybody else. Kruglanski & Co would no doubt argue that the lack of overall fearfulness among conservatives is because conservatives have adopted successful strategies to deal with their fears but isn't it odd that there is NO SIGN of such greater fear except via the sort of hokum I have pilloried above?

Finally, for a bit of humour, I might mention some findings of that very hard-working Belgian psychologist Alain Van Hiel. He recently joined with a Polish colleague to test the Kruglanski scale in both Belgium and Poland (Kossowsk & Van Hiel, 2003). He found that "Need for closure" was RIGHTIST in one country and LEFTIST in the other! As Robert Burns said: "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley!"

I can't help it: I've got to mention another amusing Van Hiel finding (Van Hiel, Kossowska & Mervielde, 2000). Because he is such a hard worker, Van Hiel went the trouble of testing out a Kruglanski-like theory on a group of people who were actually interested in politics. He used a scale of "Openness to ideas" and expected that Rightists would be less open to ideas but it turned out that it was the LEFTISTS who were closed-minded! Embarrassing! For an extended critique of the Van Hiel work see here

SUMMARY:

The Kruglanski scale is probably most accurately seen as an "Infantilism" scale rather than as a "Need for Closure" scale. Studies which rely on the Kruglanski scale are then deeply flawed by that reliance. Any studies using the scale which show that conservatives have a need for closure would be more realistically interpreted as showing that Leftists are infantile.

References:

Jost, J.T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A.W., & Sulloway, F.J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129(3), 339-375.
Kossowska, M. & Van Hiel, A. (2003) The Relationship Between Need for Closure and Conservative Beliefs in Western and Eastern Europe. Political Psychology 24 (3) 501.
Kruglanski, A.W., Webster, D.M., & Klem, A. (1993). Motivated resistance and openness in the presence or absence of prior information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 23-35
Neuberg, S.L., West, S.G., Judice, T.N., & Thompson, M.M. (1997). On dimensionality, discriminant validity, and the role of psychometric analyses in personality theory and measurement: Reply to Kruglanski et al.'s (1997) defense of the Need for Closure Scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 1017-1029.
Van Hiel, A., Kossowska, M. & Mervielde, I. (2000) The relationship between Openness to Experience and political ideology. Personality and Individual Differences 28 (4), 741-751



ADDENDUM 1 -- Backdown

Under pressure from public ridicule over their Psychological Bulletin article (particularly over their identifying Communist tyrants such as Stalin, Khrushchev and Castro as conservatives), Kruglanski and Jost did back off their claims considerably in a newspaper article, saying: "but it is also true that liberals could be characterized on the basis of our overall profile as relatively disorganized, indecisive and perhaps overly drawn to ambiguity -- all of which may be liabilities" but we have yet to see an academic journal article from them under some such heading as "Liberalism: The disorganized mind". And I am betting that we will wait a long time for such an article to appear.

Comprehensive demolitions of the claims in the Psychological Bulletin article can be found here and here



ADDENDUM 2 -- Leftism as infantilism

Since Kruglanski appears to be a Leftist, it is not exactly surprising that he idealizes infantile behaviour. As Evan Sayet has repeatedly argued, (see here and here) there is much about Leftists that appears infantile. The "Mommy look at me" syndrome is very evident among them at times, for instance. Ben Stein, V.D. Hanson and Dennis Prager, too point out a variety of ways in which Leftists would appear to be fundamentally juvenile. I have myself previously commented on the phenomenon here and here.

The following excerpt from Taranto exhibits the "me, me" infantilism vividly -- as well as being childishly incoherent. And the infantilist got a standing ovation from other Leftists! Note that the addled speaker ADMITS she is not an adult even though she is 22!

"Rush Limbaugh has a fascinating transcript from a town-hall meeting John and Elizabeth Edwards held at the University of New Hampshire Monday. They were questioned by an undergraduate named Jenny Ballantine, who had this to say:

I need to be able to look to my leader and see words of encouragement, words of hope. I need to be able to trust that person. I need to be able to know that I'm going to be grow [sic in transcript] in a world that's not going to be full of hate and prejudice and racism and to know that I matter, that I wasn't just dumped in this world for no particular reason whatsoever.

I'm busting my ass in school, I work 25 to 30 hours a week, and it's just me and my dog. So what can you do for the people that are in my situation, that are trying their damnedest in school, wanting to go to grad school, is going to be hit with the loans--and, uh, I have no idea what I want to do when I grow up. I don't know what I want to be when I'm an adult. But I'm 22 right now, so people are like, "Honey, you are an adult." You know what? It's about me. It's about me voting for you or supporting somebody who's going to be the next president. So it's all about me right now. Just give me something.

Here is how the Edwardses responded:

Edwards: God bless you. If I were choosing a president, uh, that's what I'd be doing. I'd be looking for the specifics of what they want to do, because that matters, but I would also be judging them personally, because we need to trust our president.

Mrs. Edwards: I want to say something, too. I was really impressed with you, Jenny Ballantine, and I think probably everybody in this room was, and I want everybody in this room who believes that Jenny Ballantine is going to be able to do it to give her a round of applause.

According to Foster's Daily Democrat of Dover, N.H., the audience gave Miss Ballantine not only a round of applause but a standing ovation."

Taranto also did a big follow-up to the post above -- making the excellent point that the infantile thinking concerned is largely the product of America's Left-dominated educational system.


FINIS