The Psychology Of The Social Deconstructionist Movement.
OK, so in a previous post I outlined the most over-arching characteristics of what I call " Social Deconstructionism". Let's go ahead and try to figure out not WHAT these folks believe-that is all too obvious-but WHY they believe such insane rubbish.
People who describe themselves (and are described by others) as "Social Deconstructionists", "leftists", "socialists", "social democrats", "Communists" and (in North America) "liberals" do have some things in common. And that is important. However unsatisfactory and apparently simplistic the Left/Right division of the political world may be, there is any amount of research showing it to be a powerful, ubiquitous and perhaps inescapable way of identifying both people and political parties (e.g. Budge et al., 1987; Ray, 1982; Bobbio, 1996).
An important part of what I proposed was that what Social Deconstructionists basically want does not have to be the exact opposite or mirror-image of what Rightists/Conservatives/Reactionaries/whatever, basically want -- and vice versa. This may seem at first surprising but does have some precedents. Kerlinger (1967) suggested that Social Deconstructionists and Rightists have different "criterial referents" and even thought that he had found in his survey research a complete lack of opposition between Social Deconstructionist and Rightist attitudes. Kerlinger's reasoning is interesting but that he misinterpreted his research results has previously been shown in Ray (1980 & 1982). Whether Social Deconstructionist and Rightist objectives are opposite or just simply different, how Social Deconstructionists and Rightists go about achieving their different basic objectives certainly generates plenty of conflict and opposition between the two sides.
My basic proposal, then, is that most (but not all) Social Deconstructionists/liberals are motivated by strong ego needs -- needs for power, attention, praise and fame. And in the USA and other developed countries they satisfy this need by advocating large changes in the society around them -- thus drawing attention to themselves and hopefully causing themselves to be seen as wise, innovative, caring, noble intellectuals etc. Rightists by contrast have no need either for change or its opposite and may oppose change if they see it as destructive or favour change if they see it as constructive.
We will see below why one of the most consistent themes to emerge from the Social Deconstructionist's love of change is the claimed need for "equality". And the belief in "equality" also tends to lead to support for such things as redistribution of wealth generally, heavily "progressive" income taxes, inheritance taxes, foreign aid, feminism, gay rights and socialized medicine. Again for reasons explored below, Social Deconstructionists also tend to oppose religion and the churches and this in turn tends to mean that they favor abortion and oppose or obstruct religious schooling in various ways. So let us now briefly look at some of these characteristic Social Deconstructionist/liberal themes to see how they relate to basic Social Deconstructionist motives.
Human Nature
Something that Social Deconstructionists have had in common from the beginning is the rejection of any idea of "human nature". Basically, Social Deconstructionists seem to believe that "education" can change almost anything in human behavior. This root and branch rejection of heredity was of course what underlay Stalin's support of Lysenko's otherwise thoroughly discredited theory of evolution -- the idea that characteristics acquired in one's lifetime can be passed on to one's offspring, something Darwin rejected in toto. So how do such views flow from a yen for change?
Quite obviously, any idea of human nature says that important things about human beings just CANNOT be changed and that does not suit the change-loving Social Deconstructionists at all. So Social Deconstructionists simply reject what does not suit them -- regardless of the enormous evidence in favor of inherited characteristics. The entire discipline of behavior genetics should not exist from a Social Deconstructionist point of view.
Conservatives, by contrast, not only have the view that there are important and essentially ineradicable inherited human characteristics but they share with Christians the view that those characteristics are of a "fallen" kind: characteristics of selfishness, aggressiveness, untrustworthiness etc. That Christians and conservatives share such a central belief about human nature is of course a large element in the general compatibility between Christianity and conservatism and the frequent opposition between Christians and Social Deconstructionists (e.g. "Godless" Communism versus the Roman Catholic church).
This conservative (and scientific) rejection of the Social Deconstructionist idea that human beings are infinitely malleable AND infinitely predictable ( an assertion Lord Keynes also posits), does of course pose a major threat to the Social Deconstructionist's assumptions, theories and programs and it is one that the Social Deconstructionist cannot really rebut so the usual Social Deconstructionist response is simply an ad hominem one: To abuse and demonize conservatives for lacking "compassion". Abuse, therefore and necessarily, takes the place of argument (Krauthammer, 2002). And in the same sentence, Social Deconstructionists will then accuse any perceived opponent of a total lack of rationality or logical thought! How did they get there?
The United States faces overwhelming fiscal problems. Our current level of government spending and future entitlement obligations are simply unsustainable. However, as concerning as these fiscal matters are, the biggest problem America faces has nothing to do with economics, but rather psychology. The strength of a nation reflects the character of its citizens. While America was once considered a nation of individuals fiercely independent and self-reliant, her citizens are moving closer to a state of dependence, characterized by irresponsibility and ambivalence. This change has been instigated by the politics of collectivism and the growth of the social welfare state. The most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.
To understand how this alteration occurs, one must first understand the psychological concept known as locus of control. In 1954, American psychologist Julian Rotter introduced the concept that describes how individuals could be divided into two basic groups, which represent two ends of a continuum (Figure 1): internals believe that their locus of control is within themselves, and externals believe that they are under the control of outside forces. According to Lee Harris, author of The Next American Civil War:
"[Internals] believe that they are the masters of their own destiny; they tend to be high-achievers, optimistic about their ability to improve their lot, and to discard bad habits. They believe in willpower and positive thinking. They are determined to control their own lives, for better or worse. [Externals] look on themselves as victims of circumstances, the playthings of fate. If they go to bed drunk, light up a cigarette, and burn their house down, they explain the disaster as another instance of their bad luck, and not their poor judgment, much less their bad habits." Based on Harris's description, it is simple to understand why having an internal locus of control is desirable, while having an external locus is not. Furthermore, individuals can move along the continuum in response to external factors. American psychologist Martin Seligman's experiments provided an explanation for why and how movement occurs along the continuum.
This concept came to be known as learned helplessness. Learned helplessness explains how an individual can move from an area on the continuum characterized as internal to one characterized as external, and while this condition can be induced by pain, it can also be induced by many kinder, gentler ways.
In "The Conscience of a Conservative", Barry Goldwater described what he believed would ultimately be the consequences of social welfare on the psyche of its beneficiaries:
"The effect of welfarism on freedom will be felt later on -- after its beneficiaries have become its victims, after dependence on government has turned into bondage and it is too late to unlock the jail."
Real-world examples of how modern entitlement programs have done harm to their beneficiaries are boldly presented in libertarian political scientist Charles Murray's Losing Ground. What makes this book stand out, according to Brian Doherty, senior editor of Reason magazine and author of Radicals for Capitalism, is that - “Murray does not rely on the 'welfare cheat' rhetoric ... he took a different tone and approach to the free market assault on welfare, speaking in a voice clearly concerned with the fate of the poor and blacks, about incentives and productivity and self-respect ... He uses trendline analyses to show that any improvement in the lives of the poor that happened after [the late 1960s wave of income transfer] programs went into effect was merely a continuation of progress that had begun long before the federal effort did -- and that the progress in most cases stopped as the 1970s began and the program's effects became clear. Crime and unemployment went up for the poor as the welfare state grew in the 1960s; income and educational achievement went down.”According to Charles Murray, the author of "The inspiration for Losing Ground" -
"grew out of sixteen years of watching people who run social programs ... I was struck by two things. First, the people who were doing the helping did not succeed nearly as often as they deserved to ... Second, the relationship between the ways people were to be helped and the quality of their lives became increasingly confused." Murray's policy recommendation to improve the social condition and self-esteem of America's poor, which emanated from his personal experience and dedicated research, was to eliminate all racial preference programs, institute educational vouchers, and eliminate all income transfer programs, later reinstating short-term unemployment insurance. Murray's research provides compelling evidence that suggests that social welfare programs are harming their recipients via the learned helplessness mechanism.
However, there is something even worse than creating codependency on government through entitlement programs, according to Lee Harris. "This occurs whenever a deliberate campaign encourages people to think of themselves as victims. Victims are not in charge of their own lives and destinies." The victimization mentality is closely related to having an external locus of control. As a consequence of this mentality, people who consider themselves victims erect invisible barriers around themselves from which they cannot escape. Like Seligman's dogs, they give up trying because they don't believe they are free to succeed.The victimization mentality is advantageous for left-wing politicians, who rely on their constituents' needing government benefits. Remember Hillary Clinton declaring, "I am the candidate for individuals who need government"? Unfortunately, the spread of this mentality foreshadows a poor prognosis for the survival of freedom in America.
The Making of a Social Deconstructionist
The appeal of Social Deconstruction to the average person is simple: The Social Deconstructionist offers something for nothing. And that is always hard to resist -- fraudulent though it usually is. If the Social Deconstructionist offers to redistribute somebody else's wealth into your pocket, that is one hell of an appealling scam to those who stand to benefit from it.
But the Social Deconstructionist's advocacy of equality is not all it seems. The Social Deconstructionist's passion for equality is only apparently a desire to lift the disadvantaged up. In reality it is a hatred of all those in society who are already in a superior or more powerful or more prosperous position to the Social Deconstructionist and a desire to cut them down to size. Social Deconstructionists really aim at (and sometimes succeed at) the equality of making everyone poor rather than the equality of making everyone rich.
This explains the common puzzle of why it is that modern-day "liberals" are still indulgent about the old Soviet system. As Amis (2002) points out, the many people in literary and academic circles today who once supported Stalin and his heirs are generally held blameless and may even still be admired whereas anybody who gave the slightest hint of support for the similarly brutal Hitler regime is an utter polecat and pariah. Why? Because Hitler's enemies were "only" the Jews whereas Stalin's enemies were those the modern day Left still hates -- people who are doing well for themselves materially. Actually, in Niall Ferguson's' epic "The War Of The World", he correctly points out that Stalin was persecuting non-Muscovite Russian ethnicities, while working for Lenin! So Stalins' racist policies were staggeringly more encompassing than even the Nazis'!! Modern day Social Deconstructionists understand and excuse Stalin and his supporters because Stalin's hates are their hates.
Much the same explanation applies, of course, to the similar puzzle of why the French military dictator, Napoleon, is to this day generally regarded as a hero even though practically every family in the France of his day lost a son in his wars. The figures for Napoleon's Russian campaign alone are horrendous. He took 600,000 men into Russia but brought back only 70,000. In terms of loss of life, Napoleon's wars were every bit as bad for France as Hitler's wars were for Germany but Hitler is universally (and justly) reviled whereas Napoleon is still admired! Napoleon, however, justified all his actions as extending the French revolution to other lands and this explanation still resounds favorably with today's Left-leaning intellectuals.
Such vast egotism and hunger for power and attention does of course make a mockery of the Social Deconstructionist's claim to be in favor of equality. Like the pigs in George Orwell's "Animal Farm", the Social Deconstructionist wants to be "more equal than others". They want to rule or at least dominate. Beneath the (intentionally) deceptive rhetoric, they are the ultimate elitists. He actually despises most of his fellow men and thinks that only he and his clique are fit to run everything. The last thing he wants is to be lost in a sea of truly equal people. This was of course amply shown in the Soviet Union, where membership of the Communist Party became the only pathway to the good life -- conferring on the member all sorts of privileges and access to goods and services not available to other Soviet citizens.
Another psychological motivation for Social Deconstruction that is sometimes mentioned is one that I have always had severe doubts about: Guilt. Or, more to the point, White Liberal Guilt. The claim is that affluent people feel bad (guilty) when they see how poorly others are doing and want to rectify that by getting handouts for the disadvantaged (but not from their own pockets of course). They are "limousine liberals". I have always seen this as just another Social Deconstructionist hoax: They may sometimes explain their motives in such a high-minded way but if they really felt guilty there is plenty they could do to help others rather than agitating to tax them to the eyeballs.
The undoubted fact that Left activists and agitators (from the Bolsheviks on) tend to come from affluent families does not to me point to guilt as their motive at all. Rather the "limousine liberal" phenomenon shows me that those who have all that they want materially then seek other luxuries: such as self-righteousness, praise, power and excitement -- particularly the excitement of being demonstrators in the case of "rich kid" Social Deconstructionists. And if the young limousine liberal can have praise and self-righteousness along with his/her excitement what a good deal it is! It is much the same motivation that causes self-made rich men (such as Bill Gates & Steve Jobs) to become highly philanthropic. Bill Gates has power and wealth so he now seeks praise and righteousness.
There are, however, many other reasons for Social Deconstructionism:
Because of its pretensions to standing up heroically for various difficult causes, Social Deconstruction can seem "cool" to many of the unthinking young and not so young. Particularly in the worlds of academe, the media and entertainment, being Social Deconstructionist means being "in" with the "smart" crowd. Not to be Social Deconstructionist is to be left out. How awful! Even if such people can see faults in Social Deconstructionist thinking, they are afraid to come toward the Right for fear of losing the approval of others around them.
Some people become liberals because they are genuinely outraged by things that they do not understand and are unwise enough to want to change those things willy nilly. In particular, they may be genuinely grieved by the unhappy experiences of others and want to fix that ASAP without being wise enough to seek for means of fixing it that have some prospect of working or that are not self-defeating. They might, for instance, be disturbed by the impact of rising rents on the poor and propose rent-control as a quick-fix solution -- though a few minutes of thought or the most elementary inquiry should tell them that rent control will after a time also have the effect of degrading and shrinking the existing stock of rental accommodation and drying up the supply of new rental accommodation, both of which make the poor much worse off in the long run. Some are Social Deconstructionists because they are still young and unaware of most of life's complexities so that the drastically simple "solutions" and mantras proffered by the Left simply seem reasonable. Social Deconstruction has the appeal of simplicity.Some Social Deconstructionists, again particularly the young, are idealists who find the imperfect state of the real world deeply unsatisfying. That there is some genuine idealism even among extreme Social Deconstructionists is shown by the exoduses from Communist Parties in the economically successful "Western" democracies that followed the violent Soviet suppression of the East German, Hungarian and Czechoslovak uprisings against Communist rule in 1953, 1956 and 1968. Once the real nature of Communist regimes became too clear to be denied, honest decent people whose wishful thinking had led them to believe Communist protestations of benevolence and good intentions saw the light and abandoned Communism. In the USA (in New York particularly), some liberal intellectuals even saw enough in the Soviet actions of those times to cause them to abandon "liberalism" and found neo-conservatism. Similarly in Australia of the 1950s and '60s, the Andersonian libertarians of Sydney were also intellectuals who might otherwise have been Social Deconstructionists but who were united by realism about Soviet brutality.
Some Social Deconstructionists know that they themselves are weird by general social standards so preach change towards greater tolerance for all weirdness out of sheer self-interest. As George Orwell said in "The road to Wigan pier":
"One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words socialism and communism draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, Nature-cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England...
"We have reached a stage when the very word socialism calls up, on the one hand, a picture of airplanes, tractors and huge glittering factories of glass and concrete; on the other, a picture of vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone), or earnest ladies in sandals, shock-headed Marxists chewing polysyllables, escaped Quakers, birth control fanatics, and Labour Party backstairs-crawlers.
"If only the sandals and pistachio-colored shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian, teetotaler and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly. As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents."
