That “blank outs” have a built-in delay that can be exploited — rather like the finite time it takes for the eyelids to close before the eyes see – has been part of the considerations I use in crafting quick-shot blog comments.

Leftist ideas have a certain structure and logic to them. Like roads, they lead to certain destinations regardless of what any traveller on that road fancies about where he’s going. The key to crafting one’s message to take advantage of the fact that blanking out is a process that takes effort and direction (and is therefore defeatable) is to understand those “roads”, to know where they flow, and to exploit that knowledge to force the Leftist to glimpse where his road actually leads, instead of he usual fantasy construct he uses to avoid that knowledge.

Thusly, this sort of strategizing isn’t psychologizing at all… it is simply understanding and exploiting the logic of the enemy’s ideas — something which I think Objectivists are far better equipped to do than anyone else — to trick them into seeing where their ideas really lead, even if only briefly.

And yes, they will hate you for it — enough to kill you, even. James Taggart is your template here.

http://www.pjtv.com/video/Afterburner_/The_Cost_of_Media_Bias/1736/6337/

you are a wonderful writer with a thorough grasp of Objectivism. Eloquently stated. I agree with everything you said 100%. I would only ad that it is my sincere hope that one day the same respect for the value of psychological profiling will be brought to bear on the some of the common types of bad behavior within and throughout the Objectivist movement. There have been attempts made in the past, and each time they have been met with bitterly defensive accusations of psychologizing.

DiLorenzo debated Jaffa on this subject. Look here:

http://www.independent.org/events/transcript.asp?eventID=9

I read a book by Thomas DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, a few years ago. It was recommended by the Ayn Rand Bookstore I believe. It threw me off until I read Harry Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom. DiLorenzo is similar to that neo-Confederate view you refer to.

No, I don’t think that it is. It is certainly true that I engaged in speculation about Susan Roesgin’s psychology and her psychological motives. But that is not necessarily the same thing as psychologizing. If it were then Ayn Rand and other Objectivists would also be guilty of psychologizing anytime they referred to someone such as a Bill Clinton or an Obama as a “social metaphysician” or a “Peter Keating.”

Let’s look at how Ayn Rand described psychologizing:

“Psychologizing consists in condemning or excusing specific individuals on the grounds of their psychological problems, real or invented, in the absence of or contrary to factual evidence.”

And, further:

“A man’s moral character must be judged on the basis of his actions, his statements and his conscious convictions—not on the basis of inferences (usually, spurious) about his subconscious.

A man is not to be condemned or excused on the grounds of the state of his subconscious.”

Now it is certainly true that I condemn Susan Roesgen’s behavior. But that she is worthy of condemnation is already a given without my having to say a single word about her psychology or motives. For a reporter to lose it emotionally and to argue with and lecture someone she is supposedly interviewing is inappropriate and unprofessional in pretty much ANYONE’S book. So I was certainly not condemning her on the basis of her psychology. Rather, I was attempting to IDENTIFY and UNDERSTAND her psychology and the psychological motives behind her bizarre behavior.

Asking one’s self what might motivate a professional reporter to just suddenly lose it emotionally and jeopardize her reputation and career (assuming she worked for a credible news organization, which is probably not the case here) is certainly not inappropriate nor is it “psychologizing” And there are a number of possibilities that one could consider – including that she was simply having a “bad day.”

In this particular instance, however, I noticed Roesgen as but one more instance of a consistent pattern of behavior I have observed over time involving a number of other Leftists who found themselves in a similar position of having to confront the authoritarian implications of their political views and immediately slammed their minds shut and became evasive and/or hostile. My noticing such similarities was certainly not inappropriate nor was my pointing them out.

And it certainly is not inappropriate to ask WHY a person who advocates an authoritarian political agenda would so desperately seek to evade the fact that it IS authoritarian – nor does it take a rocket scientist to come up with the answer.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that it is absolutely NECESSARY to study and understand as much as possible the sorts of mindsets and psychological motives that animate various stripes of Leftists. It is necessary on the premise of “know thy enemy” and it is NOT an example of psychologizing.

Indeed, law enforcement officials routinely do the exact same thing. Law enforcement draws up all sorts of psychological profiles of various sorts of criminals such as child molesters, rapists, serial killers, terrorists, etc. Understanding the psychological motives of such people enables officials to anticipate the their next moves and, in some cases, such knowledge can be used to help flush them out. I guarantee you that our CIA and military has done extensive psychological profiles on key officials of various hostile countries and terrorist groups.

It is even appropriate in contexts that do not involve enemies. I work in management and I have long made it a habit to always keep my eyes open for little tidbits of information and data about the people under me that can help me better understand “what makes this person tick.” For example, such information helps me make better judgments about what might and might not be an effective approach towards motivating a given individual. If an employee becomes disgruntled, such information can potentially help me make a better judgment as to whether the person is merely demotivated for some reason and is potentially salvageable or if the person is a bad apple who needs to be terminated as quickly as possible.

When it comes to Leftists, there are occasions when one might come across one who is intellectually honest and one can deal with them accordingly. But the vast majority of them are profoundly dishonest and nihilistic. They seek to DESTROY pretty much everything that most readers here value and thus the only proper course of action is not to engage in debate with such people but rather to DEFEAT them. Knowing what makes them tick is very useful information if one wishes to defeat them. It is also useful information if one is in the unfortunate situation of having to deal with them and be at their mercy. For example, a student who NEEDS a good grade in a particular class but has a vindictive, agenda driven Leftist professor would benefit enormously by having an understanding of the professor’s psychology in order to avoid pushing certain dangerous hot buttons. And, for the rest of us, we WANT to push those hot buttons whenever possible so that, like Susan Roesgen, they drop their carefully crafted facades and demonstrate for the world to see who and what they REALLY are.

Furthermore, pushing their hot buttons and forcing them to confront the contradictions that they so desperately seek to evade has the long term effect of demoralizing them and undermining their intellectual self-confidence. Who knows, perhaps because of the identifications I made as a result of watching Susan Roesgen, I might someday find myself in a position to utter in public just the right words to cause some Leftist to have a similar meltdown for all to watch. Perhaps my uttering just the right words might result in that person being less confident in future dealings with people and maybe even become downright defensive.

We have one major advantage that they do not: truth and reality are on OUR side. Our enemies, by contrast, must constantly evade, hide, distort and obscure truth and reality – both from themselves and from their would-be victims. They don’t fear dissent so much as they fear INFORMATION and facts – which is why they are desperate to shut down Fox News and talk radio. All that needs to be done to destroy them is to EXPOSE them for what they, in fact, are. You know the old saying – the truth hurts. Well, for them, inconvenient facts of reality are CORROSIVE – and that video of Susan Roesgen melting down is a perfect example of what can happen when such people are forced to confront inconvenient facts that they DO NOT want to know and wish would just go away.

Their view is that we would have been better off had the South won The Civil War because there would have been a smaller central government and many of the protectionist measures of the North would not have been implemented. They believe that slavery would have ended peacefully by the end of the century at the latest as it did in Brazil. All of this is nonsense but the libertarians are anarchists mostly and hatred of the state defines them. Both the libertarians and the left are epistemological subjectivists but they express it in different ways.

Hm…

I got a kick out of that part.

“Observe that what really sets Roesgen off is when the protester took offense at Obama quoting Lincoln on grounds that what Lincoln actually stood for was liberty.”

Why is that libertarians dislike him so much?

I would say that covers Ms. Roesgens quite nicely.