Tony Blair: unwitting libertarian champion, or psychopath?

More and more recently I hear or read people saying that Tony Blair's ten years in power has generated in them a deep distrust and even loathing of politics and politicians. Through sleaze, spin, wars, a vast growth in the reach and size of the state - most of which appears to many to have gone straight into the pockets of corporate bosses and shareholders, he has produced a far more powerful advertisement for the possible benefits of a minimal state than many who have tried to explain it academically through their writings.

Primeministers, Guns & Greenbacks

Even now, in his political retirement, with his vulgar rush to pick up lucrative jobs where he could use his rent-seeking influence to further the very fat-cat industries he pledged to attack in 1997, he still generates much loathing. Forget the Lisbon Treaty or EU Constitution, I'm ready to campaign for an "out" vote in an "in or out" referendum should Tony Blair get anywhere close to becoming the first permanent EU president.

And from behind the portcullis I don't believe that the current crop of party leaders are rising to the real challenge of Blair's legacy. In fact, ostrich like, I feel they view it as merely a series of mistakes that can be put right by more government, just of a different political hue, when in reality the message of Blair's premiership is clear:

Daily is statecraft held in less repute. Even the Times can see that “the social changes thickening around us establish a truth sufficiently humiliating to legislative bodies,” and that “the great stages of our progress are determined rather by the spontaneous workings of society, connected as they are with the progress of art and science, the operations of nature, and other such unpolitical causes, than by the proposition of a bill, the passing of an act, or any other event of politics or of state." Thus, as civilization advances, does government decay. [Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, 1851]

Government is moribund, inherently corrupt, a necessary evil for a particular point of human development. A point that has been passed and government can do no more except fight for its own existence as if it has a right to exist regardless of and separate from the desires and needs of the people it seeks to govern. This infantilizing of the people (indeed we even call it the "nanny state" in tacit recognition of that infantilization) needs to be brought to an end.

I was at some training last week on dealing with "Difficult, Disturbing and Dangerous Behaviour". In an aside about the nature of psychopathy the trainer, himself a clinical psychiatrist, suggested that perhaps politicians are in fact psychopaths. It got me looking up the definition of a psychopath. Judge for yourself how many of these criteria Tony Blair meets:

Cleckley's characteristics

In The Mask of Sanity Cleckley introduced sixteen behavioral characteristics of a psychopath that he derived from clinical interviews and other corroborating sources.[5]

1. Superficial charm and good "intelligence"
2. Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking
3. Absence of "nervousness" or psychoneurotic manifestations
4. Unreliability
5. Untruthfulness and insincerity
6. Lack of remorse and shame
7. Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior
8. Poor judgment and failure to learn by experience
9. Pathologic egocentricity and incapacity for love
10. General poverty in major affective reactions
11. Specific loss of insight
12. Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations
13. Fantastic and uninviting behavior with drink and sometimes without
14. Suicide rarely carried out
15. Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated
16. Failure to follow any life plan

Source: Wikipedia

Personally, I make it at least half of them.

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from unwitting on Mon, 25/02/2008 - 20:52

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Comments

Jock, I'm ALWAYS ready to campaign for an "out" vote in an "in or out" referendum. Toe-knee Blair is neither here not there, the rest of them are just as bad.

Hey Jock,

Try 90%. Psychopaths **always** gravitate to the places of power over and influence on those they consider to be their inferiors. Cleckley noted the effects of this personality type on his immediate social circle. Tony Blair is an example of the effect such a person has when he commands an entire nation. And more importantly, **the ideology doesn't matter**. Labour, Tory, capitalist, communist, these are just larger "masks of sanity" for the hiding the infernal, unspoken alliance of psychopathic personalities that gradually infest even the most benign of social organizations, let alone a government. Check out the social dynamic of the average ladies' church group. Power is power. It's only a matter of the scale you are able to command

Here's a quote from a reseacher working at the same time as Cleckley but behind the Iron Curtain (ca 1940's). This group of scientists made the figures of the Soviet government large and small the subject of psychological analysis, carried out in the strictest secrecy. There's a good reason for totalitarian governments to fear true psychological science! Dr. Lobaczewski's book, Political Ponerology [Ponerology - greek poneros,evil =the study of evil], was destroyed or lost three times before it was published only two years ago.

Dr. Lobaczewski writes:

"In any society in this world, psychopathic individuals and some of the other deviant types create a ponerogenically active network of common collusions, partially estranged from the community of normal people... Their sense of honor bids them to cheat and revile that ‘other’ human world and its values at every opportunity." (Lobaczewski, 138)

“We could list various names ascribed to such organizations… gangs, criminal mobs, mafias… which cunningly avoid collision with the law while seeking to gain their own advantage. ***Such unions frequently aspire to political power in order to impose their expedient legislation upon societies in the name of a suitably prepared ideology, deriving advantages in the form of disproportionate prosperity and the satisfaction for their craving of power.” ***(Lobaczewski, 158, emphasis added)

You can find more good information at www.ponerology.com

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