| World Health Organization, “Wide research needed to solve the problems of mental illness,” World Mental Health, Vol 12, pages 138-141 (WHO Press Release, October 1960) says that “people with psychopathic make-up often become leaders” / “les postes de commandement sont souvent assumés par des personnes à tendances psychopathiques”
Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (New York: Praeger Pub, 1975), says at p xi, “The psychopath in a position of supreme power is almost a common-place.”
Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life, 5th ed (Scott, Foresman & Co, 1976), p 10, by James Covington Coleman, Ph.D., summarizes the 1960 WHO data thus: “individuals with psychopathic personality makeup, who tend to exploit power for selfish purposes and have little concern for ethical values or social progress, often become leaders”;
Prof. Michael P. Ghiglieri, Ph.D., Dark Side of Man (Reading, MA.: Perseus Books, 1999), says at p 230, “. . . madmen—and slightly mad men—still rise to lead nations”; and
“Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” by John T. Jost, Jack Glaser, Arie W. Kruglanski, Frank J. Sulloway, 129 Psychological Bulletin (#2) 339-375 (July 2003), cites politician symptoms. Note also: “the Conservative [pro-war] Party was . . the stupidest party. . . . I did not . . . say that . . . Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.” (Public and Parliamentary Speeches, 31 May 1866, pp. 85-86.) “Stupidity is much the same the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so those whose opinions and feelings are emanations from their own nature and faculties.” (Subjection of Women, Chapter I, p. 273)—John Stuart Mill (1806-1873).
“The Authoritarians," by Robert Altemeyer (Univ of Manitoba, 2006) (concerns such individuals as "very aggressive . . . hostile . . . almost totally uninfluenced by reasoning and evidence . . . dogmatic . . . hypocrites, from top to bottom . . . two-faced, and . . . one face never notices the other [and] give the flimsiest of excuses and even outright lies about things they’ve done wrong [and] the rank-and-file believe them.")
Kurt Vonnegut, "Custodians of chaos" (The Guardian, 21 January 2006) "There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president."
H.L. Mencken says, “People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men.” (Details, 1922: "shallow fellows, ignorant of the grave matters they deal with and too stupid to learn. . . . incompetent and imbecile, and not only incompetent and imbecile, but also incurably dishonest . . . in the hands of small groups of narrow, ignorant, and unconscionable manipulators . . .”)
Robert LeFevre, in his essay, Aggression is Wrong, says “Government, when it is examined, turns out to be nothing more nor less than a group of fallible men with the political force to act as though they were infallible.”
James Bovard, in Freedom in Chains, says “Governments and citizens blend together only in the imagination of political theorists. Government is, and always will be, an alien power over private citizens.” |
