Yes, it is interesting. Before I tell you what I think, we need to be careful in stipulating how the terms "liberal" and "Liberalism" are defined today. Over the past century, a "Liberal" in America has be understood as everything from a "Pinko" ( a term of abuse) to a "Hippy" and even a kind of "caring Conservative."
The Founding Fathers chose Liberalism - John Locke's political philosophy - as the theoretical basis for designing their new American Republic Liberalism places great important on defending and respecting the
FREEDOM OF THE INDIVIDUAL, his/her soverign autonomy, self-reliance and self-responsibility. This is clearly reflected in the tenets of the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, America's capitalist economic system and a desire for the size and power of central government to be minimized.
That was in 1776. Now, in 2020, a "liberal" in the US is not the kind of Liberal that John Locke, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were in the 17th (Locke) and 18th century. In fact, in America in 2020 "liberal" has the exact opposite meaning to what it had in 1776. A political Liberal today in America is basically someone who does not trust the autonomous, rational individual with economic and political freedom. Instead they believe that the government should play an active, interventionist role in promoting and supporting social, economic and political change (progress).
This means that a liberal in America in 2020 is essentially a socialist. In a generic socialist system, a small body of elites: central economic planners; technocrats and social engineers make policy for a dominant centralized state that forces its laws, rules and regulations on the people. They must do what they are told to do by the government or be punished. Thus, individuals are stripped their freedom (liberty) and become slaves.
If you are arguing that White liberals in, say, America, have mental health issues/psychiatric and psychological disorders, I would say that I agree and the Pew Insitute research findings do not surprise me at all. This is because modern liberalism in the West is essentially the latest incarnation of socialism. In 2020 socialism is not called socialism, it manifests itself doctrines like: Diversity and Multiculturalisn; Political Correctness and Cancel Culture; Social Engineering (e.g. Affirmative Action"); Deconstructionism; neo-Marxism/Postmodernism; Progressivism; Critical Theory and Identity Politics; Moral Relativism; Feminism and the promotion of abortion, and so on. All of these movements are inherently anti-Western and wholly incompatible with traditional American values. They are all socialist in the sense that they seek to strip the individual of his/her God-given freedom and render him/her a dehumanized serf/slave; and they do this through the creation of
BIG GOVERNMENT. The Founders were "dead right" to warn America about the dangers of Big, centralized Government.
But real socialism doesn't work - it kills people, because life without freedom is not worth living. The motto of the State of New Hampshire: "
LIVE FREE OR DIE" could be interpreted as a warning against modern Liberalism (socialism).
Socialism is toxic because it is based on a philosophy that fundamentally misunderstands human nature. And I agree that this is a radical and pathological type of misunderstanding that suggests some kind of thought/cognitive or emotional species of psychiatric disorder.
Moreover, many committed socialists also have a firm faith ("faith" in the
religious non-rational sense of the term) that the principles of their political ideology will ultimately create a utopia - a "paradise on Earth". Their faith in this is sure and certain. But history clearly demonstrates that it is a foolish and potentially dangerous delusion, so you can add "Delusory Disorder" to the list of mental conditions associated with modern liberalism/socialism.
Modern liberals/socialists passionately believe in equality and often equity (equality of outcome). But individual human beings are
NOT equal in
ANY respect, physical or mental or moral. No two human beings are THE SAME. If you take any human trait, characteristic, ability, capacity or value - physical, psychological or ethical/moral - you will find that it is distributed
HIERARCHICALLY along a vertical axis. At the very top of the ladder is "the best" at the very bottom of the ladder is "the worst" This hierarchical ordering of things is an aspect of
NATURAL LAW - it is just they way things are in nature. Some human beings are very noble, while others are pigs; some individuals have a high IQ while others are clinically retarded. Some human beings are "diamonds" (they are at the top of the hierarchy" others are "shit" (they are at the very bottom of the ladder. One of the key emotions that created socialism was ENVY and RESENTMENT. The ENVY and RESENTMENT that the
HAVE NOTS and LOSERS felt for life's "HAVES AND WINNERS" The resentment and hatred of the loser boiled away inside him and turned into a bitter
ressentiment that expressed itself in an obsession to destroy all that was better than itself. This was what drove Karl Marx to write "Das Kapital" - jealousy and envy. Liberals (socialists) in America are people who do not understand that
EVERYONE HAS A PLACE, A RANK, "A STATION" IN LIFE and they must do the best that they can with what they have been allocated. It might be a humble station, it might be a lofty station or somewhere in between. What is wrong, though, is hating and seeking to destroy that which is more beautiful, intelligent, virtuous, dignified, wealthy than you -
that
is a symptom of a psychological pathology - a personality disorder, and it is one of the driving factors behind any form of socialism/ (modern liberalism)
