Imagine being told that you use “mental gimmickry” and exhibit a “non-evidence-based mental process” when you’re expressing your political ideas. John J. Colby (“Robitaille doesn’t understand people,” Commentary, Sept. 24) alleges this about Rhode Island Republican gubernatorial candidate John Robitaille while curiously ignoring a wealth of information about his character.
Robitaille’s background will let you judge his character — and grasp what Colby is attempting, which is broader than an attack on Robitaille. It’s an attack on anyone’s good character (poor or rich), an attack on ambition and self-esteem, and more broadly on individual rights and freedom itself.
John Robitaille was born in Central Falls to a working-class family. He was senior class president in high school. He earned money for college working at a service station. Robitaille’s highly decorated military service includes becoming a paratrooper, a second lieutenant, a captain, and chief of personnel management for the U.S. Army Special Forces.
He worked in labor relations for companies including Frito-Lay. In his own business he had clients such as Textron, Hasbro, and Johnson and Wales University. He was chosen as Governor Carcieri’s communications director. Robitaille has been on many civic and community boards, including a mentoring program, Bradley and Newport hospitals and the Association to Prevent Child Abuse. He is married, with three daughters and five grandchildren.
Colby ignores these facts, instead claiming he’s “affluent” and therefore against the poor. Accurate? No. In Robitaille’s words, “We’re middle class by most standards.” Colby’s flawed conclusion: Don’t vote for rich people; they have warped mental processes and thus no concern for the poor.
Colby uses a tactic called “psychologizing” to smear Robitaille. Learning about this can protect you from becoming a victim of it.
“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 the factual evidence,” Ayn Rand explains, in “The Voice of Reason.” “Just as reasoning, to an irrational person, becomes rationalizing, and moral judgment becomes moralizing, so psychological theories become psychologizing. The common denominator is the corruption of a cognitive process to serve an ulterior motive.”
Colby uses a theory, the fundamental attribution error, to smear Robitaille and set up a class-warfare framework, which is his ulterior motive. Since “the poor” and “the rich” are central to Colby’s attack, let’s ask: Who are the poor? What constitutes concern for them?
The poor consist of a diverse group of individuals, varying widely in character. There are poor who are rich in character, and those who are poor in character. Some are poor because they’re just starting out in life. Some are poor due to a misfortune outside their control. Some have accepted taxpayer-funded handouts, robbing themselves of the motivation to achieve, and some have chosen to betray themselves by making repeated bad choices (stealing, rape).
What constitutes concern for this diverse group of poor? For Colby, concern translates into government control of our lives, i.e., statism or socialism.
What’s Robitaille’s view of the “problem of the poor”?
Robitaille’s optimistic view is that they can work to earn their own self-esteem, nothing a taxpayer-forced government handout can ever give them. They can become non-poor, rich in character by their own effort, and existentially better off. Under a free-market economy, the poor have the opportunity to rise, as Robitaille himself did. Robitaille’s viewpoint respects the minds of the poor. He wants them to discover the joy of earning self-respect and earning a living, “learning to fish” — and rise to whatever level they set for themselves.
Taxpayer-subsidized handouts destroy motivation and self-esteem. Handouts keep the poor forever in bondage, needing to beg from self-proclaimed do-gooders and politicians, who spend other people’s money recklessly, claiming the crown of virtue for themselves, never thanking productive taxpayers — and worse, dousing the producers with unearned guilt.
When the argument is pitched as rich vs. poor, no one wins. “Need,” not achievement, becomes the focus. What you earn is not yours, but what you don’t earn is. Those who lust for power, “do-gooders,” become “double-parasites” as Ayn Rand describes in “Atlas Shrugged”: “It is this foulest of creatures — the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich — whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal.”
The choice is not rich vs. poor, but freedom and recognition of individual rights vs. statism (socialism, fascism, theocracies).
What political philosophies are based on class warfare? From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. A painful glance at history shows what death and destruction such injustice unleashes wherever this scheme has been enforced. Statism kills happiness. Witness Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, East Berlin.
Is Colby for limited government with the purpose of protecting individual rights, encouraging self-reliance, genuine benevolence, and private charities — or is he for mandated handouts from the taxpayers that keep the poor poor, sap their motivation, and are a tremendous injustice to the honest working individuals who are forced to pay for the handouts?
Colby uses the method of psychologizing to smear Robitaille — and any person of self-esteem, anyone wanting a chance to improve his or her self-esteem, and anyone wanting to live in a civilized society. Our lives depend on holding onto the moral and practical differences between socialism and capitalism, controls and freedom. Don’t fall for the mental gimmickry of class-warfare frameworks.
Judge others and yourself rationally, looking at all the relevant facts, and you will earn your own self-respect. And protect yourself from those who use the smear tactic of psychologizing.
