Paranoia? No.
Selfishness, fear of the unknown, and a lack of empathy for others? Sure.
I prefer to think of it as personal responsibility and a fear of the known. As for empathy… that can go both ways. Empathy is not the equivalent of sympathy.
This thread is nearly ironic as when RedState called DailyKos a bunch of Nazi Stalinist namecallers.
Though, I have a hard time seeing any liberal ever writing something as painfully insanely absurd as:
-emphasis added.
This from a guy who was just caught plagarizing on a grand scale. There’s just something uniquely conservative about pissing all over yourself, and then toweling yourself off with the flag like in the above. Of course, some might find that preferable to burning it, but I guess it’s all a matter of taste.
Though as paranoia goes, everyone has recently been making fun of this lady:
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/65930.htm
Isn’t paranoia the fear of some farfetched possiblity? We tend to lump fear of things entirely impossible under bat-shit crazy instead of paranoia.
I would say that applies perfectly well to “Kerry is going to socialize stuff”.
“Paranoia,” like “sadism,” is a word whose vernacular use is far broader than its original clinical-psychiatric use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia:
This lady is delusional if she thinks Hillary has helicopters.
“Personal responsibility” as pushed by the right is selfishness and a lack of empathy, not to mention a weapon used to beat down the common people; “divide and conquer”. The more we act and think only as individuals, the easier it is for the powerful to walk all over us; therefore “personal responsibility”.
I have no idea what your definition of “the right” is, but I can’t think of any meaningful definition that would make your statement correct. There is nothing “selfless” about taking someone else’s money and giving it to a third person.
Nope. Individualism is the bane of totalitarian regimes of both the rightist and leftist presuasion.
But there is definitely something selfish about tax evasion or resistance, or even political tax-reform movements.
Ya think? I recall reading that Hitler, where possible, preferred to address a crowd that was a random mixture of different kinds of people, as opposed to a crowd of laborers, or a crowd of farmers, etc. He wanted them all to be there as individuals, with nothing in common but him as the focal point of their attention.
But, then, he was not preaching to them to** be ** individuals, he was preaching to them to become part of a different group, but a group nonetheless, the one that had him in common. The tactic was to erode their primary-group bond, away from those with whom they shared immediate experience, and offer in its place another group-bond to “belong to”. Had they a healthier sense of individualISM it would have been harder to persuade them their happiness lay in feeling they shared the greatness of a Master Race.
It is possible to be an individualist with healthy self-esteem, AND feel empathy and solidarity and a sense of social responsibility. The alternatives are not those of being a law-of-the-jungle selfish egotist vs. being a drone subsumed into the collective. BUT the ideologues on both sides will seek to cast the opponent in that light.
I say, let’s GET THE PARANOIDS!
(God forbid they should be disappointed. 
)
… I wouldn’t be so paranoid if all those bastards weren’t out to get me … 
Exhibit 911
I think that “individualism” tanget has to do with the idea that it’s in the Republican’s interests to have people think of themselves as individual taxpayers as opposed to people who, like everyone else, rely on the public schools, etc. Give them a voucher and they’ll no longer care if the schools are dismantled.
It’s a commonplace tactic for people to highlight the most extreme of their political opponents, as a means of suggesting that everyone on the other side of the ideological divide must be that way.
The stereotyping gets especially silly when one argues that the paranoid crazies in one’s own camp are voicing reasonable fears, while the opposition’s loons are just nuts nuts nuts.
Those Brazilians who fear a mass takeover of the Amazon are probably right. There’s a nifty pod-vehicle in the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog that will allow us to invade in comfort. 
I’m a liberal and I agree that this is a pretty good idea. Seems like a safe thing to do at this point. I may be one of the clamoring millions when and if Bird Flu does take hold. Better to have it and be prepared (I was a Boyscout.).
I’d say paranoia does come hand in hand with being conservative, but I’m very liberal, so my perspective is admittedly biased. But those who note that there’s a healthy amount of paranoia on the other side of the fence are correct, too, especially for liberals here in the US since 2000. I think the difference is that a lot of liberals are paranoid because the Republican party here has been hijacked by evangelical Christians. Paranoia about this has been building for years, and, as of the last election, was proven to be quite well-founded.
One thing I’ve noticed about conservatives that doesn’t apply to liberals: the more they win, the more they whine. If you just listen to contemporary conservative rhetoric, you’d never know they controlled all three branches of our our government. You’d think this was ancient Rome and Christian conservatives were being fed to lions or something. For being self-proclaimed members of the “culture of life,” Christians sure are an antagonistic bunch. The last “good news” for Christians broke two thousand years ago.
I don’t think Bush is a terrorist, I don’t think he stole the election, I don’t believe a lot of the crap you hear about him. But I do strongly believe he feels that this nation is–at least in his terms–a defacto theocracy, that all our democratic mechanisms are simply ritualistic and meaningless devices when compared to his Divine Mandate. He’s with God; even on the off chance he does make a mistake, it’s between him and History and The Big Guy. The American electorate has been all but obviated.
And I think when the Republican party became a bona fide religious organization, that’s when the polarization in American politics passed the point of no return, that’s when paranoia became the default side item for any political position other than being square in the middle, if that’s even possible anymore. It’s sad, but true. As long as conservatives take the default position that liberalism is some form of Satan-worship, we liberals will continue to assume conservatism is a mental defect. Good times.
It’s pretty obvious why that observation doesn’t apply to liberals.