America's Sociopathic Leadership: Reversing the Downward Spiral

By Jerome G. Manis

Websters Dictionary traces "sociopathic" usage to 1944, defining it as "characterized by asocial or antisocial behavior, or a psychopathic nature. "Sociopathy" is used in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM).

Especially notable and and influential has been Adam Smith. His first book was entitled The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Its first chapter was on "sympathy." The first few lines of its first paragraph are quite different from the modern economists image of Adam Smith.

To Mona Charen, "Liberals have hurt the poor, to be sure. But they are also engaged in a long-term guerrilla war on Americas soul."

21st century capitalism differs enormously from its 18th century predecessor--ascetic capitalism. Abstinence, austerity, frugality.
spirituality, and virtue play scant part in the higher levels of contemporary successful capitalists.

Milton Friedmans 1970 article in the New York Times makes clear his
view of business: "The Social Responsibility of Business is to
Increase its Profits."Throughout the article he made clear that "only people can have responsibilities" while business can have no other purpose than to "increase its profits."

The 14th amendment. enacted for the protection of freed slaves, was then used as a precedent for defining a corporation as a "natural
person." Since then, the courts have struck down hundreds of laws
protecting citizens from corporations.

Millions of severe illnesses and deaths are the result of deliberate actions by the chief executives of the tobacco industry. Are they not sociopathic leaders, as well their major stockholders?

The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group, published in 2003 by Dan Briody, demonstrates where military, industry, and government have finally been unified.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 5, 2008
• ISBN: 9781465330451

Book preview

AMERICA’S

SOCIOPATHIC

LEADERSHIP

46185-MANI-layout.pdf

REVERSING THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL

JEROME G. MANIS PhD

Copyright © 2008 by Jerome G. Manis PhD.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission

in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

For Laura, Lisa, and Robert Manis

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

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46185

Contents

CHAPTER 1

SOCIOPATHY

CHAPTER 2

RATIONALITY AND MORALITY

CHAPTER 3

BECOMING SOCIOPATHIC

CHAPTER 4

SOCIOPATHIC LEADERSHIP

CHAPTER 5

SOCIOPATHIC PRESIDENTS

CHAPTER 6

HERBERT C. HOOVER

CHAPTER 7

GERALD R. FORD

CHAPTER 8

WARREN G. HARDING

CHAPTER 9

CALVIN COOLIDGE

CHAPTER 10

RONALD W. REAGAN

CHAPTER 11

RICHARD M. NIXON

CHAPTER 12

GEORGE W. BUSH

CHAPTER 13

CONSEQUENTS OF SOCIOPATHY

CHAPTER 14

GOOD POLICIES, GREAT PRESIDENTS

CHAPTER 15

UNIFYING THE NATION

CHAPTER 1

SOCIOPATHY

America’s Downward Spiral documented rising levels of serious social conditions. Among them is the continually increasing, and now about 47 million people without health insurance plus underfunded and failing schools with large numbers of poorly educated children. Thirty-seven million Americans live in poverty. We lead the modern world in prisoners and executions.

One out of four of the homeless are military veterans. Also widespread is unequal justice with harsh punishment for crimes by people and light penalties for corporate law violations that are not called crimes.

New are the recent century of major wars, worsening inequality, and deteriorating environment and infrastructure. We depend on other countries to supply the nation with our growing shortage of engineers, nurses, physicians, scientists, and teachers. The military-industrial complex, which we were warned against by President Eisenhower, has expanded to include the government.

That book concluded with a number of recommendations for change, including electing presidents capable of making the needed improvements. Still, a major question needs to be considered: Why haven’t any of the nation’s past leadership—political, economic, religious, military, and others—acted against those serious conditions? Is it possible that bad leadership has been somehow responsible for their existence?

The present book is aimed at answering those difficult questions. It will do so by considering the possibility that some of our past leaders, including our presidents, may have acted in ways that created or maintained those harmful conditions. For this purpose, such terms as sociopathic, rational, and moral behavior will be considered and compared.

Those terms will help to explain why the United States has been transformed from the first great democracy in the world to the least democratic of the modern world. Data in the following paragraphs begin to support this claim. Such information needs to be compared with data about other democracies.

Sociopathic Behavior

Webster’s Dictionary traces sociopathic usage to 1944, defining it as characterized by asocial or antisocial behavior, or a psychopathic nature. Sociopathy is used in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM). It has also been called antisocial personality disorder.

A frequent feature of these psychiatric terms is a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood. Dissocial personality disorder is used by the World Health Organization to describe the disregard and violation of the rights of others.

Childhood experiences may produce adults with antisocial patterns of behavior. The culture of a society may encourage success seeking without any concern for those who may be harmed or exploited in the process. This is especially true in the United States where economists now contend that the sole responsibility of business is profit—and no social responsibility.

Characteristics of antisocial personality disorder are listed in the DSM. Briefly summarized, they are 1) failure to conform to social norms, 2) deceitfulness, 3) impassivity, 4) irritability and aggressiveness, 5) reckless disregard, 6) consistent irresponsibility, and 7) lack of remorse.

These pathologies are categories of psychiatry, a term that dates back a hundred years earlier. Mental disorders were known for many centuries before that but were not part of a diagnostic vocabulary of a medical discipline. For mental disorders, there are difficulties in diagnosis when they lack clear-cut and identifiable physical characteristics.

While some of these terms are used interchangeably, in this report, sociopathy will refer to antisocial behavior. Such behavior will be judged by intentionality or by lack of awareness of consequences. The former is often described as lacking of sympathy or empathy with others. Lack of conscience plus excessive self-interest also has been identified with antisocial behavior. These traits are far more difficult to diagnose than cancer or tuberculosis that are based on physical evidence.

Judgments of sociopathy focused on unintended but harmful consequences may be more common, especially for elected leaders. In democracies, would-be leaders must be able to convince voters of their concern for public well-being. Of course, they may be deceitful and hide their own self-interest or their personal biases.

Antisocial Behavior

Sociology studies antisocial behavior as well as social behavior. While human beings are influenced by inherited characteristics, most of their behavior is learned through communication with others. Lacking the instinctive systems of other living beings, humans must learn how to communicate and interact. That field of sociology is symbolic interactionism.

In Symbolic Interaction (third edition), Jerome G. Manis and Bernard N. Meltzer explained that the term meant human behavior and interaction is carried out through the medium of symbols and their meaning. We learn to understand the meaning of such symbols as words and gestures from our interaction with parents, siblings, friends, teachers, and others.

Our interpretations of those symbols become a basis of our minds—our ability to communicate and interact with oneself and with others. Experiences throughout our lives can expand or fail to expand our knowledge and understanding of the complex world around us. All that is the basis of human behavior.

The behavior, which will be labeled sociopathic, varies in kind and degree. It applies to the intentional actions of serial murderers or rapists. Far fewer but more destructive are the sociopathic dictators whose actions have killed and injured many millions of their peoples.

A reckless vehicle driver is engaging in sociopathic actions, whether the driving kills or does not harm others. Although not intentional, such deaths are the result of harmful actions. A leader may act wisely or not, be aware or not of the harmful effects of some decision making. The resulting damage to his people can be termed an outcome of sociopathic behavior.

The interpretations that follow should be viewed as sociological analysis rather than of psychiatry. It must be admitted that precision will be difficult to achieve and describe. As a preliminary inquiry, that handicap must not be minimized. Nor should it be a reason for ignoring sociopathic leadership.

For this report, sociopathic leadership is used to describe possible political, economic, or other leaders who may be characterized by asocial or antisocial behavior. That includes disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others. It also includes ignorance of unintentional harm to others. Judgments of available data, therefore, must be made carefully.

Sociopaths and Sociopathic Behavior

Imagine—if you can—not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. These are the opening words of The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout. She describes the basis of extreme sociopaths—recurrent abusers, rapists, and murderers.

They differ greatly from the occasional, or even rare, actions by individuals against others. That includes self-motivated antisocial behaviors or those generated by social forces. Later, in the Stout book, she has pointed out that certain cultures . . . actively encourage antisocial behaviors, including violence, murder, and warmongering.

The title of an earlier book The Sociopath: Selections in Antisocial Behavior, edited by Rita E. Bergman, makes a similar distinction. Her ten selected reports deal with individual sociopaths, as well as sociopathic behavior. The latter refers to uncommon, or even rare, antisocial behavior by individuals.

Likewise is the view of Antisocial Behavior by Benjamin J. Wolman. He has contended that the present-day climate fosters sociopathic personality distortions and antisocial behavior. Wolman describes many such social forces.

Only when antisocial feelings and actions permeate an individual’s life should the individual be designated as a sociopath. That some persons may act much less often in antisocial ways than do others is far more common. To distinguish between seldom and frequent sociopathic actions by leadership is the present aim.

Identifying Sociopathy

That serial killers, rapists, and child sex abusers are engaged in antisocial behavior or sociopath is unarguable. That has been true of the sociopathy of leadership. Although their followers may have liked Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin, there is no doubt that they were responsible for millions of deaths and other suffering. It would seem appropriate to view them as extremely sociopathic leaders.

Idi Amin, a Uganda dictator, is another example. After a coup in early 1971, he declared himself president and commander in chief of its armed forces. He ordered many thousands of executions of any who opposed him. Many Ugandans sought safety in nearby countries. During his eight years of controlling Uganda, as many as three hundred thousand people were killed.

Among such other murderous dictators was Pol Pot of Cambodia. He gained control of the Khmer Rouge, a communist-like party, in the late 1960s. He soon transformed the party into an absolutist leadership. Its basic claim was that only peasants were true Khmers and that others should be ousted or killed. The outcome was the deaths