VIETNAM VETERANS FOR ACADEMIC REFORM
The University of Kansas Student Auxiliary
V.V.A.R.: Leading the student revolt on campus against speech codes, political correctness, multiculturalism, gender feminism, dormitory re-education, lying about Vietnam, and other instruments of academic oppression.
Leonard Magruder - Founder/President
Former professor of psychology - Suffolk College, N.Y.
Member: National Association of Scholars
CONTACT: Magruder44@aol.com - Phone: 785-312-9303
Psychologists and flim-flam: PSYCHOLOGISTS AND THE VIETNAM WAR
By Leonard Magruder
September 7, 2003
INTRODUCTION: In view of the controversy over the negative new claims being made about the personality of conservatives by psychologists at the University of California, we share with you some material on this subject from the history of Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform, The War on the Home Front. But first, here is a letter from us to the local newspaper, The Lawrence Journal-World, which was printed in their Aug. 14, 2003, edition.
To the editor:
As a retired professor of psychology and a conservative, let me decode the latest psychological flim-flam from my liberal colleagues in the profession. Almost all psychologists are liberal, so the rather negative findings at Cal. U. regarding conservatives no doubt made them jump with joy.
However, there is no discipline more riddled with unexamined philosophical assumptions than psychology. As a result psychologists often do not know how to interpret their own data.
Mike Cuena summarized the findings in a recent letter. Convervatives, the study found, are more likely to:
1) “Accept dogma.” [Dogma is nothing but a systematized statement of principles. Since liberals have no foundation for a discussion of principles, they think dogma is a dirty word.]
2) “Be fearful and aggressive.” [They wish. Ready to back out and lash out at the same time. Not likely. ]
3) “Accept inequality.” [A conservative can say “this is better than that.” Liberals, wandering around in the fog of multiculturalism, have lost the ability to discriminate.]
4) “Have an inability to accept that life is not black or white.” [Grey is a liberals’ favorite color. They don’t like the idea,”This is right, that is wrong.”]
5) “Avoid reason and rational discourse. “ [Sure, as if our overwhelmingly liberal campuses are on fire with reasoned debate over issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and evolution.]
These conclusions represent a political agenda, not scientific findings.
Sincerely, Leonard Magruder
From The War on the Home Front:
“Some years ago Mr. Magruder, President of V.V.A.R. and himself a psychologist, assisted by a fellow professor, Gary Youree, held a protest at the American Psychological Association in Washington, D.C. In literature distributed to the delegates Mr. Magruder said, “Our purpose is to act as an instrument in the reconstruction of the university. We see the present crisis of the university as reflecting the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the naturalistic and determinsistic worldviews that dominate contemporary thought, and argue that only through the re-introduction of critical dialogue between philosophy, theology, and psychology, can each of these disciplines, at present isolated and fragmented, recover their viability. As Maslow says, isolating interrelated parts of a whole from each other, parts that need each other, distorts, sickens, and contaminates them all until all are non-viable. This is what has happened. What we are seeing on our campuses are intellectual pathologies resulting from the fragmentation of the body of knowledge into sub-disciplines without creative interaction between them.”
He called upon the Convention to dedicate itself to analyzing the causes for the impotence of contemporary psychology and the contribution it itself may have made to contemporary social pathology. (As psychologist William Kilpatrick of Boston College said recently in The Emperor’s New Clothes, “The subjectivism and relativism of psychological thinkers, the confusion about free will, the emphasis on autonomy and self-acceptance, the denial of guilt, the hostility towards religious values and the lack of any meaning system to replace these, the transmutation of virtue into hang-ups and perversions into preferences, the undermining of all forms of authority, all have helped to bring our society to a crisis of catastrophic proportions.”)
Among the issues Mr. Magruder raised at the Convention were: the documented failure of psychotheray, the inablility of contemporary psychology to come to grips with the problems of identity, values, and meaning, the defensiveness of psychologists (following Rogers), the breakdown in theory, and the limitations of current statistical methods in experimental psychology.
Data now exists demonstrating that the more persons study in contemporary psychology the less the reliability of their judgements about people. There has been for some time considerable evidence of the ineffectiveness of most current forms of psychotherapy. Because such a large part of the intelligensia is involved, these findings have been suppressed. On the other hand there is considerable data showing a high positive correlation between religious belief and mental health, as well as civic responsibility. These findings are also being suppressed. The academic community cannot continue to engage in this kind of cover-up of date relevant to public health simply to protect its own ideological interests. The naturalistic metaphysics that is tyrannizing the social sciences, with its unimaginative hypotheses, its biased interpretation of its own date, its demonstrated ineffectiveness, constitutes real interference with, and delay in, progress in these fields.
One world-famous psychologist said to Mr. Magruder, “You’re right, of course, but we have it too good and nothing will change.” (For other responses to this protest see below.)
Commenting on the role of psychologists in relation to the Vietnam War, Mr. Magruder said, “The lies about the war spread by the campus ‘peace’ movement and the media have had a devastating impact on the returned veterans, leaving many shocked and causing them to believe they had done something wrong. For many, the resulting suffering was worse than the war, and was borne in silence for years. What little help was available was found in the ‘rap group,’ where again the veteran was betrayed. Anti-war psychologists encouraged veterans into becoming active in the anti-war movement, encouraged them to convert their acts of killing in the line of duty into atrocities, so as to resonate better with the lies about the war that by now permeated American society.
“Other psychologists charged the war with having created a ‘killer instinct’ for which there was not the slightest shred of evidence. Said the sociologist Charles Moskos, ‘Psychologists tried to portray the soldier as variously, perpetrators of atrocities or proto-fascist automatons.’ There was nothing in contemporary psychological or psychiatric theory, with their moral relativism, that could come to grips with the code of the soldier: ‘Duty, Honor, Country.’
“The mental health community prostituted itself to forward its politics, using the suffering of the veterans to do so. The social scientists, who through their naive secular and humanistic theories of man had played a major role on campus in betraying the war effort, now had to lie about the veterans of the war. The lying was compounding itself.”
SOME RESPONSES [to The War On The Home Front]:
“Couldn’t agree more with your basic tenants. Those many seminars which I attended and/or disrupted were addresed only to a mommouth statement of psychology’s irrelevance. The Presidential address was a crowning gem in this tiara of trivia.”
--Gerald W. Bracey, Psychologist, Educational Testing Center, Princeton, N.J.
“I recently read a paper by you on the Columbia University bulletin board. Could I be placed on your mailing list?”
--Barbara Burkhard, Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, N.Y.
“A couple of us are very interested in your ideas. Forming Division 32 is our next goal. Join us?”
--Dr. D. McArdle, Suffolk College, Riverhead, N.Y.
“Although I disagree with some of your statements, we share a concern over the future of higher eduction.”
--Dr. Charles J. Hitch, President University of California, Berkely, California
“I think you have a problem. I suggest you consult a psychologist” [cute]
-- Dr. W.L.Gulick, Chairman Department of Psychology, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
“Your new group is refreshing, besides being wanted and needed. I congratulate you on your initiative.”
--Dr, Madeline Bergh, Psychologist, New York City, New York
“I agree with your position. The article you wrote is certainly pertinent.”
--John B. Davidson, Psychology Department, Baylor University, Waco, Texas
(A question to my vet friends. You may recall that not long ago the Cranes, producers of the 4-part series on the Vietnam War, The Long Way Home Project, told us that PBS was considering airing their work. I am not aware that PBS ever did and they have not responded to my two inquiries on this. Do any of you know if they showed this series? Please let me know. If they haven’t, we will show it here at K.U. in protest, if that seems called for. Thanks. LM)
This article may be reproduced in any form.
Founder/President, V.V.A.R.
Phone: 785-312-9303
Website design and management courtesy of Annette R. Hall. Hosted by www.i-served.com.