Does The Left Have Groupthink?

According to the PsySR.org website this is the definition of groupthink:

Groupthink, a term coined by social psychologist Irving Janis (1972), occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment” (p. 9).  Groups affected by groupthink ignore alternatives and tend to take irrational actions that dehumanize other groups.  A group is especially vulnerable to groupthink when its members are similar in background, when the group is insulated from outside opinions, and when there are no clear rules for decision making.

Can’t comment of the “mental efficiency” of the Left but they seem to have deterioration of “reality testing” and sometimes even “moral judgment.”

Specifically these are the symptoms of groupthink with my comments in brackets:

1. Illusion of invulnerability –Creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks.
2. Collective rationalization – Members discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions. [Warnings about overspending getting America in more debt because they believe Keynesian economics. Warnings about over-regulation hurting the economy.]
3. Belief in inherent morality – Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions. [The Left believe that big gov’t can save society even though it does the exact opposite.]
4. Stereotyped views of out-groups – Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary. [The Left’s “enemies” are: Christians, conservatives, big business that does not take money from the gov’t, the Tea Parties, non-unionized people (that’s Jim Hoffa Jr.’s SOBs he was talking about), women and minorities who don’t go along with the party line, global warming “deniers”, etc.]
5. Direct pressure on dissenters – Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views. [Actually, the Left tries to suppress any view from anyone they don’t like.  But within their own group how about Juan Williams? Or even Senator Joseph Lieberman who had to switch to Independent.]
6. Self-censorship – Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed. [If the Left allows this to happen then that means their ideology might just be false or empty.]
7. Illusion of unanimity – The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous. [And if they are not, a member cannot be trusted.]
8. Self-appointed ‘mindguards’ – Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group’s cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions. [This the responsibility of the lame stream media.]

All cults and totalitarian regimes have these eight symptoms. Actually, cults and totalitarian regimes love these symptoms. Because members are easier to control. 

So, does the Left have these symptoms? Except for maybe #1 I would say yes—although I would not call the Left a cult per se but they are close to one.

What about the Right you might ask. Sure, the Right can have these symptoms (as the webpage made a point about President Bush and the Iraq War) but the Left main foundation revolves around groups and classes. Remember it was Hillary Clinton that said “it takes a village.” Village is just code word for group.

The way you counter groupthink if you read the webpage is to have most of the members be individuals ie have individual opinions. Otherwise if everyone thinks the same way then you will definitely have groupthink.