Assigning the Milgram
It’s time to re-examine the Milgram Experiment. You may not be familiar with it by name, but perhaps a description of the psychological study will sound familiar. Yale researcher Stanley Milgram, in 1961 and 1962, set up a controlled situation in which he ordered his subjects to administer electrical shocks to a third-party. (Specific details here.) The study was designed to examine, first and foremost, the willingness of humans to submit, or conform, to authority. The results were highly-interesting, and have been highly-debatable.Personally, I find the experiment to be certainly ethical, despite some public controversy then and now about the psychological effects on some of the subjects, and the result I find most enlightening is the lesser-known one in respect to numerous original participants contacting the psychologist years later and actually thanking him for opening up their eyes to their own human weakness.
In respect to modern-day America, or to any similar nation-state currently teetering on totalitarianism, the study is worth a long look. The experiment is often linked to the study of Nazi-ism in Germany and the shocking-to-most willingness of so many German citizens to “go along” with the climate of the times. With that in mind, certainly the Obama-bots in the Democratic Party need to be corralled into a Yale classroom and confronted directly with the wide and deep cleavage between their idealism and the reality of their political life.
One of the potential flaws in the Milgram Experiment is that the study took place within the halls of a prestigious university and therefore participants theoretically could be assured that no actual harm was actually coming to the person they were supposedly “shocking,” but I see a parallel between that element of the exam and the obvious, alarming tendency of “professional liberals” in particular, a half-century later, to “diffuse responsibility” on matters of war and torture, obsequiously bowing to the president and then digging feverishly into their psyches to find justification for betraying their morality.
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Retiring Iowa senator Tom Harkin told his chamber Friday that the budget standoff forced by Ted Cruz and his Tea Party compatriots has left us “at one of the most dangerous points in our history... every bit as dangerous as the break-up of the union before the Civil War.”
Hyperbole much? Cruz is a clown, but contrary to Beltway conventional wisdom, this country is not divided. Washington is. If Cruz’s side in Washington drew actual swords against Harkin’s, and/or vice versa, 85 percent of Americans would let the two sides battle to the death without taking even a step towards the melee. When both houses in Washington have a 20 percent approval rating, you’re going to have a hard time whipping up a militia.
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I don’t participate in MVP arguments anymore because they are fundamentally flawed. Look it up and you’ll see that the following is accurate: From 1911 to 1968 (the pre-divisional MVP era), the only time that the National League MVP trophy was not awarded to the consensus-best player on the pennant-winning team was when somebody on another team did something like hit .400, club 50 home runs, or win the Triple Crown. Translation: You had to accomplish something historic on the field to beat out the top man from the top team.
So until they let me cast my (theoretical) vote at the conclusion of the National League playoffs and upon the crowning of the league champion, I literally cannot tell you who I would vote for according to what I accept as the established definition of the Most Valuable Player. I will point out however that the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Andrew McCutcheon, a consensus favorite for the award this year, has driven in 83 runs, while the Cardinals’ Matt Carpenter has driven in 78—and Carpenter is a lead-off hitter. And Carpenter has scored 126 runs, 20 more than anybody else in the league (30 more than McCutcheon). He’s out-batting McCutcheon .321 to .317, he leads the league with 55 doubles and 199 hits, and the Cardinals beat out Pittsburgh for the division with Carpenter batting .374 in September. So come on.
posted by CM @ 5:56 PM
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