Conservative Motivation: More Than Just Beliefs?

[Boojatta]

January 30, 1973: Former Nixon aides G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord Jr. are convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in the Watergate incident.

Source:
http://www.watergate.info/chronology/brief.shtml



What motivated Liddy and McCord to break the law?

Were they motivated by a belief? For example, were they motivated by the belief that, if they didn't break the law, then Nixon would lose the election?

Perhaps they believed that, even if they didn't break the law, Nixon would win, but they wanted to improve the odds of a win and they were willing to break the law in an attempt to improve those odds?

Note #1: If you are perfectly happy using the word "beliefs" to include any and all aspects of someone's mental state, then this thread is probably not for you. One of the goals of this thread is to focus attention on the question of how to accurately describe what we're trying to talk about.

Note #2: We could talk about a more general topic: human motivation. However, it might be easier to start by considering conservative motivation.

[Jade Fox]

1. Check this out....

An actual Government-funded study of what makes conservatives tick. Welcome to DU. :hi:

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml

[Boojatta]

2. I call your press release and raise you a link to the actual article.

Article

Now we all have a 37-page reading assignment. If you omit the references at the end, there are 31 pages to read.

[Boojatta]

3. Conservative Deliberately Discredits Himself? What Am I Missing?

Pat Buchanan apparently said the following:

"You've got all those names of Nixon people – it never could have been any of them in my judgment for the simple reason that all those individuals owed their careers and everything else to Richard Nixon," Buchanan said, adding, "They had no motive to go to the Washington Post and give the Washington Post – Nixon’s enemy – information to damage a president who had defended them all and benefited them all.”

"It is not honorable in the middle of an investigation to grab material that you've dredged up which is supposed to go to the prosecutors who decide who to indict and slip it over to the Washington Post to damage a president in the middle of a campaign."

"And his motivation I think was not good, his deeds were dishonorable if not criminal and I don’t know what he thought he was doing for his country."

Source:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/6/1/83614.shtml

What motivated Buchanan to make those statements?

"It is not honorable in the middle of an investigation to grab material that you’ve dredged up <...>"
Thou shall not "grab"? Wait, Buchanan said that it's material "that you've dredged up" so first you dredged it up and then you committed the sin of grabbing it from yourself? I suppose that anyone who has committed a crime can simply accuse others of having "dredged up" something. Why isn't Pat Buchanan speaking out against those who train forensic investigators to "dredge up" all sorts of unpleasant facts?

"which is supposed to go to the prosecutors who decide who to indict <...>"
What happens if someone breaks into the office of the prosecutors and steals the material that was dredged up? Wait, I forgot, that kind of thing has never happened. Imagine someone breaking into an office! What was I thinking? People who hold high-level official positions are apparently committing crimes? No problem, just continue to handle all problems by means of the standard operating procedure. For example, the judicial history of the world teaches us that the very first court had associated with it a witness protection program. No witness was ever harmed until somebody failed to follow the standard operating procedure that was already in place to protect witnesses. Right?

Of course, we have to keep in mind that, according to Pat Buchanan, you have no motive to "damage" a president who has "benefited" you. So if you are the prosecutor and the president has "benefited" you, then you will decide to not prosecute. What an interesting system! I suppose there should just be one simple oath for anyone who holds a position in the Pat Buchanan States of America: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of (you name it!) and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend those people who have benefited me."

[Boojatta]

4. Belief and something that is not quite the same as belief

Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than to find as quickly as possible someone to worship. But man seeks to worship only what is incontestable, so incontestable, indeed, that all men at once agree to worship it all together. For the chief concern of those miserable creatures is not only to find something that I or someone else can worship, but to find something that all believe in and worship, and the absolutely essential thing is that they should do so all together. It is this need for universal worship that is the chief torment of every man individually and of mankind as a whole from the beginning of time. For the sake of that universal worship they have put each other to the sword. They have set up gods and called upon each other, 'Give up your gods and come and worship ours, or else death to you and to your gods!' And so it will be to the end of the world, even when the gods have vanished from the earth: they will prostrate themselves before idols just the same.

From The Brothers Karamazov, Book Five: Pro and Contra, Section 5: "The Grand Inquisitor"

Note: I underlined the word "believe", but if you read the whole passage that I quoted then you will be reading the following:

worship ... worship ... worship ... worship ... worship ... worship ... worship ... worship.

Yes, the word "worship" occurs eight times! Dostoyevksy was talking about "worship". There is a difference between what is simply a matter of belief and what is actually a matter of worship.

However, Dostoyevsky also used the word "believe". Had I not made any comments, I suspect that some people, after reading the passage, might have later forgotten all about the reference to "worship" and only remembered that Dostoyevsky said something about what people believe.