While at this juncture of history,nAmerican power has declined dramaticallynto the point where survival itself isnnow in question, it is not apparent thatnthis calamity has been unwelcome to thenideological agenda of the European andnAmerican Left. This is not to say that theynconsciously desire the destruction of thenWest: one of their main problems is thenfailure to think in terms of the ultimatenconsequences of ideas. The demise ofnAmerica and the West may prove to benthe final result of liberal thought. It is fornthis reason that James Bumham referrednto liberabsm as “the ideology of Westernnsuicide.” Liberalism, as we know it now,nmay be therefore, a step beyond folly—3.nhalfway position between the consciousnagent of defeat, and the foolish individualndepicted by Tuchman and Shirer.nWhere folly is the cause of self-destruction,na reversal of policy is alwaysnpossible, which, if undertaken in time,ncan bring about recovery. Thus, thenProtestant Reformation sparked thenCatholic Reformation, which enablednCurious BehaviornJerome Bmner: In Search of Mind:nEssays in Autobiography; Harper &nRow; New York.nby Richard Petersn1 he so-called cognitive revolutionnoccurred during the career of JeromenBruner, and his history is essentially itsnhistory. At the time Bruner entered thenfield of psychology it was almost totallyndominated by various offshoots of Behaviorism.nBehaviorism rests on thenparadoxical notion that psychology cannbe studied best by identifying thenstimulus that activates a living organismnand then observing the action (behavior)nof that organism in response tonthe impingement of the designatednDr. Peters isapracticingpsychoanalystn24inChronicles of Culturenthe Church to gain new spiritual vigornand not only contain the spread ofnProtestantism but recoup some losses.nAnd the final German takeover of Czechoslovakianin 1939 causedNeville Chamberlain,nthe quintessential appeaser, tonrealize that further German expansionncould not be tolerated. Individuals andngroups under the spell of folly cannultimately learn from their mistakes.nModern liberalism, in contrast, is immunento reality. In its essence, liberalismnis non&lsifiable. America’s defeats, or thenwrongdoing of America’s enemies, cannalways be interpreted as underscoringnAmerica’s perfidy. In this light, Americannfailures in Southeast Asia, Iran, and Chinanare seen as the result of America’s havingnsupported the vsrong, “unpopular” side.nSoviet aggression in Afghanistan ornEastern Europe is interpreted as the endnproduct of previous American belligerency.nHow long the United States cannsurvive so self-destructive an ideology isnan open question. Dnstimulus. The paradoxical quality arisesnfrom the fact that the organism itself,nfrom which, presumably, the activitynarises, is ignored. When the organism tonbe studied in this peculiar fashionnhappens to be man, the antimentalisticncharacter of Behaviorism becomesnclear. Practitioners of this theoreticalnpersuasion find themselves in thenstrange position of studying learning,nmemory, perception, and other attributesnof the mind without actuallynacknowledging the mind’s existence.nThe common man, of course, has alwaysnknown that in order to understand whyna person reacts to a given situationn(stimulus) in the way that he does, onenneeds to know either what his experiencenwith similar situations has been, ornwhat is motivating Kim at the moment,npreferably both.nJerome Bruner was too clever to bennntaken in by the absurd reductionism ofnthe Behaviorists. He was acutely awarenof the shortcomings of Academic Psychologynand quotes Wittgenstein on then”confusion and bareness of psychology”nand its marriage of “experimentalnmethods and conceptual confusion” innwhich “problems and methods pass onenanother by.”nBruner and his fellow graduate studentsnat Harvard were opposed to thendirect linkage of stimulus and responsenbeing taught there in the years just priornto World War II. They believed thatnthere had to be some organizing andnselecting principles operating within thenorganism and hence found themselvesntaking a mentalistic view; the mindnregained its existence. Following thenwar Bruner and his colleagues were, innthe spirit of the times, as interested in thenideas of sociologists and anthropologistsnas they were in those of psychologists,nand began studying the functions ofnopinions. At the same time, Brunerninvestigated the sources of perceptualnselectivity. If you take the larger view, itnis inescapable that the organisms studiednby psychologists are always in contactnwith a complex array of stimuli. And thisncertainly includes that maddeninglynadaptable and cunning animal thatnreigned king in the Behavioristnlaboratories—the rat. The alternative tonthe impossible task of reducing suchnsubjects to one available stimulus was tonpretend that it only attended to thenstimulus selected by the experimenter, anmaze, electric shock, food pellet, ornwhatever. When the subjects are humannbeings, they have opinions and attitodesnabout the experiment, the experimenter,nand all sorts of things nevernidentified by the psychologist as existingnwithin the framework of the experiment.nThis is not to suggest that rats donnot have opinions and attitudes aboutnthese things also; they must. It is, however,nimpossible to demonstrate andnprove such matters as rats’ opinions.nWith humans it can be shown that ofnthe vast array of constantly availablenstimuli, most are not attended to at all inn