The Right to Pursue Happiness

Another way to view narcissists is as people who think they have a claim on the lives of others.

They have these feelings, you see, feelings that compel them to lash out, and their punching bags must just understand that.

You see this, for example, in the emotional terrorist who thinks her husband must stay married to her to keep her from committing suicide. In other words, he must continue to miserable under her abuse, for her sake.

In other other words, the quality of his life must be sacrificed to provide her with a punching bag.

I challenge anyone to argue that she is not therefore a predator, a vampire. He must bleed to feed her.

He's here to serve her needs, not his own, so he must submit to continued abuse from her rather than deprive her of a punching bag by getting away from her.

In other words, she views him as though he were livestock, existing for her sake, not his own. He's here for her to ride, train, display as a zoo animal, and feed on. His own well-being is of no concern except in ways that it affects her.

That's the most extreme degree of slavery, worse than existed in the South before the Civil War. It has only been seen in the penal servitude of the Middle Ages, where the victim had to knuckle under and offer himself for abuse.

I guess it was Ayn Rand who first debunked this idea that some people have a claim on the lives of others.

It is actually quite common, even politically correct in many circles. For example, there are many people who would say that husband does wrong by divorcing such a wife. They somehow twist THAT into the callous act of the affair. They somehow twist THAT into the act that's harming someone. Just because she bawls about it, they cry, "O how cruel!"

In fact, in any situation like this, the MAJORITY will be talking like that! How on earth can they think that getting away from abuse is hurting anyone? Do most people ever think? Or do they just blow in the wind? Do they ever think once even, let alone twice?

This is a serious problem for the victims of narcissists. They get morally condemned for anything they do to try to escape or discourage the abuse.

For those who doubt how common this ass-backwards thinking is, here's another example that shows just how far out it can go.

The government of Afghanistan married al-Qaeda, protecting and arming this militia in preparation for a sneak attack on the United States. So, on 9/11, we had an act of war - a belly-slithering act of war carried out by stealth like murder to avoid revealing whodunnit. An act of war that makes Pearl Harbor sound legitimate and honorable by comparison. Committed by Afghanistan in cahoots with al-Qaeda.

Could there be any greater justification for war? If the leaders of this country had decided NOT to go to war, THAT decision would have been immoral and unforgivable. They would have been failing to protect American citizens from mass murder. Going to war with Afghanistan was not only justified, it was morally imperative.

Indeed, if our government protected and was in bed with a bunch of terrorists training in Arizona, and then something in Iran blew up, do you think the world would find the United States innocent of the deed?

In fact, 9/11 was such a flagrant causus belli that when we produced the proof of whodunnit, even those verbal eggbeaters Monsiuer Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder couldn't make Afghanistan sound innocent of such a blatant act of war. Even THEY couldn't make our invasion of Afghanistan seem unjustified.

To show how twisted the world's view is, let's review the facts. No stated grievances. No declaration of war. No warning. This nation that we had helped resist Soviet invasion paid us back for that aid one day out of the blue by turning on us in an attack designed to kill as many people as possible just for being Americans in their own homeland going about their own daily lives.

Therefore, any sane person must admit that, if there was ever a causus belli, this was it.

So, when the NATO treaty was invoked in our defense (instead of Europe's for once), they had no choice but to cry, "But of course! Of course the relationship goes both ways and we're with our American friends!" (...and decided to just foot-drag and promise everything but deliver nothing except tokenism, rather than be honest and openly refuse to honor their treaty obligations.)

That shows how hard it is to even pretend to make sense while condemning our invasion of Afghanistan.

Yet there are billions of people in the world who insist that we had no right to enter Afghanistan and get the people who were doing this, replacing the government with one not run by the Devil Incarnate.

What is their irrationale? Here it is: we were morally obligated to stay our hand, thus letting our attackers continue to strike at us from behind the bushes without our striking back. Why? Because some Afghan civilians might accidentally get hurt or killed if we strike back.

How's that for asserting that some people have a claim on the lives of others?

Let's unscramble those scrambled eggs. American civilians must continue to be DELIBERATELY mass murdered so that no Afghan civilian might ACCIDENTALLY get hurt if we defend ourselves.

Like I said, this is just one example, a prominent one, of thinking that some people have a claim on the lives of others. In this specimen of that nonsense American lives don't count; Afghan lives do. So, Americans must die so that Afghans may live. Because Americans have no right to act in our own self interest. We must act against our own self interest and IN Afghans' self interest instead. We must sacrifice our own lives to insure that none of the people in the country that attacked us get hurt.

I'm sorry, but it is just crazy to assert that.

As if the people of Afghanistan are innocent third parties who had no responsibility to see to it that they had a decent government that didn't commit war crimes in their name against other peoples. They're just lucky it was us their leaders got them into war with.

You see the same twisted thinking in socialist countries like France, where over 20% of people don't work (or "work" at fake government jobs to fudge the statistics). They feel that they have a claim on the earnings of people who do work. They claim that the people who do work must do 40-60% of their work for those who don't work.

Narcissists likewise view themselves as having a claim on your life.

The sad part is that this absurdity often invades the victim's mind. The victim himself feels morally obligated to serve as host for the parasite.

Wrong.

You have every right to leave a narcissist, no matter how loudly she threatens to kill herself if you do. You have every right to defend yourself from from a narcissist. You have every right to get out from under oppression and to disable enemies who hurt you.

The truth is self evident that all are created equal and are endowed with inalienable rights, among which is the right to pursue happiness.

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