balance of payments (BoP): The sum of the Capital account balance and the Current account balance. Unless some extraordinary conditions prevail, the capital account surplus generally tends to approximate, over long time horizons, the current account deficit, tending towards a very small balance of payments. If not, then the BoP will be large and negative (e.g., the USA), which means a large foreign accumulation of the country's currency, or else it will be large and positive (e.g., the EU membership, China, Japan), leading to a large domestic reserve of foreign currency.

The implications of a large BoP deficit by any one country is a matter of controversy. Some have argued that, as long as a critical mass of currency markets regard the US dollar as reliable, the US dollar acts as a sort of new gold exchange standard, a commodity-money standard that just happens to be universally accepted. I believe this cheer view of the matter is convincingly refuted by Brad Setser and Nouriel Roubini. Generally speaking, there is a grave danger that the vast global stockpile of US dollars abroad will become, in effect, an unsecured liability. A safeguard against this would be to contrive trade policy to ensure that a time-discounted value of future US trade surpluses is not significantly different from the net accumulation of past balances. This would, of course, require many years. bureaucratic: used here, a characteristic of state/business organization in which most objectives are subordinated to the internal administrative business of the organization itslf. Hence, a putatively Communist organization might set aside any of the various social goals of the revolution in favor of ensuring continued survival of the regime at minimal difficulty.

Bureaucracy arises from an organization with state power (such as the police), or one guaranteed by state power (such as a corporation or a post office). The delegation of this power to functionaries and managers creates certain organizational attributes that are inevitable and universal, regardless of the underlying ideology.

capital account balance (KAB): All net inflows of capital investment into the USA; includes portolio investment and foreign direct investment (FDI). Portfolio investment consists of foreigners buying stocks, or bonds (S&B) in domestic corporations. FDI includes non-securitized commercial stakes, such as a venture capitalist supplying the finance capital for a startup. When we speak of net capital inflows, we are subtracting domestic investment in ventures overseas from foreign investment in ventures located domestically. Therefore, the KAB constitutes four components:

foreign purchases of domestic S&B (or increases in FDI)
- foreign sales of domestic S&B (or decreases in FDI)
+ dom. sales of foreign S&B (or decreases in ODI)
- dom. purchases of foreign S&B (or increases in ODI)
________________________________________
Total Net Capital Account Balance

demagogue: attract followings who believe they are ideologuess; if their followers are fortunate, they soon realize that the demogogue's narrative is essentially tautological-so there is no possible course of action to remedy the problem. Usually demagogues don't have one; they often are in positions where they are not expected to.

economic rents: in the economics sense of the word, "rent" refers to the income accruing to a productive factor for which no exact substitute exists. Hence, the owner of land receives rent for its use (even the owner is the one actually using it) because of the unique opportunities afforded by the land's unique location. "Economic rents" constitute a part of the revenue stream of factors, the part greater than what is required to induce the owner to offer them on the market. Also, "monopoly rents" are the income stream that is generated by virtue of the firm's possessing a monopoly (and hence being unique.) Here are a few links explaining the concept of monopoly rents: Wikipedia; University of Dublin—Trinity College
economic surplus: In classical economics, "economic surplus" refers to the output from a society minus the cost of sustaining that activity, as, for example, the cost of feeding, clothing, sheltering, and organizing the population; cost of seed corn, feeding flocks of domesticated animals, and so forth. Among the nomadic tribes of the indigenous American peoples, economic surpluses were negligible: increases in the sizes of flocks, moveable wealth like bears teeth necklaces, and the like.
evil: the commission of a bad act for other, also bad, motives. Hence, stealing is merely bad; stealing from someone you resent, so that he will appear to be a thief, is a different, also bad, motive. The combination makes the act not merely bad, but evil. The reason for this distinction is that "evil" is typically assumed to reflect a diablical character to the act, whereas "bad" may reflect little more than weakness.

factor of production: in economics, a category of thing used in the production of goods and services. There are conventionally three factors: land, labor, and capital. The income that is paid out to land is rent; to labor, wages; and to capital, interest. In addition to these three factors, some economists refer to entrepreneurship, whose income is profit. "Land" can be understood to refer to both the the surface of the earth, and to mineral rights; hence, "oil rents," which refers to the especially high revenues enjoyed by the owner of an oil field whose costs of recovery are below what is required to induce her to make it available to the market. See also economic rents.
falangism: a type of political status under which business elites retain political autonomy, while the state intervenes against their class rivals for power. In addition to the naked abuse of power on behalf of a narrow sectional interest, the falangist political system employs an ideology of religious chauvinism, pietistic nationalism, and chronic emergency. Because of its ideology (which enshrines the elite as divinely worthy) and its motives in action (to defend the social relations of production), falangism may be truly defined as rightwing. Please see fascism, praetorian state, and totalitarianism.
fascism: a type of political status under all elites are subjected to the arbitrary power of the party bureaucracy, while the state ruthlessly enforces primarily the interests of the economic elites. Fascist states employ, and often take seriously, rhetoric of national rebirth and irrational repudiation of modernism. They employ a vast number of compulsory or semi-compulsory organizations in order to rope in as many members of the population as possible. Of these, a great majority will have paramilitary characteristics. Much has been made, and rightly so, of the great fixation on male sexual chauvinism and rituals of sexual mastery over female partners. This, and corollaries of it, is one of the attributes that distinguishes fascism from other types of totalitarianism. Because of its ideology (which enshrines the elite as divinely worthy) and the motives of its prototype movement (to defend the social relations of production), fascism may be cautiously defined as rightwing. A caveat, though, is in order because shortly after taking power the fascist movement quickly loses its original ideological content and becomes militarist-bureaucratic. Please see falangism and praetorian state.
format: technology that must be adopted by many to be useful to any; for example, VHS versus Betamax videocassette systems; SI versus imperial weights and measures; 97-octane gasoline versus all the other possible inflammable formulations of hydrocarbons; gauges of railroad track; 525-scanline television sets (USA) versus much higher image quality in the UK, EU, and Japan. In fact, virtually all mature industrial design is thoroughly dictated by format, even when the result is a far less efficient product.
fundamentalism: an attribute of harded ideological zeal. The fundamental version of any belief system rejects any alternative characterization of the reality it seeks to describe; it insists that it has not merely described an aspect of the universe, but furnished the only possible description. An unfortunate aspect of this is that the fundamentalist's ethical system suffers profound distortion: the propagation and victory of the fundamentalist's ideology trumps all other moral considerations. Famous examples of fundamentalist ideologies include Christian fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism, and market fundamentalism. All three represent betrayals of their original philosophical underpinnings.

globalization: a term reportedly originating with the business periodical The Economist in 1959, although that publication makes no such claim on its own behalf and actually disparages its use in this context as a "buzzword."

A buzz word that refers to the trend for people, firms and governments around the world to become increasingly dependent on and integrated with each other. This can be a source of tremendous opportunity, as new markets, workers, business partners, goods and SERVICES and jobs become available, but also of competitive threat, which may undermine economic activities that were viable before globalisation.

The problem with the word "globalization" in this sense is when one expresses opposition to it.

• From Wikipedia's entry,

  Some maintain that globalization is an imagined geography; that is, a political tool of ruling neo-liberalists, who are attempting to use certain images and discourses of world politics to justify their political agendas. Writers of books such as No Logo claim that by presenting a picture of a globalized world, the Bretton Woods institutions can demand that countries open up their economies to liberalization under Structural Adjustment Programmes that encourage governments to fund privatization programmes, ahead of welfare and public services.

  Since the participants in a global market place do not enjoy remotely comparably power with each other, "globalization" is more likely to refer to a greater award of power to that category of finance capital that is especially mobile.
• Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere at this site, if one says that "anti-globalization protesters" are against increased global connectedness, one is automatically exposing them to undeserved ridicule: usually opponents of this soi-disant "globalization" are so by virtual being highly connected themselves, and hence in direct contact with 3rd world victims of it. They are likely to insist on replacing consumerism, which imposes the parochial tastes of an affluent power on the industrial system of former colonies, with consumption of goods reflecting the tastes and customs of those foreign communities. I therefore recommend using the term, "Washington Consensus" instead.
• The term "globalization" as expansion of international trade and capital flows implies progress and inevitability; it implies improvement of economic prospects in the 3rd world, as former subsistance farmers acquire jobs at call centers. A false clash of interests is implied: pampered, spoiled, even "racist," industrial workers unjustly object to the erosion of their living standards, or hydebound conservatives objecting to the dissolution of their social norms. Here's a sample of this notion of the world courtesy of Civita:

  Civita’s purpose is all-encompassing. It shall communicate the values of the open society and engage in the cultural conflict between an open and pluralistic world order dominated by freedom, democracy and a market economy - and the antonyms in the form of protectionism, racism and prejudice, religious fundamentalism, socialism ..based on technological scepticism and opposition to economic growth...

  Objection to "globalization" is here equated with an embrace of socialism, racism, and religious fundamentalism, skepticism of technology and opposition to economic growth. The possiblity that the current arrangement of trade relations under which we live represents a very specifically conceived, managed arrangement—which it is—is simply not entertained, or tolerated by such people. Critics of the current arrangement of trade relations, therefore, are automatically assumed to be against everything good and virtuous. This is mere polemics.

hard right: a segment of rightwing zealotry that glorifies violence and calls for the destruction of the civil order; because of its violent hatred of non-rightwing centers of power, the hard right is characterized by an obsession with revolution and massacres of the objective enemy.

ideologue: someone who takes a narrative ("ideology") and converts it into a course of action. The term is typically applied by people who research terrorist organizations, to the people who decide what the group should do next. While "ideologue" is usually used in a perjorative sense, in daily life the job is crucial: in a sense, human rights groups are ideologues, since they refine courses of action for societes with liberal ideologies.
ideology: a system of beliefs that seeks to explain the basic shortcomings and frustations of the world faced by its believers. Ideologies also seek to propose a set of actions that offer solace or even deliverance from these shortcomings. Here is J.A. Schumpeter's analysis of an ideology, Marxism:

In one important sense, Marxism is a religion. To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved. We may specify still further: Marxist socialism also belongs to that subgroup which promises paradise on this side of the grave.

[...] Purely scientific achievement, had it even been much more perfect than it was in the case of Marx, would never have won the immortality in the historical sense which is his. Nor would his arsenal of party slogans have done it. Part of his success, although a very minor part, is indeed attributable to the barrelful of white-hot phrases, of impassioned accusations and wrathful gesticulations, ready for use on any platform, that he put at the disposal of his flock...

The important thing was that the message was framed and conveyed in such a way as to be acceptable to the positivistic mind of its time... This was done... by formulating with unsurpassed force that feeling of being thwarted and ill treated which is the auto-therapeutic attitude of the unsuccessful many...
[Joseph A Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 1942 p.5]

To justly describe an ideology, one must acknowledge its tendency to expand in scope over time. The power of the Marxist ideology was that, unlike abortive socialist conceptions of the 19th century, it could be applied to everything. It could be conceived in a vulgar way (over the angry objections of Marx himself) and extrapolated to apply everything. However, in its purest form, ideologies not only absolve the adherent from thinking and from any sort of critical judgment; they engulf the adherent in a comforting coat of platitudes, proof against any threat. The ideology's failure to achieve power is justified by the extraordinary requirements of purity and self-abnegation it makes of the true believer; only those who are properly indoctrinated in the mysteries can actually exercise power. When, at last, the ideology attains power, its confrontation eith objective reality is explained in advance by the extraordinary originality of its propositions, and the difficulty of lesser mortals to assimilate them. When, at alst, the ideology has conclusively failed, and been driven from power, it has by then long since explained why: there were many enemies, infiltrators, and mercenaries who betrayed the movement, slandered the movement, conspired against the movement, used main force against the movement. Please see fundamentalism, temporal myopia, unity of enemies, and vengeful overshoot.

jackass: someone habituated to equating personal misfortunes and frustrations to the most profound injustices. Usually, one reserves "jackass" for those who imagine their thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to be of profound importance. Not only are frustrations imagined to be tantamount to extreme horrors; insights, however banal, are supposed to be original and urgent when indeed they are utterly routine. People agitatating on behalf of others cannot be jackasses, however misguided they might be. Please see whining.
Jacobinism: an attribute of political movements, in which other ideologies are demonized, and the movement demands the violent imposition of its goals on society. In all cases, the jacobinist movement will plead urgent necessity.

leftwing: ideologically hostile to current social relations, on the grounds that they support an unjust system of production. Favors other social goals above productive efficiency.
liberal: a political outlook that generally perceives social problems as a failure of social institutions; usually favors moderate reforms, implemented with popular oversite. Liberals are generally the apex of democratic populism, since they accept no alternative to informed public participation.

An interesting sidenote to this: outside of the United States, the term "liberal" is generally associated with free markets and ample civil rights. Hence, the Australian Liberal Party is in favor of less government regulation of the economy, lower taxes, and [traditionally] less state interference in personal life. Likewise, the Liberal Party of Belgium corresponds roughly to the Conservative Party of the UK. Usually the economic aspect of this is called "neo-liberal" to avoid confusion; the broader equation of economic (or commerical) freedom with civil rights and political democracy is usually called "classic liberalism." In the USA, liberals have tended to be associated with the New Deal Reforms of the 1st term of Franklin D Roosevelt; these include certain state guarantees of a minimum income for the elderly, the separation of church and state, policies more in harmony with those of US allies, environmentalism, a systemic and orderly erradication of racism, the reform of sexist gender roles, tolerance for a wider range of culural norms, and a more honest (ergo, more self-critical) assessment of US history. In Latin America and Southern Europe, these views are usually associated with "radical parties," and the Transnational Radical Party is an international union of [US-style] liberal parties. In Northern Europe, the equivalent would traditionally be "social democratic,"

main bank: a bank employed by the national government to finance development. Most frequently the main bank functions in countries where financial markets are underdeveloped and the national government wants to facilitate FDI. However, in developed countries like Germany and Japan, the main bank is nominally private; government-main bank relations are carried out through reciprocal arrangements. Main banks enjoy extraordinary privileges and usually act as the cutting edge of the government's national industrial policy.

Most countries have main banks, although in each country the arrangement is slightly different. In smaller countries, there is typically one main bank that gradually evolves into a city bank. In larger countries of East Asia, the pattern is for there to be multiple main banks with highly personal ties to the government; there is direct duplication of effort, but the purpose of the multiple main banks is to conserve the strength of each one. In Western Europe, multiple main banks again vary dramatically by country, but the general pattern is for considerable specialization.
morality: discernment between right conduct and bad; ultimately, between the good and the bad. I think of "morality" as being codified into ethics; ethical conduct is a logical framework which seeks morality as the ultimate result. Morality is the ideal that ethics pursues.
moralizing: chauvinism or sanctimony gussied up to look like moral authority. It's a fallacious variety of thinking; it involves making moral judgments precisely where they are inappropriate. The most common I've encountered consist of blaming people for failing to do things they either cannot do, or could do only with an extreme disregard for their own interests (which the speaker himself is unaware). It's understandable to be fearful of the social disruption caused by illegal immigration; it's prudent to call for countermeasures to prevent illegal immigration. But passing moral judgment against illegal immigrants is usually stupid. They're mindful of the fact that our laws and codes of ethics exclude nearly anything by which they could plausibly solve their most urgent problems. Passing judgment on them is usually a display of arrogance and insensitivity, not moral rectitude.

narrative: explains an event or outcome of any kind. This could be a scientific phenomenon, like why wood floats in water, or it could be an ideological one, such as why the natives are making a disturbance. People compose a narrative to explain the things that fail to meet expectations, such as the success of a despised rival, or the kindness of a dreaded alien.
nationalism: a near-universal motivation in all societies. Nationalism is an ideological narrative that identifies the citizen chiefly as a member of a nation; the citizen's interests are identical with those of the nation and opposed to those of some other nation. In its incipient form, nationalism is typically chauvinistic and sanctimonious. The nationalist seeks to demand that all citizens support his/her claims against other nations, on pain of not being an authetic citizen. Hence, nationalism is innately self-seeking at the expense of the nation. See patriotism.

paradox: a proposition is one that has no truth value because it cannot be so. If one takes them literally, they are absurd. Hence, the statement, "This sentence is false," or "Everything James R MacLean says is a lie." If you read it here, it's a paradox. Usually paradoxical beliefs involve propositions which are true enough if describing tendencies, but cannot be read as universal laws: for example, "If a person doesn't believe there's discrimination against African Americans, he's probably discriminating against them." A wag reading this might wonder if, then, if everyone believed racism was a problem, it would therefore cease to exist-making the statement seemingly paradoxical. The reason it is not, is that the proposition applies individually, not universally; and the null of the proposition is "If a person believes there is discrimination against African Americans" is "he may or may not be discriminating against them," not "he is not discriminating against them."

patriotism: love of country or community. A patriot is animated by threats to the community, which may well include the atrocious conduct of putative defenders of the community from foreign threats. The patriot is also animated by threats to the character of the country, especially to its peculiar virtues (e.g., freedom). Chauvinism is inimical to true patriotism since it "requires" that the country somehow possess these peculiar virtues to extreme degree in order to merit love. Also, chauvinism is rival; love is non-rival. The patriot may love many countries, especially having lived in many. If the national interest clashes with the patriot's immediate, short-term interests, and the patriot recognizes this, then the patriot will not hesitate to prefer the interests of the country. piggybacking: when a political demagogue contrives to take "credit" for an act of "insurgency" that he/she had nothing to do with. An egregious example would be various articles I was emailed after the 9/11/2001 attacks, in which the writer claimed the USA was attacked, or deserved to have been attacked, for affronts ranging from failing to ratify the Kyoto Accord to the prevalence of bad American remakes of fine European movies ("Wings of Desire" was the example chosen). "Piggybacking" became something of an epidemic in this century because terrorists do not claim responsibility for their attacks anymore.

The piggybacker usually attempts to couch the claim ambiguously, as was the case with the "Death to Hollywood!" demagogue mentioned earlier; that writer was not proposing to say that the attackers were in touch with him, or that he somehow had a unique insight into the real motives of the perpetrator; merely that, in some convoluted way, the natural scheme of justice had served the Americans right (when it so seldom does elsewhere). A far more common case is when a riot is claimed to be an inarticulate insurgency, and some scribbler claims to be issuing commands into the ether, while sotto voce addressing the society whose city is going up in flames. The piggybacker often serves the extreme reactionary, who can go along with the travesty and insist that the piggybacker's ideology is a terrible menace to society generally and must be stamped out, even where it doesn't exist.

Pareto Optimum: equilibrium where no change in the distribution of goods can be made without making at least one party worse off. In the textbook example, a sub-optimal situation would be where you have all the beer and I have all the bread. I want beer, but I've got too much bread; and you're in the opposite situation. So we meet and trade these until we're willing to trade beer for bread at the same ratio (say, a quart for a loaf). The First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics is that we will achieve this blissful Pareto-optimal state by trade, if and only if there are no spillovers in consumption.
populist: type of political narrative in which the people are identified as a victim of a small, privileged group. rightwing populism is simply an ideology in which the scape-goated group is hostile to the established norms and interests of the host society; leftwing populism is one where the established norms and interests are themselves the problem. praetorian state: a type of political status under which the military routinely intervenes in the civil state on behalf of sectional interests; it may openly have established permanent control over the political process, and even suplant the elites it formerly intervened on behalf of. Typically, the praetorian state does so on the grounds that the civil authorities are hopelessly deadlocked. In addition to the praetorian state, there is likely to be an accompanying "praetorian system," such that

there is the absence of effective political institutions capable of mediating, refining and moderating group political actions. Social forces confront each other nakedly; no political institutions or professional political leaders are recognized and accepted as legitimate intermediaries to moderate group conflict.

A common point of confusion is whether or not the "preferred victim" is really a victim or not. Opponents of the imperialist adventure will often discredit themselves by insisting the human rights record of the target country is immaculate, when in fact it is anything but. In fact, all countries facing an insurgency tend to inflict very severe human rights violations, especially if the insurgency is large and purports to stand for an ethnic community, and if its demands would spell the end of the state. The real problem is that the foreign interloper tends to drastically raise the stakes, ensuring the intractiblity of the insurgency and the targetted regime.
Production-efficient: the same thing as Pareto-efficient, but applied to production rather than consumption. If we cannot produce any more of a particular commodity without reducing the output of another, we are "production-efficient." The University might be looked upon as a sort of facility for supplying graduates with specific technical skills. The problem, obviously, with highly technical concepts like this is that things that cannot be measured, are disregarded.
productive factor: see factors of production
pro-state insurgency: a rebellion against civil authority on behalf of the state. If the rulers are thwarted by any legal framework they have set up, or if they are stymied by the continued survival of legal norms (and recalcitrant judges), they have recourse to militia. Example of this include Indonesia under Suharto, whose military created militia associated with local groups, armed them and issued uniforms, in order to unleash collective terror and outright genocide against inconvenient communities; the Salvadoran death squads of the '80's, or Brazil and Colombia today.

rightwing: protective of current social relations, on the grounds that they support only legitimate and/or prudent method of organizing society. Believes productive managers entitled to enforce these relations through friendly political functionaries.

sadism: a type of sexual perversion in which the sufferer derives pleasure from inflicting pain on a passive recipient. Typically, in order to realize this sexual fulfillment, the sadist must find a willing victim, known as a masochist. In recent years, it has become relatively easy to arrange pairings for sado-masochistic "sex," leading to additional variations collectively known as BDSM. Not surprisingly, some enthusiasts of BDSM have deplored the preconceptions of people like me, who think the whole behavior reflects severe psychosocial hangups (and is immensely funny besides). They have sought to "mainstream" BDSM, removing at one strok its humor and its social stigma. In my view, the problem with mainstreamieng it is that it removes the last shred of reality to what is an entirely "virtual" (i.e., simulated) sexual act: a sadist "torturing" a person who enjoys the "torture," and the "submission" to someone who is still legally bound to avoid going beyond what was explicitly consented to. Once it is mainstreamed, it becomes so tame that practitioners must find a still greater thrill, one that remains socially repulsive.

The term "sadist" has been misused to mean "cruel" for any reason; people can of course be cruel out of hatred of or indifference to their victims. Cruelty can also be inflicted for raison d'etat.
St Augustine's Syndrome: The habit of condemning a practice that one has indulged in, to the point of achieving all the benefits to be had from that practice. So, for example, condeming affirmative action when one has reached the top through affirmative action; or condeming sexual promiscuity after getting bored by a surfeit of it.

scripts, scripting: in politics, the selection of language and rhetoric that reinforces an ideological narrative. The object of scripting, whether by a politician or by a zealous adherent, is to bypass any independent thought. Scripts are also used in personal life to enforce a person's self-imposed role. So, for example, a person may reject an offer of something he/she wants, in order to retain martyr status. While adhering to a script is not, in and of itself, deceitful, it tends to give people permission to lie, and typically forces them to. Unscripted lies are almost unsustainable in public life because the lies cannot be coordinated. And they are underutilized. In public life, lies are scripted so all participants are on board. Repeating the lies can become evidence of loyalty; if security or sensitivity to public reaction is to be used as a potential mitigating circumstance, then scripting ensures that one's special pleading works.

Scripted lies, among ideologues, cease to have the odium of lies. When top officials in the Reagan Administration lied about exchanging arms for hostages, they knew the Soviets knew they were lying; the real target was a few American liberals, who were the real enemy—they had lower security clearance, so to speak, than the Soviets. Lying to them served no purpose except postponing their ability to use the President's law-breaking against him or future Republicans. Yet conservatives mostly defended the president's lies on national security grounds. Hence, a scripted lie, shaped by ideology, had lost its odium.

spillovers in consumption: a benefit to others obtained by anyone consuming a thing. So, for example, a person who reads books for pleasure may accumulate a huge volume of general knowledge that makes her useful to friends; turning indicators on cars warn other cars of the driver's intentions; widespread formal education makes a country a more favorable target of FDI. See spillover in production

Spillovers in production: (also known as an externality) is an impact on your productivity caused by my production. So if you set up an adult video vental store next to my Christian bookstore, our respective clientele will probably tend to dissuade each other from patronizing our stores.

tautological, tautology: a proposition which cannot be proven false because its terms are defined on the basis of the proposition. The "No True Scotsman" argument is the preferred example:

"No Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge."
"But my friend Angus, from Scotland, does."
"Ah, but no true Scotsman does."

"unity of enemies": a common frame of mind of the person suffering from paranoid delusions; the phrase is also useful in describing ideologies. Ideologies are often inclined to advance a single, simple, clear explanation for everything, leading to fundamentalism. When an ideology is in power, it often faces a painful confrontation with objective reality, leading the ideologue to explain that this is all the result of enemies conspiring to defeat the ideals of the revolution. As the number of "enemies" grows, the ideologue (or paranoiac) will tend to assume they are acting in concert. A typical example is the political conservative who equates 3rd International Communists with Maoists, and both with New Deal liberals. (For a specific example of what I mean, look up Amazon's customer review section of any book by John Kenneth Galbraith or Keynes' General Theory.) Believing that one's enemies are united gives one the impression that one's personal struggles with those enemies are the most important battles that they face; it flatters both the paranoiac's sense of self-importance, and his sense of accomplishment (since failures, being against a bigger enemy, are easier to understand).

"Unity of enemies" is linked with temporal myopia (excessive importance attached to present difficulties) and with vengeful overshoot because the person promoting them is unable to rise out of his resentment. Both ancillary delusions support the extravagent vengefulness and anger that the paranoiac is likely to feel towards the object of his delusions.

vengeful overshoot: Human nature often craves that revenge surpass the provocation; and sometimes, that means that even innocent people indirectly associated with the perpetrator get targeted as well. This escalates as the efficacy of the vengeance declines; if I am cunning and ruthless, and I can orchestrate the mauling of the youths who broke into my car—because, let us imagine, I am the leader of a large criminal gang—then that will likely do fine. But if I am a playwright or such, vengeful overshoot very quickly spirals into barking madness.