One of the few joys I have in life is sitting on the patio at the Winchester Arms and engaging in lopsided debate with my friend, the Mad Atheist.

The Mad Atheist is a voracious reader, a meticulous researcher and a skilled debater. I routinely challenge his condemnation of the creationists, not because I disagree, but because I love listening to this guy talk.

(Actually, that's not entirely true. I do lend some credence to the revisionist creationism that says God made the world in six days and, on the seventh, stood back and screamed: "Oh no! What have I done?")

Yet, the most profound thing to come out of the mouth of good old Mad was when the bartender and I conspired to make him feel guilty for not buying me a beer. "It is impossible to make me feel guilty," he said proudly, "for I am a functioning sociopath."

The man is not being fair to himself by saying this. It throws him into the whirling maelstrom of politicians who decry others for the same practices they carry on themselves; special interest spokespersons who draw up imaginary apocalyptic scenarios for the sake of their self interest; corporations who are virtual psychopathic entities unto themselves and obstinate bureaucrats whose brains are etched in stone.

The Mad Atheist must also understand that he disqualified himself as a functional sociopath when he said he was a functional sociopath.

It's a Catch-22 because most functional sociopaths think they are wonderful, rational people - even when they are disrupting, demonizing and destroying their fellow man.

Example one is the unfolding local drama of Filsinger vs. The Beast.

Ken Filsinger, a local sign maker, has seen his property taxes almost double because the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) has given his business an industrial classification instead of the commercial one that is applied to every other sign maker in the county.

The man is obviously being screwed. It makes one want to put a megaphone besides MPAC's head and holler: "Wake up! this is wrong! Why are you doing this?"

The corporation's bureaucratic, sociopathic response is essentially this: "Because we can. Live with it."

At a hearing on the matter, the MPAC lawyer droned through an excruciating hour-long oral summation; listing precedents where MPAC has unfairly put the boots to other people. Her argument, in a nutshell, was that the corporation never gave a damn about people before and is not legally obliged to give a damn, now.

The really sad thing is that her approach was, under the circumstances, tactically correct, and MPAC may end up carrying the day when the final ruling comes down.

Example two is federal MPs getting together and exempting themselves from disclosing the cash and benefits they receive from political parties and riding associations under the House of Commons conflict-of-interest code. The move was unanimously approved without a vote in the Commons after a series of committee hearings conducted entirely in secret.

This is totally hypocritical when one considers that political transparency is the buzz word of every political campaign. Elections Canada does insist, however, that such contributions must be reported if obtained during an election campaign, where political parties can be reimbursed for election expenses. (In other words, be a forthcoming guy during a campaign because you can get some money back).

How did they pull this off without any backlash? They sneaked it through while they were serving up a pot-luck, cannibal's feast of Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla and Conservative cabinet minister Lisa Raitt to sate the appetites of the public and the media. It's like Night of the Living Dead with make-up and Hansard. These people will eat their own.

But it's not all fun and games for politicians and that leads me to example three.

Under the rules of democracy, elected officials are the de facto employees of those that elect them. Some spokespeople of special interest groups, therefore, feel they have the God-given right to use gross exaggerations and even outright lies to portray these people as siblings of the Dark Lord; simply because they are of the body that elected them in the first place.

As often as not, they fancy themselves as champions of the oppressed whose egos preclude them from considering the personal damage they cause not just to the politicians — who understand they are fair game — but to the public servants as well. They don't care. They just want to hear themselves talk. That is sociopathic.

All the while, the politicians and public servants have to grit their teeth and suffer in silence like the corporate employee who is being berated by an illinformed, self-serving ass of a boss who is out to carve himself a higher niche in the organization.

All this having been said, I regret to inform the Mad Atheist that he will likely never attain rank among the functional sociopaths. He has been known to view things, and speak, in a cerebral context and that just will not do in the amoral world of numero uno.

Instead, he may find himself banished to the burning depths of the intellectually disenfranchised cursed by the deviation of Descartes. "I think, therefore I'm damned."