Why "Conservatives" Can't Do Foreign Policy

Call Them "Radical Right", NOT "Conservative"

2008-07-18T06:27:00.003-05:00

Most of the posts I have written here address the issues of why most of the people chronically labeled "conservative" by our main stream and corporate-owned media are utterly mislabeled by this term. I have suggested that they are more appropriately labeled "pseudo-conservative" following the original use of that term in the classic book "The Authoritarian Personality" and in Richard Hofstadter's writings from the 1950s and 1960s. However, there is another term that comes from the 1960s that is also a more accurate label for many on the American right and that is "Radical Right". I recommend that these two terms can be used largely interchangeably and that just as the Radical Right has used its powers of redefinition to turn the term "liberal" into practically a dirty word and refused even to honor the long chosen and essentially accurate name of "Democratic" Party, insisting on calling it the "Democrat" party, those of us on the libertarian left and right should stop unconsciously parroting right-wing propaganda by continuing to mislabel the pseudo-conservative radical right as "conservative".

Read Glenn Greenwald's "Great American Hypocrites"

2008-07-14T08:17:00.003-05:00

Glenn Greenwald's new book "Great American Hypocrites" very effectively argues a number of the kinds of things I have proposed in earlier posts to this blog. While he is primarily focused on the Republican Party's hypocrisy this underlines how those who claim to be "conservative" are not. Here is how he puts it on p. 237:

There has been a long line of decidedly unconservative actions by the Bush administration that have been almost uniformly cheered on by the right wing--from exploding discretionary domestic spending to record deficits, to an emergency convening of the federal government to intervene in one woman's end-of-life decisions, to attempts to federalize marriage and medical laws--all of which could not be any more alien to what has been meant by conservatism for the past forty years.

Greenwald is very effective in providing evidence of how Republican ideologues are, in their actions and lives, precisely the opposite of what they say they are. Read Greenwald's book and let us put a stop to the mammoth hypocrisy they have been getting away with for at least the last 28 years. As he puts it on p. 2:

those who playact as powerful Tough Guys and anti-terrorist Warriors and Crusaders for the Values Voters have lives filled with weakness, fear, unbridled hedonism, unearned privilege, sheltered insulation, and none of the "Traditional Masculine Virtues" they endlessly tout.

In his Chapter 1 he shows how that model of Republican Tough and Patriotic American, John Wayne, actually lived his life. In Chapter 2 he describes how the establishment media enables Republican hypocrites to get away with their hypocrisy. Chapter 3 deals with the more general tendency of Republican males to swagger around pretending to be tough guys in their "Tough Guise" while in fact being the opposite. Chapter 4 concerns Republican shamming of being morally superior examples of family values.

Chapter Five examines what has perhaps become the most transparent Republican myth of all: that it is the party of small government, limited federal power, and individual liberty.

In his final chapter Greenwald focuses upon John McCain's hypocrisies. This is an excellent book.

New and Not Improved: Barack Obama

2008-07-05T11:20:00.004-05:00

Here is a New York Times editorial noting that Barack Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics. Yet now there seems to be a new Mr. Obama on the hustings. Unlike the radical right which believes that the New York Times is the "liberal" anti-Christ, I see the N Y Times is an essentially center-right paper most frequently found in the "patriotic" cheering section for most "tough" stands; thus, when Obama gets in trouble with the N Y Times editorial page that should be a sign he must be doing something wrong. The editorial cites Obama's change on FISA noting that he previously committed to supporting a filibuster against any law granting retroactive immunity. For some of the very best analysis of Obama's misleading statements about why he will now vote for the FISA "compromise you MUST read Glenn Greenwald's magnificently knowledgeable and carefully reasoned posts. There were several excellent posts before this one but Update III of the above post criticizes Obama's latest statement with a point by point analysis.

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A Big Obama Test: If Israel Attacks Iran

2008-06-20T09:04:00.003-05:00

I have been a relatively enthusiastic backer of Barack Obama. There was news this morning that Israel carried out a military exercise that was a practice for bombing Iran. I was extremely disappointed to see Obama pander to AIPAC in a recent speech where he gratuitously promised that Jerusalem would remain the Israeli capital and must remain undivided. If Israel were to bomb Iran this would be a huge test for Obama's strength of character: if he were to support such an illegal, aggressive and unjustified attack he would go down in my estimation very considerably. This would constitute a "Profile in Pandering" rather than a profile in courage. Moreover, this would put Obama in the war camp very close to George W. Bush and would be an indicator that he is not so much the "change" candidate he would like us to believe he is.

Jeffrey Feldman's "Frameshop" Blog Is Definitely Worth a Look

2008-04-19T17:31:00.003-05:00

I just discovered Jeffrey Feldman's Frameshop blog. It is an excellent discussion of how the Right uses rhetoric to "frame" our political debate.

Here's an Easy and Rewarding Way to Help the Environment

2008-01-08T12:43:00.000-05:00

I recently heard about a free service that will stop catalogs from coming in the mail to your home thus saving the mail person the trouble of carrying them, you the trouble of throwing them away, and trees that combat global warming from being cut down. Go to catalogchoice.org and sign up. They also have information about the values of doing so.

Another Good Book

2008-01-03T22:23:00.000-05:00

I've just finished reading Italian political thinker Norbert Bobbio's Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction. Since Bobbio is a serious political philosopher the book starts slowly with many distinctions that may seem academic. Start on p. 38 for the good stuff. An excellent book by a careful thinker.

Morris R. Cohen and a Basic Element of Liberalism

2007-10-18T16:39:00.000-05:00

In 1946 Morris R. Cohen, philosopher, lawyer and legal scholar, published a collection of essays under the title “The Faith of a Liberal”. The first essay in the book was written in 1931 and entitled “What I believe”. This essay captures an essential element of liberalism that provides a marked contrast with much of what has passed as 'conservatism' in the U.S. since World War II. Cohen wrote:

The central fact to which... prevailing creeds refuse to accord sufficiently serious attention is the obvious impossibility of attaining omniscience…. [S]imple honesty requires us to admit that none of our creeds are entirely free of guesswork. This lack of omniscience is not cured by reliance on faith, intuition, or authority. For however certain we may feel, we never know that such faith, intuition, or authority will not in the end prove itself mistaken….

To the inadequacy of our knowledge must be added the tremendous force of temporarily pleasant illusions, compared with which the love of truth is pitifully frail…. The sources of illusion are many: inherited forms of expression, fashions in respectable or approved opinions, the idols of our tribe or clique, of the market place, of our professional conventions, and the like….

[G]reat religious teachers, like the morally wise men of science, have taught the great lesson of humility—that there are always vast realms beyond our ken or control….

The realization of the pathetic frailty of the knowledge or beliefs on which our life depends... leads not to despair but to open-eyed courage. But it also points to a most intimate connection between scientific method and liberal civilization…. [Science] is rather a method which is based on a critical attitude to all plausible and self-evident propositions. It seeks not to reject them, but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives. This open eye for possible alternatives, each to receive the same logical treatment before we can determine which is the best grounded, is the essence of liberalism in art, morals, and politics. Conservatism clings to what is established, fearing that if we let go, all the values of life will perish. The radical or revolutionary, impressed with the evil of the existing order or disorder, recklessly puts all faith in some principle without regard for the hidden dangers which it may contain, let alone the cruel hardships which readjustments must involve. The liberal views life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situations, but in which there is no guaranty that the new will always be the good or the true. Like science, liberalism insists on a critical examination of the content of our beliefs, principles, or initial hypotheses and on subjecting them to a continuous process of verification so that they will be better founded in experience and reason…. [Emphasis added.]

Unless men reason they remain sunk in blind dogmatism, clinging obstinately to questionable beliefs without the consciousness that these may be mere prejudices. “To have doubted one’s own first principles,” said Justice Holmes, “is the mark of a civilized man.” And to refuse to do so, we may add, is the essence of fanaticism.

The fanatic clings to certain beliefs and in their defense is ready to shut the gates of mercy on mankind, precisely because he cannot see any alternative to them except utter chaos or iniquity. Rational reflection, however, makes us see other possibilities and opens our minds to the thought that some of the moral or physical principles that seem to us self-evident may be only sanctified taboos or inherited conventions.

To reflect that in the absence of omniscience all our principles of morality and conduct are but hypotheses need not prevent us from staking our lives on these anticipations of experience and from fighting as valiantly as we can for what we hold dearest…. Civil society depends not on blindness or insensibility to the loathsome traits of our fellow-mortals, but upon respecting their rights without taking them to our bosoms. This can be achieved only through sympathetic understanding. Co-operation with those from whom we differ is possible only if we rationalize our beliefs and thus make them intelligible to those from differing backgrounds.

This is why genuine liberals cannot be pseudo-conservatives or authoritarians. I think it's a great statement to which I subscribe.

'Conservatism' as Unprincipled Opportunism

2007-09-06T07:24:00.000-05:00

I am currently reading John W. Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience. Let me reveal some of my own mistaken biases: since I'm old enough to have been aware and politically active in the Watergate era I thought, "Oh John Dean, that Blind Ambition guy who was in Nixon's White House; he's just an ex-politico, what can he know?" Well, I was wrong. John W. Dean is an excellent researcher and thinker and Conservatives Without Conscience covered a lot of the ground I've been writing about myself. This guy Dean is a very serious thinker. (Why he's just got to be smart if he's writing about what I'm writing about!) I highly recommend his books.

But let me here develop an idea that he only hints at in his book. He writes at length about how so-called conservatives themselves so very frequently argue that there is no way to define 'conservatism'; they go so far as to revel in this supposed fact and celebrate their right to contradict themselves. Of course it IS difficult to give a definition of a belief system like conservatism or liberalism, there is no question about that; but when you get so MANY so-called conservatives opining that they cannot define their own belief system (see Dean, 2006, pp. 2-10) you should really begin to think about this.

It is hugely convenient for so-called conservatives to take this position. If you trumpet the fact that you cannot define what you stand for and you make an asset out of being able to take contradictory positions--what are the consequences of this stance? It allows you to be unprincipled and opportunistic in your pursuit of a coalition of followers as well as in your pursuit of political power. And it is precisely this that has occurred since Buckley and his colleagues created modern American 'conservatism' in the post World War II era. I have commented upon this earlier calling it the "witch's brew" of pseudo-conservatives (if you wish to see these search in my blog under "witch's"). So-called conservatives have been given a huge pass here by allowing them to mix the most contradictory elements and yet get away with giving the whole mess a single label.

They are for "limited government" but they support the Reagan-Bush-Cheney theory of the unitary executive! (On this see Charlie Savage's Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy; Savage won a Pulitzer for his articles about signing statements and is a very thoughtful, careful fellow.) They revere the great American Constitution but support the dismantling of its checks and balances. They are defenders of "individual freedom" but will rush back to Washington to pass special legislation telling Terry Schiavo's relatives how to manage her feeding tube. They support a "culture of life" but, unlike the Catholic Church which also opposes abortion, they are big supporters of the death penalty. They are the champions of small government but never met a defense department or national security budget increase they didn't like. They support bringing "freedom and democracy" to the rest of the world, just not where it is inconvenient as in the case of the democratically elected Hamas government. They are most emphatically Christians but seem to have 'forgotten' Christ's teachings about feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and sheltering those without shelter. They revere the Ten Commandments including the sixth, "Thou Shalt not Kill", except when it comes to Pat Robertson calling for "taking out" Hugo Chavez. They are absolutely against government interference in the economy except when it comes to passing legislation which weakens labor unions.

They are indeed a mass of blatant contradictions which truly reduces itself to an unprincipled, opportunistic grasping for popular and political power. And their strategy has been remarkably successful in America, especially since Reagan.

More Important Findings about Authoritarianism and Who Rules America

2007-09-04T13:44:00.000-05:00

I have ordered but not yet received John Dean's book Conservatives Without Conscience. This is an important book because while researching it Dean went through the social science literature and discovered Bob Altemeyer's 40 year body of work on authoritarianism. He integrated these social science findings into his book and brought renewed and much deserved attention to Altemeyer's work. As a psychologist myself I have heard often of how we are supposed to be involved in a longer term program of research in order to make a significant scientific contribution but this admonition is usually more observed in the breach than it is followed. Altemeyer is the model of long term programmatic research! He has been at it for 40 years and has accumulated a wealth of findings.

Altemeyer has researched mainly authoritarian followers or what he calls people who score high on his Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) Scale. In the 1990s a Swedish psychologist Jim Sidanius developed a measure of Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). He has mainly reported on this in professional journals but has published a book as well called Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression. Persons high on SDO want to dominate others socially and are against increased equality. Research has shown that persons who score high on RWA and others who score high on SDO are each relatively highly prejudiced against minorities.

Since the RWA scale and the SDO scale do not correlate very highly with one another they explain different sources of prejudice. Altemeyer wondered how many persons might get both high RWA score and high SDO scores and it turns out that about 8% of his sample are "Double Highs", this minority scores highly on both right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance. Both Altemeyer and John Dean have drawn attention to these Double Highs as persons who might rise to leadership in the American Right. I suspect Dean identifies Dick Cheney as a double high.

RWAs believe in submission to their perceived authorities, are dogmatic followers of the conventions endorsed by these authorities, and are more willing to advocate and commit aggression to suppress dissidents and deviants. SDOs, on the other hand, are less ideological and they seek power in a more cynical fashion. Double Highs can appeal to the RWA followers for support because they hold enough of their views and are willing to do what is necessary to achieve socio-political power. So Double Highs would likely include George W. Bush who flaunts his born again Christian credentials to gain votes and, with the help of the ultimate Machiavellian, Karl Rove, is frequently willing to do whatever is necessary to defeat his opponents and gain political power.

Must Read: "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy"

2007-08-30T17:09:00.000-05:00

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have just published the book which follows up their 2006 article by the same name which stirred a firestorm. This is a very carefully and thoughtfully reasoned book by two academic political scientists. It gives a wealth of information about how much money and support we have given Israel beginning in the 1960s; this aid is frequently in the form of grants they don't have to pay back and we give it to them no matter what they do with it. The authors make the argument that this unconditional support is contrary to US interests and those of Israel. If this seems difficult to believe please recall that governments have been horribly wrong in the past regarding their own best interests, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan doesn't look too smart now does it? How about Hitler's attempt to rule the world? Japan's decision to attack the US?

Read Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers".

An economically expanding power… may well prefer to become rich rather than to spend heavily on armaments. A half-century later, priorities may well have altered. The earlier economic expansion has brought with it overseas obligations (dependence upon foreign markets and raw materials, military alliances, perhaps bases and colonies)…. In these more troubled circumstances, the Great Power is likely to find itself spending much more on defense than it did two generations earlier, and yet still discover that the world is a less secure environment—simply because other powers have grown faster, and are becoming stronger…. Great Powers in relative decline instinctively respond by spending more on ‘security,’ and thereby divert potential resources from ‘investment’ and compound their long-term dilemma (emphasis added).

I believe, along with Chalmers Johnson (see his Nemesis), that this is the position the U.S. is now in; it is on the downslope of over-reaching militarily which will eventually hurt it economically and seriously undermine its world power.

Be Sure to read "The Authoritarians" by Bob Altemeyer

2007-08-23T12:08:00.000-05:00

I have just finished "The Authoritarians" a free online book written by Bob Altemeyer who has been researching this topic for 40 years. Apparently he is close to retirement and this book gives a summary of the many studies he has run over 40 years. This is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the American Radical Right today and why the term "pseudo-conservative" was first prominently used in a book called "The Authoritarian Personality" almost 60 years ago. Altemeyer also distinguishes 'conservatism' from 'authoritarianism' and I believe that authoritarianism is in large part what I refer to as pseudo-conservatism. It is important to understand that Altemeyer is reporting what he has found with scientific studies conducted over four decades and not, like me, just presenting opinions based on my own reading and thinking. I heartily recommend this book!

Still Trying to Distinguish Authoritarianism from Genuine Conservatism

2007-08-22T10:23:00.000-05:00

Reflections on Authoritarianism

How should we define authoritarianism? Reading both Stenner (2005) and Altemeyer’s online book, “The Authoritarians” (2007), I have some thoughts. Let us first look at how Altemeyer defined authoritarianism. On page 9 he defined authoritarians as: “personalities featuring: 1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society; 2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and 3) a high level of conventionalism.”

I think there are good reasons to question Altemeyer’s use of “established, legitimate authorities” as a reference group upon which to base his most fundamental definition. And he himself provided examples of such reasons. On p.16 he wrote: “right-wing authoritarians did not support President Clinton during his impeachment and trial over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. So as I said, the support is not automatic and reflexive, but can be trumped by other concerns. In Clinton’s case his administration not only had advocated for groups anathema to authoritarians, such as homosexuals and feminists, his sexual misdeeds in the White House deeply offended many [authoritarians].”

But Bill Clinton was the duly elected President of the United States and thus he met every criterion of an established, legitimate authority. If authoritarians did not support an elected President then the definition of their group as exhibiting “a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society” is not accurate. Altemeyer (p. 15) had already pointed out: “We would expect authoritarian followers especially to submit to corrupt authorities in their lives: to believe them when there is little reason to do so, to trust them when huge grounds for suspicion exist, and to hold them blameless when they do something wrong.” Moreover, on p. 16 he showed that authoritarians supported Presidents Nixon and George W. Bush when their integrity had been challenged; why not Bill Clinton, an at least equally established, legitimate authority?

Altemeyer (p. 9) also referred to “traditional religious leaders” as examples of the kind of “established authorities” that “authoritarian followers usually support”. But authoritarians certainly discriminate between religious leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, whom they usually support, and more liberal religious leaders whom they emphatically do not support, e.g., the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Another example occurred to me in relation to another study Altemeyer reported on (p. 28): “Gidi Rubinstein similarly found that [authoritarians] among both Jewish and Palestinian students in Israel tended to be the most orthodox members of their religion, who tend to be among those most resistant to a peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflict. If their authorities endorse hostility, you can bet most authoritarian followers will be combative.” But consider that Yitzhak Rabin was the duly elected Prime Minister of Israel, an established, legitimate authority, when he was assassinated by an ‘orthodox’ right-wing Israeli radical who opposed Rabin’s peace efforts. Rabin was obviously not the assassin’s authority even though he was ‘established’ and ‘legitimate’. Can it be merely a coincidence that Rabin and Bill Clinton were so close?

Throughout Chapter 1 of “The Authoritarians” Altemeyer repeatedly uses phrases like “their authorities” or “their in-groups” to refer to the groups to whom authoritarians give their allegiance. For example (p. 29) he wrote: “They are quite capable of adhering to the beliefs emphasized by their in-groups when these conflict with what is held by society as a whole.” (emphasis added) This seems to me an implicit admission that authoritarians have their own ‘authorities’ and ‘in-groups’ and do not give their allegiance to any and all “established, legitimate authorities”.

In thinking about this it has seemed to me that authoritarians will only glorify and submit to certain specific types of established authority, ‘authoritarian authorities’. However, this sort of formulation begs the question of defining “authoritarian”, which was the problem we set out to solve initially.

Stenner’s “authoritarian dynamic” involves the idea that when individuals with “authoritarian predispositions” are challenged by “normative threat” they will become more sharply authoritarian in thought and behavior (as well measured by Altemeyer’s Right-Wing Authoritarian Scale or RWA). She defined (p. 15) authoritarian predisposition in terms of “attitudes and behaviors variously reflecting rejection of diversity and insistence upon sameness…. The predisposition is labeled ‘authoritarianism’ because suppression of difference and achievement of uniformity necessitate autocratic social arrangements in which individual autonomy yields to group authority.”

Having “normative threat” as a very central concept she is required to consider what kind of “normative order” authoritarians would need to protect. Stenner wrote (p. 18) that she wished to distinguish authoritarians from “conservatives” by defining the latter as those who are committed to preserving a specific normative order, e.g., American Constitutionalism. She argued that although authoritarians would begin by defending the status quo and thus be hard to distinguish from mere conservatives, true authoritarians are primarily interested in maintaining uniformity and sameness in ethnic composition, political beliefs and moral values—and thus they would ultimately be willing to sacrifice any existing status quo (e.g., Weimar constitutional democracy) in favor of a new normative order that would guarantee uniformity and sameness. This then requires her to describe what type of normative order this would be.

Stenner wrote (pp. 18-9): “This is not to say, of course, that the ‘normative order’ of authoritarianism is completely interchangeable, that its content is entirely fungible, that oneness and sameness could be instituted and defended by collective commitment (voluntary or otherwise) to any set of values, norms, and beliefs. Oneness and sameness are attributes of the collective rather than the individual, and they are end states, not processes. They cannot be achieved without some type of coercive control over other people’s behavior…. If individuals are free, collective outcomes will vary, and oneness and sameness cannot be assured…. Thus, while the content of authoritarianism’s ‘normative order’ is somewhat flexible with regard to the specification of right and wrong… it is by no means value neutral. The normative order whose institution and defense might render ‘us’ one and the same can never value individual autonomy and diversity, and will always tend toward some kind of system of collective authority and constraint.”(final emphasis added)

Perhaps it is now somewhat clearer why I have been tempted to talk of ‘authoritarian authorities’. Altemeyer’s contention that authoritarians are characterized by “a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society” is not accurate. The only ‘established’ authorities that authoritarians glorify and defend are those who endorse a strict obedience to some form of coercive normative order that satisfies the needs of authoritarian followers. This could be Islamic fundamentalism or Christian fundamentalism, it could be Mussolini’s fascist philosophy or Hitler’s Nazi philosophy, it could be some form of coercive Marxism-Leninism or ‘democratic centralism—but, as Stenner argued: “The normative order whose institution and defense might render ‘us’ one and the same can never value individual autonomy and diversity, and will always tend toward some kind of system of collective authority and constraint.”

This may help to differentiate genuine conservatives like Bruce Fein and his call for impeachment of Bush and Cheney because of his profound commitment to the Constitution, from authoritarians like Bush and Cheney. To the degree that a conservative is committed to a particular normative order and advocates only slow and prudent changes to that order, like Edmund Burke, they qualify as genuine conservatives.

The category of so-called ‘laissez faire conservative’, which Stenner discussed (p. 86 and see her Index), as did Rossiter (1962, pp. 131-62) is, I believe, close to a contradiction in terms and I will deal with that at more length later. The only way I can see to save this concept is by arguing that American society as it has been constituted for a long time is committed to a type of ‘laissez faire’ philosophy and thus a conservative in the specifically American context might be an advocate of laissez faire. Nonetheless, the recognition that capitalism is itself sometimes a revolutionary force, as in the only true social revolution in American history, the industrial revolution—suggests why I think a philosophy that advocates giving free rein to capitalism and keeping government from regulating the economy cannot easily be called ‘conservative.’ And this is without dealing with the enormous revolutionary changes in American society worked by the corporate revolution, which should be kept conceptually distinct from the industrial revolution. If U.S. state governments and the courts had not awarded corporations such immense powers we would have surely had an industrial revolution but not necessarily a corporate revolution as well.

American Proto-Fascism?

2007-08-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

I've posted on what I see as gathering evidence of precursors of American fascism and have also recommended Robert O. Paxton's very excellent book, The Anatomy of Fascism. Here is another example which you can see for yourself on Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" TV program. To see a video go here and look for the August 17 "Worst Person in the World" segment which can be played online.

Melanie Morgan is a right-wing extremist commentator who recently has several times viciously attacked Jon Soltz of votevets.org because, although he is a veteran of the Iran War, he has been publicly critical of the Bush administration and the war.

Here's what patriot Melanie Morgan had to say about him: "[Soltz is a] hypocritical cockroach. He needs to be stomped on and neutralized...."

Hmmm. In case you missed the rise of the Nazis before WW II and haven't read Richard Evans' book "The Coming of the Third Reich", perhaps you'll get a replay in the not too distant future of the US. I guess Supporting Our Troops stops once they become critics of US government policy. Freedom of Speech on political issues is one of the most fundamental values on which America was supposed to have been based; I find it remarkable that these patriotic Americans don't see any contradiction between their support for America and their concurrent violation of its most basic principles.

Why do I call this proto-fascist? This is precisely the kind of hate speech that Nazis used against their political enemies. Morgan doesn't say who should carry out the "stomping" and "neutralizing" but the Nazis had the Brownshirts as an organization that carried out extra-legal political violence against its enemies. If we see the formation of extra-legal groups prepared to carry out political violence then that would constitute one more step toward full-blown fascism.

Barbara O'Brien's Mahablog Has Interesting Posts on Pseudo-Conservatives

2007-08-17T10:21:00.000-05:00

I want to direct people to a series of very interesting posts by Barbara O'Brien's The Mahablog concerning the whole topic of pseudo-conservatives and authoritarianism. You can start with today's post or search her blog under relevant terms. This whole topic of pseudo-conservatives being best understood as authoritarians is central, I believe.

My Struggles to Understand the Appeal of 'Tough' Foreign Policy

2007-08-16T16:39:00.000-05:00

In an earlier post I struggled mightily to understand the appeal of 'tough' foreign policy. I now think that this thinking makes so little sense to me because I can't empathize enough with the authoritarian personality. This notion of 'tough' punitive treatment of our opponents comes right out of the authoritarian's psychological playbook. See my previous posts involving Karen Stenner's The Authoritarian Dynamic. Search for these by using the Search tool in the upper left of my blog's homepage and type in Stenner.

Why Authoritarians Have a Fundamental Advantage

2007-08-16T14:36:00.000-05:00

I have been reading an interesting book, Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea, by linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff. This is a good book with many good ideas. One of his most fundamental ideas is that 'progressives' have a very different concept of 'freedom' than right-wing 'conservatives'. He believes these different concepts of 'freedom' are based upon differing conceptions of the family: 'progressives' are committed to a "nurturant parent" family model and 'conservatives' are committed to a "strict father" family model. This is a reasonable attempt to organize the fundamental differences between so-called 'conservatives' and 'progressives' or liberals. This task is one that needs to be done: how do we understand and organize the fundamental differences between 'conservatives' and 'liberals'?

While reading Lakoff it occurred to me that Karen Stenner's book "The Authoritarian Dynamic" might really have more to say about these differences (see my several earlier posts on Stenner's book beginning with this) than Lakoff. Lakoff simply posits that different people have different conceptions of the family while not going deeper to ask why. Stenner argued that there are perhaps 30% of people who are born with a biological disposition to be authoritarian. I wrote:

In an excellent book, The Authoritarian Dynamic, political scientist Karen Stenner gave a brief description of the predisposition to be authoritarian; she wrote (p. 16) that the stances taken by the authoritarian “have the effect of glorifying, encouraging, and rewarding uniformity and of disparaging, suppressing, and punishing difference.” Ad hominem attacks are attempts to glorify uniformity and suppress difference. On the other end of the continuum from authoritarianism is libertarianism.

I frankly think it is at least plausible that approximately 30% of humans are born with a biological predisposition to be authoritarian and that this means they feel compelled to glorify, encourage, and reward uniformity and disparage, suppress and punish difference. It is these people who would naturally be drawn to Lakoff's "stern father" model of the family.

The fact that authoritarians glorify uniformity and punish difference gives them a fundamental political advantage: their stress on uniformity and rejection of difference allows them to share a reasonably common set of beliefs that give them solidarity. Liberals, on the other hand, stand for a diversity of beliefs and the right to disagree and be different. This puts them at a fundamental disadvantage to authoritarians! Look at Hitler's emphasis upon the necessity that members of the Nazi Party declare absolute allegiance to his 25 points (see Richard Evans, "The Coming of the Third Reich", pp. 179-180). As Evans points out these 25 points were "soon declared 'unalterable', so as to prevent it from becoming a focus for internal dissension." Although I haven't got a ready citation for this think of Lenin's emphasis upon the need for "democratic centralism" in the Bolshevik Party so that once a position or strategy had been agreed to all discussion and criticism must stop. Totalitarianism has this fundamental advantage over liberals and progressives because the latter prize diversity and believe that free discussion will eventually bring one to the truth.

In fact it seems to me that a very basic belief of liberalism is that humans are not in possession of the truth and thus using tools like free public discussion, or the scientific method, or continued search for innovation in technology and industry are at the very heart of liberalism. On the other hand, the authoritarian believes we know the truth (the Bible is the unerrant word of God, America is always right and thus you must love it or leave it, questioning the government in wartime is tantamount to treason, etc.) and thus diversity and differences are simply annoying discomforts that should be punished and suppressed. The uniformity, discipline and subordination to a leader (father) gives authoritarians a very strong advantage over liberals and this is at least worth being aware of.

Further Comments on Recent Posts

2007-08-16T13:52:00.000-05:00

Let me respond to some of Steven Andresen's points here:

I am under the impression that political writers have been trying to point out the fascistic characteristics of the conservative movement for a long time. They've done it so much I hear the argument that they are like the boy who cried wolf.

Calling some group 'fascist' is indeed a well worn tactic but to me it makes a difference whether you are just throwing names around or taking seriously what the words mean. Thus, I cite Paxton who is a very serious and thoughtful student of fascism and use his carefully arrived at definition to determine if the label is justified or not.

I believe there are differences between the neo-cons and the christian zionists, for example.

I agree. The neo-cons are primarily Zionists (not all but most are) whose main concerns are a 'tough' foreign policy and US support for the hard right within Israel. The Christian Zionists are Christian fundamentalist evangelicals who believe that Israel must be supported because of their reading of the bible even though they often have the belief that Jews will ultimately go to Hell.

Do we want to argue that the kooks are beyond the pale and no one should be paying any attention to them?

I think they are part of what used to be called the 'lunatic fringe' but now the fringe has substantial power. I wish we could ignore them but as you say we can't do that if we wish to live in the real world of practical politics.

Are we wanting to question the reasoning behind the kook movements? That would be interesting. But, I'm not sure anybody has the will to follow through with any critique of their foundations.

We have to learn to be just as persistent as they are in putting forward our analysis and showing what is wrong with theirs. Drew Westen's recent book "The Political Brain" argues very convincingly how we must oppose the extremist right. Bill Clinton and Howard Dean strongly recommend this book.

I'm sure this was the argument the nazi party guys made to each other and to the German people. They said, you cannot deny the threat to our morality posed by the communists or the jews.

You are exactly right, Hitler and the Nazis emphasized the threat to the Fatherland of Communists, Socialists, Jews and homosexuals. I'd say the real threat to the US is the foreign policies we have pursued that have caused Muslims to want to fight and destroy us; similar to what Ron Paul argued at one of the recent Republican debates. Ron Paul is a Libertarian who believes we ought to leave other countries alone unless they truly pose a threat to us.

That is, the puzzle isn't so much about how all these people are different amongst themselves, but how we can know who to listen to for guidance about what to do?

I have indicated throughout this blog many of the people I think it makes sense to listen to and who have good ideas about what we can do.

Answer to a Question About 'Conservatism'

2007-08-16T09:57:00.000-05:00

Steven Andresen recently asked a question about how to define 'conservatism' as a comment to my Why Pseudo-Conservatives Are Not 'Conservative' post and since my reply is longish I thought I'd add it as a new post.

I believe the term 'conservative' has been hijacked by right-wing extremists in the US and thus tends to mean what ever they want it to mean even if what they believe contradicts the dictionary definition of 'conservative' and even if the principles they say they espouse are self-contradictory. Could I direct your attention to the four part series of posts I wrote called "What Does 'Conservative' Really Mean?" that starts here?

So-called "Christian Conservatives" are usually right-wing extremists who come closer to qualifying as fascists than anything 'conservative'. I do not use the term 'fascist' lightly. Robert Paxton recently published a really excellent book called "The Anatomy of Fascism" which very carefully examines the appropriate uses of this term. Paxton is a historian at Columbia and has spent many years teaching, writing and thinking about fascism. Here's his definition (p. 218):

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in an uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of
internal cleansing and external expansion.

While we have not yet realized a state of full-fledged fascism in the US Paxton demonstrates that movements can approximate fascism and there can be precursors. I suggest that the Christian right's preoccupation with 'moral decline' in America, it's preoccupation with seeing itself as the butt of a war on Christianity (let me know if you want an example), it's culture war against liberals, it's development of a compensatory cult of 'purity', it's mass-based militant nationalism ("America: Love It or Leave It"), it's collaboration with the traditional elites of the Republican Party and many in the corporate and military elites, the gradual but constant abandonment of democratic liberties under the Bush administration, the redemptive violence against abortion doctors and clinics, the goal of internally cleansing "secular humanists" and an external expansion that apparently knows no bounds (see Chalmers Johnson's "The Sorrows of Empire" and "Nemesis"--all of these elements are precursors of American fascism.

Sinclair Lewis is reputed to have said, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." I suspect this came pretty close to being an accurate anticipation and if Lewis said it his statement was made in the 1930s.

On the Origins of the Cold War

2007-05-25T09:06:00.001-05:00

I've been reading a number of books on the origins of the Cold War because I really believe that it was the post-WW II period that set us on the path we're on today: militarism, empire, and lessening democracy and devotion to the Constitution at home. For a truly excellent description of "the path we're on today" read Chalmers Johnson's new book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. This is a book many will find difficult to take seriously but I find it very convincing; and Johnson is no knee-jerk radical, he worked as a consultant for the CIA for a number of years and has been a respected academic for many years.

At any rate I've been reading John Lewis Gaddis' The United States and the Origins of the Cold War. Gaddis is considered the primary 'respectable' authority on the Cold War and indeed his book is very well written and researched (I'm reading the original 1971 edition.). Gaddis began with a Preface in which he explained that he was going to look at foreign policy through the eyes of those who made it. What he failed to say was that this principle applied primarily to American policymakers and not their Soviet counterparts. One of the things this means is that America's commitment to "self-determination" for all peoples, as announced by FDR and Churchill in the Atlantic Charter of pre-Pearl Harbor 1941, is taken at pretty much face value. This is important because when the Soviet Union's armies, which fought the Nazis with little manpower help from England or the US for about three years and lost 16-20 million in doing so, wanted its own sphere of influence in Eastern Europe (through which it had been attacked three times within 130 years), the U.S. found it necessary to stand for the "self-determination" of Eastern European countries.

Gaddis finds it difficult to fully acknowledge that most of our talk about "self-determination" was disingenuous propaganda because acceding to Churchill we excluded most of the British Empire from self-determination and in our own history had amply demonstrated our hypocrisy re "self-determination". For evidence of the latter think of Cuba, the Phillipines and Puerto Rico in 1898, Cuba in 1960-1, Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, French Indochina (Vietnam) in the 1954-1974 period, Chile in 1973, etc. etc. etc. (Read Stephen Kinzer's book, Overthrow.) My belief is that historians ought to attempt to be as objective as possible but most of the American history I read is "patriotic" history.

William Kristol's Revealing Slip of the Tongue, Transcript

2007-04-26T06:28:00.000-05:00

See my prior post for more explanation. Kristol is being interviewed by Robert Siegel on NPR's "All Things Considered" about John McCain's current candidacy and asks Kristol what McCain's advantages are over other candidates. In part of his reply Kristol states:

"... but ultimately this is going to be a wartime election [2008], this is the first post-9/11 primary among Republicans, 2004 was a post-9/11 election but obviously Bush wasn't challenged, and I do think it will be a foreign policy election--that will be McCain's claim, that he can lead this country through the wars or through the difficult challenges [embarrassed chuckle as he says the word "challenges" correcting his slip "wars"] that we face."

That this warmonger-ideologue is still being so frequently interviewed on radio and TV unfortunately demonstrates that pseudo-conservatives have NOT been so embarrassed by their patently horrendous advice leading us into the Iraq War that they are discredited; one wonders: 'what will it take?'

What You Can't Make a Profit At

2007-04-26T04:56:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking lately of what would be on the list of things that are essential but which you can't make a profit at (or enough of a profit). Last night on Bill Moyers Journal (first show of a new series) mention was made of how 'expensive' it is to hire the personnel necessary to research and report real factual news stories as opposed to how cheap it is to hire pundit 'experts' who merely sit and pontificate about their opinions. As a result more and more newspapers, 'news' magazines like "Time", and news bureaus for TV are getting rid of their news reporters/researchers and hiring more 'experts' to give opinions. Fewer facts and more opinions: the 'modern' fourth estate. The free press that is so essential to democracy.

I recall a fellow who had just finished yet another book on our health insurance 'crisis' who pointed out how it just wasn't profitable to provide care for people with serious chronic illnesses. Since we are such a 'Christian' society I guess Jesus would have preached that those people with chronic illnesses would just have to fend for themselves. (The Gospel according to capitalism.)

Being responsible for cleaning up one's own environmental pollution is apparently not profitable either.

I've heard discussions of medications in which it was revealed that certain drugs are just not profitable enough, thus drug companies don't research improvements in those regardless of how efficacious they would be for health. I guess Jefferson should have written:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, if said rights can be profitably pursued. — That to secure these rights, Corporations are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Board of Directors.

William Kristol's Revealing Slip of the Tongue

2007-04-25T15:49:00.000-05:00

In my car about a half hour ago I was listening to All Things Considered on NPR. Robert Siegel was doing a piece on John McCain since McCain officially announced his candidacy today. The second part of the piece was an interview with pseudo-conservative William Kristol who is a McCain admirer. During this interview Kristol said something to the effect that we need a wartime president and then followed this with the remark that such a president would be necessary to fight the "wars" we would be involved in. After he said "wars" he gave an embarassed laugh and corrected himself to say "war". The transcript and the audio will be available by tomorrow at which time I will listen again and transcribe exactly what he said. Kristol is a rabid hawk and knee-jerk supporter of the Israeli far right and if he has anything to say about it we will have more "wars". Recall my previous post on Kristol during the Israeli bombing of Lebanon last year. There I wrote:

Claiming that Hezbollah, a group supported by Iran but with its own extensive political and social base among the 40% Shia population in Lebanon, is identical with Iran, Kristol suggested that either the United States or Israel “consider countering this act of Iranian (sic) aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? ... Yes, there would be repercussions—and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.”

One of the healthiest things I've heard in a while was the comment by some pundit on TV recently that many Americans are concerned that the Republican Party is too warlike. I certainly hope this is true because the Republican Right would be only too likely to get us into more wars if they listen to Israel Lobbyists and war cheerleaders such as William Kristol. This is the same Kristol who told NPR audiences prior to the Iraq invasion that the idea that the Sunnis and Shia would get into sectarian conflict was "pop sociology".

Support Norman Finkelstein for Tenure at DePaul

2007-04-24T15:10:00.000-05:00

If you go to Norman Finkelstein's website you will find articles from the New York Times and The Independent about how Alan Dershowitz is trying to get Finkelstein's tenure turned down; although it has been OK'd by his Department and College there is a Dean who is giving in to outside pressure and saying Finkelstein should not get tenure. Finkelstein's crime is that he has been a very effective critic of Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinians (even though both his parents were in Nazi concentration camps). I have read two of Finkelstein's books and he is a very effective scholarly researcher who has received the admiration of very respected scholars in the fields about which he writes. His 'fault' has been that he is willing to attack scholarship that he thinks is wrong and he takes controversial positions. (God forbid anyone might take controversial positions in American academia.) Dershowitz tried to stop University of California Press from publishing his book "Beyond Chutzpah" and now he is trying to stop Finkelstein from getting tenure.

Now Here's a True "Must Read"!

2007-04-10T09:43:00.000-05:00

I am just beginning a very unusual book, When Corporations Rule the World, By David C. Korten. Both the author and his writing style are very unusual. The author is a 70 year old with an MBA and Ph.D. from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, who taught and did research at Harvard's Graduate School of Business and has thirty years of field experience working in Asia, Africa and Latin America for the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and a number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). With a background like this one does not expect to read a book like When Corporations Rule the World!!! Moreover, his writing is remarkably honest and extremely clear--one cannot mistake what his values are and what he is saying; this in itself is an unusual blessing. Here's an excerpt that gives the flavor of the book (pp. 9 & 12):

[T]he systemic forces nurturing the growth and dominance of global corporations are at the heart of the current human dilemma.... These forces have transformed once beneficial corporations and financial institutions into instruments of a market tyranny that is extending its reach across the planet like a cancer, colonizing ever more of the planet's living spaces, destroying livelihoods, displacing people, rendering democratic institutions impotent, and feeding on life in an insatiable quest for money.

But let me point out how the author is an authentic conservative as opposed to pseudo-conservatives such as William F. Buckley. Here is Korten's description of his "values" (a much-abused word in contemporary America):

With regard to political values, I remain a traditional conservative in the sense that I retain a deep distrust of large institutions and their concentrations of unaccountable power. I also continue to believe in the importance of the market and private ownership. However, unlike many contemporary conservatives, I have no more love for big business than I have for big government. Nor do I believe that posession of wealth should convey special political privilege. I share the liberal's compassion for the disenfranchised, commitment to equity, and concern for the environment and believe that there are essential roles for government and limits to the rights of private property. I believe, however, that big government can be as unaccountable and destructive of societal values as can big business. Indeed, I have a distrust of any organization that accumulates and concentrates massive power beyond the bounds of accountability.

OK, here's the essential kernel that separates the sheep from the goats: However, unlike many contemporary conservatives, I have no more love for big business than I have for big government. This is what separates many authentic conservatives from pseudo-conservatives. The latter chatter incessantly about the horrors of 'collectivism' inherent in 'big government'; but they are stone silent about the 'collectivism' that is only too obviously involved in the growth of the modern corporation since 1865 in the United States. Korten is a very unusual fellow in that he is consistent on this point.

Actually, I've just been thinking about the meanings of "conservative" and there is a strain within conservatism which says that rule by the rich and well-born is best and that the 'mob' cannot be trusted. (John Adams believed this.) If one takes that seriously then people like William F. Buckley could be labelled 'conservative' in the latter sense because they certainly do support the powers that be. However, in this case Buckley is simply a liar because he does not honestly state that he distrusts the people and thinks the rich and well-born (like himself) should rule; rather he uses a variation of classical liberalism like that of Milton Friedman to rationalize his views and identify himself as a defender of 'liberty'. He attacks the state but is an ardent defender of business and the corporation.