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When John Dean announced his new book, Conservatives Without Conscience, on the TV news program Countdown with Keith Olbermann Monday night (transcript), I experienced A Big Jell: a sense of everything coming together to make conservative behavior comprehensible^*.

Thesis. Dean’s thesis (as presented in the book’s preface excerpt) is that modern conservative behavior is explained by “the growing presence of conservative authoritarianism”:

Authoritarianism is not well understood and seldom discussed in the context of American government and politics, yet it now constitutes the prevailing thinking and behavior among conservatives. Regrettably, empirical studies reveal, however, that authoritarians are frequently enemies of freedom, antidemocratic, antiequality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian, and amoral.

Resonance. This finding resonates with Dean as he assesses its role in Watergate, about which he has unique historical perspective: “authoritarian thinking was the principal force behind almost everything that went wrong with Nixon’s presidency.”

This finding resonates with me because, as much as I’d like to hem and haw that conservatism correlates with authoritarianism but isn’t defined by it, I can’t think of a single hardline conservative person I know who isn’t authoritarian in outlook and behavior.

OMG. It’s not an insult to identify authoritarian thinking in someone, just a hard-to-miss observation: anyone’s behavior reveals whether he or she “favors unquestioning obedience to authority,” or else says “Hell, no” to the unquestioning part, or else is in an OMG transition from one point of view to the other.

(My earlier post, Why I became a liberal Christian, briefly recounts my own OMG transition from a conservative worldview to my current one.)

These days I swing anti-authoritarian. As a yute, I was extraordinarily compliant. But as a grownup, I think this is a vital part of being grown up: Always question authority. Is the authority sensible? Is it informed? Is it honorable? Is it just? Is its worldview internally consistent? Do its words and deeds cohere? If not, then no freakin’ sale.

Community. Then, what I thought was safety and responsibility — always complying with authority — I now realize is horribly dangerous. Obedience is not praiseworthy of itself; it must be discerning, it must be wise.

Now I’ve learned that the only sustainable wisdom is consensus wisdom. It is the priceless distillate of sweat, study, careful thinking, and apprehending the still, small communiques from the holy — averaged out over filtered through the hearts and minds of many people, over many years.

In contrast, the so-called wisdom of the “chosen few” — often characterized by secrecy and exclusivity and exercise of might, often led by a handful of authoritarian leaders who tolerate no dissent — is almost always shot through with bullshit.

So how do we make common cause again? How do we spread the viral realization that what we as humans have in common far outweighs the ways in which we differ? And that we should focus our time, talent, and treasure on the in common?

And that unquestioning obedience to unsound authority always leads to grief?

I believe God gives us conscience for a reason. It must never be switched off and checked at the door.

2006-08-23 update: Glenn provides a thorough review of Conservatives Without Conscience, going into significant detail and well worth reading for further understanding.

2007-03-06 update: Today Glenn diagnoses Ann Coulter’s behavior (who recently called John Edwards “a faggot”) in the context of the larger conservative movement. This column was triggered by a conservative pundit’s observation of Coulter that “she’s very popular among conservatives.” (See Salon, March 6, 2007: The right-wing cult of contrived masculinity.)

As when I wrote this original entry, the groupthink behavior under discussion is otherwise incomprehensible to me, so for me Glenn’s explanatory opinions help build a framework for understanding the pathology. (I’d rather understand it than demonize it, which I guess outs me as a liberal right there.)

2007-03-19 update: Dean’s primary undergirding scientific research for his observations and conclusions about authoritarianism is that of Bob Altemeyer at the University of Manitoba, as he carefully credits in his foreward. I see that Altemeyer has taken the unusual step of publishing his own summary of his decades of research as a free online book, The Authoritarians.

“Apparently, Bush does not realize that to lead he must continually renew his approval with the public. He is not, as he thinks, the decider. The public is the decider.”

Outrage fatigue or not, I’m responding to this new one, U.S. secret eavesdropping
[because spying on U.S. citizens takes my   o u t r a g e   to a whole new level]:

President Bush said Saturday he personally has authorized a secret eavesdropping program in the U.S. more than 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks and he lashed out at those involved in publicly revealing the program. …

Appearing angry at times during his eight-minute address, Bush left no doubt that he will continue authorizing the program.

Since one of the groups reportedly identified as “a threat” was a Quaker meeting in Florida, I infer the system has run amok: Won’t people realize — even those with little more than a passing idea of Quakers — that a commitment to peace, not terror, is the most consistent quality of Quakers?

That the system in place is too indiscriminate to distinguish nonviolent peacemakers from terrorists? That if it can’t make that distinction, no one’s safe from being targeted?

That you have no way of knowing whether you’ve already been targeted?

Won’t people realize that if a present president can step outside the law to eavesdrop without cause on those people now — for almost any value of those people — a future president may just as readily eavesdrop without cause on you later?

Or toss you into Gitmo without recourse?

This is a precedent that characterizes dictatorships, not honest democracies. Of course it must be forcibly rebuffed in its entirety if we want to keep calling the U.S. a democracy, much less an exemplary one.

I have little confidence in my current congressional representatives’ willingness to rectify wrongs — heck, one is a member of the egregious RSC — but I’ve written them today anyway because

• I’m glad to still have representation, even if it’s currently only nominal

• presumably there exists some outrage sufficient to rouse them to responsible, laudable action — and this one pegs the outrage meter for a lot of people

• as all congressional representatives do, they deserve to hear their constituents’ views and requests, whether they ever intend to heed them

(Also, the RSC lists itself as being dedicated to “the protection of individual and property rights,” so this seems an excellent opportunity for its members to demonstrate said dedication.)

So I write my senators and representative:

This morning I heard the President of the United States say, as I understood him, that he intends to continue to violate federal law and the U.S. Constitution by authorizing spying on U.S. citizens with no oversight by the courts, or accountability to you in Congress or to us the people.

This is [a] grave mistake: No person is above the law, especially not the U.S. president, ostensibly its chief enforcer.

The point of a checks-and-balances system is that no one entity going off the rails can bring down the entire system. Any system, governmental or mechanical, that can be taken down by the failure of one of its parts is not a failsafe system; it is a broken system. But our government’s design is not broken: Congress is the mechanism designed by the Founders to respond to Executive Branch failure to abide by the law, to contain the damage being done to the whole.

As your constituent, I respectfully and forcibly request that you make an immediate clear public statement denouncing this gross misuse of U.S. military and intelligence resources.

No system of government that breaks its own laws and spies on its own citizens without cause or warrant can properly be called a democracy. Hence I will account your statement as defending democracy itself.

Thank you.

BTW, Scott Bateman provides a succinct audio summary of today’s presidential address as an animated short film.

[Many expletives were deleted in the publishing of this entry.]

2005-12-26 update:
I am not an expert just as IANAL, but I infer that the terms “wiretapping” and even “eavesdropping” don’t capture the full reality of what’s happening: I expect to learn that significant amounts of U.S. citizens’ phone-, email-, and of course webpage data are being bulk scanned and data mined.

This would explain the “screw getting warrants” attitude — because warrants aren’t feasible at the scale they’re engaging — and how Mr. Bush can say as recently as 2004 that literal wiretaps still require a court order.

It’s seeds of Big Brother, writ large.

Hmmm, what’s the distinction between “warrant” and “court order”? I see I’m using them interchangeably, but they’re probably legally distinct terms.

2006-01-06 update:
Developing research from the amazing Soj:
JPEN: The military is using NSA intercepts to spy on Americans

This, along with James Moore’s report Wednesday (author of Bush’s Brain) about being on the No Fly Watch List for at least a year — and numerous others reporting they’re on it, too — has kinda pressed my paranoia button. Damn. We used to be better than this.