Conservatives Without Conscience (40 page)

^*
Kirk’s canons are concisely explained on the Web site of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, which is devoted to his thought. See http://www. kirkcenter.org/kirk/thought.html.

^*
Burnham found that conservatives believe: 1) there is a transcendent factor vital to successful government; 2) human nature is corrupt, and therefore conservatives reject all utopian solutions to social problems; 3) tradition must be respected, and when change is unavoidable it must be undertaken cautiously; 4) governmental power must be diffused and limited by adhering to the “separation of powers” and “checks and balances” of the Constitution; 5) direct democracy must be rejected because people are not well informed and are easily misled; 6) in states’ rights; 7) each branch of government must be autonomous and must resist encroachment or usurpation by any other; 8) public support of limited government must be encouraged in order to keep government in check; 9) the Constitution’s principles have permanent value; 10) government must be decentralized and localized so that power is diffused; 11) private enterprise should be encouraged; 12) morality begins with the individual; and 13) Congress should be more powerful than the executive branch. An expanded summary version of these statements are found at Appendix A.

^*
Princeton sociologist Douglas S. Massey, speaking for liberals, explains that what “distinguishes liberals from others is the belief that the rights and privileges outlined in the Declaration of Independence and enumerated in the U.S. Constitution are guaranteed to all people regardless of their characteristics, inborn or acquired. Thus, equality of opportunity should be offered to all persons resident in the United States, whether male or female, black or white, gay or straight, rich or poor, owner or worker; and liberals believe that equality of opportunity should exist not only in theory but in reality.” Douglas S. Massey,
Return of the “L” Word: A Liberal Vision for the New Century
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 12.

^*
Other examples of his belief in equality are evident in his efforts on behalf of women pilots from World War II, who flew transport missions just as men had, but had not been treated equally; he got them the same pension and benefits men had received, assuring them equal treatment. And he quietly pushed for racial integration of the Arizona National Guard before the armed services had done so.

^*
This breakdown does not include such factions as the so-called
South Park
conservative—a term credited to conservative blogger and pundit Andrew Sullivan. Marty Beckerman writes in
Playboy
(December 2005) that in addition to “low taxes and high times,” the
South Park
conservatives “oppose the drug war, obscenity laws, abstinence education and marriage protection acts, but support” President Bush and the Republican party “with religious fervor.” Jonah Goldberg of the
National Review
reportedly finds
South Park
conservatism a poisonous trend that kids will grow out of when they become parents. Goldberg is correct, I suspect, that
South Park
conservatism will be short-lived.

^*
Motivated cognition refers to thinking, or beliefs, that are based on factors other than pure reason or logic. As Dr. John Jost explained it: “Basically, the idea is that there are [normal] psychological reasons for why someone believes what he does, above and beyond the purely rational or informational reasons for believing something. People are motivated to believe that they are better than average drivers, that most of their opinions are correct, that their children are especially wonderful, etc. It wouldn’t make too much sense to say that someone is “motivated” to believe that 2 + 2 = 4.” (Interview with author. Unless otherwise stated, the comments about the study are based on my interpretations of it, not Dr. Jost’s.)

^*
Most recent Gallup Poll figures show about 53 percent of Americans oppose gay marriage. See http://www.pollingreport.com/civil.htm/.

^*
I do not believe I know any communitarians, but I am not unfamiliar with their outlook, which here is helpfully illustrated. Communitarianism is defined by Janda, Berry, and Goldman, who rely on the
Oxford English Dictionary,
as an ideology that envisions “a community formed to put into practice communistic or socialistic theories.” While this philosophy is beyond the focus of my study, it should be noted that Janda, Berry, and Goldman use the term in its more restricted sense, as reflective of the movement founded in 1990 by sociologist Amitai Etzioni, and it nicely completes their chart for its juxtaposition with liberalism, libertarianism, and conservatism. For anyone seeking more information on communitarianism see Amitai Etzioni,
Rights and the Common Good: The Communitarian Perspective
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995).

^*
To fully understand the Freedom-Order-Equality dynamics, I urge you to visit the Web site that Ken Janda and Jerry Goldman have created. It provides a tutorial, and a self-test that will show you where you fall on their chart. See http://idealog.org. For comparison, you might also visit a libertarian site that also offers a self-test at http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html.

^*
I have provided only a brief summary of Milgram’s key thoughts on conscience. See Stanley Milgram,
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View
(New York: Harper Perennial, 1969), 588, 127–34, which I have either paraphrased or quoted.

^*
It is important to appreciate that the term “authoritarianism” as used by the social and political psychologist is different from the authoritarianism of the political scientist or the typical journalistic reference. Political scientists and journalists typically view authoritarianism as a form of government. This authoritarianism is not what is meant by political and social psychologists who use the term, and it is not how the term is used in this chapter. When an “authoritarian personality” prevails, authoritarianism can exist in a home, in a classroom, in a church, or in a courtroom. Theoretically, a very unauthoritarian person could function as head of an authoritarian government, although that would be unusual; likewise, an authoritarian leader could easily be head of a democracy. As I point out in the next chapter, authoritarian personalities can also push democracy toward political authoritarianism. In this chapter, however, authoritarianism refers to the thinking and behavior of authoritarian personalities.

^*
Throughout this chapter I have quoted or paraphrased Altemeyer, and so noted in the text. This material is based on an extensive exchange of e-mails over a seven-month period, and to not excessively clutter this chapter, I have not added endnotes or footnotes in each instance. However, when I have relied on other material by Altemeyer, I have provided a citation.

^*
See http://www.mts.net/~gcg/.

^*
However, “right-wing authoritarians openly admit their hostility when they perceive strong social support for being aggressive—for example, against homosexuality. They also admit to a bit more hostility when they feel safe doing so, as when they are anonymous. But their social comparison process may prevent them from learning how relatively aggressive they really are.” Bob Altemeyer,
Enemies of Freedom
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1988), 190.

^*
In 1986, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science awarded Altemeyer its prize for behavioral science research for his essay “Authoritarian Aggression.” The prize encouraged development and application of verifiable empirical research methodologies in the social sciences. This is a highly prestigious recognition by scientific peers, and no higher accolade is given to social scientists. See http://archives.aaas.org/awards.php?a_id=24.

^*
Joseph de Maistre’s conservatism (and his Catholicism) was, in fact, brutally authoritarian. However, Owen Bradley’s work,
A Modern Maistre: The Social and Political Thought of Joseph de Maistre
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999) seeks “to make of Maistre the ambiguous, equivocal, un-decidable figure…rather than a monster plain and simple” (viii). According to the book’s editor, “Bradley makes a convincing argument that, far from wallowing in a morbid fascination with violence, as is often suggested, Maistre sees ritual sacrifice as spiritualizing and minimizing violence needed to maintain social order” (
American Historical Review
[December 2000] at http://www. historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/justtop.cgi?). However Maistre is viewed, his authoritarianism raises troubling questions for any modern democracy.

^*
There appears to be no national poll of Republicans indicating how many identify themselves as “authoritarians.” I did, however, locate an informal poll taken by libertarians at the Texas GOP conventions in 2002 and 2004. While less than scientific, it is suggestive. Some 339 attendees at the 2004 convention indicated whether they were: “conservatives” (like George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Jack Kemp), “social conservatives” (like Dan Quayle and Pat Robertson), “authoritarian conservatives” (like Pat Buchanan and Bill Bennett), “liberals” (like Kennedy, Clinton, Kerry, Gore, and Gephardt—it seems liberals do not have first names in Texas), “centrists” (like Colin Powell, John McCain, and Ross Perot), or “moderate libertarians” (like Milton Friedman, Jeb Bush, Jesse Ventura, Steve Forbes, and Barry Goldwater). The examples provided for each category make the poll less than accurate, because some of the examples do not necessarily match their labels. The poll revealed, however, that 6.8 percent of those responding declared themselves “authoritarian,” with 9.9 percent of these being women and 4.6 percent being men. Very similar scores were recorded at the 2002 convention. See: “The Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas” at http://tx.rlc.org/events/2004_06_04_result.htm.

^*
In 2004 Gold published
Take Back the Right: How the Neocons and the Religious Right Have Betrayed the Conservative Movement
(New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004), where he refers to the neocons as “the America-must-lead-because-America-must-lead; let’s-go-thump-somebody crowd,” and the religious right as “the Christ-died-so-we-could-tell-you-what-to-do brigades.” His book is a lament for today’s conservatism by a man who spent much of his life promoting a conservative agenda. “It would be many years before I realized that conservatism was content with the lowest common denominator, and that, in the end, conservatism would rather complain than create,” he concluded.

^*
I discussed with Bob Altemeyer the applications his findings to persons who had not been tested anonymously, and while authoritarian traits may be obvious in their behavior, precisely categorizing them can be difficult. Altemeyer advised, “We know about right-wing authoritarians, and social dominators,
in general,
based upon how
most
of them have acted in various studies. But in every study some authoritarians acted differently, and when you take an individual person, you can expect he too will act differently some of the time—just as it is much easier to predict where a herd of cattle is heading than to predict whether any particular steer is presently going this way or that, frontward or even backward. Then social sciences produce generalizations, which a lot of people find useful information. But any generalization means there will be exceptions, and you will almost always run into some when you study the complexity of an individual. Almost all generally authoritarian people thus will have some nonauthoritarian wrinkles in their behavior.” Accordingly, I have not attempted to get too precise in labeling the conspicuous authoritarian behavior of people like Scooter Libby and others. On the other hand some authoritarian behavior is too obvious not to label appropriately.

^*
We may never learn the full extent of the objections expressed by “realist” Republicans. For example, it is only reluctantly that former Bush I national security adviser Brent Scowcroft has spoken out, because he is a close friend of the former president Bush. But because none of his old friends, who now control American foreign policy, were listening, he wrote an August 15, 2002,
Wall Street Journal
op-ed, “Don’t Attack Saddam: It would undermine our antiterror efforts.” James Risen writes in
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
(New York: Free Press, 2006) that the president “angrily hung-up the telephone” on his father, when he was expressing concerns about the “neoconservative ideologues” controlling the Bush II foreign policy.

^*
Social and religious elements, however, have been present from the outset. When writing
The Conservative Mind,
Russell Kirk, it will be recalled, declared “the essence of social conservatism is preservation of the ancient moral traditions of humanity.” And Kirk’s first canon called for belief in “a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience.” Inherent in Kirk’s conservatism is the Burkean notion “of the state as ordained by God.” George Nash, in
The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America,
explained that one segment of the modern conservative movement “urged a return to traditional religion and ethical absolutes and a rejection of the ‘relativism’ which had allegedly corroded Western values” (xv).