Access Bob Altemeyer on Conservative Authoritarianism – Free PDF

 Authorities, ChumForThought, Common-Destiny, Ego 4-Conformist, Moral 3-Accord and Conformity, Moral 4-Authority and Social order, Political Commentary, Politics, SocioDynamics, USA 2012 Elections, Value 4-TruthForce  No Responses »
May 232012
 

John Dean referenced Bob Altemeyer’s work extensively in his 2006 book, “Conservatives without Conscience.”

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In case you wanted to dig deeper, your link is http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

Altemeyer explains: “This book is about what’s happened to the American government lately. It’s about the disastrous decisions that government has made. It’s about the corruption that rotted the Congress. It’s about how traditional conservatism has nearly been destroyed by authoritarianism. It’s about how the “Religious Right” teamed up with amoral authoritarian leaders to push its un-democratic agenda onto the country. It’s about the United States standing at the crossroads as the next federal election approaches.”

“The feedback I’ve gotten from those who have read The Authoritarians enables me to give you the major reason why you might want to do so too.   “It ties things together for me,” people have said, “You can see how so many things all fit together.” “It explains the things about conservatives that didn’t make any sense to me,” others have commented. And the one that always brings a smile to my face, “Now at last I understand my brother-in-law” (or grandmother, uncle, woman in my car pool, Congressman, etc.)”

 

Remembering the 99% and the “True Meaning of Christmas”

 ChumForThought, Political Commentary, USA 2012 Elections  No Responses »
Mar 042012
 

I woke up in the middle of the night with a fully-realized insight:
”Liberals are just former conservatives who have relearned the True Meaning of Christmas.”

If you do a Google image search of “true meaning of Christmas,” you find lots of Christmas trees, mangers, and Peanuts kids. That’s stop one; that’s for conservatives. If you keep looking very hard you find some different images that emphasize expressions of love, being compassionate, doing good, teaching, serving, feeding, and healing.

imagejesus_washing_apostles_feet_parson_l[1]

Yeah, you’vejust kinda gotta go with the tender, caring spirit of that last one.

One last comment in closing:

Jesus was "the good shepherd." He washed feet, gathered children to himself,  recommended being a "good Samaritan," fed the hungry, and healed the sick.

Jesus showed compassion for the 99%: the poor and the common people including sinners, lepers, tax collectors, and prostitutes.

On the other hand, Jesus really had it in for parasites such as money changers in the temple (who, instead of laboring, were making money off of others by exchanging money) and Pharisees (who were religious lawmakers who "tied heavy burdens upon others").

Are Conservatives Cynical About the Truth?

 ChumForThought, I'm Just Saying..., Political Commentary, USA 2012 Elections  No Responses »
Feb 022012
 

I have studiously watched all (I think) of the 2011/2012 Republican debates. I wanted to expose myself to a variety of points of view, even if they might differ from my own current preconceived notions. The exercise has left me shocked and appalled.

It was not just the remarkable certainty of the candidates’ conflicting assertions [they might have demonstrated more party and policy unity). But they freely engaged in the most egregious and transparent distortions of each other’s records and statements (and that was BEFORE their assertions about the incumbent President and his party who, by the way, had no immediate opportunity to make a defense or offer a rebuttal).

I know that politicians can play hardball and are prone to mudslinging, but I began to feel that there was something at work here that felt palpably evil. So I did some soul-searching and some research, and carefully selected some quotes that support my point of view. Now, granted, there are certainly other points of view and I should be willing to consider them, but this is my blog and my outrage, so please feel free to publish your own and be aware that I moderate all comments.

"It’s not a matter of what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true."
Henry Kissinger

  • “A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth.”
  • “There’s a lot of money with a lot of big law firms that have a tremendous amount at stake by getting the right language to convince the right jury that my client is either innocent or that the opposition is guilty.”
  • “We decide based on how people look; we decide based on how people sound; we decide based on how people are dressed. We decide based on their passion.”

Frank Luntz, Republican pollster and consultant on the language of persuasion.

“I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends… that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.”
Adlai Stevenson, Governor of Illinois, (1949-1953)

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
Arthur Schopenhauer

When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken, or cease to be honest.
Unknown

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King Jr.

The search for truth implies a duty. One must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.
Albert Einstein

And, don’t even get me started on the certainty of individuals defending the universal validity of their personal (religious and political) convictions, in the face of so many faiths. And, don’t even tempt me to start invoking George Carlin.

Maybe Conservatives Just LIKE to Fire People

 Political Commentary, USA 2012 Elections  No Responses »
Feb 022012
 

Donald Trump

“The Apprentice” – “You’re Fired” is the inevitable payoff for watching. [It was a game show.]

Mitt Romney

"I like being able to fire people who provide services to me." [Talking about insurance companies] [It was a “misquote.”]

Ron Paul

Wants to fire many, many incompetent government employees and excess public servants. [It is a philosophy.]

Dick Cheney

Fires on his hunting buddy, a 78-year old Texas attorney on 2/11/2006 [It was an accident]

Saddam Hussein, Moammar Gaddafi

Liked to fire off their guns, heir mouths, their advisors, and their citizens. Perhaps they were the perfect metaphors for what eventually happens to people who really like to fire things. [It was not an accident]

Republicans Have Become “Insurgent Outliers”

 Political Commentary, USA 2012 Elections  No Responses »
Jan 232012
 

Clippings from Newyorker.com, The Political Scene, The Obama Memos, by Ryan Lizz, January 30, 2012

Two well-known Washington political analysts, Thomas Mann, of the bipartisan Brookings Institution, and Norman Ornstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, agree. In a forthcoming book about Washington dysfunction, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” they write, “One of our two major parties, the Republicans, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lizza#ixzz1kJZqylwT 

In “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama wrote longingly about American politics in the mid-twentieth century, when both parties had liberal and conservative wings that allowed centrist coalitions to form. Today, almost all liberals are Democrats and almost all conservatives are Republicans. In Washington, the center has virtually vanished. According to the political scientists Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, who have devised a widely used system to measure the ideology of members of Congress, when Obama took office there was no ideological overlap between the two parties. In the House, the most conservative Democrat, Bobby Bright, of Alabama, was farther to the left than the most liberal Republican, Joseph Cao, of Louisiana. The same was true in the Senate, where the most conservative Democrat, Ben Nelson, of Nebraska, was farther to the left than the most liberal Republican, Olympia Snowe, of Maine. According to Poole and Rosenthal’s data, both the House and the Senate are more polarized today than at any time since the eighteen-nineties.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lizza#ixzz1kJk0nlgZ 

Polarization also has affected the two parties differently. The Republican Party has drifted much farther to the right than the Democratic Party has drifted to the left. Jacob Hacker, a professor at Yale, whose 2006 book, “Off Center,” documented this trend, told me, citing Poole and Rosenthal’s data on congressional voting records, that, since 1975, “Senate Republicans moved roughly twice as far to the right as Senate Democrats moved to the left” and “House Republicans moved roughly six times as far to the right as House Democrats moved to the left.” In other words, the story of the past few decades is asymmetric polarization.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lizza#ixzz1kJkPmwOF

Bill Clinton on Need for Strong Private AND Public Sectors

 ChumForThought, Common-Destiny, Political Commentary, Politics, USA 2012 Elections  No Responses »
Dec 292011
 

Source: Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy by Bill Clinton
Abstracted from pages 17-18

I believe the only way we can keep the American dream alive for all Americans and continue to be the world’s leading force for freedom and prosperity, peace and security, is to have both a strong, effective private-sector and a strong, effective government that work together to promote an economy of good jobs, rising incomes, increasing exports, and greater energy independence.

All over the world, the most successful nations, including many with lower unemployment rates, less inequality, and, in this decade, even higher college graduation rates than the United States, have both. And they work together, not always agreeing, but moving poured common goals. In other countries, conservatives and liberals also have arguments about taxes, energy policy, bank regulations, and how much government is helping an affordable, but they tend to be less ideological and more rooted in evidence and experience. They focus more on what works.

That’s the focus America

needs. It’s the only way to get back into the future business. In the modern world, leaned too few citizens have the time or opportunity to analyze the larger forces shaping our lives, and the lines between news, advocacy, and entertainment are increasingly blurred, ideological conflicts effectively waged may be good politics, and provide fodder for the nightly news, and columnist, that they won’t get us to a better future.

Our long antigovernment obsession has proved to be remarkably successful politics, but its policy failures have given us an anemic, increasingly unequal economy, with too few jobs and stagnant incomes; that is at a competitive disadvantage compared with other nations, especially in manufacturing and clean energy; and left as a potentially crippling debt burden just as the baby boomers begin to retire.

By contrast, other nations, as well as cities and states within the United States, with a commitment to building networks of cooperation involving the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, are creating economic opportunity and charging into the future with confidence.

My argument here isn’t that Democrats are always right and Republicans always wrong. It’s that by jamming all issues into the antigovernment, antitax, anti regulation straitjacket, we hog-tie ourselves and keep ourselves for making necessary changes no matter how much evidence exists to support them.

The antigovernment paradigm blinds us to possibilities that lie outside its ideological litmus tests and prevents us from creating new networks of cooperation that can restore economic growth, bring economic opportunity to more people and places, and increase our ability to lead the world to a better future.

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