Dean's "Conservatives Without Conscience"

Great Debates
221

[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
First of all, I am not attacking the book. I have not read it, as you have pointed out several times. I am disputing some of the things you said about it in your OP.
[/QUOTE]
That is the same thing as attacking the book. I merely listed some of the book’s findings. By attacking what I wrote you were attacking the findings of the book as well as the book itself without reading the necessary material. How could you possibly think otherwise?

[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
I am basing my opinion on my own experience with social science, and with the liberals and conservatives I know. And, incidentally, I think you are misunderstanding the meaning of “authoritarianism.” It does not mean that one has a strong opinion, and is expressing it.
[/QUOTE]
It is authoritarian in the sense that you’ve set yourself up as your own “authority” and have expressed opinions that rely solely on your own authority rather than on science. You seem to expect your authority to supersede – or at least substitute for --scientific findings.

[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
I certainly never said that ALL liberals are self-righteous. What I said was that IMO they are JUST AS PRONE TO IT as conservatives.
[/QUOTE]
An assertion that is based strictly on the authority of your own opinion, such as it is. I honestly consider that to be authoritarian, primarily because you do not site any scientific evidence and instead rely on your own authority. One attribute of an authoritarian is the belief that he or she just knows what is right; another is that they are intolerant of dissent.

[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
YOU say that you never said that the sociologists never condemned conservatives. Fine. But, somehow, Dean took the studies and worked up a whole book based on those studies that DOES condemn them.
[/QUOTE]
That is a blatant falsehood! Neither Dean nor the sociologists condemn conservatives qua conservatives! **And you’d know that if you had read the book! :smack: ** What they both do is examine the social science as it relates to two subsets of conservatives, the RWAs and the SDOs, and both groups combine to form the majority – but not the whole of – conservatives. You and your fellow attackers keep writing as if Dean and the sociologists have criticized all conservatives merely because they are conservatives! And that is pure bullshit. And you would have known it was bullshit from both my OP and if you had read the book.

Furthermore, self-righteousness is but one frequent attribute of these sub-groups. It does not strictly synonymous with RWAs any more than it is with conservatism.

[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
In which case, as I said, I would love to read the source material (not the book, the actual studies), in addition to the book, and form my own opinion.
[/QUOTE]
You should have done that before posting attacks on both the book and the science.

222

[QUOTE=Voyager]
ambushed, are there some tables of major results in the book that you could post - real data, not opinions, of course. Maybe we can elevate this discussion a bit.

Thanks.
[/QUOTE]
Well, my scanner doesn’t work with my relatively new computer, so it would be trying. However, the brief tables I listed in my OP are from the social scientists’ work, i.e., they list some key attributes of both Right Wing Authoritarians and Social Dominating Oriented people they found in their scientific testing of individuals. They are not John Dean’s words or descriptions, they are the scientists’, including those of the AAAS-awarded social scientist Robert Altemeyer whose work on identifiying the psycho-social attributes of Right Wing Authoritarians looms large in Dean’s book.

You may wish to peruse this article: Personality and emotional correlates of right-wing authoritarianism. I don’t vouch for the author or the article, but you may well find what you’re looking for.

To quote one small segement of the article: “Particularly noteworthy is Altemeyer’s contribution of a psychometrically sound and substantially validated instrument in this arena, the Right Wing Authoritarianism Scale (Altemeyer, 1981, 1988, 1996).”

I hope that helps.

223

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Here’s the difference between a non-authoritarian social liberal and a Diogenes-style authoritarian social liberal:

Non-authoritarian: Chldren have the right to learn about evolution if they so wish. A parent may send his kid to a religious school where evolution is not taught, but cannot forbid his child from reading about evolution.
[/QUOTE]
What nonsense! Both authoritarian (if any exist) and non-authoritarian liberals simply say: Don’t tell falsehoods to my children or deny them scientifically important facts and theories. They are entitled to learn the truth as best science knows it.

224

[QUOTE=John Mace]
But it [evolution] has zero practical value for anyone who isn’t a Biologist. Zero, zip, nada, zilch.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, I see! So there was “zero, zip, nada, zilch” value of evolutionary knowledge to the surgeon (not a biologist) who stupidly implanted a baboon’s heart into “Baby Fae” instead of a chimpanzee’s heart (given that an actual human baby’s heart couldn’t be found) and watched her die far too quickly because baboons were far too far removed evolutionarily from us?

You see, since the surgeon knew (and thus believed) too little about evolution caused this baby’s premature death! Yep, that’s “zero, zip, nada, zilch” all right.

225

[QUOTE=Onomatopoeia]
Wow, this thread has gone on some wild, and somewhat beside the point, meanderings since this morning.

Anyway, ambushed, I bought the book after reading your review today. You’re right. It’s a gripping read…very nicely sourced as well. Finished it late this afternoon. I found it insightful and somewhat unsettling.
[/QUOTE]
I’m glad you don’t think I steered you wrong, like the RWAs here who haven’t even read the book :wink:

[QUOTE=Onomatopoeia]
That Liddy, among others, is presented as somewhat of a progenitor of the new authoritarian conservative mindset is not too surprising, especially as I recall his almost ubiquitous rants on radio and TV in the early nineties, constantly confirming his blind devotion to the cause. The only thing I could never quite determine is whether Liddy was a true believer or simply an opportunistic media whore.
[/QUOTE]
Couldn’t he be both? I actually had the misfortune of reading his book, Will. How anyone could have misread Nietzsche so badly is beyond me (even though he wanted to be misunderstood), but this misreading clearly led him to be the mindless tool of authoritarianism he was so happy to become.

[QUOTE=Onomatopoeia]
Thank you very much for the recommendation.
[/QUOTE]
My pleasure.

226

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
All of them, like I already told you.
[/QUOTE]

(It’s taking longer than we thought)

Surely you could provide four or five examples of modern day non-totalitarian/authoritarian “liberals”? Still waiting…

227

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Nope. No one’s trying to force you to do that.
[/QUOTE]
The stated goal of raising cigarette taxes sky-high is to get people to quit.

But taking it away is authoritarian. There is nothing that says the government has a right to take it away.

Right. Because someone thinks there is a good reason to demand a certain action from people, then it is OK to demand that action. Authoritarianism.

What do you think carpool lanes are about?

As John Mace and I have both pointed out, these types of laws remain even when there is no shortage (because people think it’s the right thing to do, perhaps?). Shortages can always be addressed by not artificially controlling prices.

228

[QUOTE=ambushed]
That is the same thing as attacking the book. I merely listed some of the book’s findings. By attacking what I wrote you were attacking the findings of the book as well as the book itself without reading the necessary material. How could you possibly think otherwise?
[/QUOTE]
If you were in this thread only discussing the things in you OP with people who have read the book, then you would be in here talking to yourself. Why don’t you tell me the parameters I can work in, given that I have not had a chance to read the book yet? You posted a diatribe against the conservatives you know…so I guess you are authoritarian too? Oh, I forgot, you have “science” to back you up. FYI, as someone who studied social science in school, I don’t really need to read this book to know a little bit about this stuff. Social science is not exactly like medicine…there is not really a good way to test findings. So, forgive me if I take what social scientists tell me with a huge dose of skepticism, and a strong interest in looking for the holes in the methodolgy and the results.

229

[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
What do you think carpool lanes are about?
[/QUOTE]
No one forces you to use the carpool lane. You can drive a van with 10 people in it in the other lanes if you want too. I guess speed limits are authoritarian also and are of an authoritarian liberal origin to prevent people from hurting themselves.

The two examples of liberal authoritarianism are poor ones. If giving people equal protection of the law is authoritarian then the 14th amendment to the Constitution is authoritarian. I guess liberals, being authoritarian, thought up that one. Conservatives would just have allowed legal discrimination to continue.

230

[QUOTE=Common Tater]
(It’s taking longer than we thought)

Surely you could provide four or five examples of modern day non-totalitarian/authoritarian “liberals”? Still waiting…
[/QUOTE]

Name any five liberals. There you are. What part of “all” do you not understand?

231

[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
The stated goal of raising cigarette taxes sky-high is to get people to quit.
[/quote]
There might be people who think or even say that. The most common excuse I’ve seen is that the taxes are so high to compensate the government for the health costs of smokers who get welfare.

Always is a powerful word. Few people believe that a naive implementation of the law of supply and demand and free markets will always lead to an optimal economic situation, and fewer still believe that it will always lead to a normatively-desirable outcome.

232

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Name any five liberals. There you are. What part of “all” do you not understand?
[/QUOTE]

No. The burden of proof is on the one making the claim - it can’t be too difficult for you to name four or five liberals that aren’t authoritarian. What are you afraid of?
Thanks for playing though!

233

[QUOTE=Common Tater]
No. The burden of proof is on the one making the claim - it can’t be too difficult for you to name four or five liberals that aren’t authoritarian. What are you afraid of?
Thanks for playing though!
[/QUOTE]

Are just learning to read or something? Why are you having so much dufficulty with the word “ALL?” [Hint: ALL is more than 4 or 5]

Name one who IS authoritarian.

234

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]

[Quote=John Mace]
Busing wasn’t a solution to separate but equal.
[/quote]
Maybe it wasn’t a successful solution but that WAS the motive. What would have been your alternative?
[/QUOTE]
Having waded paste all the breakfast-eating Scots littering this thread and trudged past all the other rhetoric, I would like to insert one corrective fact into the thread.

The vast majority of court-ordered bussings were not ordered to correct “separate but equal.” “Separate but equal” could have been remedied by the dual approach of ensuring the same quality of infrastructure (making the lie of “equal” into a fact), and by allowing each child to attend the closest school without bussing them to “racial” schools (thus eliminating de jure segregation).

Court-ordered bussing was instituted, usually, to end de facto segregation by ensuring that all the ethnic groups were mixed together. The “separate but equal” component of the rulings was based on the claims by the plaintiffs that no school that had a majority black population would ever actually receive the funding that majority white schools were granted and that the only way to get school boards to fund everyone equally was to mix up the populations so that the school boards could not play games with the money. It was generally a small part of the argument, however.
On top of that argument, there was also a layer of social engineering with a plea that deliberate integration would eventually reduce racial friction.

Of course, the Law of Unintended Consequences resulted in an acceleration of white flight, leaving the kids to be bussed all over town looking for meaningless levels of racial parity while the destroyed tax base resulted in poorer schools for any group (generally black) who was left behind.

De jure segregation from the 1900s through the 1960s resulted (particularly in the North) in de facto segregation by neighborhood. It was the effort to eliminate de facto segregation on the grounds that it had arisen in de jure segregation that allowed the bussing to be ordered, but very few cases of bussing were argued on “separate but equal” grounds; the usual bases were the various Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, beginning with the big one in 1964.

235

[QUOTE=David Simmons]
So do you think anything should have been done about legal segregation by race? If so how, by whom, and when?
[/quote]

I’m not sure what you mean by “legal segregation”. If you mean laws passed that made it “legal” to forcefully keep the races segregated, then those violate the constiution. If it’s just people living where they want to live, then no. I don’t think anything should be done. It would be wonderful if we lived in a truly color-blind society and the races were perfectly integrated, but there’s nothing unconstitutional about self-segregation.

Of course you don’t-- you think the goal is worth the price. But this is also a good illustration of the different tactics used by rightie and leftie authoritarians. Righties more often just pass a law forbidding X if they think X = bad. Lefites often use the tax code or other means (like building carpool lanes) to nudge people in the direction of doing Y if Y = good.

Gee, what a novel idea-- make the people who use something pay for it. Highway construction is often paid for by gasoline taxes, and that is a great idea. It’s not perfect, but gas usage is highly correlated to how much a person drives. There are also market solutions (like charging tolls, with higher rates at peak hours) to address congestion.

I’m not talking about your children. I’m talking about someone else’s children if that person doesn’t want them taught about evolution–, ie, that they have the right to home school their kids and not to include evolution in the curriculum. You are correct in that righties who try to get evolution taken out of public schools are acting in a authoritarian way.

Look, you and **David **both seem to think that I’m trying to argue that lefites are authoritarian and righties are not. I’ve already posted TWICE that I think righties tend to be more authoriatrian in the social sphere than lefties do. You aren’t going to counter my argument by offering examples of righties doing similar things as lefties-- I’ve aleady said that they do. All I’m trying to do is counter the argument by Diogenes that social “liberals” are never authoritarian.

As for doctors and evolution, yes I should have said people working in the life sciences and not just “Biology”. I’m not arguing that we should take the teaching of evolution out of schools-- far from it. I want it in there! I’m just saying that if a parent wants to homeschool his kid and not teach evolution then that’s their business-- forcing them to teach it is authoritarian. I don’t buy the argument, made by Dio, that knowledge of evolution is “essential” for a high school graduate, and that parents who don’t teach their kids about evolution are somehow violating the rights of those children. And of course it would be absurd to teach Biology at the college level w/o including evolution, since that’s a course that will be taken by Biology majors and others majoring in the life sciences (like medicine).

236

[QUOTE=John Mace]
I’m just saying that if a parent wants to homeschool his kid and not teach evolution then that’s their business-- forcing them to teach it is authoritarian.
[/QUOTE]
And how is it not authoritarian for the parent to force feed his/her child lies ? Should fundie parent be allowed to lock the kids in a closet so they aren’t contaminated by sinful reality ?

237

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
There’s only so much water to go around, man. I don’t see why you have a problem with limiting access to public water in a time of shortage.
[/QUOTE]

Because it has become abundantly clear from experience that market allocation of resources works better than government allocation, and because the latter requires authoritarian enforcement.

(The “in time of shortage” caveat is meaningless – the supply of any resource is less than what people would like.)

238

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
I’d like to know how the hell carpool lanes have anything to do with liberals or how they’re authoritarian.
[/QUOTE]

As for the authoritarian part, it’s because you have to pay for them, but may use them if and only if you abide by the government’s behavior preferences (that distinguishes them from things like military bases, for which there is a legitimate non-social-engineering reason not to let just any old taxpayer wander in).

I assume this concept would be clearer to you if someone were to propose “Christians only”, “straight couples only”, or some such, lanes.

As for the liberal part, that’s simple observation of which politicians do, and do not, support the concept.

239

[QUOTE=Ludovic]
There might be people who think or even say that. The most common excuse I’ve seen is that the taxes are so high to compensate the government for the health costs of smokers who get welfare.
[/QUOTE]
OK…if you want to use that excuse, that’s fine. So, what you are saying is that if I smoke AND I am not on welfare, AND I have good health insurance, I still have to pay higher taxes, to take care of smokers who ARE on welfare and who DON’T have health insurance? Why should I be any more responsible for other smokers than non-smokers are? Sounds like a punishment for smoking to me. Authoritarianism.

240

Sin taxes, by their very nature, are authoritarian. We don’t want you to do X (even though doing X is perfectly legal) so we’re going to tax it at a higher rate. The argument that it’s to pay for increased medical expenses is bunk. Sin taxes (by and large) go into the general fund just like other taxes. I’ve seen stats showing both sides-- that smoking is a burden on the healthcare system and that smoking lessens the burden. I mean, we all die sooner or later, and if we die later, we just might use more medical care, not less.