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bout the Author
John W. Dean used to be White House legal counsel to President Nixon and then helped break the Watergate scandal with his testimony before the U.S. Senate. He served as chief minority counsel for White House judiciary of justice. He has penned books such as Blind Ambition (1976), Lost Honor (1982), The Rehnquist Choice (2001), Warren G. Harding (2004), and Worse Than Watergate : The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush (2004), and Conservatives Without Conscience. He lives in the state of California and works as a columnist for Findlaw.com.
Dean’s style of writing is efficiently simple; his tone is highly critical, and his courageous, straight forward, right-on-the-spot writing is admirable.
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onservatives without Conscience
In his latest book Conservatives Without Conscience he boldly asserts that the Republican party is reigned by authoritarians. He seeks for the conservative way of thinking and then he points out the repeating features carved in their heads such as their intolerance to opposing opinions (which is of course rendered as an authoritarian trait). Dean reveals his diagnosis when he blames the same brand of people, leaders, for turning conservative politics upside down.
John W. Dean who has given birth to this book during several encounters with his mentor, Senator Goldwater, introduces himself as a Goldwater Republican/Conservative. What makes this book precious is that it is compiled by a conservative who criticizes conservatives.
Dean in this book has made use of Robert Altemeyer’s findings, which allegedly has taken him quite a long time administering a research called RWA Survey (Right Wing Authoritarianism). In Altemeyer’s pre- composed questionnaire, individuals were being asked to agree or disagree with statements like: “there is nothing wrong with premarital sexual intercourse.”[1]. Those who had scored high according to Altemeyer’s research scale were regarded conservatives.
Dean then mentions Altemeyer’s evidence of right-wing amoral disposition through a theory put forward by him called Global Change Game. In this theory, components rule over different parts of the world. Supposedly, when right wing authoritarians took over the control in this so called “Game”, some 2.1 billion people were killed. “According to a complicating formulae used in the game to take into account the consequences of war, long term unemployment, malnutrition and poor medical infrastructure.”
Altemeyer, as the result of his long term run research, claims: “probably 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you say or do will change their minds. They would march America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had improved as a result.”
Dean maintains that Altemeyer has provided as enormous data based on a scientific work when he says: “At the outset of Conservatives Without Conscience, I provided a quick and highly incomplete summary of Altemeyer's findings, explaining that his empirical testing revealed "that authoritarians are frequently enemies of freedom, antidemocratic, anti-equality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian, and amoral." To be clear, these are not assessments that Altemeyer makes himself about these people; rather, this is how those he has tested reveal themselves to be, when being anonymously examined.”
Moreover, John W. Dean makes a clear cut distinction between those “hungry for power” and those, like the followers to Hitler, follow them. Dean lists the traits as : “highly religious, moderate to little education, trust untrustworthy authorities, prejudiced (particularly against homosexuals, women, and followers of religions other than their own), mean-spirited, narrow-minded, intolerant, bullying, zealous, dogmatic, uncritical toward their chosen authority, hypocritical, inconsistent and contradictory, prone to panic easily, highly self-righteous, moralistic, strict disciplinarian, severely punitive, demands loyalty and returns it, little self-awareness, usually politically and economically conservative/Republican.”
What Dean categorizes for leaders is as follows: “dominating, opposes equality, desirous of personal power, amoral, intimidating and bullying, faintly hedonistic, vengeful, pitiless, exploitive, manipulative, dishonest, cheats to win, highly prejudiced (racist, sexist, homophobic), mean-spirited, militant, nationalistic, tells others what they want to hear, takes advantage of "suckers," specializes in creating false images to sell self, may or may not be religious, usually politically and economically conservative/Republican.”
Interestingly John Dean doesn’t stop there; rather, he keeps on by giving names and profiles of numerous old school Republicans, whom he considers authoritarian conservatives, and clearly utters his outlook toward the red-alert situation caused by these (mostly) gentlemen. Among these names are: Newton Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Phyllis Schafly, G. Gordon Liddy, J. Edgar Hoover, and other leaders of religious right wing. He breaks out his standing point when he warns America of the history of power abduction by the above mentioned authoritarians. He believes if this trend continues, America will confront anti-constitutional threat which will also endanger what the U.S. prides itself on: Democracy.
References:
1. Conservatives without conscience (in) The Conservative America. Austine Bramwell, (17 July, 2006) Available at: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2006/jul/17/00029/
2. Dean, J.D. 2004. Conservatives without conscience. NY: Norton Co.
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