Thom Hartmann and John Dean were talking today about authoritarianism. I found it to be right on with Coulter, Faux News and the rest. Heres a bit from Dean....
"For almost half a century, social scientists have been exploring authoritarianism. We do not typically associate authoritarianism with our democracy, but as I discovered while examining decades of empirical research, we ignore some findings at our risk. Unfortunately, the social scientists who have studied these issues report their findings in monographs and professional journals written for their peers, not for general readers. With the help of a leading researcher and others, I waded into this massive body of work.
What I found provided a personal epiphany. Authoritarian conservatives are, as a researcher told me, "enemies of freedom, antidemocratic, antiequality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian and amoral." And that's not just his view. To the contrary, this is how these people have consistently described themselves when being anonymously tested, by the tens of thousands over the past several decades.
Authoritarianism's impact on contemporary conservatism is beyond question. Because this impact is still growing and has troubling (if not actually evil) implications, I hope that social scientists will begin to write about this issue for general readers..."
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/07/john_dean_autho.html
vampires, ghouls, zombies, authoritarian conservatives... all the same. Time for us to realize that we're at war with them and the stakes are the future of our democracy and our country.
