Hi Turk,

I would say that when Jeff mentioned "a simple test" for authoritarianism, he was Over -- Simplifying a matter that is actually quite complex.

I see the issue somewhat differently.

While Robert Altemyer's ground-breaking work in measuring "Right-Wing Authoritarianism" is impressive, I think of this syndrome as I would any "newly identified malady."

I know that in ADD, for example, there also are "tests" one can take. However, in reality the results will just be indications of a neurologically-based disorder. A diagnosis requires one flesh-and-blood human being sitting down with another... and inquiring. Often, even more data is required, such as speaking with concerned relatives (with the patient's permission, of course).

We humans are much too complex for our inner/outer lives to be summed up by a written test or two. (As you said, that does sound fascistic!) However, such tests, like other medical tests, can be valuable resources.

Also, noone, I believe, is a 100% dyed-in-the-wool RWA. Not even Archie Bunker, and not even Hitler for that matter.

Sectors of the personality being vulnerable to anti-democratic, sado-masochistic, oppressor/oppressed patterns of thinking and feeling? Sure absolutely. We see that writ large among certain unidentified persons pulling the strings at the highest levels of government. (Hint: first names Richard and Georgie)

And this is a serious problem for our culture - and for the world at large. In any positions of power (including being a parent), these folks can be very dangerous - without us - or them - ever realizing it....until it's too late, and the damage has been done.

But even Hitler was said to be good to his dog.

As Edgar Morin has said --- Humans, if we are to survive this time, MUST learn to think/understand more complexly.

Otherwise, we'll likely drown in our delusions, solve no problems (without creating worse one's in their place), and probably end up the evolutionary dead-end dustbin.

Introduction from George Lakoff's book. "Whose Freedom?"

Pt. 3

A Higher Rationality

I have two roles in this book. On the one hand, I am a linguist and a cognitive scientist. In this role, I am examining two very different forms of reason, in the service of a higher rationality that the tools of cognitive science provide. I believe it is vital to know how we think and to understand our forms of political discourse, to step outside of our own political beliefs and to see how moral and political reasoning work for both ourselves and others.

At stake here is the deepest form of freedom—the freedom that comes from knowing your own mind. If you are unaware of your own deep frames and metaphors, then you are unaware of the basis for your moral and political choices. Moreover, your deep frames and metaphors define the range within which your "free will" operates.

You can't will something that is outside your capacity to imagine. Free will can operate only on ideas in your brain; it cannot operate on ideas you do not have.

Free will is thus not totally free. It is radically constrained by the frames and metaphors shaping your brain and limiting how you see the world. Those frames and metaphors get there, to a remarkable extent, through repetition in the media.

If this sounds a bit scary, it should. This is a scary time.

Cognitive science, by making us at least aware of alternative frames and metaphors, acts in the service of extending the range of free will.

Beyond writing as a scientist, I am also an advocate. I believe that one version of freedom is traditional and important to keep for the deepest moral reasons. I believe that the other version of freedom is dangerous to our democratic ideals and to the moral system behind the founding of our nation.

My task in this book is to open up a discussion of these two views of freedom, to describe them as accurately as possible, and to discuss how to take back the progressive view of freedom that lies at the heart of our democracy—and to do so honestly, using framings, both deep and surface, that we really believe and that reveal the truth about our social, economic, and political realities.

* * *

Traditional American freedom still reigns in the American mind. Nonetheless, the right has made serious inroads: Tens of millions of Americans now think about freedom through the right wing's framing of the idea, and the evidence of that is in elections, in polls, in legislation, in judicial decisions, and all around us on radio and TV.

There is a real danger that the right will succeed. They have control of all branches of government. They have a tight control on political infrastructure. They have the bully pulpit of the presidency. They have control of an important segment of the media (Fox and Clear Channel). And they have framed just about every issue in public debate so thoroughly and invisibly that even very intelligent, well-educated, savvy journalists don't notice. No, they haven't won, but they are making steady progress—and virtually without discussion.

The danger is not just a matter of words, a quibble over semantics. This is a war over an idea. If the idea of freedom changes radically, then freedom as we have known it is lost. The reason is that people act on their ideas.

Ideas are not abstract things. They are components of action. They define ideals. They create norms of behavior. They characterize right and wrong, and accordingly change our understanding of the past and the present, our vision of the future, and even the laws of the land.

Ownership of the word means ownership of the idea that goes with the word, and with it, domination of the culture defined by that idea.

Moreover, that domination does not end at our borders. The United States is the most powerful country on earth and it is dedicated to spreading its idea of freedom.

Whose freedom will that be?

If conservatives define foreign policy and control the definition of freedom itself, then the idea that they spread will not be the traditional American idea of freedom, but in many ways the very opposite.

The radical right knows the stakes. The culture war they have declared is real. All the outrages I listed above are real: the Iraq War and its death and destruction, the destruction of our environment, the shrinking of our civil liberties, the devastation of our economy, the weakening of our educational system—all real, too real.

The Progressives' Mystery

What progressives see as outrages conservative extremists hail as actions promoting freedom. Many progressives explain this by saying that conservatives are just greedy and mean. For the most part, I disagree. Some may be greedy and mean, but mostly they understand themselves as moral—but with a different morality.

Freedom, as they are redefining it, is the keystone at the base of this morality and its political agenda. It unifies radical conservative positions on issues across a wide spectrum of domestic and foreign policy.

Progressives tend to fight issue by issue, while for the right, Bush's favorite phrase, "defending freedom" galvanizes the fight on many issues at once. Progressives are at a disadvantage against this worldview if they don't recognize it—and then counter it with a coherent and articulated vision of their own.

To illustrate this alien worldview, consider a line from George W. Bush's second inaugural address: "Self-government relies, in the end, on the government of the self." What does it mean? Why should it have a prominent place in his inaugural address?

I am not here to discuss mysteries for mystery's sake. If Americans are to hold on to freedom as they grew up with it, as they have come to know it and love it, then they have to understand that there is a radically different and frightening notion of what extremists on the right call "freedom" shaping our culture and our political life.

You can't stop it if you don't see it.

Test the people for fascism.....sounds fascist...

Thank you! I appreciate your words...

Power of Love,

I apologize for lying about being back shortly.
Stuff happened that kept me away from my imputer.
(The name for this box that my then 6 year old son gave it)

I DO appreciate your Spanish phrases but my Habla is confined to Amigo, cervesa and Gracias for the most part:).

But I do want to thank you in the most sincere way that I can for taking the time to further inform me about the RWA personalities and the research done on the subject.
It is obvious to me that you are MUCH more informed than I on the subject.
I was floored when I found out not that long ago that good, solid science had been done and that such people can be identified readily by very simple testing.
They are very frightening to me.
I don't know everything about anything but I do read a lot and was VERY surprised that I was totally unaware of it at all.
You sir have greatly added to my knowledge and given me further avenues to pursue.
And it is not just for my own edification but also to attempt to inform a few people dear to me on the subject.

I don't know if you are social scientist or a professional educator but you damn sure could be either of those things IMHO.

All the best to you my friend and I will look forward to catching more of what you have to say in the future.

with sincere thanks,

Jeff the bunny herding hillbilly:)

BE FOR KIDS - thanks for the update, I guess I'm pretty naive about commonsense things.

Good illustration of why this is a tag-team effort, over the long haul.

Thank you.

Namaste
__ __ __ __ We must be the change
__ __ __ __ we wish to see in the world __ Gandhi

nspire, the people the media are most responsive to are the corporate advertisers. Circulation is chump change. The only value of circulation is that the advertisers want exposure.

I learned this when my local paper, the Eugene Register-Guard came out with stories and editorials distorting the facts around the single payer health care initiative on the Oregon state ballot. A major advertiser is PeaceHealth and it's subsidiary, Sacred Heart Hospital. They take out pages of ads every day. The plan would have made that advertising moot. Some of their editorials and those of the Portland Oregonian repeated verbatim insurance industry talking points. The corporate takeover of our country is a complicated web.

I'm so ready for my tea now, QUEEN?, where did she go?

I bring great empowering and excellent N E W S:

Our belief in the systematic bought-and-paid-for inattention of the mass media may in fact be an illusion and gov't hype to completely dis-empower us to "work the system"., as evidence points to what they've actually been doing - and it's "simple" repetitive phones calls and threats to hurt circulation, not total subjugation!

OK, it might be simple, but that is hardly the same as easy, right?

Please follow this link here, for 'Confessions of "an editor who ran Bush propaganda"', where in summary that editor states that:

Every time, without fail, if there was anything on the wire that supported the Bush* administration and we did not run it prominently and "favorably," the very next day, we would get a stream of phone calls from angered conservatives who railed on and on about the "liberal media." These calls, not surprisingly, registered in the offices of our senior editors ("news editor" is not a "senior editor," by the way), and those editors -- who feared for their own jobs if they pissed off readers and lost circulation -- insisted that we present the news in a way that was favorable to the administration's position.

Wow, isn't insidiously clever to make us think we :
(1.) Have a liberal minding media, but then
(2.) Convince us that it's really not going to speak the TRUTH, but
(3.) it still may be POSSIBLE to find truth again, if we finesse it as well as the shrub's SHOCK troops do, as they're clearly massively funded and organized for the 'duration'.
(4.) The re-Thuglicans likely have a quite distributed tag-team fon tree for each media outlet ALL across the globe, and duplication of pressuring (to own editor) would only improve their (or OUR ODDs) for impact.
(5.) OK, don't even bother with FauxNews, but maybe 'the denuded emperor pix' will leak out?

What GRASS ROOTS ACTION does it take from any of US?

_a._ Any person willing to call, and call again (watching the news wires, and being aware each day)
_b._ Heavy hitter progressive thinkers that will ACT (like STARS, Media celebrities, actors, chamber Commerce, talkers) with real influence, and or patience.
_c._ Lots of 'cold calls' in attempts to find each media
_d._ Attempt to convert retrenched re-Thuglicans as "double-agents" for TRUTH, as they know who to call

Like I said initially, this is SIMPLE, but it's hardly EASY.

We ALL can Go for IT, as we deserve the best media that OUR money (remember WE are the actual circulation- right?) can influence and buy.

P.S. Thanks to inspiration posts throughout CD, and my apologies for cross-posting this to get this powerful message out, as bandwidth is likened to our CD's very blood coursing through the ethereal veins of OUR WEB.

Namaste
__ __ __ __ We must be the change
__ __ __ __ we wish to see in the world __ Gandhi

POWER OF LOVE (and AyMON)

Thanks so much for finding Geo Lakoff for me (again), I so much better need to know the twists of framing, to effectively surmount the glass slopes of PSYOPS and to be keenly able to really look within the illusionary "soul" of the DARK beast.

Namaste

Armybrat:

Well said!

Thanks for the reference to TV addiction. I, too, think we vastly underestimate its negative power.

ghostdansing: You make some good points - the politicalization of these words 'liberal' and 'conservative' has indeed warped their meanings. My entire family is very conservative - but quite progressive as well. This is common in Europe, although in a homogenous society, the application is slightly different - more like 'nationalist' - and there are distinct class differences that are not denied in the way Americans try to deny class distinctions.

I think this discussion has been more informative than the original article - at least we're hashing out the details that are often ignored.

I've noticed that my American conservative friends tend to define 'freedom' as 'I've got mine and you can go to hell' - as if good fortune was not an accident of fate, but something they deserve by their own merits. That's just plain stupid - but a very prevalent attitude. They just haven't been cut down to size yet by a disastrous war on their own land - the carnage of modern warfare does not respect class, or even wealth. (Just ask the Jews about WWII.)

I still believe that TV and pervasive advertising are doing a great deal of damage - the conservatives I know rarely watch TV, other than sports and war movies.

It is my opinion that humans respond rather strangely to TV because we evolved to value movement (and sound) highly - as survival mechanisms - it's a subconscious reaction that's hard to counter, other than turning the damned boob-tube off. (I don't watch it either, although I do watch movies and read extensively.) If you don't think it's a dangerous addiction, just try doing without it for a month - most people can't! Kids are even more mesmerized by optic and auditory stimulation - and even more addicted to it. (Cell phones, video games, etc.) The cost to communal activity and interpersonal relationships is disastrous for our society - and we've known that for decades, but do nothing about this terrible addiction.

It's going to take a social movement - a recognition of the true threat of non-human and/or vicarious (fake) stimulation before anything can change. Have to kick the habit before people can become 'normal' again - just like any other addiction. I don't see that happening - pervasive advertising promotes consumerism, which sells more advertising - it's a vicious cycle. But then, don't all addictions work that way?

Amigo de la tierra del planeta, Jeff,

(Now, about those rabbits...)

¡Guárdelo encima del buen trabajo que se reúne esos conejitos!

*******************************************

Since you asked that I pass along whatever info I have on the "Authoritarian Personality," here's a bit more.

First, a follow-up re- the 1950 study...

From the introduction:

"[Our] major concern was the 'potentially fascistic' individual, one whose [character] structure is such as to render him particularly suseptible to anti-democratic propaganda."

*******************************************

Michael Milburn in his 1996 book "The Politics of Denial," has also shared the results of his own research, aimed at testing some of the hypotheses of Adorno and his colleagues, and in particular their formulation regarding a likely origin point for the authoritarian personality.

Their theory suggests that rigid, punitive parents, by definition, cannot tolerate any expression of a child's powerful, spontaneous, and natural sexual and aggressive impulses; in fact, such parents will predictably respond to them with an exaggerated punitiveness; and this parental reaction leaves the child no alternative but to repress those impulses - that is, to ban them from consciousness.

However, emotions banished into the mind's basement - remain disturbing and tumultuous - whether or not "the owner of the house" is aware of their existence. Repression alone, as a defense against feelings, is rarely completely successful. To guard against the anxiety that these emotions might break through into conscious awareness - additional defenses must be erected - as one might pile larger and heavier pieces of furniture against a door to keep out an insistent intruder.

It is understandable that a child will respond to his parents' excessively punitive reactions with feelings of rage. But this very emotion is one the child dare not allow himself to acknowledge - or at least must not connect with his parents' behavior. This is not unusual; it's been shown repeatedly that a child, who is completely dependent on his parents, will, if forced to submit to abuse, tend to deny parental abusiveness, and continue to idealize them.

Adorno theorized that the beginnings of the formation of the authoritarian character style can be found in these humble and poignant origins. Since unresolved feelings do not simply "go away" with the passage of time and physical maturation, the original sexual and aggressive emotions - (and especially those feelings which arose in response to parents' suppression of those emotions) - far from becoming extinct, grow into a major determining force of adult outlooks and beliefs.

Aspects of themselves that the individual "disowned" long ago are "transformed" into a more "acceptable" form: they are "projected onto" (unconsciously attributed to) others - commonly members of a despised outgroup.

As Milburn points out:

"The beauty of projection lies in its psychic economy; once one has projected one's own "bad" impulses onto women, Jews, or African Americans, it is only reasonable to take out one's rage against them. After all, they are the ones who are oversexed, aggressive, sneaky, and so on. Individuals of this personality type, in addition to venting their anger on minority groups, find their own children perfect targets for displacement, and [often] treat their children the same way their parents treated them."

Later research by Milburn and associates has explored in more detail the complex relationship between authoritarianism and political ideology. Milburn discusses the many ways in which the United States as a society is remarkable in the intensity and degree of punitiveness that pervades its families, its schools and its criminal justice system.

He points out that in recent years we have seen increasing support for the death penalty, tougher sentencing laws, and even a return to chain-gangs and corporal punishment in prisons. The same punitive spirit also appears in calls to re-institute corporal punishment in schools, reduce benefits for children and the poor, abolish affirmative action, and withhold services from legal immigrants. Milburn's research suggests that a number of strong correlations exist between harsh child-rearing practices, and later adult support for such policies.

Milburn asks, "What purpose does the death penalty serve?" His answer is that such a policy allows individuals and groups to act out the anger, rage, and helplessness that they carry around within themselves… and to create a channel for directing these emotions at a target that is clearly and undeniably "evil".

Milburn argues that, in terms of public policy and popular sentiment, issues like the death penalty allow large numbers of people to participate in the relief and pleasure that can be found in a sense of retribution.

As an astute researcher and observer, he also takes notice of the ways in which the entertainment media play key roles in the interaction between individual denial and the political process.

The action/adventure genre, for instance, with its melodramatic presentation of good and evil, satisfies the public need for a target :~/ ------- one which the hero can justifiably eliminate -------- "often in grotesquely violent ways."

Clearly, many, many "conservatives" fit this description quite well!

I agree with the comment regarding our definition of "conservative"..... this is a very good article, however what "movement conservativism", what I call modern Republicanism, has become is NOT conservative at all.... it is rightist.

Also, we should revisit the concept of Liberalism as well. One of the great achievments of modern Republican propaganda has been to supress the use of the terms Liberal and liberal like they are some kind of dirty words.

Why should we have to call ourselves "progessives"? We are Liberals. We are liberal. America is Liberal..... the Constitution of the Unites States is Liberal as are the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

Fascists hate Liberals, Communists hate Liberals and so does the Republican Party of the United States.... they hate Liberalism, not because they are "Conservatives", but because they are rightists; yes, "rightest" as in fascist.

As a matter of fact, the terms Liberal and Conservative are not even antonyms. Being a "Conservative" in America should be about being conervative regarding our Liberal foundations. If it is not, then something is wrong.

I know this runs counter to the banal definitions we use in our political discourse; Liberalism and Conservativism being defined in terms of amalgamated voting clusters, starkly defined in terms of single-issue wedge votes.

But somewhere we lost perspective on the Liberal nature of our Constitutional government designed intentionally with checks and balances that undermine the potential for dictatorial hegemonies of any sort.

What we have in the White House, and for several years in Congressional majority a Party that is tacitly at issue with the Constitution itself; attempted at every opportunity to undermine the Liberal architecture of governance itself..... they are not "Conservatives".

Opps! I made a mistake on Lafoff's name in my post above that of Power of Love.

It is GEORGE LAKOFF and not ABRAHAM LAKOFF, who also was alinguist perhaps related to George.

At any rate, thanks POWER OF LOVE for a very nice expositary essay on FRAMING which is what I believ, as I said in my preceding post to Dichterfreund and Nspire that to get the American white working class masses of their dough and over come their racial insecurities as Dichter points out, progressives have to use the sophisticated techniques of Lafoff's framing program.

Good job Power of Love

Peace

Dear Jeff the bunny herder,

You wrote:

"Soooooo……is this the Dyer I've flipped past on TV? If so I just slid by assuming he was some kinda diet guru or something."

I would think yes, since Dyer often does programs for PBS. This is a man who has continued to grow and evolve. Very impressive and very articulate. IMHO he has much to teach us...and almost all of what he is teaching - about the human mind, heart, and soul - can bring us closer to inner as well as "outer" freedom.

Lakoff is one of the pre-eminent cognitive researchers addressing contemporary politics.

Here he is writing about the differences between what conservatives and progressives generally MEAN by the term: "FREEDOM..."

From the Intro to George Lakoff's book ---

"Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea"

www.whosefreedom.com/browse-book/introduction-to-whose-freedom/

Part II

The Mind and Freedom

I will be approaching the idea of freedom from the perspective of cognitive science—the interdisciplinary study of mind.

There are many excellent books on freedom written from various intellectual perspectives: intellectual history, political science, public policy, sociology, law, philosophy. The history of attempts to understand the idea of freedom has a great deal to teach us, and I am deeply grateful for the important scholarship in these areas. Nonetheless, these studies have limitations.

Freedom and other political ideas are products of the human mind.

They are inescapably the results of human mental processes. Cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, as these fields have developed in the past three decades, have given us a new and deeper understanding of mental processes and the ideas they generate, including political ideas

Cognitive science has produced a number of dramatic and important results—results that bear centrally on contemporary politics, though in a way that is not immediately obvious.

We think with our brains.

The concepts we think with are physically instantiated in the synapses and neural circuitry of our brains. Thought is physical. And neural circuits, once established, do not change quickly or easily.

Repetition of language has the power to change brains.

When a word or phrase is repeated over and over for a long period of time, the neural circuits that compute its meaning are activated repeatedly in the brain. As the neurons in those circuits fire, the synapses connecting the neurons in the circuits get stronger and the circuits may eventually become permanent, which happens when you learn the meaning of any word in your fixed vocabulary. Learning a word physically changes your brain, and the meaning of that word becomes physically instantiated in your brain.

For example, the word "freedom," if repeatedly associated with radical conservative themes, may be learned not with its traditional progressive meaning, but with a radical conservative meaning. "Freedom" is being redefined brain by brain.

Most thought is unconscious.

Because thought occurs at the neural level, most of our thinking is not available to conscious introspection. Thus, you may not know your own reasoning processes. For example, you may not be aware of the moral or political principles that lie behind the political conclusions that you reach quickly and automatically.

All thought uses conceptual frames.

"Frames" are mental structures of limited scope, with a systematic internal organization. For example, our simple frame for "war" includes semantic roles: the countries at war, their leaders, their armies, with soldiers and commanders, weapons, attacks, and battlefields. The frame includes specific knowledge:

In the United States, the president is the commander in chief and has war powers; war's purpose is to protect the country; the war is over and won when the other army surrenders. All words are defined with respect to frames.

Thus, declaring a "war on terror" against an elusive and amorphous enemy gave President Bush special war powers that could be extended and used indefinitely, even against American citizens. The Iraq War framed Iraq as a threat to our nation, making anyone against the war a traitor; when the United States marched into Baghdad, the war frame said the war was over—"Mission Accomplished."

Frames have boundaries.

Iraqi soldiers, tanks, and planes, and Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, were inside the war frame, since they fit the semantic roles of the frame. Outside the war frame were ordinary Iraqis—killed and maimed by the tens of thousands—the resentment in Iraqi families caused by those deaths and maimings, the damage to the Iraqi infrastructure, the Iraqi jobs lost because of that damage, the resistance to the American occupation, Iraqi culture and religion, the "insurgents," the ancient artifacts in the Iraqi museums, the relatives of American soldiers, American social programs cut, the mounting American deficit, the attitudes toward Americans around the world. When you think within a frame, you tend to ignore what is outside the frame.

Language can be used to reframe a situation.

The Bush administration first framed the Iraq War as "regime change," as though the country would remain intact except for who ran the government. Saddam Hussein would "fall"—symbolized by his statue falling, an image played over and over on American TV—and a new democratic government would immediately replace the old tyranny. As the insurgency began to emerge, it became clear that the old frame was inoperative, and a reframing took place: Iraq became "the main front in the war on terror."

Fox News used the headline "War on Terror" whenever footage of the insurgency was shown. During the 2004 election, Republicans were advised not to say "Iraq War" but to use "war on terror" instead, whenever possible. At the time of the election, three out of four Bush supporters believed that Saddam Hussein had given "substantial support" to al-Qaeda terrorists, as shown in a poll a few weeks before the election by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes. The reframing worked.

Frames characterize ideas; they may be "deep" or "surface" frames.

Deep frames structure your moral system or your worldview. Surface frames have a much smaller scope. They are associated with particular words or phrases, and with modes of communication. The reframing of the Iraq War as a "front in the war on terror" was a surface reframing. Words are defined mostly in terms of surface frames. Examples are labels like "death tax," "activist judges," "frivolous lawsuits," "liberal elites," and "politically correct," which are used by the right to trigger revulsion.

In politics, whoever frames the debate tends to win the debate.

Over the past thirty-five years, conservatives have framed most of the issues in American political discourse.

Deep frames are where the action is.

The deep frames are the ones that structure how you view the world. They characterize moral and political principles that are so deep they are part of your very identity. Deep framing is the conceptual infrastructure of the mind: the foundation, walls, and beams of that edifice. Without the deep frames, there is nothing for the surface message frames to hang on.

As we shall see, the conservative reframing of "freedom" is a deep reframing. The surface frames that go with slogans and clever phrases are effective only given the deep frames.

Most thought uses conceptual metaphors.

Metaphorical thought is normal and used constantly, and we act on these metaphors. In a phrase like "tax relief," for example, taxation is seen as an affliction to be eliminated. Moral and political reasoning are highly metaphorical, but we are usually unaware of the metaphors we think with and live by.

Most thought does not follow the laws of logic.

Thinking in frames and metaphors is normal and gives rise to inferences that do not fit laws of logic as mathematical logicians have formulated them. Political and economic reasoning uses frames and metaphors rather than pure laws of logic. Since metaphors and frames may vary from person to person, not all forms of reason are universal.

The frames and metaphors in our brains define common sense.

Commonsense reasoning is just the reasoning we do using the frames and metaphors in our brains. The conservative domination of public political discourse has been changing what Americans mean by common sense.

Our commonsense ideas may not fit the world.

Frames and metaphors are mental constructs that we use to understand the world and to live our lives, but the world does not necessarily accommodate itself to our mental constructs.

Frames trump facts.

Suppose a fact is inconsistent with the frames and metaphors in your brain that define common sense. Then the frame or metaphor will stay, and the fact will be ignored. For facts to make sense they must fit existing frames and metaphors in the brain. Facts matter, and proper framing—both deep and surface—is needed to communicate the truth about our economic, social, and political realities.

Important national policies are made on the basis of deep frames, which characterize our most abiding values and define who we are morally, socially, and politically, and facts, that is, realities made urgent by those values. If facts are to make sense and be perceived as urgent, they must be framed in terms of the deep values that make them urgent.

Conservatives and progressives think with different frames and metaphors.

In Moral Politics, I showed in great detail how complex conservative and progressive systems of thought are organized via metaphor around idealized models of strict father and nurturant parent families. This is hard to see when you think issue by issue, but it becomes clear when we understand how issues are organized across issue areas.

Contested concepts have uncontested cores.

Important ideas like freedom that involve values and have a complex internal structure are usually contested—that is, different people have different understandings of what they mean. In general, contested concepts have uncontested cores—central meanings that almost everyone agrees on. The contested parts are left unspecified, blanks to be filled in by deep frames and metaphors.

For example, coercion impinges on freedom. But different people mean different things by "coercion." In the uncontested case, "coercion" is not further specified; it is left vague, a blank to be filled in.

Rational thought requires emotion.

It used to be believed that emotion mostly interfered with rationality. But when people lose the capacity to feel emotions, they also lose the capacity to think rationally. Conservatives have learned far better than liberals how to take advantage of the links between emotion and rationality. They are especially adept at using fear to influence voters.

* * *

What does all this have to do with freedom? Everything.

As will become clear, freedom, like any other social and political concept, is composed of frames and metaphors.

It is also what is called an "essentially contested concept": There will always be radical disagreement about it. It has an uncontested core that we all agree on. But it is a vague freedom; all the important blanks remain to be filled in. When the blanks are filled in by progressives and conservatives, what results are two radically different ideas expressed by the same word, "freedom." Currently, radical conservatives, as part of the "culture war" they have declared, are fighting to fill in the blanks and thereby redefine freedom in their way. Currently the right is winning this battle.

Americans need to know what is happening to their most precious idea.

cruxpuppy November 23rd, 2007 1:49 pm

Pretty well summed it up. No need to be repetative. As to Mr. Green's leftist rant, Good Morning Your Majesty!

DICTEURFREUND November 24th, 2007 4:19 pm

NSPIRE November 24th, 2007 6:14 pm

Many thanks for your comments and for going forwards with an inquiry. I believe that would help progressives frame their own "psyops" following the linguist Abraham Lakoff's framing method.

The race/class split within the working classes is a difficult one to crack at their level of pop TV- mushed brains. At our level, we may probably figure out something; but anything effective and efficient will never see the light of day here, least of all in the National Enquirer and USA Today, or on American Idol.

Well, no matter. We are very fast approaching a complete breakdown of the American financial situation. That may be the shock that jolts the white working class into some form of French-like solidarity of the working classes across race and cultural barriers.

BTW, Dicterfreund I have regularly read your posts - - they have that mature Contentinental European substance and sharpness. NSPIRE, I have read your posts since you first appeared on CD several weeks ago. Tthey are focused,insightful and intellectually honest. Thanks to you both and a few others here on CD. Otherwise I would be long gone from here.

Peace

Thank you David.
When we know the truth, we're dangerous.
How wonderful is that?
Makes the blood sing in my veins.

PowerofLove,

Amigo, I was up most of the night involved in bonding a pair of house bunnies.
I'm afraid I shot my half awake mouth off a moment ago to a nice fellow about guns:).
I don't wish to stick the rest of my leg in my mouth just yet......
Soooooo......is this the Dyer I've flipped past on TV?
If so I just slid by assuming he was some kinda diet guru or something.
The things that you wrote are VERRRRRY interesting to me.
Here is my email address: jlmoehring@mindspring.com.

I would very much appreciate ANY useful info on this. Please, if it's not too much trouble, send it my way via this forum or my email address.
After a few winks I'll be back.

all the best,

jeff the bunny herder

Ah, Doeth, "end social security," luckily your pipe dream has no following. Old and infirmed, begging and dying in the streets, a libertarian's paradise. No need to waste societal money on these useless old bodies.

Paul_ GA,

I agree in principle with your second amendment stance.

To be honest, I think that it is pretty clear to any unbiased reader that the Second Amendment was a very specific law written to address the fears of some of the colonies concerning not having a militia with which to fight against an overreaching Federal government in either New York or Washington.....I'm not sure which it was at that exact time.

I PERSONALLY do not favor the "right" of any clown with a few bucks being able to buy a gun.

For the record I grew up in and reside in Alabama.
In damn near every corner of the house there was a loaded rifle. They had all rusted from disuse but my Dad felt somehow safer I guess.
Strangely though we never locked our doors day or night.

My point is this. You or I may feel safer by possessing a weapon. But unless we defend ourselves against a dumb, hapless crack head who really only wants a TV to pawn THEY ARE USELESS.......
Contrary to popular opinion ALMOST NO BURGLARS enter a house with people in it.
Like I said......most of them are either lazy or addicted to drugs. NOT KILLERS.....

The only reason I can think of to keep weapons in this country is to protect yourself from the STATE.
There is absolutely nothing even a thousand citizens armed with legal firearms can do if even a Company of typical US soldiers comes to get them.
I'm a veteran and I know that.
And if that Company runs into trouble your Bushmaster, or whatever ain't gonna do much against aircraft.
I'm not trying to argue a fine point with you my friend.
But any argument about keeping firearms to "protect our freedom" against a tyrannical government is kinda goofy if you ask me.
Unless the laws change to allow us to purchase REAL MILITARY WEAPONRY.

Would someone please tell me what is so great about Ron Paul??????? I have listened to the man and all I hear is another whacked out right wing nut job running for President who wants to screw the country up some more. He is going to get rid of the Federal Reserve! What the hell for????? He is going to get rid of this and then that! He is like Bush he is going to remake the Federal Government into what he wants it to be. Guess who will suffer in the end for this bubble headed move???? What he has to say makes literally no sense at all! He is a self-proclaimed Liberatian. I have yet to see a Liberatian who isn't a worse right wing nut case than what is currently in the Republican party. There ideas are further off base than the Bushes are. His supporters talk about the Constitution in the same sentence as they do him. I doubt the man has a clue what that piece of paper is all about. So 'talk me some sense here' and I might be impressed!

A Ronald Reagan Conservative is:

Someone with an affable smile, constantly grinning from ear to ear while they give you a big bear hug and quietly stab you in the back and steal your wallet and leave you bleeding to death on the floor as they walk away still smiling.

"Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen."
Mort Sahl

Incidentally I am for Dennis Kucinich.

Professor, Green, with all due respect, you cannot save the rest of the Bill of Rights and either ignore, or attempt to infringe upon, the right to keep and bear arms. An armed citizenry is a genuinely free citizenry; a country in which the police and military have a monopoly on deadly force (and the only other people who are armed are the criminals) is a country on the road to tyranny, no matter how "free" it seems to be otherwise.

I write like this, not because I'm a "conservative", but because I'm a libertarian. And, BTW, I quit the NRA ages ago because all it is now is a fund-raising machine for the Repubs.

And, incidentally, I'm for Ron Paul.

Oh, OH, ME ME ME!!! I Know the answer!

Because they're scared of free,empowered people.

Plain and simple. Conservatives are scared of People.

"There is no need to aid people"

This is the creed of the right, no matter which label they prefer: let people drown if their poor, let them die if they can't afford drug companies' prices, let them be tortured or shot by privateers if they happen to be the wrong color in the wrong place without proper papers.

The Market Fairy will wave a wand, and education will happen and roads will happen and freedom will happen because because because . . .

Uhm... Did you just equate the British Empire to the modern conservative movement? And you did the same with the Confederate States of America. From your first statement, you advocate a rebellion, and that the 'oppressors' should be destroyed, and as soon as you say that you say that the 'oppressors' should oppress! From a certain standpoint, taking away slavery was a violation of freedom of property, even if the practice is evil and vile (the argument is still there).

You seem to forget that politics have been about convenience and power since day one (Machiavelli FTW!). We propped up horrid dictatorships to stop the spread of communism. It would be like giving weapons to a maniac to fight Hitler. Not that communism and Nazism are at all similar, just from the standpoint that they are fighting us, and should be fought against.

As a classical libertarian, I have to agree with you on the sexuality, birth, etc. thing. Personal freedoms should be left alone.

The Kevorkian method is currently denounced by all major political parties, so your point is lost on all ears, bud.

The government should never block science, ever. If anything the government should be doing the research themselves.

Regardless of what the republicans think, they do not support economic freedom. They shit things up just as bad as democrats, but in a different way. The government should do just that, govern. There is no need to aid people.

The Iraq war could of been an assassination. Pop Saddam, replace him with the saner of the sons, and pay him into our pocket. Done. Casualties? One.

Again, you contradict yourself. Abraham Lincoln, who you previously stated to be a liberal, fighting against the "fight against the effort to end slavery" (double negative!). But, he also suspended Habeas Corpus. Gasp. What am I to do? Once again, it's a matter of convienence and power.

Conservatism is about stopping change, i.e. conserve. I mean it's in the word, pretty stupid to say otherwise.

And as for taxes? The Republicans are bad, the Democrats are worse. We should cut about half our military spending. Not subsidize, not privatize, but end social security, remove the Departments of Homeland Security. Consolidate the Departmens of Education, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, Commerce, Interior, Energy, and Agriculture into the Department of Health and Human Services. Bam. There's six cabinet posts now, half the needs for taxes are gone.

If you are saying "what about education?" don't worry. The education portion would simply govern a privatized educational system, telling them what to teach, testing, etc.. Similar systems for energy will be used, with that group telling energy companies how to act. If any of the governed bodies ignore them, then a police force is sent.

Basically, freedom is more important that equality, and a responsible government focuses attention of freedom only.

I also found some interesting exerpts from George Lakoff's 2006 book, Whose Freedom?.

It deals primarily with what conservatives and progressives generally MEAN by the term:

"FREEDOM" .......

--- This is Part I ---

From the Intro:

"Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea"

In the Name of Freedom

Ideas matter. Perhaps no idea has mattered more in American history than the idea of freedom. The central thesis of this book is simple. There are two very different views of freedom in America today, arising from two very different moral and political worldviews dividing the country.

The traditional idea of freedom is progressive. One can see traditional values most clearly in the direction of change that has been demanded and applauded over two centuries. America has been a nation of activists, consistently expanding its most treasured freedoms:

The expansion of citizen participation and voting rights from white male property owners to non-property owners, to former slaves, to women, to those excluded by prejudice, to younger voters

The expansion of opportunity, good jobs, better working conditions, and benefits to more and more Americans, from men to women, from white to nonwhite, from native born to foreign born, from English speaking to non-English speaking

The expansion of worker rights/freedom from inhumane working conditions–through unionization: from slave labor to the eight-hour day, the five-day week, worker compensation, sick leave, overtime pay, paid vacations, pregnancy leave, and so on

The expansion of public education from grade school to high school to college to postgraduate education

The expansion of knowledge through science from isolated figures like Benjamin Franklin to scientific institutions in the great universities and governmental institutions like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health

The expansion of public health and life expectancy

The expansion of consumer protection through more effective government regulation of immoral or irresponsible corporations and class action suits within the civil justice system

The expansion of diverse media and free speech from small newspapers to the vast media/Internet possibilities of today

The expansion of access to capital from wealthy landholders and bankers to all the ways ordinary people–more and more of them–can borrow money today

The expansion, throughout the world, of freedom from colonial rule– for the most part with the backing of American foreign policy.

These are among the progressive trends in American history. Progress has not always been linear, and the stages have been far from perfect, but the trends have been there—until recently. The rise of radical conservatism in America threatens to stop and reverse these and other progressive trends together with the progressive ideal of freedom that has propelled them all.

Indeed, the reversal has proceeded at a rapid pace. Voting rights are being threatened, good-paying jobs eliminated or exported, benefits cut or eliminated. Public education is being gutted and science is under attack. The media is being consolidated, corporate regulations eliminated, the civil justice system threatened, public health programs cut. Unions are being destroyed and benefits taken away. There are new bankruptcy laws limiting access to capital for ordinary people. And we are seeing the promotion of a new form of free-market colonialism in the guise of free-trade agreements and globalization, and even the use of military force to support these policies.

But for radical conservatives, these developments are not movements away from freedom but toward their version of freedom. Where most Americans in the last century have seen an expansion of freedoms, these conservatives see curtailments of what they consider "freedom."

What makes them "conservatives" is not that they want to conserve the achievements of those who fought to deepen American democracy. It's the reverse: They want to go back to before these progressive freedoms were established. What they want to conserve is, in most cases, the situation prior to the expansion of traditional American ideas of freedom: before the great expansion of voting rights, before unions and worker protections and pensions, before civil rights legislation, before public health and environmental protections, before Social Security and Medicare, before scientific discoveries contradicted fundamentalist religious dogma.

That is why they harp so much on narrow so-called originalist readings of the Constitution—on its letter, not its spirit—on "activist judges" rather than an inherently activist population.

We will be asking three questions:

How are radical conservatives achieving their reversal of freedom?

Why do they want to reverse traditional freedoms?

What do they mean by "freedom"?

Freedom defines what America is—and it is now up for grabs. The radical right is in the process of redefining the very idea. To lose freedom is a terrible thing; to lose the idea of freedom is even worse.

The constant repetition of the words "liberty" and "freedom" by the right-wing message machine is one of the mechanisms of the idea theft in progress. When the words are used by the right, their meaning shifts—gradually, almost imperceptibly, but it shifts.

The speeches at the 2004 Republican National Convention constantly invoked the words "freedom," "free," and "liberty." George W. Bush, in his second inaugural address, used these words forty-nine times in a twenty-minute speech—every forty-third word.

And if you take into account the opposites—"tyranny," "dictatorship," "slavery," and so on—as well as associated words like "democracy," the proportion rises higher. From freedom fries to the Freedom Film Festival, the right wing is claiming the words "liberty" and "freedom" as their brand: Jerry Falwell's National Liberty Journal, Liberty University, Liberty Counsel, Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, and the list goes on.

To many progressives, the right's use of "freedom" is pure hypocrisy, and George W. Bush is the leading hypocrite. How, liberals ask, can Bush mean anything at all by "freedom" when he imprisons hundreds of people in Guantánamo indefinitely with no due process in the name of freedom; when he sanctions torture in the name of freedom; when he starts a preemptive war on false premises and retroactively claims it is being waged in the name of freedom; when he causes the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians in the name of freedom; when he supports oppressive regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, while claiming to promote freedom in the Islamic world; when he sanctions the disenfranchisement of African-American voters in Florida and Ohio in the name of freedom; when he orders spying on American citizens in America without a warrant in the name of freedom; when, in the name of freedom, he seeks to prevent women from making their own medical decisions, to stop loving couples who want to marry, to stop families from being able to remove life supports when their loved ones are all but technically dead.

How can Bush mean anything by "freedom" when he works against Franklin Delano Roosevelt's four freedoms: freedom of speech and religion and freedom from want and fear? His policies work against freedom from want by pushing more Americans into poverty, by denying even a minuscule increase in the minimum wage, by seeking to end Social Security.

By promoting a siege mentality—announcing orange alerts and talking relentlessly about "terror"—he creates and maintains a sense of fear, virtually a permanent state of emergency, rather then offering freedom from fear. The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed at the height of this fear, provides new police powers to the government, abridging personal freedoms.

He works against freedom of speech by encouraging media consolidation, by spying on telephone calls, by having the IRS threaten the tax status of groups that speak out against him, by requiring all attendees at his public speeches to sign oaths of loyalty to him, and by classifying more government documents than any other recent administration. He works against freedom of the press by secretly paying journalists to promote his policies and by denying access to reporters who criticize his policies. And he works against freedom of religion by seeking to impose school prayer upon those who don't want to pray, by allowing federal funds to be used to promote one religion (Christianity), by tacit support of bringing a religious idea—"intelligent design"—into the classroom, and by pushing faith-based governmental programs of all kinds, programs that put taxpayer money and social control into the hands of churches approved by his administration.

How, progressives ask, can he possibly mean what he says when he claims that such actions promote "freedom"? The conclusion of many progressives is that the use of the word in the face of these policies tends to make the word meaningless.

Yes, Bush's acts do contradict the progressive idea of freedom—my idea of freedom. But progressives are engaging in fantasy when they assume that their idea of freedom is the only possible one and thereby deny that the radical right has any idea at all of freedom. This form of denial results in the view that Bush is saying nothing when he speaks of "freedom," that he is just degrading the language, that he is no more than a cynical and opportunistic propagandist who doesn't mean what he says.

In thinking this way, progressives are blinding themselves to the real and constant progress by the radical right toward cultural and political domination. It is tempting to dismiss Bush and members of the radical right as liars and hypocrites—but this is too easy. It is much scarier to think of Bush and others on the right as meaning what they say—as having a concept of "freedom" so alien to progressives that many progressives cannot even understand it, much less defend against it. Even more troubling is that the right's gradual takeover of the idea of freedom is going by unnoticed by a great many people.

Most Americans believe that "freedom" has only one meaning. It serves the purposes of the right when the public believes that conservatives and progressives are using the same idea, disagreeing only over which side is its more vigorous champion. It serves the purposes of the right to say that there is no theft, not even a challenge, going on. The longer the attempted theft remains invisible, the better its chance of succeeding.

Even Democrats with impeccable liberal credentials are helping the radical right by engaging in denial. I was a guest on an NPR program just after Bush's second inaugural, discussing the remarkable repetition of the word "freedom" in the speech. The guest who followed me was the brilliant and articulate Elaine Kamarck, an important figure in the Clinton administration, now at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She denied that there was, or could be, more than one meaning of freedom. "Freedom is freedom is freedom," she declared with utter assurance, echoing Gertrude Stein's "A rose is a rose is a rose."

The right-wing talk-show host Rush Limbaugh soon echoed Kamarck: There's one idea of freedom and only one. If Bush-Limbaugh freedom is the only idea of freedom in America, then the radical right has won.

But they have not won, not yet!

If they had won, if freedom had been redefined throughout America in their terms, if our freedom were gone and theirs were in its place, then there would be no need for them to repeat the word over and over and over. The point of repetition is to change not just people's minds but also their very brains. If they had succeeded in getting their view of freedom into the brains of all, or even most, Americans, then they could simply take freedom as they define it for granted.

Hi Jeff,

This from Wayne Dyer's 1980 book, The Sky's the Limit, re- TAPs::

He first states that anyone who is an alert observer of society can plainly see how few people think for themselves... Then he asserts that:

"some social scientists have estimated that as many as 77% of the people in our culture (Western civilization) manifest more authoritarian qualities than nonauthoritarian on a daily basis."

Here are some of the main characteristics that one can expect to find in a person whose basic orientation can be characterized as "authoritarian." Attributes include: intolerance of ambiguity, dichotomous thinking, rigidity of thought, punitiveness, anti-intellectualism, militaristic patriotism, conformity, and ethnocentrism.

1) INTOLERANCE OF AMBIGUITY:

The typical authoritarian experiences a strong need to have things spelled out specifically. Unless there is a yes or no answer to every question, no matter how complex, they show signs of anxiety. As a result the authoritarian has little tolerance for people who are working in intrinsically ambiguous areas - philosophers, artists, social or political leaders. It might be said that authoritarians feel compelled to insist that every piece of language they hear or read "mean just one thing"…which is clear and readily identifiable.

2) DICHOTOMOUS THINKING:

Authoritarians exhibit a compulsion to divide everything and everyone into mutually exclusive groups - good/bad, right/wrong, friend/enemy - without taking into account the subtleties, qualifications or even downright mistakes that may be involved. "Dichotomous thinking" can be considered an outgrowth of intolerance of ambiguity; it is a sort of "rush to judgment" which serves to provide an immediate (but illusory, and generally false) sense of certainty.

3) RIGIDITY OF THOUGHT:

The rigidity in the way an authoritarian perceives the world and himself is often exhibited as a generalized unwillingness to consider perspectives that conflict with his (or her) own preconceived ideas. Dyer notes, that faced with such a situation, "the last thing [such a person] will do…is to listen, evaluate, and be prepared to change his position if it seems warranted. It is virtually impossible for him ever to [sincerely] admit having been wrong or having learned anything from anyone [with views different from himself]…You will never hear [him or her] say [and mean]: 'Well, you have a point there.'" Dyer goes on to say that - with true, "dyed-in the wool" authoritarians - rational discussion [regarding emotionally laden issues]…"is never a cooperative effort to reach agreement, beginning with mutual respect on each side…The most frustrating thing about authoritarians is their inaccessibility: most of the time, there is literally no way to reach them."

4) ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM:

Dyer states that authoritarians often display a mistrust of "intellectuals," particularly people who make their living as thinkers, but he adds this caveat: "Today of course, there is no lack of authoritarians in academic fields; however…these people tend to be devoted followers of some 'school of thought,' and more often than not…are notable only for blindly following what some 'great man' has taught."

5) ANTI-INTROSPECTION

Authoritarians tend to resist looking into their own motivations. Dyer observes that one of the things such a person seems most afraid of - is admitting (to others or to themselves) that they have not always been "right." Dyer speculates that authoritarians reject looking inward because they have come to rely so strongly on external support systems to convince themselves of their own value.

6) PARANOIA

Dyer believes that authoritarians' basic distrust of themselves tends to make them suspicious about every human encounter. Because they find it so difficult to admit that they, themselves, are responsible (at least in part) for creating many of the problems they complain about, they feel compelled to blame someone else. As Dyer notes - "even to [be able to] support the relatively mild paranoia of the majority of authoritarians…it is necessary for them to imagine a multitude of enemies out there. (Yet these same individuals seldom allow themselves to be moved to greater sympathy or support for others who really are being persecuted). Their paranoid picture of the world [usually] simply leads such people to withdraw into ever-tightening spirals of paranoia."

7) ANTI-WEAKNESS

Authoritarians tend not to support help for the weak because they equate weakness with evil; so, the outcasts of society are responsible for their own situations. It is their own fault if they did not "make it to the center of the herd." Another implication of this view is that "winning" is all that really matters: if you are weak, or part of a "weak team" you should be feel ashamed.

8) POWER WORSHIP

The other side of the anti-weakness coin is the authoritarian's typical worship of power, no matter how the power is being used. This trait also speaks to authoritarians' habit of compulsively looking outside of themselves for measures and validation of their worth.

9) ETHNOCENTRISM

This trait has been considered both one of the most common and most dangerous of all the typical authoritarian qualities, because it is most capable of leading to violence. Ethnocentrism in general, and racism in particular are, in turn, connected with the phenomenon of anti-minority thinking and behavior. Dyer points out that such a set of attitudes promotes alienation between all kinds of "minorities" and "majorities." He goes on to argue that, more recently, focus on being part of a "great majority" has replaced allegiance to a specific ethnic group; this trait, he notes, fits with the "authoritarian knack for covering up the fact that they are not flawless."

10) CONFORMITY and SUBMISSIVENESS

Authoritarian people tend to be governed by opinions and social forces outside of themselves; generally, they are quite weak when it comes to relying on their own judgments, instincts, independent sets of values, etc. They find it much easier and more comforting to adjust to imposed standards than to look inward for the keys to guiding their own lives. As Adorno has said, "Conformity is one of the major expressions of lack of an internal focus."

So, it seems natural for such people to be submissive to established authority and conventional modes of behavior. And we can see here, the way in which a person with a strong authoritarian inclination will inevitably be quite suggestible and gullible, particularly to propaganda and hype.

This vulnerability can be contrasted with the relative resiliency of more autonomous individuals who are willing to challenge authority, and "who see no reason to accept things as they are - simply because an authority figure or institution decrees it should be so."

The double standard which is implicit in the authoritarian stance is particularly evident in the way such people think of the parent /child relationship (which can be considered as a model for their approach to all relationships). The concept of the parent as absolute authority is sacrosanct. The authority of the parent is seen as a one-way street, in which the parent deserves respect, simply for being an authority figure.

Embedded within this conceptualization is the idea that authority itself must be unchallengeable - because a challenge to any authority is seen as a threat to all order, and authority. So, as might be expected, parents who act in an authoritarian fashion toward their children will feel strongly motivated to act in a submissive fashion toward their own parents.

It would be fair to say, then, that for such people the "game" they are most comfortable playing in life is that of "follow the leader."

Power of Love,

Thanks for your response.
You proffered great questions which I will address in "25 words or less"

1) I'm not a social scientist. But my research, as a layman, makes it very clear that the ability to hold two or more diametrically opposing beliefs at the same time is both an astounding trick and one of the signature markers of this group.
ALL of the tests that I TOOK and the testimony of Altermeyer seem to prove that this anomaly is common to ALL of the RWA's.

2)The figure of approximately 25% of the US population falling into the RWA classification is based upon his recent testing.
The very same article and included tests that I took.
His recent testing, and I assume ONGOING testing is the basis of John Dean's book "Conservative's Without Conscience".
I did enough reading, and Altermeyer was not hesitant to address some of the limitations of the earliest studies.
But I have no doubt whatsoever that Altermeyer and others have devoted the time and sheer numbers necessary to fine tune the science.
There is a dangerous, mentally damaged, segment of the population in the US that are ripe for fascism.
And it(they)are gnawing at the door frames.
It may be only 25% or so.
But they are by nature zealots and it has never taken more than a sliver of any group to seize power and unleash the worst of human excess.
I am doing all that I can to scrape a few bucks up to get the hell out of here.

all the best,

Jeff Moehring

Hi J. Coghlan,

Welcome to our COMMONS, a place to met and share ideas and dreams with some of the most thought provoking intellects, which are melded into compassionate wisdom, all of us striving to empower and inspire the LIGHT of the true ONE (within us all). We hold the torches high so that others can see for themselves.

Thank you for your sharing and clear compassion of so many less fortunate, we are all pleased (and curious) when new souls join into our midst, as coming here to this site is like (for me) traveling 99 44/100 % of the way we all eventually need to go.

Namaste

( Commentary By J. Coghlan )

Roseann Barr said, "A poor person voting Republican, is like a chicken voting for Curnal Sanders."

The poor people who vote Republican, are rich people wannabes. They think that they are going to become rich, and all of these conservative ideas are going to be good for them. Ether that or they are just stupid, and believe the lies that they are told.

Conservatives, underlying goal is to create a class system. It offer more freedom for the better half, at the expense of the poor. At the end of the nineteenth century the rich were filthy rich and the poor were piss poor. With an abundance of unemployed poor people, the rich were able to hire them to work for peanuts. The affluent were able to afford, maids, cooks, chauffeurs,gardeners,and all kinds of servants. This sure is freedom. Freedom to not have to do all of these things for your self. The rich would love to see a return to the days when they could stick their foot into the air, and have their toenails trimmed.

The present Conservative Administration is doing its best to make the rich richer. The obvious is, taxing the rich less and, taxing the poor more. Lotteries, cigarette taxes, robbery at the gas pumps, and heating oil price gouging are disproportionately burdensome to the poor and middle class. Our horrible health care system is not being fixed, because the wealthy are making to much money on it the way it is. Illegal drugs are the largest industry in the nation. The drug lobbies in Washington are making sure that our lawmakers do not pass any sensible drug laws. It is a cash cow for the privileged, with an atrocious cost to the poor. The war in Iraq is putting Billions into the pockets of the privileged. The cost is payed by the middle class ,and the poor. At home, and in Iraq the big cost is in human life, suffering and misery. You see, rich peoples children really don't fight in wars. In fact, the wealthy don't pay anything for wars. They make money on them. Our Rich Commander and Chief, got a safe place at home with the National Guard during the Vietnam War. Even than, he went AWOL.

We poor and middle class have something far more powerful than money, our numbers. There are a hell of a lot more of us than there are of them. We need the will to use our power to make positive change. A government representing all the people is the only thing that can be called a true Democracy.

It is sad to see working people lousing their homes due to sliding interest rate mortgages. Its not so sad to see this swindle back fire on the Big Banks. Do you know anyone who wants to by a house? The banks have got lots of them. I heard they were going to have a going out of business sale.

When money has become more important than people, greed has always caused the bottom to fall out. Sometime this has to happen to revive our better half, and get us moving in a good direction again.

Hi Jeff (Moehring),

Thanks for you comment. I am familiar with some of the points you make, and I have a few questions.

I've read Adorno's (et.al) book The Authoritarian Personality (1950). And yes, that was, as you say, a research project attempting to understand how the German people could have "allowed" the holocaust to happen.

Lot's of social scientists have pointed out flaws in the study's research methodolgy. But my strong sense is that the phenomena they were studying - the authoritarian character structure - is both real (in terms of intra- and interpersonal dynamics, and relevant in terms of our times).

I'm also aware that Altemeyer has done a great deal to show a way out of the cul-de-sac where this line of research had gotten stuck. He has essentially (and virtually singlehandedly) revitalized this research direction, and brought it back into public view, as something it would behoove us to pay close attention to.

You wrote:

"They [authoritarian personality types] are perfectly capable of holding two incompatible philosophies at the same time, as you alluded to.

"In fact, IT IS ONE OF THE MOST CONSISTENT COMMONALITIES..

"They are in fact mentally damaged.
That's not the term they use, but it is basically correct in a layman's sense. THEY ARE MENTALLY ILL…… there I said it."

Now, I know that in Orwell's 1984 --- Newspeak and Doublethink involved just this kind of ability:

"to hold in mind two utterly contradictory and incompatible notions or philosophies at the same time."

My question is - is this your formulation about TAP's (Auth Persons...rather obvious, isn't it)? or research you've read and that's been corroborated?

Also your statement:

"And surprisingly there is about 25% of the US population in that group. The same amount as the people that still support the Cheney/Bush Cabal."

Again, did you get the 25% from the research or is this your guess-timation?

Just a few other notes on this:

Dyer, in his book The Sky's the Limit offers a very readable summary of Adorno's work on this subject. He also makes the point that most of us, due to our conditioning, have "authoritarian traits" and that we are usually unaware of them. This puts the estimated percentage of people with authoritarian leanings much, much higher.

I appreciate your addressing this critical issue which I believe is at the bottom of so many of our world's problems.

STOP the RE-THUGLICANS! They have to lie or LOSE! Yeah, I think I've absorbed the narrative. Somebody get me a vegetarian latte, I thirst.....

armybrat, you sound pretty progressive to me.

armybrat,

Which of the three conservativisms do you identify with? The sort which has played out in current events (Bush's assault on civil liberties, big government, tax & spend, cronyism, torture, etc.) The sort which is the "true" conservativism that (of course) nobody in D.C. actually observes, or an abstract/academic conservativism (reference some dead historical figure's theoretical writings here).

If one can toss aside bigotry, racism, chauvenism, jingoism -- the usual wedges -- most of us are trying to find little more than honesty, respect for reason/science, justice and fairness. We're advocating for some sort of utilitarian balance, probably a system which grants the most freedom to ordinary people, and carefully checks the power of the powerful (whatever hat they wear) -- since they stand to do the most damage.

It's not worth anyone's while to label this left/right or liberal/conservative. But I think the "progressive" label fits pretty well.

Somebody said above: 'it remains unclear whether anyone who could turn this country around has the least interest in running.'

I suspect this is in fact true; not unclear at all. Democracy requires decency in its citizenry, but also a decent option pool from which representive leaders are chosen. And anymore, what we have is no pool, but more like a swamp.

It's clear that in the US, leadership-gifted people who're also honest, emotionally balanced, intelligent, politically moderate, etc., are increasingly repelled [and eliminated] by the knotted filth of our national politics and MSM-twisted pop culture. So much so, that even thoughts of serving noble public ends are probably deflected by such good people as momentary masochistic impulses.

But believing that any political White Knight, no matter who, can singlehandedly untangle such a mess as our country's become, is like a chef believing its possible to ungel a poisoned set pudding.

With more and more people gaggin on, getting sick, and dying from the present fare, common sense political recipies and good chefs stand some chance of re-emerging, I suppose.

Most of us personally need to believe our country's turn-around will happen. Especially at Holiday Times when its almost impossible to sing fammily cheer with national threnody. Frankly, I'm not too good at compartmentalizing my head this way.

AYMON and DICHTERFREUND,

I'm digging through some old bookmarks to find a wonderfully engaging web site and articles that directly address your question posed earlier, of:

"Why is extreme, fascistic "conservatism" of the last 25 years since Reagan still so attractive to tens of millions of Americans, most of whom have received nothing of value in their economic welfare from it? Deeply puzzling to any human with even an IQ of 90."

For now, is escapes my search, but perhaps a fruitful googling might track it down again? Here's what I recall:

1. The shrub & Co. are using PSYOPs (psychological operations) against us (and we're paying for this totally illegal crap through our own taxes?). This puts a whole new meaning on "taxing."
2. Psychological manipulation is formulated upon some 6 (or so) key and very widely accepted human needs (beyond Erikson, and within the last few years).
3. These needs can be serendipitously gamed through many ploys, which thereby associate the dastardly hogwash with our (hidden) needs, and
4. bingo bango we are co-opted into submission, as if we're just hungry mice being feed in a convoluted maze of illustions.

Namaste

Thank you David for a great article. Conservatism = authoritarianism = dictatorship

I am a conservative - but not a fascist. I have been outraged that so many people have taken for granted that 'conservative' is identical to 'fascist' - that's not common sense! Corporate control of the economy, the military, the judicial, the educational system, religion, and various social elements is NOT conservatism! It is FASCISM!

I do not think that preserving the best of what we have (what little we have left today) is anti-social. To be conservative is to look before you leap - and to consider the consequences of any new social model. It has nothing to do with piracy, looting society, invading other countries, or outright militarism - that's just plain old criminality. Just because we have had criminals in our government for decades does not mean that they are 'conservatives' - they just hide behind the word, just like radical extremists always do... consider how the Zionists hide behind the oppression of the Jews, or how some crazies claim to be 'Islamists' - it's all a lot of hogwash!

As a conservative, I know - my family taught me full well and right - that the lower classes must be protected if society is to flourish. Inequality harms all of us - no matter which social rung we occupy. Obscene wealth and power are detrimental to all of society, including those who gather such wealth and power. They are deviants - mentally disturbed - paranoid and fearful. They are NOT conservatives - they're just sick. The 'authoritarian personality' is real - and it isn't conservative. The obscenely wealthy do not renounce their wealth as a true conservative would - after all, flaunting good fortune is unseemly. Pride is still a vice, not a virtue - as is greed, envy, etc.

Thanks to all of you who point out that the central criteria to consider is decency, integrity, honesty - solid conservative values.

As to why I read this 'progressive' website - well, conservatives can be progressive as well. After all, who are we if we do not attempt to improve the lot of all in our society? No man is an island. There can be no great prosperity without a flourishing society - and that means ALL classes - not just the fortunate few or those who profit through ill-gotten means. Anyone who claims to be a true traditional conservative must be able to explain how the wealthy few accumulated their gains without the support of the masses - and this bunch of fascists cannot do that. They are just plain dishonest greedy mentally-disturbed criminals and sociopaths - there's nothing conservative about that - and nothing worth conserving. Get rid of the whole lot.

PS Ron Paul is a libertarian, and although he seems to be quite honest, I'm sure he would soon find that some of his ideas simply would not work - and hopefully he would have the integrity and decency to admit as much. I'll back him although I don't agree with all of his ideas...

David Michael Green

I love the title of your editorial!

And if conservative values are the ideology of freedom, you may be the Queen of England, but I'm the King of France!

Now, since most Republicans say they're conservatives, my remaining problem is what to call the Democrats, something specific for them only. They aren't liberal or progressive for sure. They aren't even centrists. Actually I call them traitors, for their refusal to play really really hard-ball with the Bush administration and the so-called conservatives in Congress. They aren't too bright about Bush's foreign policy, which is what most Americans are angry about. They want to keep the wars going and haven't said diddly about Bush's unitary executive actions in their campaigns.

There's nowhere left to turn if the fabric of the American political scene and its corporate support system aren't torn asunder to allow real representatives of Americans and Constitutional principles to rise up and take the helm.

To lancelot_link_007 (& Greg R):

The lack of (consecutive) term limits is one of the greatest flaws in our political system. Every election cycle we see entrenched and close-minded incumbents running unopposed because potential opponents cannot put together the resources to overcome the tremendous advantages of incumbency. One of George Washington's greatest acts was to voluntarily walk away from the absolute power and monarchy he could have very easily acquired. There probably were many things on his "agenda" that he would have liked to see accomplished before he left office, but he also realized that the new nation would mature better if he let it grow up. Chavez seems to think that he is the only one who can lead his country. He isn't, but if during all his years in office, he has not developed any real plans for his succession, then he has either failed his people and party miserably or he never really intended to give up power. His power play is the same one many Republicans tried to do for Reagan when they wanted to remove the term limits on the Presidency that were put into place during Truman's term.

Tijuana,

"If progressivism is the ideology of freedom, how come . . ."

The experience of colonized peoples & the history of de-colonialization has to be studied extensively, which right-wingers simply refuse to do. Coupled with the histories or workers' movements, such a study destroys all the corporate-funded, commercially-crafted mythologies produced by the propaganda agencies you've named.

It's typical of such propaganda to blur the differences between, say, the Khmer Rouge, whose rise was the result of the US invasion & bombing of Cambodia as part of the war against Vietnam, with a populist socialist like Chavez, or either of those with Castro, who, according to the reactionaries, should have collapsed in the wake of the end of the Soviet bloc, or any of them with Mugabe's regime, which has much more to do with the problems imposed on Africa by English colonialism. The notorious brutality of Ian Smith's Rhodesian regime are simply flushed down the memory hole by the Orwellian Right.

"yet i have been told i am "fucked up" by more than a few of them, for having a strong pro-gun belief, but i am supposed to be "tolerant" of this?"

More or less that's what I'm saying. Vegans say that I "suck" because I eat meat, but I'm not going to take my marbles and go home. Maybe "tolerance" is the wrong word, more like remaining engaged. You don't have to shut up and stay silent. We bead wearing long hair hippie pinko lefies can be quite annoying, but look at the alternative.

" Hard as it is to believe, the Real Conservatives would be EVEN WORSE in power than the Bushits.

That certainly is very hard to believe and open to some debate, I would think."

Hard to believe -- but then seven years ago, people found it "hard to believe" that the regime in power could gain such extensive control & encounter such little resistance.

aymon,

"Why is extreme, fascistic "conservatism" of the last 25 years since Reagan still so attractive to tens of millions of Americans, most of whom have received nothing of value in their economic welfare from it?

Deeply puzzling to any human with even an IQ of 90."

Because a race-based class interest has been created which is opposed to class interest based on labor & cross-racial economic benefit. The protections that lower middle class & white working class Americans receive from the state don't translate into increased income or educational advantages, but do translate into possession of privileges above non-whites; every attempt to equalize economic levels translates into resentment votes. "Look at the fuss that's made over those black kids, no one makes a fuss over black kids killing or raping white women!"

You also have to be STUPID, AND BRAINWASHED enough to believe the drivel that the snake oil sales people label conservatism.

The other day I heard something unique: Rush Limbaugh let slip the real reason for hostility toward those touting global warming.
While ending a segment he opined, and I'm not quoting verbatim but damn close, " The ones pushing global warming just don't want the wealthy to enjoy their lifestyle. The best and the brightest, and we're not stupid...we are rich."

Hi GODLESSRANT,

Many fall prey to mistaken associations between things (contents) and ideas and BE'ingnes (context), when discussing emotionally charged subjects.

Although I respect your choices (and rights) to have certain contents in your life (guns), I'm a solid believer that such freedoms carry responsibilities (a two sided coin, so to say), which is the context of how and when one might choose to use a weapon.

Enough said. I hope that you can see a possibility of hard sides (left/right) having a chance to live together peaceably and thereby softly and smoothly.

Namaste

Democrats, Republicans, independents, lberals, conservatives, left wingers, right wingers, progressives, ALL have two things in common, if they don't possess a high degree of common sense. ___ Those two things they have in common are, they are both ignorant and stupid.

"No matter how you consider the gun owership issue, just imagine a world without crime or guns or gun killing. That would be pretty cool wouldn't it?"

yes and also incredibly unrealistic. who wouldn't want that except for the crazed war hawks? but to believe that banning our weapons will somehow make the violence go away is irresponsible and naiive.

i have never figured out why progressives/liberals are so for gun control. the right to self defense is not just a small side issue. i am tolerant with many aspects of progressivism, yet i have been told i am "fucked up" by more than a few of them, for having a strong pro-gun belief, but i am supposed to be "tolerant" of this? there's not much difference attitude-wise between hard left or hard right that i have found.

Post Rational

A car needs both an an engine and brakes to work properly.

I'm just hoping we can just elect a "driver" next November who knows how to manage both.

A long time ago, the Democrats and Republicans working together filled this ideal.

Paul Bramscher,

Hi. You certainly make strong points, and might perhaps benefit from reading Naomi Klein's "No Logo", as we live in a very reductionist media heavy perceptual world, where BRAND'ing is the rage and the source of exorbitant profits by luring people into false associations: PROPAGANDA or PYSOPS here.

There is also a long thread going into the meaning of meaning issues (Creationist Bugaboo...), that is here

Namaste

I we still insist on using those terms, we're stuck in a quagmire: using them as they've played out in practice, as people "claim" such labels to "really" mean, some lofty and abstract definition of them, etc.

In practice, "conservative" is synonymous with the precise opposites of the Platonic virtues (wisdom, courage, moderation, justice). Rather: anti-science, fear-mongering, greed, torture and bigotries, etc. It is an ideology, in practice, which is also the opposite of the Golden Rule. Indeed, the very existence of tyranny/fascism/injustice hinges on no critical organizing mass ever developing and reciprocating the "favor."

Linguistically, "to conserve" would suggest something rather different. In terms of the environment, it would suggest conservation. It terms of class order, it would suggest hereditary/caste/elitist limits applied to the transition of wealth/power.

Rhetorically, conservativism has nothing to do with either its playing out in practice or its linguistic roots. If you'd listen only to the rhetoric, you'd be left with some fuzzy thoughts about a mythological code of ethics, true freedom, holding individuals responsible, small government.

"A progressive liberal is a man who is right most of the time, but he's right too soon". Gregory Nunn

Good quote Guy Noir. It reminds me of the ever present push-pull relationship between the progressive and the conservative.
The Progressive, unchecked, would (and has)gone to far, to fast for it's own good. The Conservative, unchallenged by change, would stagnate and wither.
We need both Progressives to push society forward and Conservatives to keep us from going to far to fast.
I'm sorry I'm reduced to making an automotive analogy but it fits; A car needs both an an engine and brakes to work properly.

I'm just hoping we can just elect a "driver" next November who knows how to manage both.

"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them"..... Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935

"A progressive liberal is a man who is right most of the time, but he's right too soon". Gregory Nunn

oldredleg,

Chavez is not introducing law to make him president for life (you've been watching too much corporate news), he is introducing laws to allow him to run for more that 2 terms as president. As you will recall, there were no limits to presidential terms before 1948 or thereabouts in the US. Were all of the presidents before Truman therefore dictators.

You are repeating almost verbatim news reports from Faux, CBS, NBC, CNN and ABC. You should no better of you read Commondreams.org.

OldRedleg-Chavez wants to see his vision of Venezuela fully entrenched before he leaves office. Hey, he's buddies with Fidel after all. I say let him continue with his experiment. FDR was elected 4 times. I hope Chavez is elected more times than that.

Power of Love.....

Look up the study of RWA's.....
Right Wing Authoritarian Personalities......
Wikipedia is a good place for links, etc...

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

It is my understanding that the research was begun immediately after WWII to try to figure out how such an educated and cultured people as the Germans in the 20's and 30's could fall under the sway of the Nazis.

Conservatives decry the studies and the testing and, well all of it. And if I were them I would too.
Because it shows that through simple, verifiable and REPEATABLE TESTS it can be shown that there are personalitiy types prone to that sort of thinking.

They are perfectly capable of holding two incompatible philosophies at the same time, as you alluded to.
In fact, IT IS ONE OF THE MOST CONSISTENT COMMONALITIES..
They are in fact mentally damaged.
That's not the term they use, but it is basically correct in a layman's sense.
THEY ARE MENTALLY ILL...... there I said it.

And surprisingly there is about 25% of the US population in that group. The same amount as the people that still support the Cheney/Bush Cabal.

Check it out. You can even take the tests if you like.
I did and found it to be an enlightening couple of hours.

Here is a quote:

"For example, take the following statement: "Once our government leaders and the authorities condemn the dangerous elements in our society, it will be the duty of every patriotic citizen to help stomp out the rot that is poisoning our country from within." Sounds like something Hitler would say, right? Want to guess how many politicians, how many lawmakers in the United States agreed with it? Want to guess what they had in common?
Or how about a government program that persecutes political parties, or minorities, or journalists the authorities do not like, by putting them in jail, even torturing and killing them. Nobody would approve of that, right? Guess again".

IN FACT I would like for everyone, ESPECIALLY those of a "conservative" bent to visit Dr. Altemeyers site (use the Wiki link). Take the tests (VERY easy and NOT time consuming)and see for yourself.
I'd LOVE to hear back what you find out.
Finally I want to state, because I can hear what's coming next, that Altemeyer simply built on the work of others.
This is nothing new folks.......10's or 100's of thousands of people have taken these tests and the results have been PROVEN TO BE VALID, REPEATABLE SCIENCE.

evanj: Both the concocted/funded "left" and "right" miss a certain clarity of analysis:

There is the politics of plutocracy/autocracy, and there is the politics of grassroots/populism, the politics of oppression vs. self-determination.

Left/right are hung up on particular forms of oppression, rather than oppression itself. There is no such thing as economic libertarianism, since ownership of things hinges -- today at least -- on a socialized legal/judicial/enforcement/military system. Take that away, and it's every man to himself. Or is this what the libertarians are really suggesting? Want to be rich -- then find some weakly defended estate, knock off the owner, and claim it for yourself -- no socialized legal/judicial system standing in the way. Or is this not quite what they're asking for? Only the already-wealthy may use such coercive techniques, and enjoy the historical baggage which put them into the position they currently enjoy?

The ownership of things just needs to be returned to the age-old pact: locally owned, no distant banks (church) or governments (crown) demanding tithes. When we're at that point, then we can take it to the next step. First we need to get out of the Middle Ages again.

Re noonespecial's 'a lot of conflicting opinions that confuse economics and social issues'.
The crude duality Conservative vs Liberal contributed mightily to the confusion of economics and social issues.
Economic libertarians will be put in the Conservative box in the US, even though they may have 'liberalist' views regarding social issues.
As for noonespecial's 'politicalcompass' site, the quadrant structure is a major advance on the cretinous straight line duality. But myriad details laid out didactically on that site are all over the place. Getting there, but in general a mess.
Why then is the richest country in the world, with the most elaborate and well resourced academic establishment in the world, incapable of coming up with a rudimentary matrix of the political spectrum that has a modicum of plausbility?

Mr. Green, you've got people laughing. And when you get people laughing, people start thinking. That's why all the totalitarians you care to name, ranging from the Emperor Diocletian, to Henry VIII, to Stalin, to Hitler, and to George Bush, hate it when people start to laugh, since they've always had to rely on the peoples' non-thinking.

Humour gives people courage to doubt the slogans and soundbites passed down to them by the mighty. It is to any totalitarian system as the spark of static was to the Hindenburg.

godlessrant-
It IS important to realize "progressivism" is an ideology and requires a certain tolerance from you as well. There are actually many points to it that cross my lifestyle as well, but I'm flexible enough to stick to it. Who's being intolerant here? No matter how you consider the gun owership issue, just imagine a world without crime or guns or gun killing. That would be pretty cool wouldn't it? An ideology is NOT necessarily set up to reflect reality; it presents a sometimes intangible IDEAL (hence the name), something to shoot for, if you'll forgive the...
I'm afraid that's the best you've ever going to find for yourself - there's never going to be a movement called godlessrantism, unless you want to start it.

Hi dingo, thanks for your comments, i don't want to give up on progressive politics. however people on the left also need to be as tolerant as the people they are opposing, the conservatives. i also agree there is too much violence in america, and especially in the media/movies. mocking firearm owners or people who don't agree with every aspect of progessive ideals isn't helping; it's dividing us. i've read many posts on here, mocking people who are centrist oriented, so i don't see much difference between the hard left or the lunatic right. many of us despise the current situation and the war and i've marched in many peace marches

Godlessrant--

I'm a progressive (a libertarian socialist actually) and I don't mind gun owners. Although I don't own a gun many of my friends do and it's not typically an issue for me. I do think there's an obsession with guns and violence in the U.S. but I don't make it a litmus test for friendship or political purity.

I guess that's the libertarian side of my political perspective. So don't give up on 'progressive' politics!

Lots of talk about whether Republicans in the mold of George Bush are truly conservatives, and a lot of conflicting opinions that confuse economics and social issues.

I prefer to look at these charts to keep it in perspective:

http://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2

http://www.politicalcompass.org/usprimaries2007

Continuing the previous post.
Barton Bernstein's 1969 Towards a New Past contains a brilliant essay titled 'The New Deal: the Conservative Achievements of Liberal Reform'.
What is titularly labelled liberal reform had generally conservative outcomes - that is, patching up the system in order to maintain its essentials (which was the existing class hierarchy), in order to save the system from itself. Roosevelt as Conservative. The label is consistent with his privileged origins. Much of reform globally in the last three hundred years has actually been engineered by intelligent conservative forces - I call it the 'head 'em off at the pass' strategy.
Yet James Patterson wrote a book in 1967 that captures the conventional language: Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: the growth of the conservative coalition in Congress, 1933-1939.
However, this COngressional coalition is more accurately labelled reactionary. These forces of reaction are forebears of the radical reactionary ascendancy that came to fruition with Reagan and have reached their insane apotheosis in the reigning junta of Bush junior (junta because the regime has never been granted legitimacy by an authentic popular vote).

Your Royal High-ness:

I find it interesting to think about what goes on "inside" both the leaders and followers of the "By-Definition-Lying-'conservative' ideology."

(Obviously, as humans we are all astoundingly complex, so my thoughts speak to a general condition rather than about any specific individual).

How many "leaders" are actually quite aware of the built-in lies and clear contradictions between what they said and what they do? …for instance, accusing other governments of being repressive, anti-democratic, trying to create a Fundamentalist Theocracy? Pul-ease!!

Of the folks who manage to stay unconscious about all this - what does it do to their sense of self, of self-worth, of inner integrity - to be chronically split in two...

(that is, stuck in a wierd limbo-like dimension...where citizenship depends on having to lie to onesself, to deceive onesself - day after day, year after year)?

Also, just what is it that motivates so many people to embrace this creed of greed and meanspiritedness when they'd like to be thought of, and think of themselves — as just the opposite?

I wonder what it is that draws people indulge themselves - (while decrying liberal lack of self-restraint) - giving in to their basest impulses (often vicariously) as they freefall into the gravitational field of policies based on hate. All the while considering their motivations to be above reproach. They are "decent, moral, 10 commandment following, caring people >>>>>>

(and often followers of Jesus - who gave a 'new' commandment -To Love thy neighbor as thyself"). >>>>>>

While it's true that many of these folks may try their best to be kind at home or at work, it's also true that they fervently believe that they are Fair-Minded and Honest Folk. They're not.

Conservatism, as the ideology we observe playing itself out -

(notice the steady drift of neo-cons toward neo-fascism)

- apparently is - in its very essence Unfair, to say the least.

We're talkin' here 'bout Large segments of the U.S. population, - apparently Unable to see through the "right-in-front-of-your-face" absurdities and wild mind-boggling contradictions that lay before them.

And either unwilling or unable to notice that while they believe in Heaven, they are supporting policies that create economic, social, and political hell for others.

I guess one could understand why so many non-Americans see us as "Insufferably Stupid."

A large part of the problem is the simple abuse of language.
The AMerican political spectrum has in the last couple of decades been forced into the Conservative-Liberal duality.
This binary is ludicrous.
The Liberal label covers Social Liberals and Social Democrats.
The Conservative label bizarrely covers genuine Conservatives (a spectrum in itself) and economic Libertarians (though not of course Anarchists).
Conservatives believe in a strong state. Libertarians formally believe in a minimal state, albeit the vested interests behind libertarian ideologues believe in a strong state acting in their interests (neo-feudal labor regulation for example, or imperial outreach as cover for multinational capital).
The label Conservative does appear to have been used appropriately (i.e. in common with the rest of the world) until the early post-WWII period. Clinton Rossiter's 1955 COnservatism in America gives a feeling for the transformation. William Buckley Jr's 1970 American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century obscures the hell out of the label.
A large part of Green's conundrums could be cleared up readily by acknowledging that the conventional use of the word Conservative in contemporary American parlance is a joke.

We must remember that there are millions and millions of Americans who are conservatives. And many of them are led to conservatism through their religious beliefs (Where? see the red states). It explains why Republicans are so tormented about their canidates this year - none is a saintly, rock-solid conservative. To overcome this grassroots conservatism is a daunting task. Liberals are viewed as unpatriotic, anti-religion, and heralds for homosexuality and abortion. That's why a unrepentant, progressive, hard-left Democrat will never be president. But, never say never...

ok i agree with much of this article and i hate conservatism but you lost me here:

"Yeah, sure, it's true that conservatives will be right there for you if you want the freedom to buy guns and ammo, including 'cop-killer' bullets, assault rifles (to nail those most obstinate of pheasants, of course), or a fifty caliber rifle capable of bringing down a jumbo jet, and advertised as such in its sales literature. Of course, along with the freedom to buy these weapons (and how come, if the Second Amendment protects the bearing of "arms", not 'guns', I can't also legally buy cannons, napalm and tactical nuclear warheads - just in case the neighborhood gets a little rowdy?), also comes the lovely 'freedom' to join the 35,000 or so Americans every year who become very stiff corpses as a result of the massive proliferation of weapons in which America uniquely specializes. Perhaps you'd rather live in Europe, eh, enjoying being alive? Well, for the rest of you non-sissies out there, conservatives have made sure that you have the freedom to take your bullet along with you when you're buried. What cheese-eating Frenchman ever had that freedom?"

why the hell do the "progessives" hate gun owners so bad? this is why i could never call myself liberal or progessive. It alienates me from the progressive movement very much.

yeah so let's get rid of all private gun ownership, and hold hands with each other by the campfire. I just knew i'd find an anti-gun message in this article. also i understand that progressives seem to scorn people in the ideological middle yet we have so much in common with them.

I'm not sure voting is the best democratic mechanism any more. And it remains unclear whether anyone who'd properly turn this country around has the least interest in running for office.

@rtdrury "consensus" always makes policy and it determines just about everything. My concern is that the consensus represented by the Constitution with its emphasis on individual liberty and Emersonian values such as self-reliance and self-determination no longer exists. The republic envisioned by our 18th Century ancestors may no longer be possible because people no longer define themselves individually, but only in terms of their identity within politically defined groups. Our notion of individual liberty and concordant responsibility is very limited when compared with so-called primitive native Americans, for example. A consensus of self-determining individuals looks very different from a consensus of those habituated to obedience to authority.

Good Lord my dad, always a staunch conservative, a McCarthy era guy and a self-made capitalist who voted for Bush, told me this Thanksgiving that he thought democracy had failed in the U.S. I almost choked. I never thought I would ever hear that from him. He said, sadly, "the system just doesn't work."

He suggested to me, and mom, who aren't conservatives, that in the next election Americans of all stripes go and vote all their incumbents from both major parties out of office.

Is more afoot in America than I could have known?

cruxpuppy, most people exposed to the truth want to build a good-faith concensus standard for the general welfare, and promote individual liberties that preserve it. Limits must be imposed on the general welfare to preserve individual liberty, and limits must be imposed on individual liberty to preserve the general welfare. Americans are taught differently of course. The Randite indoctrination is at the root of the whole problem.

If you had a nickel for every conservative lie you'd make Carlos Slim look like a pauper, but we have been impoverished, not enriched, by their duplicity. The only ones who have benefited are the corporate fat cats, war profiteers and power-mad neocons, while our country has fallen on evil days. The dollar is becoming worthless, our reputation vile, our rights only a memory and our children's future dismal in a war debt crippled, overextended, socially incoherent and environmentally devastated America.

Liberal/conservative and left/right are useless terms, now more than ever.

There is only the politics of the up (plutocracy/autocracy) and the politics of the down (grassroots/populism). The politics of oppression vs. the politics of self-determination.

There's no need to waste brain cells on pedestrian or "academic" redefinitions of labels.

I believe it is unfortunate to have such labels. I wish the only label applied to any elected was one of only two.

1. An honest Statesperson

2. A lying crooked idiot.

An honest statesperson would display a HIGH degree of ntelligence, honesty, sobriety, and good common sense,, mixed with the favorable elements of having a kindred soul with love and compassion for all others.

A stupid, ignorant, lying, crooked, selfish, jealous, mean spirited, cruel, greedy, psycotic, rat SOB fits the other. I do beleve, we have more of the other, than the former.

Don't kid yourself: someday it will be your grand- or great- or great-great grandchild who has this disease... or a another family member's child... or the child of someone you love. Finally, as we live our lives on this precious blue planet, it is wise to realize: The human family is One; the human family is YOUR FAMILY. To ignore this is to break your own heart.

I find it interesting to contemplate what is going on "inside" both the leaders and followers of the "By-Definition-Lying-'conservative' ideology."

(Obviously, as humans we are all astoundingly complex, so what follows is a gross generalization).

How many are "leaders" are cynically aware of the built-in lies and clear contradictions between what is said and what is done? ...for instance, accusing other governments of being repressive, anti-democratic, trying to create a Fundamentalist Theocracy? Pulease!

Of the folks who keep all this unconscious - what does it do to their sense of self, of worth, of inner integrity to be split down the middle --- which is to say --- to lie to Onesself day after day, year after year?

Also, just what is it that motivates so many people to embrace this "creed of greed" and meanspiritedness when they'd like to be thought of, and think of themselves --- as just the opposite?

I wonder: what it is that makes people gravitate toward supporting policies based on hate, and then think of themselves as caring people (and often followers of Jesus - who gave a 'new' commandment -To Love thy neighbor as thyself"). Meanwhile, it's also quite true that many of these folks very much strive to be caring people in their personal lives.

I'm talking about Large segments of the U.S. population, who are apparently Unable to see through the "right-in-front-of-your-face" absurdities and bald mind-boggling contradictions that lay before them.

I guess one could understand why so many non-Americans see us as "Insufferably Stupid."

You may have all noticed how often the conservatioved old and neo make use of the words 'freedom' and 'liberty'...Think of 'Freedom' House, which is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. Im sure you can all come up with eghs where this word is used to mislead the Sheeple down the road to fascism:

'From The Mind Of The Sheeple

Oh yes, I am a sheeple, and oh so proud to be.
I'm way too smart and clever, to believe in conspiracies.
Three towers falling straight down - it all makes sense to me.
"They're all just jealous", Bush tells me, because I live so free.

Terrorists hiding everywhere, even places I cannot see.
I know they must be out there, cause I heard it on tv.
My newspaper is completely honest, it would never lie to me.
Oh yes, I am a sheeple, and so proud to be.

Did you know we saved the Iraqis? The bad guys had to flee.
And now those people love us, that they're dancing with such glee.
The whole wide world should thank us, all on bended knee.
Oh yes, I am a sheeple, and oh so proud to be.

You Conspiracy theorists are so stupid, as blind as blind can be.
Even Anti-war protestors should be hanging from a tree.
They and all the traitors - ship them off to Germany!
But me, I am a sheeple, and oh so proud to be. '

Good job Mr. Green. What those of us who understand Conservatism need to do is (like you) speak up about the subject LOUD and CLEAR...especially in mixed company. Speak truth to power. When joining internet discussions such as this one, use your real name...not some cutsy pseudonym. Be proud that you have the compassion and the intelligence to see through the idiocy that is ruining the USA and the entire world. HEAR THAT GEORGE??? Ya sorry f**k of an excuse for a president.

I have on more than one occasion posted things that went against the popular grain on a given subject.
And have never been "banned".
But I have to wonder why a few of the people who posted on this subject bother to read Common Dreams in the first place.
It is for "The Progressive Community".....says so right at the top.
I think that makes some of the posters what folks call "trolls".
And I've never understood why those kinda folks show up and spout the things that they do.
There are plenty of right wing blogs out there.
I can only speak for myself but I can do without their drivel.
It's not like the things they have to say are novel.
You can find them on Fox or the right wing radio should you wish.
It seems to me to be simply childish and a form of taunting to go to a progressive blog and spout simple minded right wing talking points.
And don't try to tell me that you are hoping to "change minds or educate" us poor uninformed progressives.
The crap I have read on this one post alone is the same tired pack of lies the regressive right have been spouting for years.
I seriously doubt that there is a regular reader of Common Dreams who hasn't heard all that B.S. a hundred times already.

BeForKids, I know this is a bit off-topic, but you may want to reconsider your support for Hugo Chavez. I, too, was one of his supporters, but all his recent actions have revealed him to be just another petty dictator who will do anything, preferably "legal," to remain in power. He has done some great things for the common and poor people of Venezuela, but all his maneuvering to stay in power and become President for Life will probably result in his own form of dictatorship and future oppression of those who question his motives and methods. We are already seeing the results of this same political maneuvering in Pakistan with President Musharraf trying to stay in power. I'm still wondering if George W. will try something similar at the end of his term.

Wow! Great article. And of the equivocation that is happening with the word "conservative"? (as there is with the words liberal, freedom and profit and on and on) I think of my self as being conservative when I think of self reliance, belief in individual initiative, the conservative use of resources.

The "real" conservatives have clearly been as betrayed as the "Liberals" and the rest of us.

Here's a suggested definition: Those who's ideology is to use lies to gather power. Those who's actions are to use any means most readily lies and other tools of violence to eliminate or marginalize what and who they see as competing.

And then there are those that embrace transparency and accountability.

SO this article reads better for me when I think of it that way: The power addicted liars and the rest of us. There are a great many areas for contention amongst us. Believing in the Democratic Process means that with access to resources, educational, media we can enter into discussions and get to know each other so we can arrive at higher levels of understanding.

Kudos to David Green. What an apt title.

My progressive friends I am still confused by one thing:

Why is extreme, fascistic "conservatism" of the last 25 years since Reagan still so attractive to tens of millions of Americans, most of whom have received nothing of value in their economic welfare from it?

Deeply puzzling to any human with even an IQ of 90.

Please explain.

Don't confused being banned with having a post deleted. Plenty of mine have been deleted. Then I found myself unable to log on - that would be banned. But the CD editor said, it's a program glitch, they've never banned anyone. And you can email the CD editor for a new password if that happens.

Auntie Jane, are you fearful that some Fascist King will ask you to shut up?

After all, look at everything that Latin America has to thank Spain for, Columbus, Cortez and the destruction of their civilization, smallpox and the destruction of their population.

The above quote is from a free "book online" entitled:

Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An exegesis
by David Neiwert

Address: http://www.cursor.org/stories/fascismintroduction.php

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Some good stuff here...

Chapters:

Introduction
I. Projecting Fascism
II. Understanding Fascism
III. The Core of Fascism
IV. Tracking Fascism
V. Proto-Fascism in America
VI. Crossing the Lines
VII. The Transmission Belt
VIII. Official Transmitters
IX. Media Transmitters
X. Reaching the Receivers
XI. Dualist Receivers
XII. Divine Transmissions
XIII. Fascism and Fundamentalism
XIV. The War on Liberals
XV. Waiting for Godwin
Bibliography

..and I'd have to agree with the commentary that "real" conservatives hate Bush. He wasn't voted into office by the support of conservatives, he was voted into office by the real conservatives who hated even more the alternatives to Bush. It was a "least offensive" strategery.