John Dean's new book "Conservatives Without Conscience" analyzes the right's fascination and enamoring of Authoritarianism.
Excerpt:
"Regrettably, empirical studies reveal, however, that authoritarians are frequently enemies of freedom, antidemocratic, antiequality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian, and amoral. They are also often conservatives without conscience who are capable of plunging this nation into disasters the likes of which we have never known."
Hey, no love for the Repubs, but fair is fair -- authoritarianism exists on the political left as well as on the political right.
The conept of authoritarianism was formulate in the late 1940s by Theodore Adorno and others as a theoretical expalanation for the success of fascism in Weimar Germany [the seminal work -- "The Authoratarian Personality"]. I don't think what we got here in the US is even close to what was witnessed in europe. It's bad enough on it's own terms, but it's not Hitler, it's not Stalin, it's not even Franco, Salazar or Musolini.
I'm grateful for all favorsa, no matter how small and how infrequency they occur.
this is one of those times you and i are in agreement.
What we have here currently in the US is not what Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, or Mussolini's Italy experienced.
HOWEVER... we are definitely headed down that path. Xiaoming, with all candor, I don't like you. I resent your point of view regarding the Middle East, Israel and the Jewish people. I may tell you to drop dead of excrutiating pain, but I will never tell you not to speak your free mind.
That being said... we should all remember that in the USA (AND Israel for that matter) we are still allowed to freely express our viewpoints. and be willing to be villified, and even die for them. With this administration, some of those liberties and freedoms we take for granted are being curbed, if not completely excised by the stealthy application of Executive Orders and Priviledge.
I'm willing to die defending those principles. If you are as well, then perhaps we still have common ground.
Doc, you write : "Xiaoming, with all candor, I don't like you. I resent your point of view regarding the Middle East, Israel and the Jewish people. I may tell you to drop dead of excrutiating pain, but I will never tell you not to speak your free mind." [And I'm raly such a charmer when you know me personally].
Well, I'm glad you got your priorities straight. OK to wish me a painful and excruciatng death [well, why not -- I've already had a painful and excruciating life], but you would NEVER try to stifle my free expression? I'm massively relieved.
Yep, I'm putting you in for THe Voltaire Award, The Tom Paine Prize, and a slew of other stuff.
PS. I'm not taking this too seriously. But just in case I've misjudged the Board's resident Likudite/Meir Kahane wannabe, kindly Xiao still forgives you.
2nd PS. Have you contemplated the irony in that, with The Patriot Act, we possibly take a few steps down that road? A law enacted to meet the exegencies of fighting The War On Terror? That very same war forced upon us in no small part by our endless support for Guess Who? Nah, of course you don't.
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