How is it that Bush and Cheney could take us to war in Iraq with constantly shifting rationales, unleash the NSA to spy on the country at large, and with the aid of foot soldiers like John Yoo cobble together shoddy legal findings as flimsy justification for torture and other abuses of executive power?  How is it that partisanship has grown so bitter that the wheels of Congress threaten to seize?  Why does one side in our always-contentious political landscape feel today so strongly that they have lost "their" country and must take it back from those liberals who are not "real Americans?"

There is a common element running through these and other scenarios. It is the factor of authoritarianism: a personality construct and set of behaviors certain people exhibit and are drawn to. Authoritarian followers march behind their leaders blindly and loyally, ready to unleash aggression upon any that question those leaders. Authoritarian leaders believe the ends justify the means, and blithely embrace manipulation, aggression, deceit, and force to get what they want at any cost.

This goes beyond any mere political difference between liberals and conservatives. Social science scales which test for personality traits have found that approximately 25% of the general population is wired this way.[1] Not surprisingly, authoritarians like order and tradition, and traditional authority. They gravitate to patriarchal forms of allegiance. Authoritarianism may manifest differently in differing political systems (such as in China), but in the U.S., authoritarians are typically drawn to conservative party politics.

Fundamentalist Christians and the evangelical right were drafted wholesale into Republican politics to get Ronald Reagan elected in the 1980s. That infusion of Christian conservatives was revitalized under born-again Bush II. Since then, this set of traits has become even more prominent and entrenched in the American right wing. This broad authoritarian streak accounts for why the GOP and its close media affiliates like conservative talk radio have become so rigid in their orientation that the Republican party has shed moderate conservatives in droves over the last decade.

Authoritarian abhorrence of compromise and the tactics they use to gain control at any cost are at their heart anti-democratic. The more powerful this element becomes in politics, the more damage is done to our democracy. That is my concern in exploring this aspect of contemporary politics. To frame that discussion,  I'll be looking at the authoritarian personality, then at how these individuals and groups behave, then their political/religious affiliations, and finally at specific authoritarian actions that are subverting constitutional principles in the service of their bid for power.

Next in series: Pt 3, The Authoritarian Personality

Part 1 of series: Authoritarians and Conservative Politics

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1. See subsequent posts for discussion of this data, related factual claims,  and links to source material.