Essentials: Altemeyer’s “The Authoritarians”

Maha recently wrote about conservatives and pseudo conservatives, here and here.

I would like to use this as a springboard to highlight Bob Altemeyer, an American psychologist working at the University of Manitoba, whose world renown work on authoritarian psychology illuminates much of what the far right mentality is about, how it works, and why it is so antithetical to democracy. John Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience is an effort to make this same subject much more widely known, and is largely based on Altemeyer’s work. At Dean’s behest, Altemeyer distilled his life’s work into a very readable, free book (a series of pdfs) you can download from his website.

Authoritarianism is a personality style that often underlies conservativism in general, and pseudo conservativism in particular. However, it’s important to note that historically, there have been both left and right wing authoritarians. Altemeyer explains:

Authoritarian followers…support the established authorities in their society, such as government officials and traditional religious leaders. Such people have historically been the “proper” authorities in life, the time-honored, entitled, customary leaders, and that means a lot to most authoritarians. Psychologically these followers have personalities featuring:

  • a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society;
  • high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and
  • a high level of conventionalism.

Because the submission occurs to traditional authority, I call these followers rightwing authoritarians. I’m using the word “right” in one of its earliest meanings, for in Old English “riht”(pronounced “writ”) as an adjective meant lawful, proper, correct, doing what the authorities said.

In North America, people who submit to the established authorities to extraordinary degrees often turn out to be political conservatives, so you can call them “right-wingers” both in my new-fangled psychological sense and in the usual political sense. But someone who lived in a country long ruled by Communists and who ardently supported the Communist Party would also be one of my psychological right-wing authoritarians even though we would also say he was a political left-winger. So a right-wing authoritarian follower doesn’t necessarily have conservative political views. Instead he’s someone who readily submits to the established authorities in society, attacks others in their name, and is highly conventional. It’s an aspect of his personality, not a description of his politics.

And so in Altemeyer’s view, authoritarianism is a psychological trait that often underlies a particular political view. How does authoritarianism work?

Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers submit too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want–which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical and brutal. In my day, authoritarian fascist and authoritarian communist dictatorships posed the biggest threats to democracies, and eventually lost to them in wars both hot and cold. But authoritarianism itself has not disappeared, and I’m going to present the case in this book that the greatest threat to American democracy today arises from a militant authoritarianism that has become a cancer upon the
nation
.

Authoritarian followers seem to have a “Daddy and mommy know best” attitude toward the government. They do not see laws as social standards that apply to all. Instead, they appear to think that authorities are above the law, and can decide which laws apply to them and which do not–just as parents can when one is young. But in a democracy no one is supposed to be above the law. Still, authoritarians quite
easily put that aside. They also believe that only criminals and terrorists would object to having their phones tapped, their mail opened, and their lives put under surveillance. They have bought their tickets and are standing in line waiting for 1984, The Real Thing. There might as well not be a Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. And when the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is used to deny people the right of habeas corpus–one of the oldest rights in western law–it is unlikely that right-wing authoritarians will object to the loss of this constitutional guarantee either.

There is much I could quote from Altemeyer, but a comment Maha made in an earlier post:

…a government run by current conservative dogmas is not sustainable. Perpetually cutting taxes, eliminating social welfare programs, allowing infrastructure to rot, encouraging income inequality, squandering public resources to enrich private enterprise, starting pointless wars all over the planet, restricting civil liberty in the name of “freedom” — this is just nuts.

…prompts me to focus on an amazing experiment Altemeyer conducted in 1994, described in his free book, which looked at what happens When Authoritarians Rule the World:

Global Change Game

The setting involved a rather sophisticated simulation of the earth’s future called the Global Change Game, which is played on a big map of the world by 50-70 participants who have been split into various regions such as North America, Africa, India and China. The players are divided up according to current populations, so a lot more students hunker down in India than in North America….

Then the facilitators…call for some member, any member of each region, to assume the role of team leader by simply standing up. Once the “Elites" in the world have risen to the task they are taken aside and given control of their region’s bank account. They can use this to buy factories, hospitals, armies, and so on from the game bank, and they can travel the world making deals with other Elites. They also discover they can discreetly put some of their region’s wealth into their own pockets, to vie for a prize to be given out at the end of the simulation to the World’s Richest Person. Then the game begins, and the world goes wherever the players take it for the next forty years which, because time flies in a simulation, takes about two and a half hours.

Altemeyer ran two distinct groups through this simulation. First, he came up with a simple twenty-two question test to score how much right wing authoritarianism ("RWA") an individual has in their personality. Next, he created two distinctly opposite groups of subjects: those who scored low in RWA, versus those who scored high in RWA. In turn, he let each group run the world:

The Low RWA Game

..67 low RWA students played the game together on October 18th . (They had no idea they had been funneled into this run of the experiment according to their RWA scale scores; indeed they had probably never heard of right-wing authoritarianism.) Seven men and three women made themselves Elites. As soon as the simulation began, the Pacific Rim Elite called for a summit on the “Island Paradise of Tasmania.” All the Elites attended and agreed to meet there again whenever big issues arose. A world-wide organization was thus immediately created by mutual consent.

Regions set to work on their individual problems. Swords were converted to ploughshares as the number of armies in the world dropped. No wars or threats of wars occurred during the simulation. [At one point the North American Elite suggested starting a war to his fellow region-aires (two women and one guy), but they told him to go fly a kite–or words to that effect.]

An hour into the game the facilitators announced a (scheduled) crisis in the earth’s ozone layer. All the Elites met in Tasmania and contributed enough money to buy new technology to replenish the ozone layer.

Other examples of international cooperation occurred, but the problems of the Third World mounted in Africa and India. Europe gave some aid but North America refused to help. Africa eventually lost 300 million people to starvation and disease, and India 100 million. Populations had grown and by the time forty years had passed the earth held 8.7 billion people, but the players were able to provide food, health facilities, and jobs for almost all of them. They did so by demilitarizing, by making a lot of trades that benefited both parties, by developing sustainable economic programs, and because the Elites diverted only small amounts of the treasury into their own pockets. (The North American Elite hoarded the most.)

One cannot blow off four hundred million deaths, but this was actually a highly successful run of the game, compared to most. …Low RWAs do not typically see the world as “Us versus Them.” They are more interested in cooperation than most people are, and they are often genuinely concerned about the environment. Within their regional groups, and in the interactions of the Elites, these first-year students would have usually found themselves “on the same page”–and writ large on that page was, “Let’s Work Together and Clean Up This Mess.” The game’s facilitators said they had never seen as much international cooperation in previous runs of the simulation. With the exception of the richest region, North America, the lows saw themselves as interdependent and all riding on the same merry-go-round.

The High RWA Game

The next night, 68 high RWAs showed up for their ride, just as ignorant of how they had been funneled into this run of the experiment as the low RWA students had been…. The game proceeded as usual. Elites (all males) nominated themselves, and the Elites were briefed. Then the“wedgies” started. As soon as the game began, the Elite from the Middle East announced the price of oil had just doubled. A little later the former Soviet Union (known as the CIS in 1994) bought a lot of armies and invaded North America. The latter had insufficient conventional forces to defend itself, and so retaliated with nuclear weapons. A nuclear holocaust ensued which killed everyone on earth–7.4 billion people–and almost all other forms of life which had the misfortune of co-habitating the same planet as a species with nukes.

When this happens in the Global Change Game, the facilitators turn out all the lights and explain what a nuclear war would produce. Then the players are given a second chance to determine the future, turning back the clock to two years before the hounds of war were loosed. The former Soviet Union however rebuilt its armies and invaded China this time, killing 400 million people. The Middle East Elite then called for a “United Nations” meeting to discuss handling future crises, but no agreements were reached. At this point the ozone-layer crisis occurred but–perhaps because of the recent failure of the United Nations meeting–no one called for a summit. Only Europe took steps to reduce its harmful gas emissions, so the crisis got worse. Poverty was spreading unchecked in the underdeveloped regions, which could not control their population growth. Instead of dealing with the social and economic problems “back home,” Elites began jockeying among themselves for power and protection, forming military alliances to confront other budding alliances. Threats raced around the room and the CIS warned it was ready to start another nuclear war. Partly because their Elites had used their meager resources to buy into alliances, Africa and Asia were on the point of collapse. An Elite called for a United Nations meeting to deal with the crises–take your pick–and nobody came.

By the time forty years had passed the world was divided into armed camps threatening each other with another nuclear destruction. One billion, seven hundred thousand people had died of starvation and disease. Throw in the 400 million who died in the Soviet-China war and casualties reached 2.1 billion. Throw in the 7.4 billion who died in the nuclear holocaust, and the high RWAs managed to kill 9.5 billion people in their world–although we, like some battlefield news releases, are counting some of the corpses twice.

The authoritarian world ended in disaster for many reasons. One was likely the character of their Elites, who put more than twice as much money in their own pockets as the low RWA Elites had. (The Middle East Elite ended up the World’s Richest Man; part of his wealth came from money he had conned from Third World Elites as payment for joining his alliance.) But more importantly, the high RWAs proved incredibly ethnocentric. There they were, in a big room full of people just like themselves, and they all turned their backs on each other and paid attention only to their own group. They too were all reading from the same page, but writ large on their page was, “Care About Your Own; We Are NOT All In This Together.”

The high RWAs also suffered because, while they say on surveys that they care about the environment, when push comes to shove they usually push and shove for the bucks. That is, they didn’t care much about the long-term environmental consequences of their economic acts. For example a facilitator told Latin America that converting much of the region’s forests to a single species of tree would make the ecosystem vulnerable. But the players decided to do it anyway because the tree’s lumber was very profitable just then. And the highs proved quite inflexible when it came to birth control. Advised that “just letting things go” would cause the populations in underdeveloped areas to explode, the authoritarians just let things go.

Now the Global Change Game is not the world stage, university students are not world leaders, and starting a nuclear holocaust in a gymnasium is not the same thing as launching real missiles from Siberia and North Dakota. So the students’ behavior on those two successive nights in 1994 provides little basis for drawing conclusions about the future of the planet. But some of what happened in this experiment rang true to me. I especially thought, “I’ve seen this show before” as I sat on the sidelines and watched the high RWAs create their very own October crisis.

Please read Bob Altemeyer’s The Authoritarians. Is there any question that people of this bent are completely unfit to be managing anything more complicated than their own sorry lives? How our world groans and suffers simply because so many of the people in power lack the empathy and basic orientation to connect with others who share with them this tiny blue green planet.

107 thoughts on “Essentials: Altemeyer’s “The Authoritarians”

  1. Also because the people who would do a good job aren’t ruthless enough to take power in the first place…

    Personally in the high RWA game if things got bad I’d start building domes and underground shelters to survive the oncoming holocaust.

  2. Ah, 2 more things.

    1) That game sounds unbelievably fun.
    2) The point is once enough of the RWAs start an “arms race” so to speak, all the other countries are forced to take sides or be helplessly bullied leading to a self-defeating cycle. Maybe if enough of the smaller nations banded together, but it would probably take a major decisive war to end the escalation. But keeping that war from escalating too badly…. well that’s the trick. I say bring on the aliens, we need ’em to rally against.

  3. Way to stiffle any dissent by closing the comments of another post after you hurl false alegations against people who actually care for this country.

    How much does BinLaden pay you to spout your terrorist propaganda?

  4. Isn’t it interesting that so many righties say they hate “big government” and “collectivism,” and brag about how independent they are. Yet at the same time they want to give government more and more authority to protect them from the things they fear.

    It’s like adolescent rebellion. Teenagers want to keep mom and dad at a distance, but they want mom and dad to shelter them and bail them out when they get into trouble.

  5. Way to stiffle any dissent by closing the comments of another post after you hurl false alegations against people who actually care for this country.

    How much does BinLaden pay you to spout your terrorist propaganda?

    This is why I have to close comments whenever a right-wing blog links to my site. The righties never present counter-arguments; they just spew insults.

    I actually gave a reason for my allegations (see also here), and stand by them. Not one of you has refuted my reason. You just throw temper tantrums because I insulted you.

    Definition of “reason”:

    1. The basis or motive for an action, decision, or conviction. See Usage Notes at because, why. 2. A declaration made to explain or justify action, decision, or conviction: inquired about her reason for leaving. 3. An underlying fact or cause that provides logical sense for a premise or occurrence: There is reason to believe that the accused did not commit this crime. 4. The capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought; intelligence. 5. Good judgment; sound sense. 6. A normal mental state; sanity: He has lost his reason. 7. Logic A premise, usually the minor premise, of an argument.

    I throw in the definition because I assume righties don’t know what “reason” is. It’s rare to see them display any.

  6. maha:
    You tell it exactly like it is.
    It’s very sad that the 25% or so righties are not open to reason & probably never will be. Their whole beings are wrapped up in these closely held beliefs as if they were swathed in warm bankies. It is much too frightening and alarming for them to question in the slightest way because that would break open the floodgates.
    It’s arrested development, imo. They got stalled during the maturation process at some point.

  7. Wow … that post by “Doug” has just GOT to be sarcasm, right? I mean it’s so outlandishly loony that it is basically a caricature of your typical right wing blogee….

  8. Please be sure to take a look at Karen Stenner’s book “The Authoritarian Dynamic” as well. This is perhaps a more difficult piece of conceptual analysis in places plus reports of her empirical work but I think it is one of the most thoughtful pieces of social science research I have read in years. She has a methodological critique of Altmeyer’s definition of authoritarian I think is valid, but this does not invalidate Altmeyer’s questionnaire-based empirical work which is excellent. I have posted on it several times beginning here. I posted on it yesterday as well. Search my blog for Stenner for all posts.

  9. How long until you close the comments on this thread, coward? Why don’t you ONCE answer a valid criticism, rather than holler “hate speech!” and quickly get in the last word?

    Never mind, it’s too tough a concept for you to grasp, living in your little isolated hole.

  10. Pardon me for commenting twice on the same thread but you’ve definitely hit one of my favorite themes here. Another interesting book attempting to understand the systematic differences between ‘progressives’ and ‘conservatives’ is George Lakoff’s “Whose Freedom?” I comment on it here. Lakoff’s book does not deal directly with the concept of authoritarianism but he does trace ‘conservative’s’ version of ‘freedom’ to commitment to a “strict father” type of family.

  11. Why don’t you ONCE answer a valid criticism

    As soon as I get a valid criticism, I promise I’ll answer it. However, comments that consist of nothing but insults, with no refutation whatsoever of my points, are not “criticism.”

  12. Wow … that post by “Doug” has just GOT to be sarcasm, right?

    I think in Rightie World that’s what passes for a witty rejoinder.

  13. One must wonder what would happen if Altemeyer ran a simulation composed of equal elements of high- and low-RWA participants. It’s one thing to believe in worldwide cooperation when your partners consistently play along and honor their committments; it’s quite another when some significant percentage of your partners cheat and double-cross you on a regular basis.

    As regards authoritarianism in general, I applaud the author’s recognition that it manifests on both the Left and the Right. While this audience focuses its attention on the efforts of the current Administration, it would be wise for us to recognize the authoritarian elements on the Left, which are likely to come to the fore once the present troubles are behind us. It’s easy to be skeptical of a government prone to trample our rights in the name of security, but what of the coming governments who’d like to trample those same rights in the name of environmentalism, faux-tolerance (i.e. speech crimes), or public health? Are you really anti-authoritarian, or are you just looking for an authority who agrees with you politically?

  14. And I cannot help but note that comment #13 consists of nothing but a broad insult based on an unfair stereotype of somebody’s political opponent. Per the rules of this blog, I expect this comments thread to be closed forthwith. I feel fortunate that I’ve been able to sneak my comment in under the wire.

  15. Administration, it would be wise for us to recognize the authoritarian elements on the Left, which are likely to come to the fore once the present troubles are behind us. It’s easy to be skeptical of a government prone to trample our rights in the name of security, but what of the coming governments who’d like to trample those same rights in the name of environmentalism, faux-tolerance (i.e. speech crimes), or public health? Are you really anti-authoritarian, or are you just looking for an authority who agrees with you politically?

    THAT’S a valid criticism (jeff r, take notes). I share your concerns, although I suspect we won’t be crossing that bridge for a while.

  16. I agree with ironranger that it is a maturation problem.

    Piaget’s theory tells us children have four stages (from Wikipedia):

    Sensorimotor stage: from birth to age 2 years (children experience the world through movement and senses and learn object permanence)
    Preoperational stage: from ages 2 to 7 (acquisition of motor skills)
    Concrete operational stage: from ages 7 to 11 (children begin to think logically about concrete events)
    Formal operational stage: after age 11 (development of abstract reasoning).

    If you never get to abstract reasoning, you tend to remain stuck with black and white thinking, being overly dependent on others for decisions, and over-generalize because the brain lacks over-arching concepts that allow them to transfer rules from one situation to another.

  17. Jim Bond – thanks much for you comments. I’ve been interested in Lakoff’s Whose Freedom? ever since I saw it, but haven’t yet read it. Thanks for linking in your comments on this and on Stenner’s work. I’ll look at both.

  18. A great example of the authoritarian mindset can be found in Chris Hedges’ book American Fascist. While Dean’s book does a good job explaining the mindset (I’ll have to pick up Altemeyer’s), Hedges present a great, real world (and too close to home) example in the dominionist Christian movement. It’s rather disconcerting.

  19. WereBear (#19) – Sara Robinson at Orcinus made a similar observation here, which blew me away when I discovered it. I was going to write a full posting about it, but never managed more than a brief comment to one of maha’s postings. You add a lot more meat from the scientific literature to what Sara wrote.

    Squid (#14) although hundreds of millions had to suffer for it, we are indeed fortunate for the example of Communism, which illustrates that authoritarianism doesn’t always map to political conservativism. And your observation about mixing up low and high RWAs is certainly valid and definitely more real-world.

  20. OMG, you are almost funny. You accuse me of doing nothing more than spitting out insults after you accuse other bloggers of hating America. That makes sense. Not one person with an IQ higher than 8 would agree that you made a valid argument. Simply claiming that it is valid doesn’t make it so.

  21. RT Firefly (#21) – I’ve listened to Hedges speak and he’s quite an amazing guy, from an amazing, high caliber background. I have a couple of books of his on my shelf, as yet unread. As you point out, he has a particular, riveting insight into the connections between authoritarianism and Christianity, born from first hand experience.

    Hedges’ father was a pastor in upstate New York, he himself went off to one of the pre-eminent divinity schools (I think Harvard) , and he spent many years as a war correspondent. Definitely someone worth reading.

  22. Excellent posting, Moonbat! I’ve downloaded The Authoritarians thanks to John Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience. I plan to read it as soon as I can get to it, unfortunately, I am overloaded with reading material at the moment.

  23. OMG, you are almost funny. You accuse me of doing nothing more than spitting out insults after you accuse other bloggers of hating America. That makes sense. Not one person with an IQ higher than 8 would agree that you made a valid argument. Simply claiming that it is valid doesn’t make it so.

    Simply claiming is isn’t doesn’t mean it isn’t, either. Why is my point not valid? Do you even know why I said certain persons hated America? There is a reason. All manner of people have taken offense at what I said, but not one of you has addressed the reason I said it. If you honestly don’t know what the reason is, say so (politely) and we’ll discuss.

    Oh, and I called you all cowards, too. Have a nice day.

  24. maha,

    I appreciate that my first argument was taken in the spirit in which it was offered, though I’m saddened that my second argument was not.

    My too-cute-by-half comment was merely an observation that for all the crudeness of the attacks leveled at this blog by defensive right-wingers, they do contain a grain of truth: insults directed at righty mouth-breathers are accepted, encouraged, and even engaged in by the hostess. Insults directed the other way, by contrast, result in criticism, and sometimes banning and threadlocking. It is an undeniable double standard, no matter who points it out or what language they use, and it does you little credit.

    I realize that criticizing this regime is bound to make me less popular than if I concentrated on criticism of the regime in Washington, but there you have it.

  25. “…but what of the coming governments who’d like to trample those same rights in the name of environmentalism, faux-tolerance (i.e. speech crimes), or public health?”

    Squid, I’m not so sure I prefer having my rights trampled by insurance companies (as is the case currently in the U.S.) over giving a democratically elected government the responsibility and duty to provide every citizen with health care.

  26. That would be due to the fact that you had no reason.

    Wrong. I had a big one, and a very specific one. Thank you for validating my decision to close the threads, however.

  27. insults directed at righty mouth-breathers are accepted, encouraged, and even engaged in by the hostess. Insults directed the other way, by contrast, result in criticism, and sometimes banning and threadlocking.

    Please see comment rules, particularly #s 1, 2, and 8.

  28. Maha, I realize you can’t read, but I informed you that you offered no reason for your claim that malkin or allahpundit hate America. Do I need to type slower for you?

  29. Doug (#32), I’ve deliberately stayed out of this fight, but you’re really geting boring. It is you who is making a fool of yourself by such juvenile remarks. Can you offer anything about the subject at hand, about Altemeyer’s Authoritarianism, or are you just going to waste people’s time?

  30. Doug, dear, I know good and well what I wrote, because I’m the one who wrote it. I did have a reason for saying what I said. I believe I stated it plainly. I stated it again at more length in the next post. I figure you must be able to read because you can write, so why don’t you read the last two posts again to figure out what you missed?

  31. As far as the current dust-up goes, it seems that one camp is happy that a bad guy was put away, and the other camp is upset at how that was accomplished.

    Now each side accuses the other because they choose to focus on the means over the ends, or vice-versa. For my part, I celebrate the end, and I acknowledge that the process makes me uncomfortable. I am somewhat reassured that the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial branches all weighed in, though I acknowledge the deep divisions within each branch. I hope that the Congress will revisit the issue with a clearer mind when matters aren’t quite so fraught, though I admit that such hopes are foolish.

  32. When I read hardcore true believer righties’ comments, for the life of me, I cannot find any sense or logic in them. It just sounds like a lot of ‘so theres’ and reminds me of trying to have a conversation with someone that has had a few too many over their coherent limit around midnight at the local bar.

  33. #35 – I can’t rejoice in the End because the Process is at best questionable. This is what the phrase “due process” is all about, ensuring a just ends through a fair process.

  34. Squid — I’m afraid I cannot be as complacent as you. See, for example, Glenn Greenwald:

    That this bright line was crossed, and crossed so explicitly and with so little controversy, was an unmistakable sign of just how much of our national character was being eroded, just how limitless was the attack on our basic constitutional framework, just how profoundly our political press was failing.

    See also two posts by Balkinization, here and here.

  35. Canadian Reader,

    My ‘public health’ element wasn’t about the insurance companies as much as it was about governments deciding that certain foods are prohibited for the sake of the public good (the NYC fat fiat being the most prominent recent example).

    I enjoy chocolate, and beer, and red meat, and potato chips. In much the same way as the current debate isn’t so much about Padilla as it is about those who may come next, so my concern isn’t about trans fats as it is about what may come next.

    (And considering how well this democratically elected, representative government handles most things, I remain terrified at the prospect that they’ll have primary responsibility for my health. Sign me up for an HSA and let me make my own decisions, thanguverrymush.)

  36. Moonbat (#24), I first became aware of Hedges from a radio interview and immediately bought his book “War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning” (his background as a war correspondent in Bosnia, as well as other strife ridden countries made this a great read). And his theological background (yes it was Harvard) gives him tremendous insight on the dominionist topic. While much of “American Fascists” is anecdotal, I’ve seen enough of this movement and its followers to consider him a credible source. And, he does provide quotes, interview excerpts, and snippets from various dominionists’ pamphlets whenever possible. I humbly suggest you get some of his books that you have off your shelf as soon as you get the chance to read them.

  37. Squid — I agree with you that the trans fat restrictions went way too far. If some future progressive Congress passes a law like that, I’ll stand with you against it. I’ll even bring the beer. 🙂

  38. #35 — here’s the problem. Whether one guy gets locked up or not for one particular crime, or set of crimes, doesn’t really matter a whole heck of a lot in the grand scheme of things.

    If the system as a whole is in jeapordy, however, that very much DOES matter in the grand scheme of things.

    If the system is sound, we can have confidence that most bad guys, most of the time, will find justice, and most innocents, most of the time, will not get caught up in the system.

    If the system is rotten, we can have no such confidence, and we must end up fearing our own government, fearing that *we* will get caught up in it.

    *That* is why the means are so very much more important than the ends.

    -me

  39. Give it up Maha…

    Punks like this “Doug” character never get it…

    Telling him to read (and understand) what you wrote is: “about as useful as kicking a hog barefooted” (as my Ol’ Daddy used to say)…

  40. #42 – I’m reminded of Justice Stevens’ dissent in Bush v Gore:

    Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

    As you stated,

    If the system as a whole is in jeapordy, however, that very much DOES matter in the grand scheme of things.

  41. Doug, I’m not the least bit pissed that Padilla was found guilty. If he conspired with al Qaeda terrorists, then he was guilty. That was not the point.

    I am pissed because the central founding values of our country were betrayed, and people like Malkin were celebrating.

    You’re banned now, btw.

  42. What you view as a threat from the conservatives, I view the same threat from the liberals. This game of perception can go back and forth. Conservatives want to grind the constitution under their heel, and merge religion and government into one lock stepping theocracy. Right, I get it, I’ve heard it before…

    I contest that Liberals want to destroy dissent. As a recent graduate from college, I see nothing more dangerous than liberal speech codes and thought police. Think like us, be like us, conform to our set of beliefs. The individual isn’t important (or so says the collective elite of the professorship). I’m here to serve the social construct of the people around me. Whether that be talking about the plight of the poor ad nauseum over cocktails (doing things isn’t the liberal way…see this report that conservatives actually donate more to social causes), or saying that I need to pay more into the system that blessed me with such luck of success, liberals seem to want to interject nanny state into everything I do. I see nothing more authoritarian than a state sanctioned parent that tell me how I can and cannot think.

    So…to establish. I think you’re wrong, not evil, not retarded…just wrong. But because of the way I think, according to the research you’ve provided and embraced…my situation is driven by a mental condition, why else wouldn’t someone have the same set of beliefs as you?

    Civil enough?

    I don’t care what your policy beliefs or political positions are…but a disclaimer in your rules saying you don’t need to be held to the same standards you hold your commentors doesn’t make it right. Authoritarian even?

  43. Bah, why do rightwing nutters bother with the pretense? Take the bloody Constitution & burn the damn thing. It means NOTHING to them. Pathetic.

    Kudos to Maha, and for all the right wing nutters out there, just watch out what you ask for, you just might get it.

  44. Seems maha and others on her side of the ideological divide are making sweeping generalizations about “righties”. Putting aside her hyperventilating accusations that Michelle Malkin and others “hate America”, it’s simply false to assert that there was not much disagreement on the right over the process. See here or even here

    “Concerns about detention of enemy combatants are not persuasive, but neither are they frivolous

    And there’s much more along those same lines. The “righties” have not opted to shred the constitution in order to convict a bad guy as has been asserted. Far from it. The dominant sentiment on the right from what I read, is that Padilla enlisted in Al Queda and plotted with them, and therefore should be considered an enemy combatent not subject to the same priveleges and protections of a US citizen.

    It’s a valid argument, one that I have not seen acknowledged, much less addressed on this blog. No need to do so, I suppose, if you feel that the other side are nothing but America hating sniveling cowards

  45. Stout Republican — I hear this stuff about colleges, and I agree with you that sometimes the thought police thing seems to go too far. I wrote about that earlier this year. I think a lot of this behavior is pure immaturity (on all sides). Let me say I am absolutely opposed to government enforcement of “liberal speech codes and thought police,” and if such a thing ever happens in my lifetime I pledge to speak out against it.

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