Well, I am not sure if this covers the variety of "sins" that have created the current US crisis, and I am sure that not being able to cope with change is what characterizes the addictive personality. What seems to be missing here to me is WHAT to do about it. I don't think "elections" are the answer .. I think spiritual renewal is in order.

But the studies mentioned here are certainly interesting.

A real indepth analysis of how people are so easily programmed seems to be missing. The super right isn't the only ones with a patent on the the God concept.

And the "authoritarian" personality is just as evident in New Age, Ascensionist or any other type of social organization.

EXTREME CONTROL TECHNIQUES and personalities are evidence of addictive personalities and those who have been surrounded by them. I think that Dean avoided the obvious conclusions. The entire planet needs some waking up, and elections cannot produce that outcome. But then it's a male politician and NOT a healer writing the book.

Other obvious oversights I see, is that Germany was an escapist, addictive society LONG before 1933. It had been conditioned for two decades to hand their power away to outside sources. Dean my benefit by taking a harder look at what was needed to accomplish fascism in ITALY, instead. There, Big Business and Government types banded together to produce that lovely thing known as FASCISM. And thus is American today .. and Canada is hard on its heels now.

Another glaring oversight is that he avoids the word

PSYCOPATH

and surely doesn't understand political ponerology.

How convenient.
- V.

"Conservatives Without Conscience"
Buy this book and give it to a republican!
From the Progressive Internet -- www.crisispapers.org

Buy John Deans book and give it to a independant voter or a republican who approves of the Job Bush is doing!

The Fast Lane To Fascism: the 4th admendment means absolutely
nothing!

A Review of John Dean's"Conservatives Without Conscience" review the files!

http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/constitutionalcrisis/


By Bernard Weiner,Co-Editor
The Crisis Papers
August 1, 2006
"How does the Bush Administration get away with it?"

And:
"How come,no matter what scandal or embarrassment or disaster Bush&Co. get
enmeshed in, one third of the population still supports them?"

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/electionfraud2004/

The answers to those oft-expressed questions are complex, to be
sure, but with the publication of former White House Counsel John W.
Dean's compelling new book "Conservatives Without Conscience," we
now have more of a framework for understanding what drives the
Busheviks and why so many continue to stand behind them.

Dean, whose insider testimony helped bring down President Nixon
during the Watergate scandal, is a Goldwater-style conservative
Republican. Like so many such "old-style" conservatives -- believers
in small government, maximizing freedom of the individual, balanced
budgets, caution in foreign affairs, etc. -- Dean is appalled by the
extremists who now run the party, turning all the traditional
conservative beliefs upside-down.

These so-called "conservatives" have taken the country down the
slippery slope of extra-Constitutional rule, at the bottom of which,
unless the situation changes, lies the reality of fascism.

"It would not take much more misguided authoritarian leadership, or
thoughtless following of such leaders, to find ourselves there,"
Dean writes.

IMPACT OF FUNDAMENTALIST THOUGHT

And here is the heart of Dean's intelligently-reasoned volume. In
his 2004 book "Worse Than Watergate," Dean excoriated the
CheneyBush presidency for its secrecy, unconstitutional over-reaching,
and in-your-face nastiness. But, aside from revealing its dastardly
governance, Dean didn't have an over-arching theory of why the
Administration and their followers behaved that way. Here,
in "Conservatives Without Conscience," he has come up with a
believable explanation as to why those traits are so prevalent in
rightwing circles.

So how did America wind up on the freeway heading toward the exit
marked fascism? Dean finds a good share of the answer in the pulling
power of authoritarianism, both as practiced by demagogic officials
and as accepted by the third of Americans who, without much thought,
permit themselves to be swayed so easily by those leaders.

But what explains the willingness of so many millions of American
citizens to blindly follow such leaders?

Dean points to the power of fundamentalist religious thought, both
in this country and in other areas of the world as well, no matter
what the religious preference.

Dean keeps digging: What has led to the resurgence of fundamentalist
belief systems?In America, he notes, fundamentalist/evangelical Christians had
political reasons for their renewed activism, including reacting
strenuously to attempts to tax their schools, for example, or to Roe
vs. Wade. But there is something much deeper, which is true as much
in Afghanistan as it is in the U.S. of A.

HARD-WIRED FOR AUTHORITARIANISM

To put it simply (in my words, not Dean's) there are those who are
reasonably comfortable with major social changes, or at least can
adapt to them, and there are those who find rapid changes off-putting,
disorienting, even frightening. To the latter group, the
world is a scary place, with so many conflicting options and
alternatives, so much freedom and so many temptations. Many find
psychic safety in returning to the old verities, the simple
prescriptions for behavior, the clear reasons for acting this way
and not that way.

Not having to think for themselves, or about themselves, provides a
secure "container" for their anxiety. Conservatives have
a "heightened psychological need to manage uncertainty," notes one
social researcher quoted by Dean.

Fundamentalism, you see, seems to provide a safe harbor, a
simple "quiet" way in the midst of all the world's ambiguity
and "noise," that helps in dealing with the frightening and
contradictory cacophony outside the religion. There is good and
there is evil, a right way and a wrong way, Revealed Truth and
dangerous falsehood, you're with us or with our enemies, that sort
of simplistic understanding of the world. Got Mitt Uns -- God is
on our side, so why should we compromise with or pay attention to
those who do not believe in The Truth?

But, says Dean, in addition to the doctrinal underpinnings,
something in the personality of many fundamentalist religious
leaders, and their followers, may be working even more strongly: a
built-in tendency toward authoritarianism.

He quotes from voluminous studies by social psychologist/researcher
Bob Altemeyer, who -- after examining the attitude of tens of
thousands of subjects in interviews and questionnaires -- concluded
that "acceptance of traditional religious beliefs appear to have
more to do with having a personality rich in authoritarian
submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism, than with
the beliefs per se."

LYING AS STANDARD MODUS OPERANDI

Dean says he writes as "a conservative who is deeply troubled by
what has become of a treasured philosophy. Conservatism has been c
o-opted by authoritarians, a most dangerous type of political animal."

"[A]t heart," he writes, those in charge of the Republican
party "are tough, cold-blooded, ruthless ... tolerate no dissent,
use dissembling as their standard modus operandi, and have pushed
their governing authority beyond the law and Constitution ... [O]ur
nation's founders relied on reason, which is anathema for many of
today's conservatives. ... [They] cannot be trusted to exercise the
powers of government responsibly."

Conservatives, Altemeyer found, often engaged in right-wing
aggression not only out of political belief but also "for the pure
pleasure of it ... [They are] malicious, mean-spirited, and
disrespectful of even the basic codes of civility ... [A]uthoritarians
have little if any conscience when pursuing their
causes, and reason gives way to expediency."

THE NEED FOR DOMINATION

Altemeyer and other social scientists who have done the
ground-breaking research on authoritarianism have also found that many
political conservatives, both leaders and followers, possess "a need
to dominate others."

Dean reminds us of the famous '60s experiment by Dr. Stanley Milgram
where college students readily inflicted electrical shocks (or what
they thought were such shocks) on supposed prisoners in their care
because the supervising scientist in a white coat told them to do
so, despite the prisoners' seeming writhing in pain. The experiment
revealed in most of the subjects a clear readiness to bow to the
orders of authority figures. Decades later, we saw photos and
videotape of normal young U.S. soldiers tormenting, humiliating and
torturing prisoners in their care at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. The
hard-wiring is there and switches on in optimal social situations.
(And what pray tell is an "optimal social situation" - V.)


According to Altemeyer's research, "authoritarian aggression is
fueled by fear and encouraged by remarkable self-righteousness,
which frees aggressive impulses. ... [Lying is] easy for right-wing
authoritarians to do because of their remarkable self-righteousness.

"Not only do political conservatives tend to follow authority
figures' orders more often, Altemeyer's research revealed, but they
are "intolerant of criticism of their authorities, because they
believe the authority is unassailably correct." In short, their
leaders do not lie; but when they are found to have lied, they did
so for good, godly reasons. After all, the righteous end justifiesall means.

Outbreaks of dangerous authoritarianism have occurred throughout our
nation's history, notes Dean, but the CheneyBush Administration has
taken social authoritarianism to the extreme -- with Dick Cheney,
Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay as dominator poster-boys for the
movement.

They may think of what they are doing as akin to playing political
chess, but, if so, it's a political game with extremely lethal
consequences. Unlike most other examples of previous
authoritarianism in earlier U.S. administrations, now when the
leaders lie, a large number of people die. Another such example
would be what happened in Europe in the 1930s; see "The Easy SlideInto Fascism: Germany in 1933.

"Most everything in the Bush Administration is done for political

reasons, often to feed its rock-solid fundamentalist/evangelical
base. Rove's tested election strategy is built upon that base. By
hook or by crook or by fraud -- dropping hundreds of thousands of
Dem voters off a state's rolls, tying up oppositional phone lines,
perhaps altering ballot tallies, and so on -- he's able to claim one
more vote than the opposition and feels free then to assert that the
GOP now has a "mandate" to rule.

And, of course, the run-up to the election is orchestrated to the
drumbeat of constant fear and fright, against real or imagined
enemies; these days, the buzzworded scapegoats are "gays," "illegal
immigrants," "atheists," and that oldie-but-goodie "terrorists."(When the
Bush Administration "continues to raise the threat of
terrorism but refuses to implement even the minimum measures
recommended by the [9/11] commission," writes Dean, "it is clear
they are playing the politics of fear.")

WHAT HAPPENS IF GOP WINS IN NOVEMBER

What can America look forward to if the GOP holds onto the House and
Senate in November? For sure, we can anticipate the further
destruction of any opposition as the Republicans continue their
drive for permanent one-party rule. "Our goal is to inflict as much
pain as possible," said authoritarian GOP honcho Grover
Norquist.

"It is not good enough to win; it has to be a painful and
devastating defeat. We're sending a message here."

In addition, we can anticipate continued packing of the appeals
courts with more jurists in the authoritarian mode, serious cracking
down on opposition websites and writers on the internet, the
continuation of corruption at the highest levels as lobbyists buy
corporate access to the writing of laws, and further movement toward
the assumption of "unimpaired executive authority," to use Cheney's
spine-chilling term.And, no doubt, we can expect more wars abroad
(Iran? Syria?Venezuela?), carried out with bullying, self-righteous certainty of
victory -- which, since these guys never learn, and are clueless and
incompetent as well, will backfire in America's face. Again. Chalk
it up to greed, power-hunger and the arrogance of empire. (Bush's
unwavering support of Israel's destruction of Lebanon is a proxy
case in point.)

Is the situation hopeless in moving this country away from
authoritarianism, and restoring America to its great foundations,
its adherence to and respect for law? Dean concludes with this:

"Research, however, reveals there is a solid majority of Americans
who are not right-wing authoritarians, that there are countless
millions of liberals, moderates and conservatives with conscience,
people who shudder at the prospect of giving away our hard-earned
democratic principles, and who cherish our liberties. These are
individuals who question their leaders and their policies, and that
is as it should be."

Democracy is not a spectator sport that can be simply observed. To
the contrary, it is difficult and demanding, and its very survival
depends on active participation. Take it for granted, and the
authoritarians, who have already taken control, will take American
democracy where no freedom-loving person would want it to go. But
time has run out, and the next two or three national election cycles
will define America in the twenty-first century, for better or
worse."