David Neiwert
September 17, 2006

Conservatives Without Conscience

Current conditions in US seem to align with Robert O. Paxton's nine "mobilizing passions" of fascism

Review of Conservatives Without ConscienceBy John W. DeanViking, New York, 2006

The title of John Dean's exegesis on the conservative movement in America is obviously Conservatives Without Conscience meant to ring a few bells of recognition, being as it is an obvious play on Barry Goldwater's touchstone book, The Conscience of a Conservative. It's clear that Dean hopes to reclaim the good name of conservatism, and in exploring as he does the stark contrasts between modern movement conservatives and the ideals of movement founders like Goldwater, he does so admirably.

But the title rings another bell -- unintentionally, to be sure, but tellingly: it first brought to my mind Robert D. Hare's now-standard text on psychopaths, Without Conscience, which was first published in 1993 but remains in print. Dean's book, as it happens, makes no reference to Hare's work, but it does explore similar territory in examining the psychology not just of the movement's fear-driven followers -- people whose needs drive them to seek out authoritarian leaders -- but the conscienceless manipulators who are all too happy to lead them.

Dean's real achievement in Conservatives Without Conscience lies in this dual identification -- first, of movement conservatism as a travesty of genuine conservative thought; and second, of the pathological nature of the movement, based as it is on an authoritarian, and decidedly antidemocratic, impulse latent in the American landscape. It is a recognition long overdue, both for genuine conservatives and liberals alike.

Dean takes us down this path by first describing his personal experiences in the 1990s with the pathological nature of movement conservatives -- namely, the claque of ideologues, led by Watergate conspirator-turned-talk-show-host G. Gordon Liddy, who undertook concocting and promoting a bizarre conspiracy theory blaming Dean and his wife, Maureen, for secretly orchestrating the Watergate scandal. The theory was drawn out in a book by Leonard Colodny and Robert Gettlin, Silent Coup, that was eventually discredited as a factual travesty, but not before the Deans sued for libel (a suit that was eventually settled out of court).

What baffled and stunned Dean was the willingness of other conservatives to countenance barefaced lies and grotesque distortions, all in the name of a larger agenda. And the harder he looked -- especially during the subsequent Clinton impeachment fiasco, followed by the power-mad Bush administration -- the more widespread he realized this had become. The "conservative movement," far from reflecting traditional conservatism, had transformed into a Machiavellian, power-hungry mob:

Conservatism is not inherently moralistic, arrogant, condescending, and self-righteous. Nor is authoritarian. Yet all of these are adjectives that best describe the political outlook of contemporary conservatism. I make these observations not as an outsider, but as a conservative who is deeply troubled by what has become of a treasured philosophy. Conservatism has been co-opted by authoritarians, a most dangerous type of political animal.

To make the contrast clear, Dean devotes the book's first chapter to a brief history of conservative thought, providing an oversight through the lens of parlor conservatives like Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley and James Burnham, as well as Goldwater. As he points out, conservatism is difficult to define, in no small part because of certain incoherencies -- particularly the claims to fidelity to the spirit of Constitution, which was in large part a product of liberal sensibilities. If conservatism can claim intellectual roots, they are indeed shallow.

If the book has any serious weakness, it is here, since Dean, by focusing on intellectuals, tends to somewhat whitewash the actual history of conservatism in America, probably because his overview is brief. (It might also be said that he somewhat over-exalts Goldwater's legacy; as Rick Perlstein detailed in his authoritative text on the rise of the conservative movement, Before the Storm, the late senator's conscience did not preclude him from indulging the Bircherite paranoia that many of his followers harbored.)

Moreover, it is difficult to consider Dean's overview complete or accurate without, for instance, discussing John C. Calhoun, the intellectual architect of the Confederacy and the Dred Scott ruling, who was the embodiment of conservative politics in the 19th century. Likewise, the long influence of figures such as Theodore K. Bilbo, Strom Thurmond and their fellow Southern segregationists in the first half of the last century, not to mention authoritarian demagogues like Joseph McCarthy, has also played a significant role in the development of modern conservatism. (Note that the latter's legacy recently was "rehabilitated" by Ann Coulter in her book Treason.)

Indeed, the malignant influence of these figures in American history, and the strain of conservatism that they represent, goes a long way toward explaining the disconnect between Goldwater conservatism and the movement in its current state -- because the latter, it's fairly clear, is directly descended from this strain.

So, for that matter, is the authoritarian pathology that Dean goes on to examine in some detail. Most of the rest of the book is devoted to exploring the nature of authoritarian personalities, tying theoretical aspects into real-life examples from the modern right. And it is an examination that is simultaneously on-target and enlightening.

Building off the work of social scientists who have devoted years of study to these personalities -- including a specific set of tests for them -- Dean examines the symbiotic relationship between the right-wing authoritarians who constitute the footsoldiers of the conservative movement and the social-dominant personality types who lead them. The former are the voters and ordinary citizens whose submissive natures attract them to leaders who will dominate them: "High-scoring authoritarians are intolerant of criticism of their authorities, because they believe the authority is unassailably correct. Rather than feeling vulnerable in the presence of powerful authorities, they feel safer."

These followers are deeply wedded to convention, and more often than not are fundamentalist and apocalyptic in their approach to religion. They also have a strong sense of their moral superiority, a trait aided by the ease with they seem to "evaporate guilt."

The people who happily oblige them are described as those who have a "social dominance orientation" -- that is, they "see the world as a competitive jungle in which the fittest survive," and their lives revolve around not only surviving but also dominating. Equality, for them, is for suckers: "Dominators see themselves as realists, maintaining that 'complete equality is probably impossible; that natural forces inevitably govern the world of individuals; and that people should have to earn their place in society."

Libby, Delay, Abramoff, Cheney, Rove, Frist and Robertson

From Conservatives Without Conscience book jacket: Libby, Delay, Abramoff, Cheney, Rove, Frist and Robertson

Finally, there is a third type: people who combine both of these traits, or what Dean calls "double highs" (referring to their test scores). They both want to dominate and believe fervently in the need for people to submit to authority -- preferably themselves. The psychologist whose work provides most of the basis for this model, Dr. Robert Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba, calls them "scary."

The conservative movement, as Dean explains, attracts more than its share of all these personalities, and he can point to abundant examples everywhere. The armies of the religious right, for instance, provide us with a broad and vivid living example of fundamentalist authoritarians coalescing to bring about their own peculiar vision of religious authoritarianism, driving inexorably toward a "Christian" theocratic government. Likewise, leading figures in the movement, from Dick Cheney to Pat Robertson, readily fit the description of the social dominators and "double highs" who play politics like a Darwinesque fight for survival, with the ends, always, justifying the means.

The politics and policies engendered by this symbiosis, as Dean goes on to illustrate in thorough detail, have been nothing short of spectacularly destructive. Not only has the nation been led to war under false pretenses; not only have we fallen spectacularly in the eyes of the rest of the world by our bullying and our willingness to permit torture; not only have short-sighted economic, environmental and social policies, driven by a mad lust for power and the consolidation of wealth, worsened the quality of life for average Americans; but in the process of doing all these things, the conservative movement has created a toxic political and social environment in which dissent is treason and our fellow Americans are designated our enemies. This is not merely divisive; it is pathological.

Dean relies heavily on the work of Altemeyer and his colleagues in this analysis, and for good reason: it is a useful and instructive model that goes a long way towards explaining the mess the nation currently finds itself mired in. But it is hardly the only work that has been done by social scientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists in this field, and any consideration of the problem could stand to benefit from including it.

Perhaps most notably, the psychologist Erik Erikson began undertaking, shortly after the Second World War, the work of examining the psychology of totalitarianism as part of his general theory of the development of the personality, which he divided into eight stages. Erikson found that personalities that were stunted at key stages of development were prone to certain maladjustments; and that those who suffered "identity confusion" in their adolescent and early adult stages were especially prone to what he called "totalism," or an avid willingness to participate in a totalitarian society. The similarities to Altemeyer's analysis of authoritarianism are fairly clear. (Erikson's work in this regard was later refined by such psychologists as Robert Jay Lifton, Dick Anthony and Thomas Robbins, who largely applied it to cult and brainwashing phenomena, though it also extended into their studies of the "exemplary dualism" that lends itself to extremist political beliefs.)

Similarly, there is a fairly rich vein of material regarding those leading personalities -- especially the "double highs" and others who exhibit a striking lack of conscience in their interpersonal as well as political dealings -- that can be found in everyday psychological analysis, especially in the area of personality disorders such as psychopathology, as in Hare's text. The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders' description of antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders, for example, provides a diagnostic context for the very behaviors that Dean describes among so many of the "social dominants" and "double highs." Antisocials, for instance, "show little remorse for the consequences of their acts.... They may be indifferent to, or provide a superficial rationalization for, having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from someone (e.g., 'life's unfair,' 'losers deserve to lose,' or 'he had it coming anyway')... They may believe that everyone is out to 'help number one' and that one should stop at nothing to avoid being pushed around."

However, all these social sciences and their insights have certain limitations as well. Most of the testing upon which these models are built was not designed to differentiate people by their politics, and it can be dangerous -- especially for amateurs -- to leap to too broad of conclusions, especially political ones, about our fellow citizens from them. What studying them tends to suggest, instead, is a deeper understanding of the kinds of motivations and personalities that we encounter in the course of dealing with the political realm; that is, they should give us a healthier understanding of the very human nature that often lies behind public policy.

For all this insight, though, we are left with a larger conundrum: Where do we go from here? Conservatives Without Conscience drills so deeply into the personal realm that, by the time we reach the end, it becomes hard to raise our eyes up to see the larger political picture that emerges. Dean briefly touches on this when, late in the book, he describes how his studies of authoritarianism led him to also study fascism.

This step was perfectly logical, since the personal and social pathologies that he finds in the conservative movement also take a political form, and fascism is the consummate right-wing political pathology of the modern era. He describes studying Robert O. Paxton's landmark text, The Anatomy of Fascism, yet at the end he backs away:

Are we on the road to fascism? Clearly we are not on that road yet. But it would not take much more misguided authoritarian leadership, or thoughtless following of such leaders, to find ourselves there.

Yet in examining Paxton's book, it is difficult -- especially in combination with the remarkable weight of the evidence and analysis that Dean provides -- not to conclude differently. Paxton explains that, as with personal pathologies, fascism consists not of a single core belief or trait but of a constellation of them, and that real fascism emerges when they coalesce. He provides a list of nine "mobilizing passions" that together create this constellation:

A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;
The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether universal or individual, and the subordination of the individual to it;
The belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against the group's enemies, both internal and external;
Dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;
The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;
The need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny;
The superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason;
The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success;
The right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess in a Darwinian struggle.

Conservatives Without Conscience tends to demonstrate, actually, that we are indeed well on the road to fitting that description thoroughly. Dean's hesitation may well be due to the reality that the description does not fit completely (the conservative movement, beyond its war making, is not particularly violent yet, for instance, though violent rhetoric is becoming increasingly popular in its ranks), but it is hard not to see that the differences are dwindling daily.

A rigorous analysis can just as readily conclude that the movement is not yet fascist, but it is -- more through the impetus of the psychological forces into which it is tapping than through any design, and certainly not any conspiracy -- certainly creating the conditions for an outbreak of it. It may take another generation, but it is clear that movement conservatives are engendering a mass mindset that bears all the traits of a genuine American form of fascism.

Such hesitations notwithstanding, though, Conservatives Without Conscience is unquestionably an important book, and may someday take its place as a landmark work in its own right. That is because, regardless of how far we may draw our conclusions, Dean has taken the public discourse in the right direction: assessing the real nature of this yawning maw of insatiable power that conservatism has made itself, and providing us with the tools needed to grapple with it.

For that, he deserves not just our readership but also our deep appreciation. Just as he was 30 years ago in stripping away for public view the machinations of the Nixon administration, John Dean once again has provided the American public with an invaluable service at a time when it desperately needs it.