Cliff LyonWhy Evil Lurks in Some of The Nicest People
I’ve written about this before, and I’m writing about it again because I find it keeps coming up again for me over and over again in conversation.
This single interview WAS for me a major epiphany in the quest to understand why so many people are so willing to accept at face value whatever they are told by people on TV. Today those same people are the ones who have been unwilling or unable to grasp the evidence and reality that Bush, the neocon movement, his administration, have been feeding us a pack of lies in the most criminal fashion.
John Dean, Republican advisor to Richard Nixon has written a deeply disturbing book about the conservative right’s growing move toward authoritarianism and blind loyalty. Its an old concept. It worked for Hitler and others. It is at work today.
This interview with Keith Olbermann gives us a frightening new perspective on the use of fear to gain and keep power.Download:
General obedience in not always a bad thing. Blind obedience however is possibly responsible for all the most horrific acts ever perpetrated on this planet by our species. The research Dean refers to in the book is largly the life work of Robert Altemeyer who is himself writing an online book called The Authoritarians.
Dean’s book is called Conservatives Without Conscience.
June 10th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Not much new about the method is there? Been going on forever like this. The only people who aren’t scared are currently kicking the crap out of us, physically and psychologically, in what appears to be a championship effort.
That would be team IED and market bomb menacers. Or as like to call the truck driving variety, Team RYD! Ruin your Day.
June 10th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Hey! Dean is an Outraged former Repug just like me. Authoritarians are our Achilles heal, hippies are yours.
June 11th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Outraged [former] Repug:
Hippies are a myth created by the main stream media and war profiteers. The largest group of people who want something for nothing are called inside traders.
June 11th, 2007 at 5:13 am
You’ll bow to the Hippie ‘code of correctness’. Amen
June 11th, 2007 at 5:29 am
What do you think it is that creates so much apathy about this subject? I’m guilty of it and so are most Americans. We can write our thoughts on blogs such as this but where does that get us? Both sides of the aisle in Congress and the Senate happily passed the Patriot Act because of their fear of another terrorist attack and yet the terrorists have already achieved much of their goal without any more violence. We have fewer rights and less security - from our own government - today than we’ve had in my lifetime and most of it is of our own doing. The Patriot Act showed up on Capital Hill within two weeks of 9/11. Do you really think anybody wrote 343 pages of legislation in two weeks? Hell no! That deceitful document was in the works long before 9/11. We should all be afraid of those who are promoting this idea of authoritarianism but we should be more afraid of our own apathy.
June 11th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
I agree with you that there are a plethora of conservatives who either don’t think or let their ill-conceived “devotion” think for them, but when is someone going to write the book called “Liberals without Conscience”, because they exist, too. I trust the man or woman most who is willing to call a spade a spade, no matter whether it is uncomfortable.
This is what dismays me about Al Gore’s latest book, “Assault on Reason” which in its representation of good political principle is actually an OUTSTANDING book. (I wrote here that I was pleasantly surprised in my initial reading). But when it comes to practical application of those principles, it becomes an anti-Bush diatribe.
In essence, Gore should have named his book “Assault on Bush”, because in its wide panoramic sweep he avoids mentioning the inadequacies of anyone but the Republicans (at least in the first 100 pages).
June 11th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
If I had to guess, I would say Dean’s title Conservatives Without Conscience (which I haven’t read) is in reference to Barry Goldwater’s classic Conscience of a Conservative (which I read long ago, in a less cynical time– for me anyway!).
I wonder if I’ll need to read Gore’s book, probably any of us could write it by now. The point of criticizing the Republicans is that they have had all the power from 2001 until this year. There have been a lot of Democratic inadequacies, but these have to do with being an ineffective opposition party and not with running the country.
Just one example– only six(!) senators ever read the classified version of the 2002 Iraq NIE. We know this because it was kept in a secure room and senators had to go there to read it. I think it’s disgraceful that so many Democrats failed to read the report, and thereby discover that the Bush administration was lying about Saddam’s WMDs. Maybe they would have voted not to authorize the use of military force to invade Iraq. But their votes didn’t count anyway, because the Republicans were united in support of Bush.
June 11th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Shite was coming thru the fan fairly hot and heavy at that time, but it is a fact that it is thier job to be cognizant of the minutea of our laws as they are presented for approval. A no vote is appropriate if there doesn’t seem to be enough time to digest the information. It is here that they failed. They are in effect legislative terrorists by virture of the work they have done (rather not done), in injuring our form of governance.
June 11th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
What amazes me is that Gordon Liddy hasn’t turned John Dean into a pencil neck. In this case, meaning a pencil THROUGH John Dean’s neck. Liddy used to brag about such abilities and doesn’t deserve a radio show any more then Ted Bundy.
Dean has a lot of guts.
February 23rd, 2008 at 5:42 pm
[...] us all on this kind of mental illness, this stifling fear of change, this tribal conformity — which lurks in the nicest people — called Authoritarianism. OneUtah authors were among the first to write about it in this [...]
November 13th, 2008 at 8:50 am
[...] will not be changed by reason, discussion, or niceties because they are not like us. They must be attacked mercilessly and humiliated at every [...]