authoritarian

The Authoritarians
$12.05
It's really unfortunate that this book never made the mainstream. It may be party because it's available free [...]

Altemeyer's 'The Authoritarians' is a compilation of years of research he's done on a personality type he identified and labeled "Right Wing Authoritarian." This label does not imply that all authoritarians are right wing. There can be left wing authoritarians but we simply don't see them in the US and Canada for his research was mostly done.

Though the webpage has some political diatribe it is mostly absent from the book which explores the various beliefs of RWAs. RWAs include very few in their 'in' group and villify their 'out' group. They have many hypocrisy's which they don't notice due to their highly compartmentalized thinking. They respect might over reason and are willing to do terrible things under the direction of a proper authority, especially if the person on the receiving end is some sort of outsider. Their fear of the world and change fuels their aggression. Worst of all, they control a large portion of our government.

While Right Wing Authoritarians can be considered dangerous fools, Social Dominators (also discussed in the book) could arguably be considered evil. They view people as tools to be used for their own benefit, are uninterested in helping others unless they will receive more in return and delight in using RWAs for their own purposes.

While the RWA personality corresponds very highly with fundamentalist religion, it is distinct. Anyone who's read Sam Harris' 'Letter to a Christian Nation' or 'The End of Faith' should give this a read. After reading this I believe that while religion may focus people to maladaptive ends, this book really gets at the root of the problem.

It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush
$16.99
This is the most forthright and incisive book on the Bush administration's lies, deceptions, subversions of the Constitution, and secret and illegal activities that I have read. Conason has a way with not only words but an ability to organize and present the damning facts in a clear and decisive manner.

He begins with a sort of reprise of some of the points made by Sinclair Lewis in his famous novel about the fascist threat to America in 1935, "It Can't Happen Here." Some of the parallels are stunning. For example:

"Buzz Windrip, a charismatic politician with little intellectual curiosity but great capacity to appeal to the regular guy, is elected president." George W. Bush could play this part.

"Windrip regularly expresses contempt for the press (except for the newspapers of the ultraright Hearst empire)..." Murdoch's media empire including Fox News fits nicely.

"Windrip is entirely the creation of Lee Sarason, a brilliant, ruthless strategist and advertising man..." Karl Rove fits.

Windrip "exudes a syrupy compassion for the white, Christian, middles-class family while proclaiming a staunch moral and patriotic conservatism. He often mentions that he has read the Bible at least a dozen times." Bush doesn't read that much, but he does hold daily pray sessions that everybody on staff is tacitly required to participate in.

"His most important supporters are the nation's religious fundamentalists, notably a radio preacher with millions of followers who hails Windrip as God's chosen leader, and the country's wealthiest businessmen, who understand that he is their wholly owned instrument despite his populist rhetoric."

"Soon after taking office [Sarason and Windrip] seize upon the genuine economic crisis besetting the country to arrogate more and more power to the White House. Windrip turns Congress into an advisory body and starts appointing hacks to the courts."

"His government conducts business in near-total secrecy, acting to suppress or control the press while the Hearst media serve as propaganda outlets...lavishing praise upon the president and all his works, including his plans for a preemptive war on Mexico." (The quotes are from pages 5-7.)

Throw in George Orwell's prediction of perpetual war in "1984" in order to control the population and increase centralized power, and we can see that our Bush nightmare has all happened before except then it was fiction. Now unfortunately it's all too real. In this regard, Conason recalls James Madison's statement: "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

And that brings us to Chapter 1, "The `Post 9/11 Worldview' of Karl Rove." Karl Rove, clearly has read his Madison (and Machiavelli too) and as one of the two brains behind Bush (Cheney is the other) he knew that the best way to increase the power of the presidency and to ensure Bush's reelection was to start a war. As Conason reports, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rove, and Bush begin planning for the invasion of Iraq as soon as Bush was installed in the White House. In a most revealing insight into the neocon mind, Conason recalls conservative columnist "Irving Kristol's 1989 essay on the Grenada invasion, used by Reagan to draw attention away from the disastrous terrorist bombing of a marine barracks in Lebanon. `The reason we gave for the intervention--the risk to American medical students there--was phony but the reaction of the American people was absolutely overwhelmingly favorable,' Kristol gloated in retrospect. `They had no idea what was going on, but they backed the president. They always will.'" (p. 29)

Mickey Herskowitz, one-time Bush family confidant, summed up the Bush attitude with "Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade." Herskowitz quotes Bush as saying "One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it....If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." (pp. 29-30)

The really chilling thing here is Bush's complete and utter disregard for anyone's life--our soldiers, Iraqi citizens--who cares? Bush only cared about self-aggrandizement. His motivation was purely the will to personal power and glory. Such a man is easily manipulated by people like Rove and Cheney.

Conason goes on to describe how Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Attorney General John Ashcroft circumvented the Constitution and bullied both the press and Congress into giving them what they wanted. He details how corporate America and the evangelical right wing co-conspired to move this country terrifyingly close to an authoritarian state. The amazing thing about all this information is just how public it really is. (Conason provides copious endnotes.) Yet how little does the general public understand about what is going on, and, to be honest, how little does the average person care?

The real legacy of the Bush administration may be the tremendous increase in presidential power that he achieved through such chicanery as the use of "signing statements" on bills he has signed, basically saying the president as commander-in-chief has the power to do what he likes regardless of what this bill says. In inaugurating what is now called "the long war," Bush has shown subsequent presidents the way to greatly increase their power. I suspect that future occupants of the White House, be they Republican or Democratic, will not be able to resist using such methods. Unless somehow Congress can be strengthened, the checks and balances that the Founding Fathers created will disappear and we will have an authoritarian state led by an imperial president with immense power. That is the Bush Legacy.

Imago Dei: Is God Authoritarian?
$9.95
USA Today did a poll that asked Americans what was their image of God. The responses were eye opening and broke down into 4 major views. Rick McDaniel examines these 4 views and helps us to capture the accurate image of God.This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

Shostakovich Against Stalin
$29.98
I was fortunate enough to hear Symphony 7 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last week. As moving as the music was, it has helped so much to see this documentary and understand the world Shastakovich lived in when he was composing the "Leningrad". I appreciated the different camera angles of Gergiev's orchestra, and Gergiev does a very good job of explaining to his musicians and his audience the emotions of the music. I never got tired of hearing him talk about the symphonies. The historical footage put the music in context, but a companion DVD that goes more into detail of the time is STALIN (1992) starring Robert Duvall, currently available on Amazon. The interviews with Shostakovich's contemporaries added to the understanding of the music, which played in the background throughout the documentary. I agree with others that at 76 minutes long, I could easily have watched another hour of this enlightening documentary, but I appreciate that Larry Weinstein has put together this much.