Conservatives Without Conscience

Milgram believed that Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) was correct in its analysis. She took issue with the Israeli war crimes prosecutor’s efforts to depict Eichmann as a sadistic monster for his horrific role in exterminating Jews during World War II. She in turn described Eichmann as “an uninspired bureaucrat who simply sat at his desk and did his job,”[4] a compliant cog who had set aside his conscience. “Arendt’s conception of the banality of evil comes closer to the truth than one might dare imagine,” Milgram observed. In fact, the lesson of his work was that “ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terribly destructive process.” Stated a bit differently, Milgram revealed that for a remarkable number of people, it is very difficult to disobey authority figures, but quite easy for them to set aside their conscience.

Milgram’s research explained how someone like Chuck Colson was able to set aside his conscience when Nixon wanted a break-in at the Brookings Institution, and Colson became a dependable and unquestioning lieutenant for following orders.[5] Colson, a former Marine, was a click-the-heels, salute, and get-the-job-done type. But after he had left the White House, had become a born-again Christian, and had acknowledged Nixon’s disgraceful conduct, the Milgram model became less than satisfactory in explaining Colson’s efforts to promote a bogus history of Watergate.

Milgram’s notion of an agentic conscience, however, appears to explain how, under Bush and Cheney, National Security Agency employees can turn their powerful electronic surveillance equipment on other Americans without objection. It can also account for CIA employees’ and agents’ willingness to hide so-called enemy combatants (that is, anyone they suspect of terror connections) in secret prisons, not to mention engage in torture—all contrary to law. Gordon Liddy, in contrast, pretends that he is obedient to the orders of his superiors, when exactly the opposite is the truth, as a close reading of his semiconfessional autobiography reveals. When in the FBI Liddy made illegal entries—“black-bag jobs”—searching for clues in an auto theft case, even though such activity was authorized (under the Fourth Amendment) only for certain national security cases, and even then had to be approved by FBI headquarters in advance. Liddy describes his illegal activity as “a simple extrapolation from FBI procedure in security cases.” Rather than follow orders, he has consistently “extrapolated” and regularly disobeyed and deceived superiors.[6]

Milgram’s work does not explain Liddy’s behavior, or for that matter the obedience of the conservative Republicans who agreed to vote to impeach Clinton because their leaders instructed them to do so. And it does not even begin to illuminate the question of what drives authority figures, for Milgram focused only on those who compliantly follow orders, not on those who issue them. To really understand the conscience of contemporary conservatism we must turn to the study of authoritarianism, which explores both those who give orders in a political setting, as well as those who obediently follow such orders.

Linguistics expert George Lakoff reports in Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think that the language and thinking of contemporary conservatism is, essentially, authoritarian. The conservative’s worldview draws on an understanding of the family that follows “a Strict Father model.” (By way of comparison, he noted, the liberal worldview draws on a very different ideal, “the Nurturant Parent model.”) Lakoff contends that the organizing ideal of conservatism is the strict father who stands up to evil and emerges victorious in a highly competitive world. In the terms of this model, children are born bad and need a strict father to teach them discipline through punishment.[7] Chris Matthews of MSNBC’s Hardball has made similar observations, and describes today’s Republicans as the “Daddy” party and Democrats as the “Mommy.” There is no doubt in my mind, based on years of personal observation, that contemporary conservative thinking is rife with authoritarian behavior, a conclusion that has been confirmed by social science. An examination of the relevant studies provides convincing support for the argument that authoritarian behavior is the key to understanding the conservative conscience, or lack thereof.

Authoritarianism

Social psychologists have spent some sixty years studying authoritarianism.[*] A decade before Milgram produced his startling findings, those most likely to comply with authority figures were identified as a personality type in The Authoritarian Personality, a study undertaken at the University of California, Berkeley. This work was part of the effort of leading social scientists to understand how “in a culture of law, order and reason…great masses of people [could and did] tolerate the mass extermination of their fellow citizens,” a question that was of some urgency after the horrors of World War II.[8]

The Berkeley study introduced the idea of “the authoritarian type”—people with seemingly conflicting elements in their persona, since they are often both enlightened yet superstitious, and proud to be individualists but live in constant fear of not being like others, whose independence they are jealous of because they themselves are inclined to submit blindly to power and authority.[9] For good reason, alert observers of American democracy are again expressing concern, as they had after World War II, about the growing and conspicuous authoritarian behavior in the conservative movement. Alan Wolfe, a professor of political science at Boston College and the director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, suggests that The Authoritarian Personality be retrieved from the shelves. “The fact that the radical right has transformed itself from a marginal movement to an influential sector of the contemporary Republican Party makes the book’s choice of subject matter all the more prescient,” Wolfe wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education.[10]

Although The Authoritarian Personality is not without critics, Wolfe believes that despite its flaws it deserves a reevaluation. Public officials “make good subjects for the kinds of analysis upon which the book relied; visible, talkative, passionate, they reveal their personalities to us, allowing us to evaluate them,” he observes. A good example, he suggests, is United Nations ambassador John R. Bolton. At Bolton’s Senate confirmation hearings (after which the Senate refused to confirm him; Bush nonetheless gave him a recess appointment), his contentious personality was exposed, with one former State Department colleague calling him “a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy.” Wolfe notes, “Everything Americans have learned about Bolton—his temper tantrums, intolerance of dissent, and black-and-white view of the world—step right out of the clinical material assembled by the authors of The Authoritarian Personality.” Wolfe also finds Republican senator John Cornyn of Texas and former House majority leader Tom DeLay in its pages as well.[11]

During the past half century our understanding of authoritarianism has been significantly refined and advanced. Leading this work is social psychologist and researcher Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba. Altemeyer not only confirmed the flaws in the methodology and findings of The Authoritarian Personality, but he set this field of study on new footings, by clarifying the study of authoritarian followers, whom he calls “right-wing authoritarians” (RWA). The provocative titles of his books—Right-Wing Authoritarianism (1981), Enemies of Freedom (1988), and The Authoritarian Specter (1996)—and a few of his many articles found in scholarly journals—such as “Highly Dominating, Highly Authoritarian Personalities” in the Journal of Social Psychology (2004) and “Why Do Religious Fundamentalists Tend to Be Prejudiced?” in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion (2003)—indicate the tenor of his research and the range of his interests.[*]

4.

Milgram, Obedience to Authority, 5.

5.

Stanley L. Kutler, Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes (New York: Free Press, 1997), 3, 6, 8, 10, 13, 17. (Repeatedly in the remarkable conversations Nixon demands a break-in at the Brookings Institution.)

6.

G. Gordon Liddy, Will (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), 77 (regarding black-bag jobs), 157–69 (Liddy describes how he concocted the plan to break into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, noting that he “was forbidden to participate directly in the mission,” but despite his orders, he did so, claiming he “was the only game in town”), 255. Liddy explains that, contrary to his orders and his promise to his superiors that his activities would not be linked to him or anyone with whom he was associated, he used the head of security for the Nixon reelection campaign, James McCord, as part of his burglary team at the Watergate, because “McCord was the only game in town.”

7.

George Lakoff and John Jost radio interviews, “The Science of Conservatism,” WBAI-FM (November 12, 2005). See also George Lakoff, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 33. (Lakoff’s work is fascinating, and his credentials are strong, but his book really provides no documentation. He does provide a laundry list of references at the back of the book, but it is impossible to tell where his material comes from. It appears he speaks largely ex cathedra. Since there was no way to examine his sources, I found I could not use his material. I was unsuccessful in my efforts to contact him, with my e-mail resulting only in my being added to the mailing list of his foundation.)

*

It is important to appreciate that the term “authoritarianism” as used by the social and political psychologist is different from the authoritarianism of the political scientist or the typical journalistic reference. Political scientists and journalists typically view authoritarianism as a form of government. This authoritarianism is not what is meant by political and social psychologists who use the term, and it is not how the term is used in this chapter. When an “authoritarian personality” prevails, authoritarianism can exist in a home, in a classroom, in a church, or in a courtroom. Theoretically, a very unauthoritarian person could function as head of an authoritarian government, although that would be unusual; likewise, an authoritarian leader could easily be head of a democracy. As I point out in the next chapter, authoritarian personalities can also push democracy toward political authoritarianism. In this chapter, however, authoritarianism refers to the thinking and behavior of authoritarian personalities.

*

Throughout this chapter I have quoted or paraphrased Altemeyer, and so noted in the text. This material is based on an extensive exchange of e-mails over a seven-month period, and to not excessively clutter this chapter, I have not added endnotes or footnotes in each instance. However, when I have relied on other material by Altemeyer, I have provided a citation.