Conservative scholar Peter Viereck examined authoritarian conservatism in his work Conservatism: From John Adams to Churchill, in which he analyzed the “rival brands” of early conservatism, dividing them into two founding schools: that of Edmund Burke and that of Maistre.[4] Viereck characterized Burkean conservatism as “the moderate brand” while Maistre’s as “reactionary.”[*] Burkean conservatism was not authoritarian but constitutionalist, while Maistrean conservatism was “authoritarian in its stress on the authority” being granted to “some traditional elite.”[5] Although most conservative scholars choose to ignore Maistre, treating him as an unwelcome member of the family,[6] his work is significant in that it suggests that authoritarianism was an integral component of conservatism at the time of its founding. Authoritarian conservatism had subsided by the time Andrew Jackson was elected president in 1828, and in the ensuing years (literally from the age of Jackson until recently) it was quiescent.[7] Today, however, a neo-Maistrean brand of conservatism is on the rise.
Dunn and Woodard paused in their study of the American conservative tradition to compare authoritarian conservatism with libertarianism and traditional conservatism. They provided an illuminating contrast.
Authoritarian conservatism begins with basic conservative beliefs—order, distrust of change, belief in traditional values—and branches in the direction of favoring state power to protect these beliefs. Libertarianism has an entirely different set of core beliefs which are based upon nineteenth-century liberalism. Those beliefs subordinate the order of a community to the desire for individuality and stress personal rights over personal responsibilities. Libertarians move away from state power to secure maximum liberty for the individual. Authoritarian conservatives are like traditional conservatives in their belief in established values, while libertarians are like traditional conservatives in their desire for limited government. Traditional conservatives and libertarians, however, differ in the degree of their belief in limited government. Libertarians are extreme in their opposition to state power while traditional conservatives are more moderate in their opposition. Traditional conservatives are much more likely to accept some state power than are libertarians.[8]
Two factions of conservatism currently embrace a contemporary adaptation of authoritarian conservatism: neoconservatives and social conservatives.[*] Neoconservatives are a relatively small group of social-dominance authoritarians, with significant, if not disproportionate, influence. Social conservatives, whose core members are Christian conservatives, comprise the largest and most cohesive faction of conservatism. They are, by and large, typical right-wing authoritarian followers. Both neoconservatives and social conservatives include countless conservatives without conscience within their ranks.
Neoconservatism first surfaced in the public during the Reagan administration. More recently its interest in, and influence on, American foreign policy has drawn a great deal of attention. One of the more colorful (and accurate) descriptions of the typical neoconservative comes from Philip Gold, who justifiably described himself as having “impeccable conservative credentials and long experience in the national-security field,” as well as being “a grumpy old Marine (a former intelligence officer), who has grown infuriated with and appalled by the conservative embrace of disaster” served up by neoconservatives. Gold, a former Georgetown University professor, described neoconservative foreign policy wonks as “a new aristocracy of aggression that combines 19th-century Prussian pigheadedness with a most un-Prussian inability to read a man or a ledger book, and a near total lack of military—let alone combat—experience. Ask these people to show you their wounds and they’ll probably wave a Washington Post editorial at you.”[*]
The Christian Science Monitor describes neoconservatives as mostly liberal Jewish intellectuals who became disenchanted with the left in the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s they had become Republicans, having found a home for their aggressive policies in the Reagan administration. According to the Monitor, what distinguishes neoconservatives from other conservatives is their desire for militarily imposed nation building. They believe the United States should “use its unrivaled power—forcefully if necessary—to promote its values around the world.” Neoconservatives do not trust multilateral institutions to keep world peace; rather they believe the United States must do it.[9] An American empire is a perfectly plausible scenario for neoconservatives; containment is a policy they believe is outmoded. Neoconservatives view Israel as “a key outpost of democracy in a region ruled by despots.” They want to transform the Middle East with democracy, starting with Iraq. Today the foreign policies of neoconservatives and of the Bush administration are fundamentally synonymous.
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff and national security adviser—and he was also an assistant to the president—is an überneoconservative, a personification of the true believer who has been involved with neoconservatism since its arrival in Washington during the Reagan administration. Libby is also an exemplary authoritarian.[*] Until he was indicted by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald for perjury, false statements, and obstruction of justice relating to the investigation of the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s covert status, Libby was relatively unknown, a “behind the throne” man with unique influence within the Bush/Cheney White House. Libby worked with Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense under Bush I, and while at the Defense Department he assisted his former Yale professor Paul Wolfowitz in drafting a defense policy guidance paper calling for unilaterally preemptive wars and the invasion of Iraq—a decade before the 9/11 terror attacks. (When this highly controversial document was leaked to the press, Bush I had the policy withdrawn, assuring the world that this was not the way Americans were thinking.) Later Libby would help draft a report for the neoconservative Project for the New American Century entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses—Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century,” which was merely a restatement of the early policy paper, but under Bush II it became the blueprint for the administration’s defense policy.
Libby has been extremely aggressive in promoting the aims of neoconservatism. Reportedly:
It was Libby—along with Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and a handful of other top aides at the Pentagon and White House—who convinced the president that the U.S. should go to war in Iraq. It was Libby who pushed Cheney to publicly argue that Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda and 9/11. It was also Libby who prodded former Secretary of State Colin Powell to include specious reports about an alleged meeting between 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official in Powell’s February 2003 speech to the United Nations.[10]
This, of course, turned out to be extremely bad advice but typical of authoritarian aggression. Libby no doubt took whatever steps were necessary to further the cause he believed in, even pushing dubious information with great self-righteousness.
4.
A brief biography of Joseph de Maistre and a Maistre home page administered by Richard Lebrun at St. Paul’s College, University of Manitoba, is located at http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/history/links/maistre/maistre. html. Lebrun has written a full biography of this early conservative,
*
Joseph de Maistre’s conservatism (and his Catholicism) was, in fact, brutally authoritarian. However, Owen Bradley’s work,
*
There appears to be no national poll of Republicans indicating how many identify themselves as “authoritarians.” I did, however, locate an informal poll taken by libertarians at the Texas GOP conventions in 2002 and 2004. While less than scientific, it is suggestive. Some 339 attendees at the 2004 convention indicated whether they were: “conservatives” (like George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Jack Kemp), “social conservatives” (like Dan Quayle and Pat Robertson), “authoritarian conservatives” (like Pat Buchanan and Bill Bennett), “liberals” (like Kennedy, Clinton, Kerry, Gore, and Gephardt—it seems liberals do not have first names in Texas), “centrists” (like Colin Powell, John McCain, and Ross Perot), or “moderate libertarians” (like Milton Friedman, Jeb Bush, Jesse Ventura, Steve Forbes, and Barry Goldwater). The examples provided for each category make the poll less than accurate, because some of the examples do not necessarily match their labels. The poll revealed, however, that 6.8 percent of those responding declared themselves “authoritarian,” with 9.9 percent of these being women and 4.6 percent being men. Very similar scores were recorded at the 2002 convention. See: “The Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas” at http://tx.rlc.org/events/2004_06_04_result.htm.
*
In 2004 Gold published
*
I discussed with Bob Altemeyer the applications his findings to persons who had not been tested anonymously, and while authoritarian traits may be obvious in their behavior, precisely categorizing them can be difficult. Altemeyer advised, “We know about right-wing authoritarians, and social dominators,