Conservatives Without Conscience (41 page)

^*
While there have been several excellent books, not to mention a President’s Commission on Campus Unrest, addressing the Kent State shootings, the facts remain contested as to exactly what happened that spring day. Hoover’s slanders reveal a great deal about the man who should have sorted the facts out when memories where fresh by undertaking a full investigation.

^*
Given what is known about Hoover it is difficult to believe that he actually believed much of what he preached.

^*
The Eastern liberal establishment is not an “established authority” for an authoritarian conservative like Agnew, so his attacks were not against what he believed acceptable authority.

^*
Schlafly graduated from college in 1944 at nineteen years of age with a Phi Beta Kappa key, and received her master’s degree in government from Harvard a year later. She twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress. She has long been involved in Republican politics at the state and national levels, once chairing the Illinois Federation of Republican Women. Ms. Schlafly obtained a law degree at Washington University Law School, and worked with her husband in a legal assistance (ACLU-type) organization for conservative causes. To date, she has written over twenty books; her monthly “The Phyllis Schlafly Report” to conservative activists is now in its thirty-eighth year; her syndicated column appears in about 100 newspapers; her radio commentaries are heard daily on some 460 stations; and her radio talk show on education, called
Phyllis Schlafly Live,
appears on 45 stations. She has also raised six children.

^*
“Acceptance of traditional religious beliefs appears to have more to do with having a personality rich in authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism, than with beliefs per se…. Authoritarians just absorb whatever beliefs their authorities teach.” Bob Altemeyer,
The Authoritarian Specter
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 146–47.

^*
Today the National Association of Evangelicals claims to represent an astounding thirty million members and to speak for over forty million evangelicals in the United States. See: http://www.nae.net.

^*
The observations of evangelicals like Noll, Thomas, and Carter are corroborated in studies such as John C. Green’s
The Christian Right in American Politics: Marching to the Millennium
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003) and Geoffrey Layman’s
The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). The latter scholarly study drops the rhetoric and uses the best polling data available to analyze exactly what its title describes. Layman illustrates the religious right’s polarizing impact on the nation, and correctly, it appears, predicts this will continue into the new millennium.

^*
While Robertson has many traits of social dominators and right-wing authoritarians, I am focusing only on those directly relating to the defining elements of social dominance, and indirectly to his right-wing authoritarianism. These elements are domination, opposition to equality, desire for personal power, and amorality.

^**
At the time he made the statement, however, Zsuza Polgar, at twenty-one years of age, had already become the first woman ever to earn the designation Grandmaster, the World Chess Federation’s title for top-ranked players. She was followed the next year by Pia Cramling, and then by Zsuza’s little sister, who became the youngest Grandmaster at age fifteen.

^*
Military authorities had arrested a number of suspected secessionists, including John Merryman. Chief Justice Robert Taney, who had written the
Dred Scott
opinion, ordered the Army commander holding Merryman to produce him, but the Army commander, under orders from Lincoln, ignored the Court’s order. In holding the commander in contempt, Taney wrote in
Ex parte Merryman
that he had done all he could do by issuing his order, and that he believed Lincoln now had no constitutional power to suspend the writ. Lincoln disagreed, and on July 4, 1861, gave a full explanation to Congress of why he had suspended the writ: to preserve the Union.

^*
Gingrich brought his charges against Wright to the House Ethics Committee, which later issued a report suggesting Wright had arranged for bulk sales of his vanity book,
Reflections of a Public Man,
and had earned speaking fees in excess of the allowed maximum. In addition, Wright’s wife, Betty, was given a job and perks that made it possible for him to skirt the limit on gifts. Rather than fight the charges, Wright resigned. Understandably, when Gingrich later accepted a $4.5 million advance for a book deal with Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house, he was accused of hypocrisy and unethical behavior. Gingrich responded by returning the advance.

^**
Gingrich’s tactics were developed through consultations with communications experts, and soon became standard operating procedure for Republicans. George W. Bush has taken “perception politics” to the extreme, packaging everything he does. This strategy appears to work for conservatives, in part because their right-wing authoritarian followers, as noted earlier, do not often question authority figures.

^*
Not long after Gingrich’s authoritarian approach became evident, a reporter for the
Independent
(London) observed that Gingrich was an avid reader of Frans de Waal, a Dutch ethnologist whose book
Chimpanzee Politics
was on the Speaker’s list of twenty-five recommended books. In dead earnest the reporter noted striking parallels between Gingrich’s rise to power and “apes striving to acquire the coveted status of ‘alpha male,’” as de Waal’s study described. John Carlinin, “How Newt Aped His Way to the Top,”
Independent
(May 31, 1995), 13.

^*
The Committee on Rules was created by the first Congress. Unlike in the Senate, where unlimited debate is permitted, legislation in the much larger House (currently at 435 members) proceeds to the floor pursuant to a rule issued by the Rules Committee. This committee lays out the procedures for legislation on the floor, governing the length of debate and the nature of any proposed amendments. Rules are voted on by the House, and it is well known that DeLay considered votes on rules to be tests of party loyalty. Any House Republican who defied DeLay stood to suffer (e.g., lose his or her committee assignments and campaign funds, or face a DeLay-sponsored primary opponent in the next election).

^*
Tom DeLay, Jim Ellis, and John Colyandro were indicted by Travis County, Texas, district attorney Ronnie Earle for money laundering. More specifically, they were accused of sending some $190,000 of the $1.5 million they had collected from corporations nationally to the Republican National Committee in Washington, which then issued new checks, worth a total of $190,000, to candidates running for the Texas legislature.

^**
This use of his position would later result in a mild reprimand from the mostly moribund House Ethics Committee.

^*
Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 but immediately commenced pushing the nation to the right as if he had a mandate; Electoral College votes are not really a popular mandate, since a simple majority in any given state will result—in most states—in the winner’s getting all the electoral votes.

^*
Recently, the
American Conservative
addressed the shameful growth of lobbying in Republican-controlled Washington, revealing its staggering growth: “The Cato Institute’s David Boaz reports that the number of registered lobbying firms jumped from 1701 to 2060 in the last six years; over the same period, lobbyist spending went up 50 percent, and the number of companies with lobbyists rose 58 percent. The number of lobbyists in the nation’s capital approaches 35,000, doubling the number in 2000.” Doug Bandow, “Republic for Sale,”
American Conservative
(February 13, 2006), 7.

^*
Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform was formed in 1985 with a mission to “oppose any effort to increase the taxes on individuals and business.” To accomplish this goal, it circulates petitions to elected officials at the local, state, and national levels, asking them to promise that they will oppose all taxes. Norquist’s Web site boasts that “President George W. Bush, 222 House members, and 46 Senators have taken the pledge. On the state level, 6 governors and 1,247 state legislators have taken the pledge.” See http://www.atr.org/index. html. Norquist once famously stated, “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” Norquist also operates a Web site that reports on openings at lobbying firms and on new hires. It notes that while the Democrats once employed “graft,” the K Street Project represents good government, where like-thinking people can implement their common values. See http://www.kstreetproject.com/index.php.

^*
This is typical Norquist, who views politics as war, and invokes chilling language whenever discussing political matters. In another political contest, for example, he explained, “Our goal is to inflict as much pain as possible. It is not good enough to win; it has to be a painful and devastating defeat. We’re sending a message here. It is like when the king would take his opponent’s head and stick it on a spike for everyone to see.” John Maggs, “Grover at the Gate,”
National Journal
(October 11, 2003), 31. (These are words that could have been spoken by Joseph de Maistre himself.)

^*
Abramoff’s résumé indicates he received his JD from Georgetown University Law Center in 1986, but he was not licensed to practice law.

^*
The Senate Indian Affairs Committee subpoenaed the e-mails from Abramoff’s two employers. They can be viewed at www.indian.senate.gov. Time after time they show Abramoff shamelessly manipulating his clients.

^*
The Republicans were led by Senator John McCain (AZ), who was joined by Senators Lindsey Graham (SC), John Warner (VA), Olympia Snowe (ME), Susan Collins (ME), Michael DeWine (OH), and Lincoln Chafee (RI). The Democrats were led by Senator Ben Nelson (NE), and he was joined by Senators Joe Lieberman (CT), Robert Byrd (WV), Mary Landrieu (LA), Daniel Inouye (HI), Mark Pryor (AR), and Ken Salazar (CO).

^*
Josh Marshall, as anyone who follows the better blogs knows, today runs the growing and always insightful (regardless of one’s political point of view) Talking Points Memo and TPM Café blogs at htttp://www.talkingpointsmemo. com/.

^*
As I suggested in
Worse Than Watergate
(page 40) I have never been certain that Cheney will not go the distance of a full second term. When the
Washington Times
’s
Insight
magazine runs stories heralding this potential it has some basis. See Anonymous, “Cheney seen retiring after midterm elections,”
Insight on the News
(February 27–March 5, 2006) at http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/cheney3.htm.

^*
The nine senators who voted against McCain’s amendment—and
for
torture—deserve special recognition, for they are true authoritarians: Senators Wayne Allard (R-CO), Christopher Bond (R-MO), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Thad Cochran (R-MS), John Cornyn (R-TX), James Inhofe (R-OK), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and Ted Stevens (R-AK).

^*
Bill Safire reported in his political dictionary that when campaigning for his first term as president, Franklin Roosevelt offered a good description of a radical: “[S]ay that civilization is a tree which, as it grows, continually produces rot and dead wood,” FDR said. “The radical says: ‘Cut it down.’ The conservative says: ‘Don’t touch it.’ The liberal compromises: ‘Let’s prune, so that we lose neither the old trunk nor the new branches.’” William Safire,
Safire’s New Political Dictionary: The Definitive Guide to the New Language of Politics
(New York: Random House, 1993), 407.

^*
For example, President Alberto Fujimori manipulated the people of Peru for electoral gains and to justify authoritarian practices in 2000 by using the threat of terror. “Elitists and dictators have used fear tactics to control their constituencies since the beginning of time,” noted scholar R. D. Davis in “Debunking the Big Lie,” in
National Minority Politics
(November 30, 1995), 37. Chris Ney and Kelly Creedon, authors with expertise on Latin American politics, wrote that “fear won the election” in El Salvador in 2004, noting, “The rhetoric and tactics mirror those employed by other Latin American right-wing parties, including that of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.” They conclude with an observation remarkably applicable to American democracy: “The targeted use of fear is a powerful motivator, especially for people who have been traumatized by war, state terrorism, or economic insecurity. The implications for democratic government—whether newly formed or well-established—are deeply disturbing.” Chris Ney and Kelly Creedon, “Preemptive Intervention in El Salvador,”
Peacework
(May 2004), 15.