Letters to the Editor
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RWA and the Clinton Years
The Small Town Hick askes a very good question:
I just finished reading the MYDD article linked to in the Greenwald post.
One little point - if the typical RWA typically submits to authority, then what explains the Clinton years?
Let's start by going back to the definition:
RWA is defined as the convergence of three attitudinal clusters:
* Authoritarian submission: A high degree of submission to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
* Authoritarian aggression: A general aggressiveness, directed against various persons, that is perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities.
* Conventionalism: A high degree of adherence to the social conventions that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities.
The very essence of politics in the Clinton years was the constant rightwing effort to delegitimate and dis-establish the Clinton presidency. The right wing was largely joined in this effort by the Washington establishment, which viewed the Clintons as hick interlopers.
The GOP's RWA base ate this stuff up. But the majority of Americans did not, as shown by Clinton's continued high job approval numbers, and the consistent majorities opposed to his impeachment.
In short, RWA helps make the Clinton years considerably easier to understand, and the Clinton years help illuminate the broader explanatory role that RWA should have in understanding our politics.
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El Cid Is On FIRE!
I must say that El Cid has really been on fire lately. But now he (?--el) takes it to a whole new level:
If someone here raises a truly interesting point worthy of debate, then by all means, debate it.
But if someone declares in a snide aside that "What are you liberals going to do when the mole-men hatch from their lava eggs and start forcing the human women to bear their larval children?", do the readers of this blog really have to fill up 50 pages to respond to such mentally ill paranoia?
We need to get on those lava eggs right away!
After all, it's Easter!
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@nabalzbbfr ... my word.
nab-whatever wrote:
Who turned out to be right? The Neoconservatives or the panglossian liberals, who in some demented Orwellian distortion warp now call themselves realists!
--nabalzbbfr
********
I couldn't bear to quote your entire post again. Do you realize that everything in that post was wrong? That everything you said contradicted known facts about the subjects you address? Except Bush's deep religious faith...something that helped get us into this mess, not something that is "protecting us from evil.." huh. Even there, you got it wrong.
I'm truly amazed. First, that you would post such stupidity, and second, that you could be so stupid. I'm hoping this is just malicious trolling, designed to get our dander up on a slow weekend.
You need to get into the real world, dude. Your neocon heros are being exposed and it probably makes you very confused. So you just repeat the talking-points as hard as you can. Wild. I'm impressed. And I'm gonna ignore your gabble from here on in. People who live in fantasy worlds aren't very interesting. Except to themselves, I suppose.
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If shooter242 and nabalzbbfr would be so kind
Perhaps they'd care to define precisely what the following terms mean, just so we all understand their thinking:
evil
the enemy
winning in Iraq
justice
the rule of law
ethics
morality
torture
genocide
Of course I'm not naive enough to think they have the moral courage to actually answer any of these, but still one feels obligated to at least ask them to behave like civilized beings.
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Thanks Paul
Lava, eggs, fire -- takes me back to the Easters of my youth.
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One other point to Paul's response
Every political idealogy has its own myth, power and value system. For the RWA it's mythology lies in moral purity and clarity, often couched in religious themes or even reversions to former more chivalrous or glorious pasts. Its power, of course is strength, particularly military strength with all its saber rattling and wars of opportunity. It's value system is accumulation of personal wealth, control over resources and power in a world defined as a zero sum game.
The Clinton presidency, like the Weimar Republic and the Italian monarchy, was attacked for its moral relativism, sexual depravity and diplomacy centered foreign policy of weakness. It stood for all the things RWA's despise at the RWAs first attacked Clinton's child of the Sixties relativism as unpatriotic and then his sexual peccadilloes as morally depraved. This also explains the oddly extreme level of vitriol thrown at him by people whose own personal lives were far from virtuous. It wasn't about Clinton, it was always about asserting a RWA ideology on the American people.
We are now reaping the whirlwind of the real evil underlying this ideology and the only response from its apologists is that the left has not yet managed to clean up their mess.
Oh, and Shooter, if authoritarianism is the best political game in town you should visit North Korea. Fifty years of the most authoritarian rule on the planet, it is a veritable Utopia.
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Left Hook Right Jab
You are correct, it is an unfortunate choice of names since it does ignore left wing authoritarians such as committed Marxists.
I prefer the term "authoritarian follower" even though it is a damn sight harder to type.
Jonathan Hoag `
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I don't believe the political spectrum is communism on the left and facism on the right. The gist of this blog is that the spectrum runs from anarchy on the left to totalitarianism on the right. Hardline Marxists are right wingers. Islamic jihadists are right wingers.
Democracy springs from liberalism, and you can't have a liberal democratic society without a free enterprise economy. At the same time you need a modicum governmental authoritarianism to maintain the free enterprise system so that the environment doesn't get ruined and cheaters don't prosper.
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So let's see if I have this straight.....
If Senator Leahy has aides confiscate press releases from conservative organizations in his hearing room, that's RWA?
Clinton's declaration of war on Iraq was RWA?
The EU telling Microsoft to share it's secrets is RWA?
Remind me again, what isn't RWA?
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Similarities
Greenwald's point about doublethink reminded me a TownHall post by Dean Barnett a few weeks back. Turns out those of us who opposed the war from the first and now want the US to get out have no concern for Iraqi lives, even if we may have used the threats to Iraqis as part of our argument against this debacle from the first. But when an advocate of the war like Charles Krauthammer tells us that Iraqis 'chose Civil war' and there's nothing we could do about it, he's apparently expressing a higher moral concern. The current situation was entirely predictable given the religious divisions that Saddam had long manipulated. Recognizing that beforehand showed 'racism' on our parts for not joining in the dream that every military action by the US brings flowers, candy, democracy and joy to the hearts of the world. Recognizing it now is defeatism, unless of course you're one of 'America's finest columnists' blaming the victims.