CONSERVATIVES WITHOUT CONSCIENCE

BOOK REVIEW
John W. Dean (Penguin, 2006)

Until the November 2006 election, the USA was firmly in the hands of a cabal of secretive republican authoritarian leaders who were systematically destroying what was left of our democratic tradition and acting with such incompetence that most of the planet has totally lost faith in America as a bastion of freedom.

Two men who had deep connections with republican politics, Kevin Philipps (book previously reviewed) and John Dean have written best about the rot and its underlying causes. What dean says in Conservatives Without Conscience is indicative of my feeling, expressed in another blog to accompany this one.

His cogent, calm book based upon his own experience in government and an actual wake up telephone call from Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes that threw Dean back on the public stage as the result of a totally unfactual book that implicated him and his wife as the forces behind Watergate. A book that cost the publishers much money when Dean sued for libel.

The incident brought about a desire to understand how the republican leadership could function in such a fraudulent incompetent manner.

Conservatives Without Conscience is the result of his attempt to understand.

I urge its reading, for in its short compass it explains quite clearly how men whose behavior has little to do with democracy were well on their way to dismantling the very fabric of our governmental structures when the 2006 election short circuited our march towards to fascism. This book helped produce that short circuit.

It’s method of analysis is based upon the psychological research of Bob Altemeyer whose book The Authoritarian Specter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996) should be required reading for every voter who wishes to make sure it doesn’t happen here.

I read enormously.

I have been horrified by the incompetent secretive behavior of W. Nerd Bush and friends. I have also been mystified by the failure of the media to complain about and to analyze their anti-American behavior.

Dean has rectified that lack. Read him and then turn to Altmeyer. It will aide any sincere quest to provide a leadership whose intentions are democratic.

The Bush/Cheney nightmare is not over, but Conservatives Without Conscience is indicative of our being close to awakening from the trauma.

It is prophylactic. Use It.

Ira Einhorn