Eliot Spitzer for SEC?

When John McCain said he would appoint Andrew Cuomo, the New York Attorney General noted for his aggressive investigations of Wall Street, as Chairman of the S.E.C., my thoughts immediately turned to another former New York Attorney General famous for is agressiveness toward Wall Street Eliot Spitzer. And now it appears that others have thought of that as well.

So, would Spitzer make a good choice for chairman of the SEC? Reluctantly, I must say no. Yes, Spitzer is an expert on Wall Street's dirtiest secrets. Yes, backed with the power of the federal government, he would make both an excellent enforcer of regulations, and an excellent advisor on what new regulations to enact. And yes, cleaning up our finances and putting them on a sound, long-term footing are far more important than how Spitzer wishes to get laid.

But it wasn't just the prostitutes that brought him down. Spitzer is also arrogant, authoritarian, vindictive, and prone to abuse his office to pursue personal vendettas. Given the importance of getting our financial institutions under a solid regulatory regime, even these defects might be forgiveable, but only in an office that could be kept on a right reign. Chairman of the SEC is not that office. As McCain quickly learned when he called for the Chairman of the SEC to be fired, the President cannot fire the Chairman of the SEC. The purpose of this provision is obvious; to safeguard the independence of the SEC and insure the President does not abuse it as a political tool. But that also means that the President cannot stop the Chairman of the SEC from abusing his own agency. The independence of the SEC makes it unsafe to entrust to Eliot Spitzer.

On the other hand, I would be happy to see Spitzer in some role overseeing banks so long as someone could oversee Spitzer. Let him be US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, or head of the US Attorney General white collar crimes division (if such a division exists). Either way, the Attorney General could reign him in. Or let New York Governor David Patterson appoint him to Hilary Clinton's seat in the Senate. He could serve on the Senate Banking Committee, exposing Wall Street shenanigans, but with enough colleagues to keep him from doing any serious harm. Others have proposed some sort of informal advisory role in a kitchen cabinet.

In any case, Spitzer certainly has much of value to offer in the current crisis, and he should be used. But only in a capacity that will keep him under someone else's authority.

Anti-Democratic Republicans: The Cheney Strand

The danger to democratic norms posed by the Republican Party in general and the Bush Administration in particular is not limited to the Rovian strand. Since the September 11 attack, Dick Cheney and his allies, such as David Addington and John Yoo, have been pushing another strand, the view, in effect, that the President is an elective dictator who cannot be bound by any treaty or statute in matters of national security. It was the Cheney faction that rigged the evidence to support the invasion of Iraq, the Cheney-Addington-Yoo wing that justified GTMO, indefinite detention, torture, warrantless surveillance, etc., and this wing that argues that statutes and treaties are unconstitutional to the extent that they limit the President's power.


Although the Bush Administration is strongly influence by both the Rove and Cheney strands, they are not the same. Where the Rovian wing is frankly partisan and focused on domestic politics, the Cheney wing sees partisan politics and, indeed, domestic policy altogether, as a trivial business best left to Congress while the President focuses on the important matter of national defense. To Cheneyites, war, indefinite detention, warrantless wiretaps and torture are matters of high principal, necessary for our protection. To Rovians, they are clever political ploys to attack an opponent's patriotism. Rovians are opportunists who do not believe in anything. Cheneyites are true believers, too rigid to be swayed by anything. Rovians would make the United States Mexico and the Republican Party the PRI. Cheneyites would preserve democracy in domestic policy, but expand a non-partisan national security dictatorship to include most decisions of any importance.


But the two strands can easily intersect, and Dick Cheney, of all people, should know it. Cheney, after all, served in the Nixon White House and made it his goal to restore executive power to its pre-Watergate status. What he seems to ignore is that pre-Watergate executive power led to, well, Watergate, as well as countless other abuses by Presidents of both parties. Despite the theory of a noble and lofty President, acting only to protect the nation from its enemies, real life Presidents, when given the sort of vast an unaccountable powers that the Cheneyites envision, tend to abuse them for personal or partisan gain. And Presidents face the constant temptation to equate their own political fortunes with the nation's. Rovians slander their political opponents as traitors; Cheneyites are in danger of actually believing it.


That is what happened with Watergate. The United States was at war. McGovern was running on an anti-war platform. To some of Nixon's more hard core supporters like G. Gordon Liddy, McGovern was working for a US defeat and therefore committing treason. Support for a Nixon victory came to be seen as an urgent matter of national security. Such fears were grossly exaggerated; Nixon won the election by an unprecedented landslide. Fast forward to the present. Once again the United States is fighting an unpopular war. Once again a Democratic candidate favors withdrawal and opposes numerous policies the Cheney-Addington-Yoo wing see as essential to our national security. And, unlike McGovern, Barrack Obama stands a good chance of winning. How tempting must it be, then, for the Administration to treat a McCain win as a matter of national security and stoop to who-knows-what to bring that about.


But the dangers posed by the theory of an elective dictator will not end with the election of a new President. The power the Bush Administration has amassed for the executive will not end when Bush's successor is sworn in, and Congress is showing no disposition to reign in an out-of-control executive. The power is there. Until it is taken back, every President, regardless of political party, will be tempted by it.

Anti-Democratic Republicans: The Rovian Strand

In my last post, I argued that the Bush Administration in particular and the Republican Party in general are showing a disturbing tendancy to ignore the rules of democracy. I also argued that there are two essentially separate anti-democratic tendancies, the Rovian tendancy and the national security (or Cheney) tendancy.

The Rovian tendancy clearly pre-dates 9/11. It is the Rovian wing of the Republican party that seeks to create a "permanent Republican majority" and to shut the Democrats out of power entirely. This tenancy is frankly partisan, focused on domestic policy, and essentially amoral, valuing power over principle. It shows little interest in the substantive merits of policy, regarding policy mostly as a tool of partisan advancement.

To the extent the Rovians are want to create a dictatorship, the nearest equivalent would not be any of the examples Naomi Wolf cites, but Mexico in the heyday of the Party for the Institutional Revolution (PRI). Mexico was a dictatorship, not of any individual or of the army, but of a political party. It maintained the outward trappings of democracy. Each President had near-dictatorial powers, but was limited to a six-year term. The PRI tolerated opposition parties, but did not allow them any actual power. Seemingly independent institutions, such as labor unions, served as arms of the PRI. The PRI maintained its power through patronage (when possible), rigged elections (when patronage failed to buy enough support) and repression (when all else failed).

Likewise, Rovian Republicans seek a permanent Republican majority in which the Democratic Party will maintain the appearance of competition, but be excluded from any share of actual power. The problem for Rovians is that, in fact, public opinion is about divided between Democrats and Republicans. Their response has been to seek a 51% majority by rallying the base and treat it as a sweeping mandate.

Some Rovian tactics have been what Wolf would call hardball, but still within democratic bounds. Nasty elections are one such example. All Democratic politicians, regardless of their actual viewpoints, are invariably slimed as wild-eyed left-wing extremities and, since the Iraq War, probable traitors. "Red" and "Blue" maps are used to imply that "real Americans" support Republicans and only a tiny elite favors Democrats even if, in the case of the 2000 election, that tiny elite slightly outnumbered "real Americans." Domestic policy is treated solely as a matter of pandering to favored constituencies, without a thought to substantive merit.

Congressional Republicans have been seeking to shut Democrats out of power entirely since they became the majority in 1994. They began by launching the K Street Project, requiring lobbyists to hire only Republicans or lose access to Congress. Bills were prepared at the top, or by the executive or lobbyists, sometimes even forgoing committee hearings. During floor debate, most bills were declared unamendable, forcing a straight up-or-down vote on legislation Democrats had not had the opportunity to read. When Senate and House versions of a bill differed, Democrats were excluded from conference committees altogether. Under these conditions rank-and-file members of Congress have little to do other than bring home the bacon to ensure their reelection, hence the notorious abuses of earmarks. And once the Democrats again took control of Congress in 2006, Senate Republicans responded by blocking all legislation regardless of merit.*

Though extreme hardball, all of this is legal. It is dangerous, nontheless, because it clearly violates the spirit of the democratic consensus that the minority will yield to the will of the majority and the majority will respect the rights of the minority. The goal of a permanent Republican majority is to deny any rights to the Democrats.

As Republican defeat loomed in 2006, the Bush White House went beyond legal dirty tricks. A growing body of evidence suggests that it attempted to use the federal government as a patronage machine to ensure the reelection of Republicans, in violation of the Hatch Act. Most notably, Lurita Doan was forced out of the General Services Administration for directing federal contracts to benefit vulnerable Republican candidates for Congress. Nor was the GSA alone. An estimated 15 federal agencies received briefings on the importance of helping vulnerable Republicans, including the EPA, VA, and Health and Human Services, Interior, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, Treasury, Education, Agriculture and Energy Departments, as well as NASA, the Small Business Administration, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Most alarming of all has been evidence of corruption in the Justice Department. The US Attorney scandal, after all, has been about whether the Bush Administration attempted to use prosecutions as a tool for swaying elections. In particular, did it seek to time indictments for maximum electoral impact, or to treat all narrow Democratic victories as evidence of fraud? And did it use dubious prosecutions as a political tool against rivals such as Governor Don Siegelman of Alabama, or Elliot Spitzer?

Ultimately, of course, the Rove attempt to create a permanent Republican majority has failed. When public opinion is roughly equally divided between two parties, it is not feasible to for one to become a permanent majority, or to completely exclude the other from power. A 51% majority is unstable and easily disrupted by relatively few defections. Focusing entirely on the base will ultimately alienate swing voters. Seeking to rally the base by demonizing large portions of the population will counter-mobilize the groups being demonized. Focusing entirely on politics and ignoring the substantive merits of policy will make for bad policy, a fact that can only be concealed for so long. The Rovian strategy can win short-term victories, but it is self-destructive in the long run.

But the Rovian danger remains because it is not limited to the Republicans. The pathology of the permanent campaign has been with us a long time and is not limited to one party. One of the traits of the permanent campaign is the degree to which it forces office holders to subordinate policy to politics and focus on pandering rather than accomplishing. And what Republicans did over 12 years of power was merely an exaggerated and compacted version of what Democrats did over 40. The K Street Project, by pressing for only Republican lobbyists, was merely seeking to reverse Democratic domination that had developed over 40 years. By 1994, Democrats were seriously abusing earmarks and bringing 70% of all bills to the floor as unamendable. Republicans went on to make earmark abuse much worse and by 2005 allowed only 12 out of 111 bills to be amended. In short, Republicans have merely been perfecting disturbing trends that were underway well before they came to power. And Democrats, having gotten a hard lesson in how to play really dirty, will be strongly tempted to give Republicans a taste of their own medicine.

The Rovian Strand has been defeated by now, but the danger is by now means over.


*I am not clear whether or to what extent they are still doing it.

The End of America: Where the Real Danger Lies

As I have discussed before, I believe Naomi Wolf's book, The End of America seriously exaggerates the dictatorial features of the Bush Administration and the danger it poses to our democracy. But I do believe the danger exists, even if it is more subtle than Wolf implies.

If Wolf intends to discuss how democracies fail, her focus on how dictatorships consolidate their power is, at most, only half the story. The downfall of democracy began in Germany well before Hitler was named chancellor; it began in Italy well before Mussolini's march on Rome; in Spain well before Franco's revolt; in Czechoslovakia well before the Communist takeover; in Chile well before the 1973 coup, and so forth. Democracy began to fail in all cases when a certain critical mass of participants stopped accepting democratic rules of fairplay and began working in ways that undermined democratic government. Any discussion of how democracies fail, and certainly any argument that we are in danger of becoming a failed democracy, has to begin there.

Wolf correctly points out (p. 25) that the Founders did not consider democracy to be something easy or natural, but something inherently fragile and in danger of failing. Mature democracy has proven a whole lot more stable and resilient than they anticipated; so stable and resilient that most Americans have forgotten just how odd and unnatural democratic habits can be. As I have said before:

Democracy . . . values procedure over substance. It demands obedience to leaders who are chosen by the right procedure (i.e, who win the election), regardless of how loathsome their values or policies may be to us. It expects us to treat abstract procedural details, such as federalism or separation of powers, as more important than the actual merits of what policy to adopt. It insists that we respect the rights of people we despise (sometimes deservedly). . . . These are not easy rules to swallow.

Democracy also requires a remarkable degree of good sportsmanship. It requires being a good loser when an election does not go the way one wishes; never an easy skill to master. It also requires good sportsmanship by the winners, and what fun is that. It requires, in short, a system in which the minority yields to will of the majority and the majority respects the rights of the minority. This is unlikely to be either group's first choice. It helps if all participants know that they will be in the minority sometimes (and on some issues) and in the majority other times. But it is not always easy or natural to take so long a view. And the problems of permanent minorities (usually ethnic or religious) can be extremely thorny, as our own history makes shamefully clear.

The failure of democracy begins when participants within the democratic system stop abiding by the rules. It begins when minorities stop yielding to the will of majorities or majorities respecting the rights of minorities. It begins when winning becomes everything and the end is seen to justify the means. It begins, in short, when enough people stop obeying democratic rules of fair play that those rules stop working.

So, while it is a gross exageration to accuse the Bush Administration of being a dictatorship (even a mild dictatorship in the early stages of consolidating power), I do believe it is legitimate to ask whether the Republican Party is giving up on the rules of democratic fair play. And the answer, I believe, is yes, much of the Republican Party is showing disturbing signs of an anti-democratic tendancy. Though not as much noticed, I believe there are two anti-democratic strands in the Republican Party in general and the Bush Administration in particular. One is what I would call the Rovian strand; the other I would call the Cheney or national security strand.

Coming up next: The Rovian strand.

Reflections on the Spitzer Scandal

Since everyone else is commenting on the downfall of Eliot Spitzer, I might as well put in my two cents' worth. A few qualifications at the beginning. First, I have not followed Spitzer's career closely enough to have a clear sense of whether his prosecutions of white collar crime on Wallstreet were hardball but admirable actions to clean up Wallstreet or vindictive abuse of power and little better than blackmail. Second, Spitzer has only himself, not New York politics, public corruption or anything else to blame for his decision to use the services of prostitutes. At face value, his private vice may seem to have little to do with any larger public issue, but I believe there are some larger lessons to be learned here.

What you can get away with depends on who you are. My initial reaction to hearing that Spitzer was "involved in a prostitution ring" was that if he was merely a customer, it was a private pecadillo, but if he was on the take he should do maximum time. But others convinced me that what is a petty vice in a "charming rogue" politician is not so easily dismissed in a righteous crusader. An Attorney General, as a law enforcement official, has a special obligation to obey the law. And when he has aggressively and publicly prosecuted prostitution rings in the past, his use of prostitutes is inexcuseable. Even the argument that the proper punishment for this sort of hypocrisy is ridicule and mockery, not forced retirement, let along criminal charges, is unconvincing. Some politicians (say, charming rogues like Bill Clinton) can survive mockery and ridicule. A pillar of righteousness like Spitzer cannot.

Beware of leaders with authoritarian tendancies. Blogger Sara Robinson of Orcinus likes to warn that authoritarian leaders rarely follow the rules they set down for others. She was thinking mostly of Republicans, of course, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that one party has a monopoly on authoritarianism. Spitzer's whole aggressive, punitive, hardball, and vindictive style was the mark of an authoritarian streak a mile wide. And let's face it, in seeking popularity by proving his toughness in dealing with his own set of scapegoats (Wallstreet crooks), Spitzer was appealing to the same base instincts as any right-winger proving his toughness against right-wing scapegoats (illegal immigrants, Arabs, terrorists, etc).

Granted, Spitzer preyed on the powerful and right wingers prey on the powerless. The difference is important. He seems to have done good work, cleaning up corruption and fraud and forcing valuable reforms. And one can fairly argue that a tough, aggresive, combative, even vindictive style was necessary given the powerful interests he was up against. But the fact that authoritarian traits can serve good ends does not make them any less authoritarian. And while the authoritarian approach can be put to constructive use, we would do well to limit it within strict bounds, because it remains dangerous. Which leads to the next, closely related point.

A good Attorney General is not necessarily a good Governor. Eliot Spitzer's political career was already in deep trouble even before the latest scandal broke. The Attorney General is a purely executive office, authoritarian, top down, and not involved in lawmaking. An Attorney General's role is specifically in litigation -- adversarial, combative, focusing on conflict and not cooperation. An Attorney General does not have to do the things a governor does -- negotiate with the legislature, compromise, cut deals, give a little to get a little, and go along to get along. It is these things that make democratic politicians seem sleazy and unprincipled to many people. The rotten compromises of democratic politics tempt many people admire more authoritarian figures such as military men or AG's who do not have to make dirty deals.

Such criticisms are not entirely unfounded. Politicians often do elevate deal-making and getting along above all else and make careers of scratching each other's backs. Left unchallenged, this can degenerate into a corrupt, cozy little oligarchy, a government of the insiders, by the insiders and for the insiders. We need obnoxious, uncompromising reformers, not afraid of making enemies among the powerful, to shake things up. Every legislature could use a few such trouble makers. Attorney General is an office made to order for a crusading reformer bent on shaking things up. But chief executives (Governors or Presidents) have to work, to some extent, within the system, or the system will resist them every step of the way.

When overly rigid, "principled" leaders come to power and refuse to play politics, the results can get ugly. Spitzer was well in the process of learning this the hard way when his career met an unexpected downfall. If he had been a highly successful and popular leader (like, say, Bill Clinton) he might have survived the scandal. Weakened an unpopular, he did not.

A Final Note on Authoritarianism

Let me add as a final note that I welcome the appearance of authoritarianism, both the word and the concept, into our discourse. There is a danger to it, that the term will lead to a game of labeling anyone we dislike as "authoritarian" or (worse) "double high." But it is a danger I am willing to accept. If one believes (and I do) that the present-day Republican party contains many leaders of a profoundly undemocratic outlook who pose a danger to our institutions, then those leaders have to be called something. By all means, let us call them authoritarians (or double highs). The term is a whole lot more accurate, less inflammatory, and more easily defined than fascist. If some sort of insult is to be thrown about promiscuously (and face it, it will be), then by all means let it be authoritarian (or even double high) and not fascist.

The Need for Non-Authoritarian Conservatives

A popular lament among liberals these days is that the authoritarians have taken over the Republican party altogether, unlike the fine, non-authoritarian conservatism of the good old days. This should be taken with a grain of salt. In the early 1950's, after all, the Republican party had a strong McCarthyite wing (while the right wing of the Democratic Party was dominated by Southern segregationists). In the late 1950's, the John Birch Society became influential. And then there is Nixon. So obviously there has been a strong authoritarian streak within conservatism for a long time. The difference now is the extent to which the authoritarians have taken over the Republican Party, their complete domination of the Republican primaries, and their eagerness to win general elections by "rallying the (authoritarian) base." This is unfortunate because I do believe that a strong non-authoritarian conservatism is important to a healthy democratic body politic.

Doubtless it is presumptuous of me, as a liberal, to seek to define true conservatism or tell conservatives what they should be. But let me give it a try. I go back to a definition learned in college -- that liberalism is optimism about human nature and conservatism is pessimism. Though perhaps skepticism would be a better word. A conservative need not consider human nature evil, so much think it unsafe to gamble on human nature being good. After all, in the absence of institutional safeguards, it takes only a few evil people to ruin everything. We should not trust in the goodness of human nature, but in institutions that can handle human evil. This is certainly a sound principle. Conservative skepticism also applies to social innovation and seemingly brilliant new ideas. A conservatives attitude toward reform is, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it; if it is broke, proceed with extreme caution." Or, as Founding Father John Dickinson put it, "Experience must be our only guide. Reason may mislead us."

A society consisting only of (non-authoritarian) conservatives would be stodgy and sluggish in dealing with challenges (new and old). A society consisting only of liberals would be flightly and overly given to foolish and ill-thought-out social innovations. We need both liberals who dare to dream and conservatives who subject those dreams to merciless scrutiny; liberals whose vision soars and consevatives who keep their feet firmly planted on the ground. (One sure sign of danger in the current administration is that it is now liberals taking the traditionally conservative role of being "reality based.")

Let there be no doubt; respect for authority, as well as tradition, is a part of this kind of conservatism. Anyone who does not trust in human nature or believe that people can be expected to be good on their own will favor authority to compel people to be good (or at least stay out of trouble). But respect for authority is not the same as authoritarianism. The difference between conservatives and authoritarians is that conservatives take their skepticism about human nature to its logical conclusion and apply it to authority as much as to anyone else.
If we cannot trust in the goodness of ordinary people without authority to keep them in line, neither should be trust in the goodness authority. Too much concentration of power is dangerous because power tends to be abused. We should not trust in the goodness of our leaders, but in sound institutions to keep them in line.

Non-authoritarian conservatism may be well summed up in a famous quote from James Madison: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." Conservatives never assume that anyone is an angel.

Beware the Authoritarian Within

Altemeyer described authoritarians as thinking in terms of us versus them, ethnocentric and distrustful of outsiders, driven by fear to submit to authority, self-righteously aggressive on behalf of authority, and a general danger to democracy. In fact, the overall tone of his book gives the impression that we virtuous non-authoritarians are being menaced by evil authoritarians (defined more or less as all conservatives), and that we should fear the threat they pose to democracy and take energetic action to defend ourselves against their menacing onslaught. The problem, of course, is that that way lies you-know-what, a danger he only gets around to warning us against in Chapter 7 (the last chapter).

The danger is so strong because, in fact, the traits he so often describes as authoritarian are actually human traits that we all share to some degree. Who does not prefer the company of people with similar values and congenial views? Who does not want leaders who share their own values? Who does not support leaders from their own in-group and tend to defend them against out-groups? Who does not want to strengthen institutions they control against institutions controlled by rivals? Who does not feel the temptation to place picking the "right" leaders with the "right" values over obverving all procedural nicety. And, as Altemeyer makes clear, everyone tends to become authoritarian when fearful and feeling menaced. The difference between people with high and low authoritarian scores is, at most, one of degree. The danger here is of it becoming not even a matter of degree, but simply of which team one roots for. So how do we know whether we are actually standing up for freedom and democracy or just standing up for our in-group and identifying it with freedom and democracy?

To begin with, resist the temptation of fear. Just as we urge right-wingers be realistic about the actual threat posed by terrorists and not exaggerate it, so too we should be realistic about the threat to democracy posed by the current Administration and not exaggerate it. (Finding out what they are actually up to would help here; nothing is so frightening as the shadow-threat whose exent we don't know).

At least as importantly, resist the temptation of demonization. It can be so much fun to wallow in self-righteous indignation, congradulating ourselves on our virtues, and making our foes, whether terrorists or the Bush Administration out to be pure evil. And in this we become just like them. In order to overcome those temptations, let us engage with Administration supporters and others whose views we dislike and make some attempt at dialogue. Altemeyer and others recommend this as a way of overcoming authoritarians' tendancy to demonize liberals. But it is useful in the opposite way too, it helps curb our own temptation to demonize. (Confession: I come up badly short here).

Resist the temptation to believe that the ends justify the means. Everyone knows about this danger, but everyone is tempted by it. The means are, in effect, those tedious procedural rules of fair play it is so easy to brush aside. As I have said before, it is not natural or easy to elevate the procedural rules of fair play above all else, but it is essential if democracy is to survive. The best way to do this is probably to go firmly on record about what is and is not permissible fair play. Then someone can hold us to our own words if we break them.

Finally, resist the temptation of self-righteousness. This means maintaining a constant attitude of self-criticism and self-doubt. It means constantly examining ourselves for authoritarian tendancies and paying attention when others, including our opponents, claim to see such tendancies in us. Authoritarians are well-known for mocking liberals' propensity to self-criticism and self-doubt and dismissing it as a weakness, compared the the strength of their own self-confidence. Don't believe them. The Bush Administration is made up of people with an extraordinarily low capacity for self-criticism or self-doubt. Look where it got them.

Why Authoritarianism is Not the Same as Statism

At first glance, one would expect authoritarians to be statists, i.e., to be defenders of the power of government as the ultimate authority. But there are many authoritarians (the Religious Right, the John Birch Society, the militia movement) who traditionally fear government and want to restrict its power. Why this seeming paradox? The answer, I believe, is simple; authoritarians want to enhance the power of institutions they control and reduce the power of institutions they do not.

My first insight into the phenomenon came from Robert Bork's book, Slouching Toward Gomorrah. Bork considers himself non-authoritarian because he wants to limit the power of the state, and to encourage institutions independent of government. Yet he invariably encourages authoritarianism in families, churches, universities, corporations, etc., and sees any sign of democracy outside of government as social decay. And, despite Bork's purported support for democratic government, his few mentions of Communism (his book was written after the Cold War) border on favorable, and he shows considerable affection for the Middle Ages when dissent could be punished by burning at the stake. My own conclusion was that Bork conceded democratic government as an unavoidable evil, and settled for upholding maximum authoritarianism outside of government. My brother pushed this analysis one step further: Bork wanted to limit the power of the state because it was not authoritarian enough and stood to infringe on the authoritarian institutions he preferred.

Another useful insight comes from Sara Robinson of Orcinus. Explaining why right wingers are so hostile to the United Nations and international cooperation in general, she says:

Back in that generation [the 1930's], people still had very Victorian ideas of how power flowed; and military-style hierarchy was all they really knew. And because the anti-one-world-government grognards still understand power and hierarchy this way, it's fair to guess that much of their fear stems from the thought that they'll be subordinated to leaders who don't meet their specific criteria for legitimacy -- always a hot-button issue for authoritarians.

Recall Altemeyer's description (in Chapter 3) of authoritarians are strongly ethnocentric, distrustful outsiders, and viewing things in terms of us versus them. It follows that authoritarian followers do not have a blanket attitude of submissiveness toward all authority. Their attitude is one of submissiveness toward authority they see as legitimate (i.e., toward leaders of their own in-group who share their values and goals) and deep hostility toward any authority outside their group. Doubtless Robinson is right, that authoritarians particularly fear submitting to "leaders who don't meet their specific criteria for legitimacy" because they assume that those leaders will be just as authoritarian as they are.

In a country as large and diverse as United States, the national government will normally give a large voice to people an authoritarian in-group sees as outsiders with dangerous ideas. Hence it should not be too surprising to see authoritarians distrust the federal government. Some may see state government as sufficiently congenial and favor states rights. Some may see states as giving too much voice to outsiders and favor maximum local power. The Religious Right is traditionally distrustful of government in general and prefers to concentrate power in authoritarian families, churches and (private) schools. The John Birch Society saw government as riddled with Communists and built up a Bolshevik-like organization to counter it. And the militia movement of the 1990's were little short of anarchists -- organized into authoritarian military structures. These examples present a seeming paradox: The most authoritarian organizations are often the most distrustful of government, because government is never "pure" enough for them.

The militia movement raises another question -- what happens when anti-statism becomes outright revolutionism. Altemeyer (in Chapter 1) refers to authoritarian followers as Right Wing Authoritarians, which does not refer to a particular ideology, but to support for established authorities and traditional values. In a Communist country, a person who blindly followed the Communist Party would be a Right Wing Authoritarian. Perhaps a better term might be status quo authoritarians. Altemeyer says there can also be left-wing authoritarians, who might also be called revolutionary authoritarians. These are the revolutionaries dedicated to the overthrow of existing and traditional sources of authority, who nonetheless build equally authoritarian power structures for themselves. (Jacobins and Bolsheviks had very hierarchical and centralized organizations). They eternally fight among themselves about who has the greatest revolutionary purity. As conservatives are fond of pointing out, when such people seize control of the state, the results are horrifying. But revolutionary (or left wing) authoritarians are mostly a phenomenon of societies in which a significant number of people regard the whole social order and established leadership as illegitimate. Such people are rare in post WWII United States and Canada, apparently too rare for valid psychological studies. Nonetheless, I wish Altemeyer had discussed such people in more detail. I would like to know whether their psychological portrait is similar to or different from people who are authoritarian on behalf of traditional institutions. And what of people like the militia movement (or, for that matter, Bin Laden and his followers) who consider themselves revolutionaries, but on behalf of an abandoned or betrayed tradition?

Authoritarians who wish to enhance the power of institutions they control and restrict the power of institutions they do not control can switch from anti-statist to statist overnight as soon as they take control of the government. In a democracy like the United States, that fortunately means winning an election, and fortunately authoritarians can be removed at the next election when their ways put people off. What is new and disturbing is the extent to which authoritarianism has become partisan. The authoritarian wing has taken over the Republican Party to the extent that Republican primaries are little better than contests to see who can be the most authoritarian. In power, the authoritarian wing of the Republican party becomes statist fast. And in the meantime, the Rush Limbaughs, Bill O'Reillys and so forth have been convincing their followers that any Democratic leader is inherently illegitimate. If a Democrat becomes the next President, expect a return of the slime machine that attacked Clinton, raised many-fold, and expect the more extreme members of the right to take to the woods with their guns. Authoritarians in control wielding the power of the state or authoritarians in the woods preparing for armed resistence. These may be our options in the 2008 elections. I hardly known which to dread more.

Robert Altemeyer on Authoritarians

One of the most popular ideas among liberal commentators these days is the concept of the authoritarian personality, drawing heavily on Robert Altemeyer's book The Authoritarians (available on line). Altemeyer is a Canadian psychologist whose research on authoritarianism was known mostly to professional colleagues until John Dean (of Watergate fame) popularized it in his book, Conservatives Without Conscience. Dean also persuaded Altemeyer to write his on-line book, summarizing his research for the general public.

Chapter 1 defines authoritarian followers as people who are blindly supportive of established authority figures and willing to ignore their misdeeds, aggressive and punitive in support of authority, conformist, and insistent that everyone else also conform. Chapter 3 is an unflattering description of authoritarian thinking. Authoritarian followers care more about reaching a conclusion they like than whether it is supported by facts or logic. They can hold contradictory views simultaneously without being aware of it, and hold their views dogmatically regardless of evidence. They lack self-awareness and a capacity for self criticism. Authoritarians are strongly ethnocentric. They associate as much as possible only with their in-group, distrust outsiders, and tend to see things in terms of us versus them, and to place a high value on group loyalty and cohesiveness. But there is a flaw in this description, particularly the accusation that authoritarians hold contradictory and illogical beliefs. Most people, whether authoritarian or not, hold a multitude of values and principles and, in this messy, complex world, they often come into conflict. Apparent contradictions in such cases are often simply decisions which value has higher priority.

Consider, for instance, Chapter 4, which discusses authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism. Fundamentalists are strong defenders of the right of parents to raise their children as they see fit. Altemeyer gives the hypothetical (pp. 126-127) of a teen from a troubled home seeking advice from another family. If the child was raised as a Christian and seeks advice from atheists, fundamentalists defend the rights of parents to raise their children and belief outsiders should not try to undermine the child's Christian beliefs. But if a troubled child from an atheistic home seeks advice from Christians, most fundamentalists think they should ignore the parents' authority and seek a conversion. In another example (pp. 115-117), fundamentalists favored U.S. schools preaching Christianity despite the wishes of religious minorities. They justified this as a matter of majority rule. But they did not believe that schools in Muslim countries should preach Islam against the wishes of religious minorities, as a matter of minority rights. Altemeyer sees these as examples of a fundamentalist "double standard." But, of course fundamentalists are being perfectly consistent; they are favoring Christianity over any rival religion or non-religion. What they are really saying is that promoting Christianity trumps any consideration of parental authority, majority rule, or minority rights. And, after all, if you believe that Christians go to Heaven and everybody else goes to Hell, what can be more important that promoting Christianity at all costs?

Similar, but less obvious are political cases decribed in Chapter 3. Authoritarians are more likely than non-authoritarians to censor "dangerous" ideas, either of the left or right, including racist ideas (pp 83-84). Clearly authoritarians believe that promoting good ideas over bad ones (including racism) is more important than a value-neutral freedom of expression. More troubling (pp. 81-83) is the hypothetical of a speaker inciting a riot between pro- and anti-gay demonstrators. Authoritarians would punish the speaker more or less severely depending on whether he was giving a pro- or anti-gay speech. This can be treated as a double standard. Or it can be taken to mean that authoritarians consider violence more or less reprehensible depending on whether it is committed on behalf of a "good" or "bad" cause.

And here, I think, lies the answer to the "mystery" (Introduction, p. 2) as to why some people don't seem to want democracy. Democracy is really not as easy or natural as we have been taught to assume. It values procedure over substance. It demands obedience to leaders who are chosen by the right procedure (i.e, who win the election), regardless of how loathsome their values or policies may be to us. It expects us to treat abstract procedural details, such as federalism or separation of powers, as more important than the actual merits of what policy to adopt. It insists that we respect the rights of people we despise (sometimes deservedly). Freedom of expression makes no distinction between good and bad ideas, but expects us to give equal privilege to even the vilest ideas that surely have nothing to contribute. And, to people who believe that their religion is the sole path to Heaven, freedom of religion requires us to allow the spread of false doctrines that will condemn countless people to Hell. These are not easy rules to swallow.


And, in fact, authoritarians do not swallow these rules. They value adopting right and moral policies over any procedural rules of fair play as to how these policies are reached. They do not respect the rights of people they consider underserving. They value the promotion of good ideas over bad ones more than an abstract and value-neutral freedom of expression. They want every advantage for true religion over false. And, increasingly, they are even beginning to value having leaders like themselves, who share their outlooks and values, over electoral nicities.

In a society that did not profess an attachment to democracy, or to freedom of religion and expression, authoritarians could openly say that they favor truth over democratic rule. But in the United States today, it is utterly unacceptable to admit, even to one's self, that one opposes democracy. Thus authoritarians seem self-contradictory and hypocritical. But strip away the pretense of democracy, and authoritarian views are perfectly consistent.

I will address this further in my next post.