I am reading John Dean's latest book and it explains a lot!

I was hooked about 2 pages into the preface. Conservatives with out a Conscience is fascinating reading. To beat "the enemy" we must know the enemy.

Basically, the book explains that current conservatives in power are authoritaian conservatives (I am still in chapter 1), and how folks like this think.

Dean is an excellent writer, and he confirms the vast right wing conspiracy to get Clinton, as well as explains how he got drawn into the fray with most Republicans at large - how they tried to "swift boat" he and his wife.

I looked over in Books: Non-Fiction and saw one thread about this book, but I would like to post daily as I read and maybe to get other DUers to share their thoughts about the book and excerpts I'll be posting.

What I am getting so far is that besides learning to frame the issues (ala Lakoff), we also have to assess the damage already done to liberals by these rabid republicans. Not all republicatins are without conscience but most in power these days are. Dean also has excellent foot notes about "conservative icons" - Nash and such. So far these conscienceless conservative seem to be type A personalities, win at any cost, claiming to be religious but hypocritical, and just plain mean spirited. (I know all DUers ALREADY know That much!!)

This book just came out in 2006. I need to look for worse than watergate after I digest this one.

Here are a few gems:

"In their efforts to present conservatism as an American tradition, conservatives have also reinterpreted the US Constitution. ... Madison, the father of the Constitution,clearly saw his work as the opposite of conservatism." (He has other examlpes of the rewriting history too)

Dean says conservatives do not think the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written in the same spirit, and that Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness are concepts that are not part of conservative thought.

Conservatives hated FDR, and later LBG, because of the New Deal and the Great Society.

Most conservatives can't even come up with an ideology in common. To Cons, ideology is a bad thing.
Here's William F Buckley's "definition" of conservatism - "a paragon of essences toward which the phenomenology of the world is continuing approximation". ( Boy, I doubt the callers from CSpan who call on the GOP line would even understand that gobbildy gook).

More tomorrow....

toward which the phenomenology of the world is continuing approximation". ( Boy, I doubt the callers from CSpan who call on the GOP line would even understand that gobbildy gook).'

Hell, I have degrees in Classics and Linguistics and I don't understand that gobbeldy gook.:wtf:

Thanks!

for the afternoon folks

along with Conservatives without Conscience, and the common denominator is fundamentalist Christians, are also authoritarians, who may be conservatives without consciences.

I have wondered for quite awhile now how Christians can support people who lie and commit other sins.
Dean's book explains a lot and has some survey questions that both point out conservative leaders' and followers' traits, and explain the psychology of things...

I also picked up Worse than Watergate, so I am ODing on Bush books (I think I may be in my manic phase). I had not dared to read these books earlier because we were stuck with him for 4 more years, but now the end is in sight, maybe sooner rather than later..