The skulduggery that led to Libby’s indictment is likewise characteristic of authoritarian behavior. Libby had sought to discredit the visit to Africa, by former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to determine if Niger was supplying yellowcake uranium to Iraq. Bush and Cheney had been claiming that Iraq’s pursuit of uranium was evidence of their development of a nuclear capacity, thus providing a justification for a preemptive war. Wilson found the yellowcake report not true (in fact, it had been based on forged documents), and after the president made a contrary statement in his 2003 State of the Union address, Wilson publicly corrected the record. Libby was outraged and apparently believed that by claiming that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA operative involved in monitoring the proliferation of such weapons, had been involved in sending her husband to Niger, the trip would be perceived as some kind of boondoggle. In fact, she was not involved in the CIA’s decision to ask her husband to make the trip, but Libby leaked her covert identity to members of the news media anyway. Under some circumstances it is a violation of the law to reveal the covert status of CIA operatives, for it not only places the agents themselves in jeopardy, but also their contacts. Surely Libby knew this, given his long experience with national security. When special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald investigated her exposure, Libby gave FBI agents and the grand jury false statements about the newspeople to whom he had revealed her name. As Altemeyer’s work shows, authoritarians have little if any conscience when pursuing their causes, and reason gives way to expediency.
Many conservatives view the grandiose plans of neoconservatives and their aggressive implementation by people like Scooter Libby as overzealous and loaded with potentially terrifying consequences. By way of comparison, more traditional conservatives call for “realism” in foreign policy that they feel is more appropriate in this age of terrorism. Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft champion this school of thought, and the American Conservative, a publication launched by Pat Buchanan, has urged that American self-interest be the controlling consideration in national security. “Realists take seriously the threat from international terrorism but keep it in historical perspective,” a lead article reported. “They are also skeptical of the administration’s claim that we face a more dangerous adversary now in al Qaeda than we did with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. After all, the Soviets had a huge nuclear arsenal, while our worst-case fears today are that al Qaeda might get one or two crude radiological ‘dirty bombs.’ Realism counsels prudent caution but not panic in our approach to the global War on Terror.”[11]
Libertarians are likewise counseling prudence in responding to terror attacks, and they have urged the Bush administration to reign in its post-9/11 authoritarianism. The libertarian Cato Institute has asked government officials to “demonstrate courage rather than give in to their fears. Radical Islamic terrorists are not the first enemy that America has faced. British troops burned the White House in 1814, the Japanese navy launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Soviet Union deployed hundreds of nuclear missiles that targeted American cities. If policymakers are serious about defending our freedom and our way of life, they must wage this war without discarding our traditional constitutional framework of limited government.”[12] Similarly, economic conservatives, who favor free trade and elimination of government restraints and regulations, are also wary of granting the president unlimited power to deal with terrorism. They are uncomfortable with the unchecked and unbalanced Bush/Cheney presidency, and the conspicuously right-wing authoritarian Congress that compliantly cedes to the executive branch. For example, Norman Ornstein, a longtime student of the U.S. Congress who works for the economically conservative American Enterprise Institute, noted that the key oversight committees of Congress “shuttered their doors” at the outset of the Bush administration and that “the Bush Justice Department is to checks and balances what Paris Hilton is to chastity.”[13] Most economic conservatives understand that authoritarianism is as faulty a strategy in government as it is in business.[14]
Neoconservatism’s authoritarian strategies and its militarism have taken us into a preemptive war in Iraq, have encouraged us to wage war in Iran and North Korea as well, and have been the foundation for a foreign policy that has made America loathed all over the world.[15] It does not take the National Security Council but common sense to understand that the blowback for these actions may well be terror attacks on our children and grandchildren, not to mention ourselves. Many people believe that neoconservatives and many Republicans appreciate that they are more likely to maintain influence and control of the presidency if the nation remains under ever-increasing threats of terrorism, so they have no hesitation in pursuing policies that can provoke potential terrorists throughout the world.[16] Indeed, this is precisely the type of amoral, Machiavellian behavior that socially dominant personalities are known to employ.
Most conservatives have not publicly objected to the neoconservative, militaristic foreign policy of the Bush/Cheney administration,[*] a predictive failure in light of the fact that social scientists have established that authoritarians as followers tend to be relatively submissive to and unquestioning of presidential authority, particularly when they perceive the president’s beliefs to be consistent with their own views—beliefs which they are expressing their support for. Thus, when the Bush/Cheney presidency adopted neoconservative policies and made them their own, they also became the policies subscribed to by their unquestioning authoritarian followers, the largest bloc of which is made up of Christian conservatives. American-style despotism is possible only if it has a large and influential base, and that potential exists in the religious right’s active role in the political arena.
Appropriate recognition is seldom given to the authoritarians who launched social or cultural conservatism and made it an increasingly significant influence on conservative thinking. (As noted earlier, I believe the terms can be used interchangeably, notwithstanding efforts by some to define them separately.) Any representative list of the major players in launching this movement should include J. Edgar Hoover, Spiro T. Agnew, Phyllis Schlafly, and Paul Weyrich. Each, in his or her way, has made significant contributions by adding to the work of their predecessors; all are authoritarians. These individuals took what was but a thread within conservatism, and collectively their influence made it into the rope that now controls conservatism and Republican politics.[*]
J. EDGAR HOOVER
As the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hoover ruled like a despot. At each stage of his career, he also worked methodically at terrifying Americans and he appears to have been well aware that fear is a wonderful manipulator, particularly with authoritarian followers. Hoover ran the FBI from 1924, during the time of Coolidge, until he died in 1972 during Nixon’s presidency. One FBI historian observes that “Hoover’s conviction of his own righteousness and his insistence on compliance with his personal idiosyncrasies is graphically captured in his first manual of instructions, which he prepared immediately after becoming Director. Unlike later manuals, which were prepared with assistance, this one exudes Hoover’s vigorous authoritarianism, his exaggerated sense of his own importance, his intolerance of individuality, and his extreme narrowness of vision.”[17] Hoover biographies in fact reveal him to be a classic Double High authoritarian, a manipulative demagogue, with the worst traits of both right-wing authoritarians and social dominators.[18]
11.
Michael C. Desch, “George ‘Wilson’ Bush: How the dark side of America’s Liberal Tradition drives us to global crusades in democracy’s name,”
12.
Melanie Scarborough, “The Security Pretext: An Examination of the Growth of Federal Police Agencies,” Cato Institute Briefing Paper No. 94 (June 29, 2005) at http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3828.
13.
Norman Ornstein, “Checks and Balances? The President Has Few, if Any,”
14.
See Abraham H. Maslow,
15.
See, e.g., Patrick J. Buchanan, “America’s Next War,” Creators Syndicate (August 23, 2004); Max Boot, “Q & A: Neocon power examined,”
16.
In a December 18, 2005, speech, President Bush all but conceded the point that America is provoking terror. He stated, “If you think the terrorist would become peaceful if only America would stop provoking them, then it might make sense to leave them alone.” George W. Bush, “Bush Says Iraqis See Democracy as Their Future,” U.S. Department of State, at http://usinfo.state.gov/mena/Archive/2005/Dec/19-15664.html. Writing in the
*
We may never learn the full extent of the objections expressed by “realist” Republicans. For example, it is only reluctantly that former Bush I national security adviser Brent Scowcroft has spoken out, because he is a close friend of the former president Bush. But because none of his old friends, who now control American foreign policy, were listening, he wrote an August 15, 2002,
*
Social and religious elements, however, have been present from the outset. When writing