Washblog

I recently read an entire online book The Authoritarians by Bob Altermeyer. This is the sociologist whose research John Dean used in his 2006 book Conservatives Without Conscience.

I meant to skim, but it was such a fascinating and entertaining read, I finished the whole thing. The book is, says the author:

...an easy-ride journey through some relevant scientific studies I have done on authoritarian personalities--one that will take you a heck of a lot less time than the decades it took me...

It's about what's happened to the American government lately. It's about the disastrous decisions that government has made. It's about the corruption that rotted the Congress. It's about how traditional conservatism has nearly been destroyed by authoritarianism. It's about how the "Religious Right" teamed up with amoral authoritarian leaders to push its un-democratic agenda onto the country....

For example, take the following statement: "Once our government leaders and the authorities condemn the dangerous elements in our society, it will be the duty of every patriotic citizen to help stomp out the rot that is poisoning our country from within." Sounds like something Hitler would say, right? Want to guess how many politicians, how many lawmakers in the United States agreed with it? Want to guess what they had in common?

Or how about a government program that persecutes political parties, or minorities, or journalists the authorities do not like, by putting them in jail, even torturing and killing them. Nobody would approve of that, right? Guess again.

Don't think for a minute this doesn't concern you personally. Let me ask you, as we're passing the time here, how many ordinary people do you think an evil authority would have to order to kill you before he found someone who would, unjustly, out of sheer obedience, just because the authority said to? What sort of person is most likely to follow such an order? What kind of official is most likely to give that order, if it suited his purposes? Look at what experiments tell us, as I did.

Rationale for DC Madam / DC Domina Connection.

According to this ABC News "blotter", US Deputy Secretary of State, Randall L. Tobias, resigned in April after admitting that he was a client of DC escort service "whose owner has been charged by federal prosecutors with running a prostitution operation."

Ok, so Republicans like sexy massages too (that's all he's admitted to). The rich part:

"As a top official overseeing global AIDS funding to other countries, Tobias was responsible for enforcing a U.S. policy, enacted during the Bush administration, that requires recipients to swear they oppose prostitution and sex trafficking." and etc.

This must be the same policy that refuses funding for reproductive medical services to countries that provide family planning counseling ....   I like it that he's co-authored a book on "Leadership" with his son.  

Recently I read this article on touch, neurological development, and sexuality:
Touch and Childhood Development -- and I was thinking about what George Lakoff said at the end of his book, Moral Politics -- that if we want to reform politics, we would do well to pay atttention to how people are treated in early childhood.  Kind and accepting treatment in childhood leads to more tolerant adults -- and more liberal adults, politically.  

I was also thinking about all the research I looked at when I was the librarian for Seattle Midwifery School on the effect of touch and nurturing in early childhood -- and how physically painful and grueling birth often is -- unnecessarily so.  (There's a gentle birth movement in the US).

Anyway, if we want fewer conservatives with mean-spirited public policies that hurt and punish the poor, who obsess on sexual morality while they break their own codes (and if we want fewer fascists) ....  let's find ways to encourage people to have gentle birth, and to kindly touch their babies and children.