Conservatives Without Conscience by John W. Dean Page A

15 To underscore the fact that his questionnaire does not address the left, Altemeyer specifically calls his scale a survey of right-wing authoritarianism. “I have tried to discover the left-wing authoritarian, whom I suspect exists, but apparently only in very small numbers,” he told me. He is not testing for political conservatism per se, however. Nonetheless, he finds that those who score highly on his right-wing authoritarian scale are by and large “conservatives,” as journalists and the general public understand that term. Other social scientists have reached the same conclusions. 16
    In one of Altemeyer’s recent articles—“What Happens When Authoritarians Inherit the Earth? A Simulation”—he describes right-wing authoritarians as “political conservatives (from the grass roots up to the pros, say studies of over 1500 elected lawmakers).” He explained what can be a confusing distinction between a right-wing authoritarian and a political conservative:

    When I started out, and ever since, I was not looking for political conservatives. I was looking for people who overtly submit to the established authorities in their lives, who could be of any political/economic/religious stripe. So in the Soviet Union, whose Communist government we would call extremely “left-wing,” I expected right-wing authoritarians to support Communism because that was what the established authorities demanded, and they did. So when I use “right-wing” in right-wing authoritarianism, I do not mean the submission necessarily goes to a politically “right-wing” leader or government, but that it goes to established authorities in one’s life. I am proposing a psychological (not political) meaning of right-wing, in the sense that the submission goes to the psychologically accepted “proper,” “legitimate” authority. That’s the conceptualization.
       Now it turns out that in North America persons who score highly on my measure of authoritarianism test tend to favor right-wing political parties and have “conservative” economic philosophies and religious sentiments. This is an empirical finding, not something that conceptually has to be, that was conceptually assumed or preordained. So my statement about authoritarians being political conservatives is a statement of what turns out to be true according to the studies that have been done. To put it in a nutshell: Authoritarianism was conceptualized to involve submission to established authorities, who could be anyone. But it turns out that people who have “conservative” leanings tend to be more authoritarian than anyone else. (Incidentally, I put all those tiresome quotation marks around “conservative” and “liberal” because I don’t want people to think I know what I’m talking about. Good definitions are very difficult here, especially from place to place and era to era.)
    While there is no question that a satisfactory definition of conservatism is elusive, it is not surprising that right-wing authoritarians are conservatives under almost any current definition, based on the items found in the principal tool for measuring authoritarianism, the RWA (right-wing authoritarian) scale. 17 For example, in the RWA scale (see a full sample in Appendix B), the following questions would surely be answered in varying affirmatives (strongly agree or agree as opposed to disagree or strongly disagree) by social conservatives, particularly Christian conservatives:

Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.
The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional values, put some tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers who are spreading bad ideas.
“Old-fashioned ways” and “old-fashioned values” are the best guide for the way to live.
God’s laws about abortion, pornography, and marriage must be strictly