Conservatives Without Conscience by John W. Dean Page B

followed before it is too late, and those who break them must be strongly punished.
Once our government leaders give us the “go-ahead,” it will be the duty of every patriotic citizen to help stomp out the rot that is poisoning our country from within.

    Social conservatives would just as likely very strongly disagree with these statements from the RWA scale:

Gays and lesbians are just as healthy and moral as anybody else.
Atheists and others who have rebelled against the established religions are no doubt every bit as good and virtuous as those who attend church regularly.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with nudist camps.
There is nothing wrong with premarital sexual intercourse.

    Altemeyer explains the conservative-liberal dimension of his research in The Authoritarian Specter. “I submit that when journalists, educators, and politicians themselves talk about liberals and conservatives on the issues of our day,” he wrote, “they are usually talking about the dimension measured by the RWA scale.” He noted,

    When I hear Rush Limbaugh, Jesse Helms, or Pat Buchanan say that liberals favor guaranteeing equal rights for homosexuals, I say to myself, “Actually, Low RWAs do, and it connects to much else in their thinking.” And when I hear Gary Trudeau, Edward Kennedy, and Barbara Jordan say that the conservatives oppose abortion and favor the death penalty, I say to myself, “Actually, if you understand that it’s High RWAs who do these things, you’ll realize why and a lot, lot more.” When people are “conservatives”—politically, religiously, economically—the odds are pretty good that they are High RWAs. That is not an opinion, but a scientifically established fact. 18
    A recent study employing the RWA scale, conducted by another researcher, showed it to be quite prescient in predicting voting patterns for Republican candidates in the 1996 and 2000 elections. 19 While the right-wing authoritarian scale does not measure either conservatism or Republican party identification, this recent research again confirms Altemeyer’s findings that those who score high on the scale are, more than likely, both.
    Early in our exchanges on authoritarians Altemeyer related, “The biggest thing that has happened recently has been the discovery thatthere are two, not one, authoritarian personalities.” He explained that the Berkeley group’s research, like that of other social scientists and his own, focused on “authoritarian followers, persons who submit too fast, too long to established authorities.” (Emphasis added.) These people are RWAs. More recently social psychologists have “developed a measure to identify authoritarian leaders, persons who want to be submitted to.” (Emphasis added.) These individuals, because of their social dominance orientation (SDO), are take-charge types. Not unaware of my background at the Nixon White House—since Watergate was one of several events he had examined that demonstrated “that many citizens in a democracy will support high-handed, repressive, and anti-democratic policies” that obviously were not envisioned by the nation’s founders—Altemeyer suggested that I was no doubt personally familiar with these types of personalities. After learning more about them, I found he was correct, and, in addition, I have discovered them in my recent studies of the Bush White House and Washington political culture. And all of them are hard-right conservatives.
    Working my way through Altemeyer’s books and journal articles, along with the writings of others in the field, I began to understand the particular categories within the authoritarian personality classifications. First there are the followers, the right-wing authoritarians. Then there are the leaders, the social dominators. And finally, there are those who uniquely combine the worst personality traits of both types and appear to be best positioned to become leaders of right-wing movements and undertakings, a group