ACORN may not exist anymore but 20% of Americans still think (or at least say they think) it will steal the election to keep Democrats in control of Congress this fall.
Quite apart from the fact that many of these people vote and own firearms, it distresses me to think that these people drive cars.
> . . .20% of Americans still think. . . [all sorts of
ReplyDelete> things]
_The Authoritarians_
Bob Altemeyer
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
(http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ ,
via
http://www.myspace.com/nonclassical )
p. 46
David Winters of the University of Michigan found in 2005 that
the high RWAs [scorers on Altemeyer's "Right-Wing Authoritarianism"
scale] in a large sample of university students believed the invasion
of Iraq constituted a just war. They thought the danger posed by
Iraq was so great, the United States had no other choice. They
thought the invasion occurred only as a last resort, after all
peaceful alternatives had been exhausted, and that the war would
bring about more good than evil. They rejected the notion that the
failure to find weapons of mass destruction showed the “pre-emptive”
attack had not been necessary for self defense. They also rejected
the suggestion that the war was conducted to control oil supplies and
extend American power, or as an act of revenge. And they still believed
that Saddam had been involved in the 9/11 attacks.
If you want a star-spangled example of authoritarian submission by an
ordinary citizen, it would be hard to beat the sentiment of Clydeen Tomanio
of Chickamuauga, Georgia, who was quoted on a CNN.com report dated
September 7, 2006 as saying, “There are some people, and I’m one of
them, that believe George Bush was placed where he is by the Lord.
I don’t care how he governs, I will support him.”
In turn, you won’t find a better example of authoritarian submission
in government than that displayed by Steven Bradbury, the
Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, on July 11, 2006.
At the end of June the Supreme Court ruled that the Pentagon’s
use of special military commissions to try suspected terrorists at
Guantanamo Bay violated the Geneva Conventions and the United States
Uniform Code of Military Justice. Bradbury appeared before the
Senate Judiciary Committee to explain what the administration was therefore
going to do instead. Pressed by Senator Leahy of Vermont to say whether
President Bush was right in his assessment of the situation, Bradbury replied,
“The president is always right.” Is Bradbury wildy atypical? Investigations
into the December, 2006 firing of the eight U.S. attorneys suggests
that George W. Bush has placed hundreds of “true believers” in the highest
levels of his administration, many of them products of Pat Robertson’s
Regency University, who put loyalty to the president above all other concerns.
For a truly horrifying argument that the president ought to be above
the law, see Professor H. Mansfield’s op-ed piece in the May 2, 2007
_Wall Street Journal_.