{"id":379,"date":"2008-10-19T21:06:40","date_gmt":"2008-10-20T01:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iomaire.com\/?p=379"},"modified":"2008-10-26T10:24:15","modified_gmt":"2008-10-26T14:24:15","slug":"a-breakthrough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/2008\/10\/19\/a-breakthrough\/","title":{"rendered":"A Breakthrough"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since starting this blog early last month, I have been wrestling with the paramount theme that underlies the campaign for the office of the President of the United States this year: conservatism vs. liberalism. In some early posts, I looked at the definition of a conservative<\/a> and then the definition of a liberal<\/a>. I lurched through an examination of the recent opinion of the Supreme Court on the Second Amendment<\/a>, then bounced around to other topics concerning religion, politics, and fundamentalism. After starting to read Eric Hoffer’s book, “The True Believer”, I looked at the role of the individual in this difficult conundrum where people consistently vote against their own best interests. I finally started to make some headway in understanding what the truth of the matter was when I found Robert Altemeyer’s<\/a> site. Then, I found a complementary idea called Social Dominance Orientation<\/a>, which is part of Social Dominance Theory<\/a>. From there, I found a review of John Dean’s book, Conservatives Without a Conscience<\/a> which pointed me to a wonderful series of essays by Paul Rosenberg on the relationship between conservatism and authoritarianism. There are five essays in the series:<\/p>\n

Conservatism As Identity Politics – Intro<\/a><\/p>\n

Conservatism As Identity Politics – Part 2<\/a><\/p>\n

Right Wing Authoritarianism and Conservative Identity Politics <\/a><\/p>\n

Social Dominance Orientation and Conservative Identity Politics<\/a><\/p>\n

How Racism Changes Form – Conservatism As Identity Politics<\/a><\/p>\n

I had said to friends some time ago that President Bush and his neo-conservative associates were not conservatives; that I didn’t know what they were, but they weren’t what I thought of when I thought of conservatives. Now, armed with the research and studying that I have done, I can see what they are: Authoritarians. The campaign of John McCain and Sarah Palin, seeking to continue the failed policies of the last twenty-eight years, has driven me to understand, finally, what is going on in my country. I am no longer ashamed to state, with firm conviction, that I am a liberal. I’m proud to be a liberal and there are plenty of Christians and Republicans who are also proud liberals. The authoritarian right has invaded and infected the Republican party and is engaged in a vicious campaign to undermine the foundations of this once great country. They have promoted hatred, division, selfishness, racism, sexism, intolerance, mean-spiritedness, anti-intellectualism, dogmatism, bigotry and a host of other evil personality traits that are anathema to the founding principles of this country. The Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys of the world have sullied the word “liberal” in a classic smear campaign (see the Laird Wilcox<\/a> site and this post<\/a>). It is time for all of us, liberals and conservatives, Democrats, Libertarians, Republicans, Progressives, and every other stripe of liberal, to take back our country from those who want to take us back to the world that existed before the age of Feudalism. It is as simple as that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since starting this blog early last month, I have been wrestling with the paramount theme that underlies the campaign for the office of the President of the United States this year: conservatism vs. liberalism. In some early posts, I looked …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[122],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions\/421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}