March 13, 2016 at 03:40AM
"Authoritarianism's impact on contemporary conservatism is beyond question." -- John Dean, 2006 #readingToday

Authoritarianism's impact on contemporary conservatism is beyond question. Because this impact is still growing and has troubling (if not actually evil) implications, I hope that social scientists will begin to write about this issue for general readers. It is long past time to bring the telling results of their empirical work into the public square and to the attention of American voters. No less than the health of our democracy may depend on this being done. We need to stop thinking we are dealing with traditional conservatives on the modern stage, and instead recognize that they've often been supplanted by authoritarians.

Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean of Watergate fame (or better, infamy) isn't very happy with the direction the Republican Party is headed under its current leadership. After studying "decades of empirical research," he thinks he understands why, authoritarianism,...