Many conservatives view the grandiose plans of neoconservatives and their aggressive implementation by people like Scooter Libby as overzealous and loaded with potentially terrifying consequences. By way of comparison, more traditional conservatives call for “realism” in foreign policy that they feel is more appropriate in this age of terrorism. Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft champion this school of thought, and the
Libertarians are likewise counseling prudence in responding to terror attacks, and they have urged the Bush administration to reign in its post-9/11 authoritarianism. The libertarian Cato Institute has asked government officials to “demonstrate courage rather than give in to their fears. Radical Islamic terrorists are not the first enemy that America has faced. British troops burned the White House in 1814, the Japanese navy launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Soviet Union deployed hundreds of nuclear missiles that targeted American cities. If policymakers are serious about defending our freedom and our way of life, they must wage this war without discarding our traditional constitutional framework of limited government.”[12] Similarly, economic conservatives, who favor free trade and elimination of government restraints and regulations, are also wary of granting the president unlimited power to deal with terrorism. They are uncomfortable with the unchecked and unbalanced Bush/Cheney presidency, and the conspicuously right-wing authoritarian Congress that compliantly cedes to the executive branch. For example, Norman Ornstein, a longtime student of the U.S. Congress who works for the economically conservative American Enterprise Institute, noted that the key oversight committees of Congress “shuttered their doors” at the outset of the Bush administration and that “the Bush Justice Department is to checks and balances what Paris Hilton is to chastity.”[13] Most economic conservatives understand that authoritarianism is as faulty a strategy in government as it is in business.[14]
Neoconservatism’s authoritarian strategies and its militarism have taken us into a preemptive war in Iraq, have encouraged us to wage war in Iran and North Korea as well, and have been the foundation for a foreign policy that has made America loathed all over the world.[15] It does not take the National Security Council but common sense to understand that the blowback for these actions may well be terror attacks on our children and grandchildren, not to mention ourselves. Many people believe that neoconservatives and many Republicans appreciate that they are more likely to maintain influence and control of the presidency if the nation remains under ever-increasing threats of terrorism, so they have no hesitation in pursuing policies that can provoke potential terrorists throughout the world.[16] Indeed, this is precisely the type of amoral, Machiavellian behavior that socially dominant personalities are known to employ.
Most conservatives have not publicly objected to the neoconservative, militaristic foreign policy of the Bush/Cheney administration,[*] a predictive failure in light of the fact that social scientists have established that authoritarians as followers tend to be relatively submissive to and unquestioning of presidential authority, particularly when they perceive the president’s beliefs to be consistent with their own views—beliefs which they are expressing their support for. Thus, when the Bush/Cheney presidency adopted neoconservative policies and made them their own, they also became the policies subscribed to by their unquestioning authoritarian followers, the largest bloc of which is made up of Christian conservatives. American- style despotism is possible only if it has a large and influential base, and that potential exists in the religious right’s active role in the political arena.
Appropriate recognition is seldom given to the authoritarians who launched social or cultural conservatism and made it an increasingly significant influence on conservative thinking. (As noted earlier, I believe the terms can be used interchangeably, notwithstanding efforts by some to define them separately.) Any representative list of the major players in launching this movement should include J. Edgar Hoover, Spiro T. Agnew, Phyllis Schlafly, and Paul Weyrich. Each, in his or her way, has made significant contributions by adding to the work of their predecessors; all are authoritarians. These individuals took what was but a thread within conservatism, and collectively their influence made it into the rope that now controls conservatism and Republican politics.[*]
J. EDGAR HOOVER
As the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hoover ruled like a despot. At each stage of his career, he also worked methodically at terrifying Americans and he appears to have been well aware that fear is a wonderful manipulator, particularly with authoritarian followers. Hoover ran the FBI from 1924, during the time of Coolidge, until he died in 1972 during Nixon’s presidency. One FBI historian observes that “Hoover’s conviction of his own righteousness and his insistence on compliance with his personal idiosyncrasies is graphically captured in his first manual of instructions, which he prepared immediately after becoming Director. Unlike later manuals, which were prepared with assistance, this one exudes Hoover’s vigorous authoritarianism, his exaggerated sense of his own importance, his intolerance of individuality, and his extreme narrowness of vision.”[17] Hoover biographies in fact reveal him to be a classic Double High authoritarian, a manipulative demagogue, with the worst traits of both right-wing authoritarians and social dominators.[18]
I myself witnessed Hoover successfully manipulate Attorney General John Mitchell, during one of my own more memorable meetings with the director. We had gathered in the attorney general’s conference room following the death of four students and the wounding of nine others at Kent State University, when Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire during a noontime antiwar demonstration on May 4, 1970. Our agenda that day was to assess whether the Department of Justice should investigate aggressively what had happened at Kent State and why, but it became clear quickly that Hoover wanted to keep the FBI out of it, for reasons that were astounding. Hoover held forth at some length about how one of the young girls who had been killed was a “slut,” and indeed he seemed to know more about her sex life than the events that had transpired during the shootings. His harangue was so disturbing that after the meeting I spoke with an attorney friend in the Civil Rights Division, which had jurisdiction over the situation. Hoover, he said, did not know what he was talking about, and many in the FBI were aware that he was trying to give President Nixon and Attorney General John Mitchell a way of avoiding a federal investigation.[*] Without Hoover’s approval nothing happened at the bureau. His associate director, William Sullivan, later reported that Hoover was the only person “who could make decisions in the FBI.” Sullivan added, “All the well-meaning people in the bureau did exactly what he told them, for if they didn’t, they’d be pounding the pavement. They had to carry out his orders if they didn’t want to sell their homes and take their children out of school.”[19] After studying Hoover’s behavior and activities, Dr. Harold Lief, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, concluded he was “what is known as an Authoritarian Personality. Hoover would have made a perfect high-level Nazi.”[20]
For decades, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, Hoover was a public presence to be reckoned with in America. Presidents, who came and went, protected the nation from foreign invasion; Hoover, who held his post for almost a half century, protected the nation’s “internal security” from mobsters, Nazis, communists, hippies, and antiwar protesters. He intimidated (and blackmailed) members of Congress and presidents (about whom he gathered information); and he helped foster McCarthyism by feeding often dubious information to the maniacal red-hunting senator. Hoover influenced the Supreme Court by using background investigations to disparage potential nominees he did not like and to promote those he did. He also aided Nixon’s efforts to remove Justice Abe Fortas from the Court, and hoped to do the same (but failed) with Justice William O. Douglas. Hoover trained his FBI agents in the black arts of burglary and other surreptitious skills, and had them employed at his whim. He was a racist who sought to disable the civil rights movement; he refused to hire black FBI agents; and he tried to get Martin Luther King, Jr., to commit suicide. He rigged the Warren Commission investigation in a manner that still colors the nation’s understanding of President Kennedy’s assassination. How many innocent people were framed by Hoover’s FBI—a prototype of authoritarian government—will never be known.
