Conservatives Without Conscience

It should surprise no one that when conservatism and authoritarianism are joined together the result is authoritarian conservatism. Here too are found right-wing authoritarian followers and social dominators, as well as conservatives without conscience. With science to assist as an analytical tool, the growing authoritarian conservatism can be more deeply probed.

CHAPTER THREE AUTHORITARIAN CONSERVATISM

POLITICAL AUTHORITARIANISM in America still pales in comparison with that in countries like China and Russia, or in any of the many semidictatorial or quasi-totalitarian governments. This is as it should be; America’s founders rejected political authoritarianism when they rejected monarchy and it has no place in our history. But democracy is not simply the antithesis of political authoritarianism, for any government has an inherently authoritarian nature. The United States is a republic, meaning that authority resides with the people, who elect agents to represent them in making day-to-day political decisions. Our founding fathers understood that republics were vulnerable; they knew that “many republics in history, such as the Roman republic, had been replaced by despots,” political scientist Jay Shafritz of the University of Pittsburgh pointed out. Shafritz noted that when Benjamin Franklin was asked what sort of government had been created at the Constitutional Convention, he suggested that weakness in his reply, “a republic, if you can keep it.”[1] The vehicle that despotism rides is authoritarianism, and we have been fortunate that authoritarianism, until recently, existed only at the fringes of our government.

In fact, authoritarian conservatism has been present in American politics in some form since America’s founding. There has always been an authoritarian element in modern conservatism (which developed post–World War II), but only recently has it found widespread adherence, overpowering libertarian and traditional thinking. Nonetheless, there exists a symbiotic relationship between authoritarianism and conservatism, which today is concentrated in social conservatism and the policies of neoconservatism. Its presence in these factions is no small matter, though, for it is they who largely control the current political agenda in the United States. Keeping the authoritarian influence of conservatism in check, however, is vital to maintaining our republican form of government, and it can only be checked if it is recognized and its implications understood.

Early Authoritarian Conservatism

Alexander Hamilton, the monarchist-leaning founding father, can justifiably be considered America’s first prominent authoritarian conservative. Political scientists Charles W. Dunn and J. David Woodard reported in their study The Conservative Tradition in America that Hamilton’s “brand of conservatism may be properly labeled authoritarian conservatism.” Dunn and Woodard trace the ideology of authoritarian conservatism to Joseph de Maistre, a French nobleman and political polemicist who became an outspoken opponent of Enlightenment thinking, and who favored a strong central government.[2] Maistre’s writing provides an all too vivid glimpse at his rather dark worldview, such as this from his appreciation of executioners.