09/22/10
Comments:
Miguel.
This was argued in Nov. 2009 by Obama's Department of Justice.
I guess your position is that it would be OK for the government to embed GPS tracking devices into each license plate issued. It should be equally OK for a company like Exxon to privately "tag" every vehicle in the US to obtain marketing information.
Maybe the RWA Republican party could use the information to determine everyone who drives to a Tea Party event, and ask for donations. Likewise, let's keep a list of where people who attend Obama rallys live, work, shop and relax.
Obama's Justice Department is all for this activity...
09/22/10
Comments:
You might check the history of the case...it dates back to the Bush era.You might want to read the case. Regardless, there is no requirement to put a tail on a person...in many ways this is LESS intrusive in that it only provides location information and no data about behavior.
09/22/10
Comments:
RWA Bush: Warrantless wiretaps.
??? Obama: Expands warrantless wiretaps. Now argues for the expansion of warrantless secret attachment of GPS beacons to private vehicles to track individual movements.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/public-privacy/#ixzz10GwocAiu
09/21/10
Comments:
Doug The road to hell is paved with good intentions...just because you believe something doesn't make it true. Try not to let your fellow kill people OK.Good Bye
09/20/10
Comments:
Miguel.
I didn't reply earlier as you did not pose any questions. Your statements are true, but I disagree with the with the finer points of motivation.
Properly directed authoritarians have the potential of defeating the Nazis or defeating enslaving socialism. Authoritarian mentality is (in my humble opinion) (as I didn't spend a career only directing my research unidirectionally) as common on the left as it is on the right. Labor union lackeys is a glaring example, as are militant feminists (the feminazis), abortion supporters, eco-terrorists, and assorted socialists.
The real question is how do you direct these people's enthusiasm for the common good. There is significant popular support for healthcare, the environment, welfare, peace, etc. in the American political right. Just as there is support for capitalism, pro-life, limited government and religion in the left.
Dr. Altemeyer just can't seem to look in all directions - right and left, backwards and forwards. Its just too easy to look backwards for traits of the Nazis and transpose them onto the American political right and state that how awful these folks act. I laugh as I listened on the way home to work to Michael Medved and Michael Savage - two politically right talk show pundits - who happen to be Jewish. Tea party leaders who are Jewish... Goebbles is spinning in his grave...
Back to your remarks...
The political leaders of the USA are in the business of getting (re-)elected. To do this they need votes. To get votes they can 1) enact good policy or 2) demonize their opponent. They choose #2 - its much easier to do. In the last few decades there is so little meaningful legislation that it is laughable - right or left - the expenditure of legislators' time is to demonize their opponent (which I contend is Dr. Altemeyers goal for writing his book.)
I disagree that RWAs would be intolerant of people of other religions. If you pay close attention to Altemeyer's Religious Ethnocentrism scale (p 113) - it uses the word "avoid" not eliminate or convert. Thinking your religion is different and superior is not the same as believing that you must convert or not tolerate other religions.
I also disagree that RWAs are intolerant of other races or ethnicities or gender. This is supported by ALtemeyer as a weak (r=0.19) (p 149) correlation. I think that the American political RWAs are only slightly more intolerant of races or ethnicities as the political left. (The loons need to congregate somewhere...and they pick this slough.) I think that the crazy tea party is full of female leaders. Mama grizzlies...
So the generalization that the American RWAs fear the same "things" the Nazis did is an over-simplification at best. We both fear communists.
09/20/10
Comments:
Doug...You might want to parse the rhetoric of the protesters in your demonstration, and compare it to the rhetoric of Beck/Palin...who they were protesting...not to mention the size of the group. The protesters were protesting what they feel to be a racist streak in the tea party. If we believe the correlation between Authoritarians and prejudice presented here I think they have a valid claim.
No where do they say "Take our country back", "We are unarmed...this time", "Join the NRA - Join the Resistance"...and my personal ironic favorite "Restore Our Checks and Balances" ============= You might compare these two quotes for semantics...just for informational purposes, to understand the rhetoric of the Authoritarian Leader...and the things the Followers need to hear in order to be led. "The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be President would be "What the hell you mean we're out of missiles?" " and "It must be thoroughly understood that the lost land will never be won back by solemn appeals to the God, nor by hopes in any League of Nations, but only by the force of arms." =========== Please stop teaching my children that everyone gets a trophy just for participating. What is this, the Nobel Prize? Not everybody gets a trophy. and "Without failure there is no sweetness in success. There's no understanding of it" =========== And I've come to the - to the - to the place where I believe that there's no way to solve these problems, these issues - there's nothing that we can do that will solve the problems that we have and keep the peace, unless we solve it through God, unless we solve it in being our highest self. And that's a pretty tall order. and The world will not help, the people must help themselves. Its own strength is the source of life. That strength the Almighty has given us to use; that in it and through it, we may wage the battle of our life The others in the past years have not had the blessing of the Almighty - of Him who in the last resort, whatever man may do, holds in His hands the final decision. Lord God, let us never hesitate or play the coward.
09/20/10
Comments:
Let's try this again without the politics shall we.
The Followers want to be led, they want a homogeneous society, they want to be surrounded by those that feel like they do (or at least are proscribed from expressing opposition). What ever they claim as their motivation...promoting life or "making the world safe for democracy", what they REALLY want is that all people are like they are or at least behave in a manner that doesn't make them have to face their fears. And the Authorization to penalize those that aren't.
A world free of obscenity, or western influence. A world of "democracy", or communism, or Sharia. A world that recognizes the hegemony and dominance of America, or communism, or the Third Reich. A world with defined enemies and the Authorization to attack.
What the leaders want is power, they will harness what ever fears the local Followers have to take that power and inflate it to proportions needed to incite the bloodlust buried in the psyche of the Followers.
If correctly handled they could easily become the core of an uprising on par with the fall of the Weimar, or Imperial Russia, or the Taliban...Or an electorate with similar results. This is the case because of their pathology, and the pathology of those that would lead them. And they will be led where their pathology needs them to be led.
One does NOT have to look very far to find atrocities in the name of Jesus and America right here...led by Leaders of Followers desperately seeking a release for their dissonance and personal nightmares.
So yes, you should fear the RWA in the US, they fear all the things that the NAZI's did, they want a return to undisputed American hegemony, and they have god on their side.
09/20/10
Comments:
It would be remarkable to understand the mentality of the left-wing "RWA" union lackeys... (some profanity on link below)
What do we get from Dr. Altemeyer?... Nothing...
Video from this weekend of a union lackey RWA counter-protest of a big bad tea party rally.
09/19/10
Comments:
And for what it's worth globalization is a term for economic and cultural hegemony...something strongly desired by the authoritarians and generally viewed with suspicion by the rest of humanity.Why not ask the Inca, or the Ute how it worked out for them, or the Tibetans, or the steel workers, or the Spaniards when the armies of Islam rolled over them. But then I forget...it's a dog eat dog world. Well now we are getting handed our head, due to the fact that even as we were promulgating this we didn't realize that it worked both ways.
09/19/10
Comments:
Try to stay on track here...Those we are discussing are the Authoritarian Followers in NORTH AMERICA...who are overwhelmingly politically Right wing and religious...Even if you're little side trip proves to be fruitful it does not change THAT fact, nor the fact that Authoritarian Followers have caused a hell of a lot of harm and have the potential to do so again.
It's a distraction, and intellectually dishonest.
09/19/10
Comments:
In my opinion one only has to honestly examine the run up to the Iraq War to see the tools being used. Logical fallacy, suppression of dissenting opinion, assertion of Authority, attacking the dissenters as being traitors inflammation of scientific fear, and finally and most telling We vs. Them.
Replacing one word and we can now explain how global warming, err... climate change, err... global climate disruption was pushed by the uninformed mass.
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One does NOT have to look very far to find atrocities in the name of science and globalization right here...led by Leaders of Followers desperately seeking a release for their dissonance and personal nightmares.
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It really would have been neat to have tested the RWA of say, Tim McVeigh to gain info on the matter. Testing of the socialist Nazis would have been enlightening also.
09/19/10
Comments:
The Followers want to be led, they want a homogeneous society, they want to be surrounded by those that feel like they do (or at least are proscribed from expressing opposition). What ever they claim as their motivation...promoting life or "making the world safe for democracy", what they REALLY want is that all people are like they are or at least behave in a manner that doesn't make them have to face their fears. And the Authorization to penalize those that aren't.
A world free of obscenity, or western influence. A world of "democracy", or communism, or Sharia. A world that recognizes the hegemony and dominance of America, or communism, or the Third Reich. A world with defined enemies and the Authorization to attack.
What the leaders want is power, they will harness what ever fears the local Followers have to take that power and inflate it to proportions needed to incite the bloodlust buried in the psyche of the Followers.
If correctly handled they could easily become the core of an uprising on par with the fall of the Weimar, or Imperial Russia, or the Taliban...Or an electorate with similar results. This is the case because of their pathology, and the pathology of those that would lead them. And they will be led where their pathology needs them to be led.
One does NOT have to look very far to find atrocities in the name of Jesus and America right here...led by Leaders of Followers desperately seeking a release for their dissonance and personal nightmares.
So yes, you should fear the RWA in the US, they fear all the things that the NAZI's did, they want a return to undisputed American hegemony, and they have god on their side. ====================== In my opinion one only has to honestly examine the run up to the Iraq War to see the tools being used. Logical fallacy, suppression of dissenting opinion, assertion of Authority, attacking the dissenters as being traitors inflammation of religious fear, and finally and most telling We vs. Them. And it worked, costing 100,000's of thousands of lives, billions of dollars, igniting a holy war, providing a recruiting ground for those who had no real opinion of the US, and possibly most damaging, destroying US soft power in the region...and the respect of allies around the world.
09/19/10
Comments:
You make some great points.
I would contend that there have been very few policies by either party in the States which has done "substantial damage" to the republic. The only seismic shift which is has substantial damage potential is allowing Iran to gain nuclear weapons. Other than that there is alot of push and pull of minor policies which has little potential to substantially damage the viability of the US's republic. We need to put on our boots, pay off the debt, increase manufacturing - pretty minor things.
Thanks, but I know my economics... I stated: "In the 20th century this evil has nearly always been socialist and many times atheist." The reference is to the democidal reigmes of the Stalinists, Maoists and others. North America has never been socialist.
The point is that N.American Christian authoritarians may act in a single-minded direction. But what are their goals? The goal is mostly to promote life (abortion), promote goodness, promote liberty and freedom, there is also a trend of minimizing government. Contrast this to the goals of the socialist athiest authoritarians of (mostly) Asia, who had a goal of forced equality, disregard for life, promoting social order, minimizing liberty and freedom and maximizing government. One system murdered 130 million humans, and the other is now viewed by Dr. Altemeyer as a threat. The problem with his logic is that he can't or won't understand the end-game - what are the goals of the American Christian right?
Test to other societies: Altemeyer describes giving this RWA test to communist bureaucrats in the former USSR. He finds RWAs in the socialist athiests... The test was modified to align RWAs as not a belief in religion, but a belief in government. It would be interesting to give the same "belief in government" test to the political left in N. America. That would be a hoot, as I bet (Dr. Altemeyer here is another way you can get my money - I'll bet at toonie.) that the Christian right would score lower than the left would on the test which was given to the Soviet burearcrats. Such a flexible tool. It can be bent to prove whatever Dr. Altemeyer wants, on whomever he wants to demonize.
Your thoughts on subservance = lack of ability to make one's own ethical decisions seems like a great topic.
09/19/10
Comments:
I'm NOT going to get into a political argument, suffice it to say that I do not disagree with the actions asserted and their consequences. I believe that in general the POLICIES put in place by the Republicans under the guidance of Authoritarian Leaders ("I'm The Decider" and "The Great Deregulation") have done substantial damage to the USA. =================================== I think pathology is an appropriate term...any set of behavioral traits that result in delusional behavior are a disease, pathology is the study of disease processes and morphology.
Regardless of your assertions regarding socialism, in NORTH AMERICA, those personalities gravitate towards the political right wing. In other societies they gravitated towards whatever "ism" met the needs of their pathology. The fact that these personalities are CAPABLE of such evil should be enough to make you worry...regardless of the political leanings of these people (or yourself).
(a brief aside...socialism is not political, it's economic, you might want to sort that out)
I bet if you gave this test in other societies you would find that those who went to Madras (or an Orthodox Synagogue) before going to college would tend towards Authoritarianism. In NA people go to church and become Christians.
Note also, that in our society individual responsibility and freedom are stressed, leaving little for the Authoritarian follower to follow EXCEPT religion, which provides an excellent avenue for the Follower. And in the case of Christianity the convenient cop-out of redemption.
I would like to see this test run across the German population with an eye towards differences between those raised in East Germany and those raised in the West. It would be interesting to see the differences between the indices in two notionally secular societies with distinctly different views on authority. Perhaps the slant towards highly authoritarian societies comes from regular indoctrination...like weekly and daily education...like one might find growing up in a religious family and not interacting with other sorts of people. It's as though they don't trust themselves to make good decisions, a fear that seems to be well founded. =========================================== There are some interesting studies going on right now as to WHY people believe in a god. One of the theories is that as individuals we have conflicting evolutionary drives. As an individual there is little reason for altruism, but as a species, because our achievements are societal, there is a need for it. So the question becomes how does a society enforce the need for the group to be first. It forms a policing structure, BUT there is still a percentage who will cheat, the introduction of an all powerful, all seeing god to keep an eye on things keeps people in line.
MY OPINION is that people with high RWA personalities have a need to be controlled, perhaps because they fear that they will do something BAD if they are not. The problem arises when Leaders use this tendency to Follow to do the very same evil things that the Follower secretly fears doing and yet wants to do. The Follower fears people that are different because it threatens him, the fact that people can make ethical decisions without an Authority, some how makes them feel smaller. They fear that their Authority will be weakened by their admitting that this is possible and they will lose their protection from doing the BAD thing. ============================================= I DO believe that a large mistake was made in using the word BECAUSE in the conclusion, for all the statistical accuracy in the body of the work, to fall into the causation - correlation fallacy is appalling.
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