Bob Altemeyer's-The Authoritarians

Right now I'm writing a paper in one of my classes on 'The Authoritarian Personality'. You know of them quite well - easily submit to authority, fearful and suspicious of the 'other', etc. Many conservatives most defnitely fall into this category. The study of the authoritarian personality first broke ground with 'The Authoritarian Personality', a Berkeley study by Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford, in 1950, while the dark shadow of fascism and the Holocaust was still fresh on peoples' minds. It's a pretty dated book if you read it today, but there's a lot of truth to be found in it.

Fast forward to the mid-90's. University of Manitoba's Bob Altemeyer writes 'The Authoritarian Specter', a more modern and exhaustive statistical analysis, with the concept of the 'Right Wing Authoritarian' scale (RWA) introduced, a gauge of how strongly one fits into that concept. John Dean referred to it often in his recent 'Conservatives Without Conscience' book in reference to the Bush administration and its sheeplike supporters.

Anyways, Bob Altemeyer has recently released a great, free e-book called 'The Authoritarians' that you can download and read, which distills the major themes into a more brief, concise volume. It's a great read, and I encourage you to download it here, and get a better perspective into the minds of what we're up against. Take the RWA test yourself, and see how you score.