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John W. Dean
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Conservatives Without Conscience Paperback – August 28, 2007

by John W. Dean (Author)
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On the heels of his national bestseller Worse Than Watergate, John Dean takes a critical look at the current conservative movement

In Conservatives Without Conscience, John Dean places the conservative movement's inner circle of leaders in the Republican Party under scrutiny. Dean finds their policies and mind- set to be fundamentally authoritarian, and as such, a danger to democracy. By examining the legacies of such old-line conservatives as J. Edgar Hoover, Spiro Agnew, and Phyllis Schlafly and of such current figures as Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, and leaders of the Religious Right, Dean presents an alarming record of abuses of power. His trenchant analysis of how conservatism has lost its bearings serves as a chilling warning and a stirring inspiration to safeguard constitutional principles.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    256 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    August 28, 2007
  4. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.69 x 8.44 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0143038869
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0143038863
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A penetrating and highly disturbing portrait of many of the major players in Republican politics and power ... riveting."
-Booklist, starred review

"A fierce indictment of Republican politicians ... the sheer outrage in Dean's book has power of its own."
-Chicago Tribune

About the Author

John Dean was White House legal counsel to President Nixon for a thousand days. Dean also served as chief minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee and as an associate deputy attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; Reprint edition (August 28, 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0143038869
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143038863
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.69 x 8.44 inches
  • Customer Reviews:

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John W. Dean

John W. Dean

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John Dean served as Counsel to the President of the United States from July 1970 to April 1973. Before becoming White House counsel at age thirty-one, he was the chief minority counsel to the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives, and an associate deputy attorney general at the US Department of Justice. His undergraduate studies were at Colgate University and the College of Wooster, with majors in English Literature and Political Science; then a graduate fellowship at American University to study government and the presidency before entering Georgetown University Law Center, where he received his JD with honors in 1965.

John recounted his days at the Nixon White House and Watergate in three books: Blind Ambition (Open Road 2016), Lost Honor (1982) and The Nixon Defense (2014). After retiring from a business career as a private investment banker doing middle-market mergers and acquisitions, he returned to full-time writing and lecturing, including as a columnist for FindLaw's Writ (from 2000 to 2010) and Justia’s Verdict (since 2010). Donald Trump’s election and presidency resulted in John’s 12th book by return to American authoritarianism, which he examined earlier New York Times best-sellers Conservatives Without Conscience (2006), because authoritarianism is on the ballot in 2020. Thus his study with Bob Altemeyer, Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers.

John held the Barry Goldwater Chair of American Institutions at Arizona State University (academic years 2015-16), and for the past decade and a half he has been a visiting scholar and lecturer at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications. John is a CNN News contributor and analyst, and teaches continuing legal education (CLE) programs examining the impact of the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct on select historic events from Watergate and the Trump presidency with surprising results – see www.WatergateCLE.com

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4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
399 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

T. ORourke
5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, an explanation!
Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2011
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I read the Kindle version of this book after serendipitously seeing Mr. Dean on Keith Olberman's show in a late rerun after a bowl game last week. I have heard Mr. Dean on TV before and found him to be a most reasonable man, so I thought it was worth the $13 to read what he had found, as actual research and science are at a minimum in the public debates currently. This book is fascinating. As a devout Catholic, I am personally conservative about some matters, but I also feel I have no right to force my beliefs on others. I have never been able to understand how so many of the people that I know, most of whom are enjoyable company, become completely irrational about politics and public policy and absolutely ignore or willfully misinterpret events and situations that run contrary to their viewpoints. They repeatedly conflate the facts to suit their narratives or ignore the facts, or what serves as the best information we have, in order to sustain what I feel is a delusion. That they are authoritarian puts a name to the problem which decreases my general discomfort with the situation (much like giving a person a diagnosis for a discomfort they are having relieves some of their anxiety, though doesn't necessarily relieve their illness - I am also a doctor) but it is not "cured". Anyone with any insight into people will see how true all this rings as they read it. Of course, by rule, authoritarian readers (perhaps including the reviewer for Publishers Weekly) will not get it or will be made angry by its information and attack the messenger. My favorite parts are when he reviews the various Republican leaders of the last two to three decades in all their fallen glory. I especially enjoyed his total takedown of Cheney, who has surely been one of the worst human beings of the last 30 years. That someone finally had the guts to put in print Cheney's incompetence and poor judgment (has the man ever been correct about anything?) makes whatever else Mr. Dean had to go through to get to this point eminently worth it. Still the conclusions are frightening, especially as we see with the recent violence in Tucson and the public reactions: these people will not change and have almost no insight into what the problem may be! I would love to send this book to all my friends who were and still are in lockstep with the Republicans on every issue no matter how foolish or hypocritical their position is, and who have no problem with the near treasonous abuse of their power and influence to keep almost anything from happening in order to make President Obama look ineffective, but I know they would never read it. Clearly, three or four years later, the knowledge this book contains has not penetrated the public discourse, but those of you who read the book will know and maybe everyone of us can start to push back against these most pushy people and get our country headed in a better direction than fascism or fundamentalist theocracy (see also American Fascists by Chris Hedges).
I must also note the charts and graphs on my Kindle did not show the right side of the page, which mostly listed liberal, or at least non-authoritarian traits. I guess I could have shrunk the fonts? Still, well worth your time if you want to better understand why our country is going down the toilet.
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Alice Friedemann
5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on authoritarians (Republicans) and why they appear to have no morals. Explains Trump best too.
Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2018
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John W. Dean was a former attorney on the White House Counsel for President Nixon from 1970 to 1973, but left politics after that. But when G. Gordon Liddy wrote a book in 1991 accusing him of being the mastermind of Watergate, he became so alarmed about the danger of the right-wing fascism and end of Democracy that he became on expert on authoritarianism to try to understand what they were thinking. This book is based on a great deal of scientific research on authoritarianism the past 40 years. It may sound politically partisan, but it isn’t.

Take the authoritarian quiz to see if you or any of your friends are authoritarian leaders or followers:

• Here are traits typically found in social dominators and right-wing authoritarian leaders based on extensive testing. To fall within this definition, you must have these traits: Dominating, oppose equality, wants personal power, amoral. Other traits that most, but not all leaders have are: typically men, intimidating and bullying, faintly hedonistic, vengeful, pitiless, exploitive, manipulative, dishonest, cheats to win, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, militant, nationalistic, tells others what they want to hear, takes advantage of “suckers”, specializes in creating false images to sell self.
• Right-wing authoritarian followers have these traits: submissive to authority, aggressive on behalf of authority, and conventional. They are likely to have the following traits: highly religious, moderate to little education, trust untrustworthy authorities, prejudiced (particularly against homosexuals, women, and followers of religions other than their own), mean-spirited, narrow-minded, intolerant, bullying, zealous, dogmatic, uncritical of chosen authority, hypocritical, inconsistent and contradictory, prone to panic easily, highly self-righteous, moralistic, strict disciplinarian, severely punitive, demands loyalty and returns it, little self-awareness, usually politically and economically conservative/Republican.

Social conservatives, whose core members are Christian conservatives, comprise the largest and most cohesive faction of conservatism and typical right-wing authoritarian followers.

They cannot be stopped because their behavior is simply a function of the way they are and how they think, their dispositions, and the way they deal with the world.

And why does nothing seem to change their follower’s minds? The followers of authoritarian leaders crave submission to a powerful authority as a means of alleviating their fears of ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity. The exaggerated hostility of leaders and talk-show hosts also satisfies a psychological need for antagonism toward the “out group,” reinforces the self-esteem of the conservative base, and increases solidarity within the ranks.

Dean is also an expert on the history of conservatism and its ideas. He lists eight kinds of conservatives and they have different values and goals.

Given the very different beliefs of the various conservative factions, how have conservatives succeeded in coalescing as a political force? The simple answer is through the power of negative thinking, and the ability to find common enemies. The adherents of early conservatism agreed that communism was the enemy, a fact that united them for decades—and hid their differences. Today’s conservatives—especially social conservatives, as opposed to intellectuals and the more thoughtful politicians—define themselves by what they oppose, which is anything and everything they perceive to be liberal. That category includes everyone from Democrats to anyone with whom they disagree, and can, therefore, automatically be labeled a liberal.

The root of the problem of authoritarian leaders and erosion of democracy are Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists, who are somewhere between a quarter and a third of the electorate and 58% of all Republicans. They are the foot soldiers of authoritarian leaders and turn out in great numbers at the polls. Their influence is felt at every level of government.

Without the support of Christian conservatives Republicans cannot even get nominated to local, state, and national offices, because they have become the filter through which all Republicans must pass today. Christian conservatives have a virtual lock on state and local Republican politics, and have totally outmaneuvered their opposition. “In American politics,” wrote Joel Rogers of the University of Wisconsin, “who controls the states controls the nation. The right understands this, and for a generation has waged an unrelenting war to take over state government in America. It has succeeded, in large part because it hasn’t faced any serious progressive counter effort.

Their ultimate goal is to pack federal courts with judges who will do God’s work and stop the right of women to have abortions, stop the teaching of safe sex and evolution in schools, encourage home schooling, ban contraceptives, halt stem cell research with human embryos, ban gay marriage, eliminate the separation of church and state, control the sexual content of cable and network TV, radio, and the internet.

And you can’t get rid of them, their children will become authoritarian too: Authoritarian parents transfer their beliefs to children through religious instruction. Christian conservatives tend to come from strict religious backgrounds, and often prevent their children from being exposed to broader and different views by sending them to schools with like-thinking children, or by home schooling them. This, in turn, results in an authoritarian outlook that remains strong during adolescence—the period when authoritarian personalities are formed and then taken into adult life.

To me this is a Twilight Zone show. Evangelicals are not letting the next generation know anything about anything but the Church and the Bible and racism and hatred of liberals. My god, this is the only time in history when 80 to 90% of people didn’t do back-breaking farming all day and have the luxury of learning about the Universe. To deny your children the wonder and amazement of all that’s around us should be criminal.

This is a long preface because no one reads long posts. I was going to break it up into several posts. But hey, this is a 20 page summary of a 209 page book. If you find it at all interesting, buy the book, I had to leave a lot of good stuff out.

My full review is at energyskeptic, post: Why and how authoritarian evangelicals threaten Democracy
59 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

GeeWhizz
5.0 out of 5 stars Important Book!
Reviewed in Canada on October 18, 2019
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Great read, thanks for making it simple to understand!
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Kristi Decke
5.0 out of 5 stars I have already received this book
Reviewed in Germany on October 21, 2020
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Great book!
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rhona tolchard
5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and troubling
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 29, 2017
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A compelling and informative picture of American conservatism, and it goes a long way towards explaining the now glaring disconnect between declared Christian belief and personal behaviour that characterises some American politicians. A timely publication that has great relevance for the current situation in the USA and should enable British evangelicals to become aware of the similarities and deep differences between themselves and their American counterparts. Anybody who watches the 700 Club and similar programmes, now available in the UK on the God Channel, should read this book and realise that nobody should be able to claim moral ascendancy and the right to enforce their own questionable agenda purely on the basis of an appeal to religious belief.
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Ken Saul
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on May 19, 2017
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Excellent!
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