For those here, I recommend “The Authoritarians” by Robert Altemeyer. He discusses both authoritarian followers and authroitarian leaders, which are two quite different animals.

The paper can be obtained in either a paper version ($) or a PDF (no $) here:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

Many of my impressions of the world around me have changed as I have watched Iraq devolve, and as with every generation that endures its time here, we are bound to be riven by the predictable depravity of human nature. But the world shrinks, and our eagerness to ignore those who have declared war on us has punishing consequences, and has taught us we can no longer continue to grant them the benefit of the doubt. Does that mean we traipse around the world in fatigues? No. But it also makes no sense to withdraw into intellectual closets - alienating the ‘pure’ from the unwashed masses of pseudo conservatives you stand on. Hewing to age old principles means having to teach those principles time and again. Consider it your duty to the next generation.

If every generation were to stand on the lessons of those before it, it might be that we could recognize the difference between the tyrants and their victims, but our greatest challenge today is the relativism that blinds us. Today Bush is Hitler, colonialism grants its victims moral defense of atrocity and Winston Churchill is pulled from history lessons. When the West turns upon itself, it’s telling the next generation they’re on their own. Again.

The dissenters on the left are tainted with Bolshevism and oikopobia. The ones on the right are fairly scarce and often a bit cranky.

Better to slay the fatted calf for Rod upon his change of heart than to upbraid him for having absorbed the national consensus from grade school onwards.

Again, I appreciate what Dreher is doing. No doubt he understands that his recent rash of truth-telling is his ticket to professional obscurity. But the fact that Dreher the writer existed at all is proof enough to me that in a generations time the United States will be at it again, committing aggression on a large scale, to the general applause of its intellectual and commentator class. The thousands of new Drehers of 2040 will see to that.

The ludicrous Muravchck beats the drums against Putin. And of course, they’re wiaving the bloody blouse of the martyred Politovskaya.

There are sordid aspects to the status quo in China and Russia, neither of which is, or wants to be, part of the West, and realpolitik teaches us caution with respect to potential rivals.

Here’s where we could use some competent diplomats and some cultural and historical perspective. Instead we are hearing from a bunch of Poly-Sci Henny Pennies and human rights agitators. If you keep running around saying the sky is falling, some day it might.

I have to say, though, that I am surprised at the utter chutzpah shown by so many neocons in the face of their obvious policy failures. Not only do they still think Iraq a good idea, but they want to move on to Iran and Syria! I thought no one could top Great Society liberals and communists in this department. Their ideological cousins have shown me otherwise.

http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/twain.htm

As an Oklahoma patriot in this our centennial year of statehood I can think of no better example as a domestic Solzhenitsyn than the work of the late Dr. Angie Debo:

http://www.amazon.com/Still-Waters-Run-Angie-Debo/dp/0691005788

She was a pre-statehood pioneer, and attended the University Of Oklahoma, but in the ’30’s her doctoral dissertation could only be published outside of the state. As children, my parents were acquainted with some of the villains.

Finally, there is this from Solzhenitsyn himself:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,496003,00.html

Der Spiegel usually presents the expected European leftist view of things, but their website is often interesting.

And the late Dr. Angie Debo documented some of our domestic forays into continental imperialism: http://www.amazon.com/Still-Waters-Run-Angie-Debo/dp/0691005788.

As an Oklahoma patriot, and in this our centennial year of statehood, it pains me to bring Dr. Debo’s work to the attention of a larger public, but even here it is no longer unmentionable. As children, my own parents were acquainted with some of the villains. Dr. Debo was a pre-statehood pioneer of Oklahoma herself, and attended the University of Oklahoma, but her doctoral dissertation had to be published first as a commercial book outside of the state.

And finally, in regard to Solzhenitsyn himself, an interview that should be of interest to all readers of Eunomia:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,496003,00.html

Of course, Der Spiegel usually presents the expected European leftist view of things, but their website is worth a look.

When I say a Solzhenitsyn I mean someone deeply committed to the culture but also deeply aware of its flaws, who looks at it from spiritual, historic, and literary perspectives. God forbid that we should have to endure Gulag-like suffering to obtain such wisdom.

I hope we will not need a Solzhenitsyn, but now that we have at least the beginnings of our own Gulag, we’ll see.

Foreign adventures can damage us morally, promote economic and political centralization and repression. Indeed, they have done so. We need a sober assessment of our virtues and our flaws, animated by a realistic patriotism.

Where is our Solzhenitsyn?

And those who feared that our constitutional republic would not survive territorial expansion beyond the Mississippi were all too prescient, although leaving those areas in French, Mexican, and British control would not have stopped the “Westering” impulse of Americans to create a continental empire.

I admit it has only been in the last few years that my own eyes have become opened to the utter disaster that is our country, but the evidence has always been there.

Thanks for a a thought provoking post. Just to add to your point 2, what really woke me up to conservatism being about the GOP and not about principle was seeing the little purple bandaids at the Republican convention making fun of John Kerry’s purple heart, and the supreme lack of interest in the outing of a CIA agent amongst nearly all conservative commentators. Respect for the military and for service, contempt for treason, it turned out none of that mattered unless it could be used to bash the liberal operation.

–Rick Taylor

Russian liberal