Here is a video on one of my favorite subjects or rather my favorite intersection of subjects. It’s an interview with Jonathan Weiler who recently wrote a book about the sociological study of authoritarianism in terms of US politics (I just bought his book and so I probably will be writing more about it). This is the same area of study that Bob Altemeyer has written about (Altemeyer’s research having been referenced in John W. Dean’s writing about contemporary conservatism).
Here is an article Jonathan Weiler wrote about all of this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-weiler/from-soup-to-nuts-the-aut_b_762558.html
“It is not that all Republicans are authoritarians; nor that all Democrats are non-authoritarian. Far from it. And people adopt party affiliations for a variety of reasons. But whereas those with the authoritarian cognitive style used to be more evenly split between the parties, decades of appeals for “states rights”, “law and order”, and against ERA, gay rights and immigration reform have concentrated this particular personality type in the GOP. And the consequence of that decades-long process has been the emergence of a Republican party that is, to a remarkable degree, built on viscera — on appeals to anger and resentment, and a deeply-felt conviction that America is breaking down irretrievably and that the way to stop that process is to demonize and marginalize outgroups deemed responsible for that breakdown. And this is no longer a geographically confined phenomenon, but a fully national one.”
“The fact that the more and less authoritarian now find homes in opposite political parties has made our politics almost impossibly acrimonious. When Democrats raise what they view as legitimate concerns about tolerating those who are different, the base of the Republican Party does not understand. And when Republicans bring up what they view as legitimate views about safety, security and threats to our way of life, the base of the Democratic party does not understand. Party loyalists are no longer wrangling over policy differences. Instead, they represent fundamentally opposed personalities, which prioritize, in many ways, incommensurate, values.”
If you find this as intriguing as I find it, then you might enjoy some of my other posts (which reference research about personality besides just authoritarianism):
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/moral-righteousness-intent-vs-results/
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/responsibility-choice-vs-obligation/
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/divide-and-conquer/
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/conservative-moral-order-the-lazy-unemployed/
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/psychology-of-politics-development-of-society/
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/morality-politics-and-psychology/
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/political-party-morality-personality-gender/
Marmalade 
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