Clidston's review
Conservatives Without Conscience
by John W. Dean
Clidston's review
Conservatives Without Conscience by John W. Dean
Clidston's review
rating:
The title of the book is a reference to Barry Goldwater's "The Conscience of a Conservative," and in fact Dean had initially planned to write this book together with Goldwater, but the senator's failing health and eventual death prevented it.
Partly a clinical, psychological study and partly a catalog of the many sins of J. Edgar Hoover, G. Gordon Liddy, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Bill Frist and of course Dick Cheney. There's also some account of the intellectual history of conservatism, a number of thinkers' definitions of conservatism, and a longish and frankly jaw-dropping personal account of how Liddy and some conspiracy theorists attempted to pin the Watergate break-in on Dean twenty years later in a libelous book called "Silent Coup."
Dean talks about personality types in terms of "social dominators," "right-wing authoritarian followers" and then the ominous "double highs" who combine characteristics of both of ...more
Partly a clinical, psychological study and partly a catalog of the many sins of J. Edgar Hoover, G. Gordon Liddy, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Bill Frist and of course Dick Cheney. There's also some account of the intellectual history of conservatism, a number of thinkers' definitions of conservatism, and a longish and frankly jaw-dropping personal account of how Liddy and some conspiracy theorists attempted to pin the Watergate break-in on Dean twenty years later in a libelous book called "Silent Coup."
Dean talks about personality types in terms of "social dominators," "right-wing authoritarian followers" and then the ominous "double highs" who combine characteristics of both of ...more
