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John Dean
Conservatives without Conscience
Viking, 2006
The reason this book is important is that most U.$. conservatives and people to their right reason from authority, which is not to reason at all. Dean was Nixon's choice of White House Counsel; hence, there are a few people who will read him who would not read MIM.
In the first hundred pages, John Dean does a good job explaining the rise of authoritarian politics. The latter part of the book loses focus somewhat and becomes more of a regurgitation of things that people should already know from reading newspapers. Conservatives may also want to note that Dean also believes that "Cheney is the mind of this presidency, with Bush its salesman." (p. 169) Then again, the fact that a former Nixon man who served time in prison for Watergate is saying what is in this book is the main selling point.
For authoritarian man, the point is often the authority speaking, not what he says. For this reason, John Dean's book hits a soft spot that MIM cannot reach, even if MIM wrote a book twice as good.
While noting the spread of authoritarian politics and how it differs from the Barry Goldwater conservatism that Dean is from, Dean has no explanation for why the phenomenom seems to be rising. He says that it is rooted in fundamentalist religion in politics, but why fundamentalism should be rising into politics more is not explained.
MIM would point to the following. One is the rise of parasitic authority-related occupations-- especially prison guarding and the military. Compared with World War II, the U.$. society is somewhat demobilized militarily, but compared with the 1800s, today's military has a permanent component that is much larger and more organized. So one answer is the rise of authoritarian professions.
Another reason is the spread of education, a democratic effect that liberated the small exploiters of the united $tates. These small exploiters used to have little direct voice, but with the spread of college education into such a large portion of society, the most backward sections of the small exploiters became capable of speaking for themselves. Nixon-style, George Wallace-style and Reagan-style politics became the norm. No more would imperialists simply manipulate these sectors for votes. Those who speak to the labor aristocracy directly and push its hot buttons do better as successful politicians.
John Dean is an example of an imperialist who reached into the upper ranks of the Nixon administration without ever rubbing shoulders with the labor aristocracy. When the social conservatives became more active in proportion to their population weight, John Dean and many other Wall Street style conservatives did not know what to make of what was happening. Dean's book is actually symbolic of a tension in the imperialist-labor aristocracy class alliance ruling the imperialist countries.
John Dean is much more optimistic about Amerika than MIM is.
"'Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds.'" (p. 184)John Dean probably feels vindicated in his optimism by George W. Bush's low public approval rating right now. It seems that the authoritarian wing of parasitism that Dean points to is isolated.
MIM would give credit to the Iraqi insurgents. Even if John Dean were president on an anti-authoritarian platform, MIM would say that the united $tates is still imperialist, and the population would still be overwhelmingly composed of exploiters. What John Dean says is accurate within a conservative point of view, just not aimed at the problems that MIM is worried about.
Note:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dean
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