The Fat Blaska Sings, the Day Wisconsin Surrendered Freedom to the Walker Authority!

Should I be surprised the Wisconsin State Journal’s conservative whiner Chris Richert had a hard time understanding why the Solidarity Singers didn't buy a permit. Or that a former Republican county supervisor, David Blaska, bought one because his leaders required it? It’s what some have described as authoritarian conservatism. They don't get the long term point.

Who would have thought that the party who likes to think of themselves as “constitutional conservatives,” would think to first ask to get their governments permission to protest? I’m thinking it would be almost comical to get one of them to “channel” a founding father, which they often do, to justify such a policy.

Blaska’s “permit protest” will unintentionally represent only one thing…surrender. His party subservience will be on display for all to see. And this is what passes for rugged individualism? 

WSJ: “They have commandeered this space, and the fact is, to get my song in edgewise, I’ve got to get a permit,” said David Blaska, a conservative columnist who is organizing the group he calls the “We've Got a Permit” singers.

“'We've Got a Permit' singers,” really? It's breathtaking. To be honest, I never thought I’d see the day we had such unquestionably blind obedience to a political party. Watching Blaska cower before his leaders should give everyone watching, a sinking feeling that something is terribly wrong here:

Blaska will lead his group in singing “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless America.”

I've pointed to this article below in the past, and find it the best explanation yet about what is really going on, from George W. Bush on up to Scott Walker, Rick Snyder, Rick Scott... Terms like "Right-Wing Authoritarians," "Social Dominators" and the "Double High Authoritarian" who possesses " 'extra-extra unfair' natures," are all ways of describing Republicans today. From former Nixon White House counsel John Dean of Watergate fame, the “Triumph of the authoritarians,” appearing in the Boston Globe on July 14, 2006. All this from a real conservative:

Contemporary conservatism … calls for packing the courts to politicize the federal judiciary  … the monocratic leadership style imposed on the US House in 1994 … destroy the deliberative nature of the US Senate … Today's Republican policies are antithetical to bedrock conservative fundamentals.

Authoritarian conservatives are, as a researcher told me, "enemies of freedom, antidemocratic, antiequality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian and amoral." And that's not just his view. To the contrary, this is how these people have consistently described themselves when being anonymously tested, by the tens of thousands over the past several decades.

Authoritarianism's impact on contemporary conservatism is beyond question. Because this impact is still growing and has troubling (if not actually evil) implications, I hope that social scientists will begin to write about this issue for general readers. It is long past time to bring the telling results of their empirical work into the public square and to the attention of American voters. No less than the health of our democracy may depend on this being done. We need to stop thinking we are dealing with traditional conservatives on the modern stage, and instead recognize that they've often been supplanted by authoritarians.