Quotable: "The Books of Bokonon" on History

"History! Read it and weep!"

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The GOP's authoritarian turn - more graphics from V-Dem

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I wanted to follow up on a previous post about the authoritarian turn that the GOP has taken this century. Both of the following graphics I obtained from a working paper (no longer online, regrettably) by V-Dem in 2020. I seriously doubt the trends have changed. The Guardian had a good summary of the findings. For our purposes I am using the term authoritarianism and illiberalism as synonyms.  This first figure shows two dimensions: economic left/right and illiberalism (authoritarianism). Both dimensions start at 0 and end at 1. A party espousing economic conservatism would appear closer to 1 on the economic dimension. A party espousing authoritarian approach to governing will be closer to 1 on the Illiberalism dimension. Notice that Venezuela's ruling party actually scores a perfect 1 on illiberalism. The GOP appears in orange print and the Democratic Party appears in blue print. Other governing political parties appear in gray, and we get a baseline idea of where autocracies te...
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The US Republican Party is no Longer Conservative: It is Authoritarian (repost)

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Note: This post comes from my academic blog and was published a little over three years ago. I am making some minor edits to account for the year we live in, but am otherwise leaving it unchanged in terms of content, given that I would still arrive at the same conclusions based on V-Dem's data analyses described in the following paragraphs.  The data tell the tale. The mass media and still too many of the US intelligentsia refer to the Republican Party (GOP) as conservative, and its politicians and followers as conservatives. I would argue that the party leadership, its politicians, and its activist base abandoned conservatism a long time ago, and took a much more authoritarian turn. And before anyone tries to get too far into the weeds here, I published some research roughly nine years ago (and I am far from alone I suspect) distinguishing at least some very substantial facets of conservatism from authoritarianism. That there are actual conservatives in the US who want n...
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Ozymandias

When I think of our current era and all of its dictators and would-be dictators, there is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley that rings as true now as it did when he wrote it:     I met a traveller from an antique land,     Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone     Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,     Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,     And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,     Tell that its sculptor well those passions read     Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,     The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;     And on the pedestal, these words appear:     My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;     Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!     Nothing beside remains. Round the decay     Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and ...
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