The subservient boot-kissing gutless RINO mainstream GOP created the trumpeting Trump, who acts far more like the appeasement party's bull elephant mascot.
When too much water retreats at the beach, leaving its asphyxiating voters flopping full of frustration behind--LOOK OUT!
A tsunami backlash is on its way for better or for worse.
You don't mess with mama nature or human nature either.
P.S. A Hillary voter ain't got nothing to do with the above norm for natural or having any common sense either.
Michael Savage said it best: "Liberalism is a mental disorder."

At least Trump tells us to make our own country great. Its inspirational actually.

Obama is the quintessential authoritarian brat. He must think he is god , in the way he treats everyone domestic or foreign. Its disgusting. We need Trump to kick this whole thing in the butt. We should stick to making ourselves and our country great, and stop trying to tell other countries what to do.

Another in the tide of objections to Donald Trump. I have heard so much of this that I just dont listen anymore. The Trump haters just have ulterior motives to keep the crony and crooked establishment in power. Trump is THE one to tell us when the emperor has no clothes. The rest of them just want to keep on paying themselves and their friends with OUR money.

So the R's want to dominate us with laws, regulations, controls, etc. while the D's want to dominate us by taking everything the productive have and giving it to the unproductive. Looks like we lose either way :-(

"neither party has ever represented my families interests"
I like to think my family's interests are to provide an environment where we can follow our interests and dreams. I tend toward thinking Democrats are better at that. That doesn't matter so much because neither party calls for shrinking gov't cost and intrusiveness.

If the truth means anything to you, then you must be prepared for it. Among many calling themselves Objectivists is a streak of authoritarianism. Other than a belief that Objectivism will lead one to a happier, more productive life, there are those who believe that persons who do not agree with the precepts laid down by Rand are fools and anything put forth by them should be disregarded. It is good to shine the light of truth on Authoritarianism, but an examination of one's own attitudes and actions should be a part of that as well.

I think you're saying Democrats pretend to oppose authoritarianism a better than Republicans do, but they are both equally authoritarian in their actions. I think you're saying Trump doesn't even pretend to be anti-authoritarian, and you like that honesty.

I mostly agree with all that. The only minor difference is I'd rather have people who at least pretend so their constituents have a shot at getting them to back off as in, "Wait, you said this was going to be about optimism and change but this sounds like the way President GW Bush did things."

If they run as an authoritarian and win, they can rightly say authoritarianism is part of their mandate.

The American public's preference for authoritarian candidates reflects the critically high endemic levels of fear within that population. It has spread like a disease and, ironically, produces consequences which create even more fear.

Given that Objectivism is based on emotional premises of confidence, freedom and empowerment, this is not exactly the most preferable environment in which to operate at the moment.

If you haven't read it, I recommend Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: A Study in Mass Movements." No psychobabble, but simply intelligent observation of what attracted people to authoritarian figures like Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco, and what behaviors were common among the various movements.

The Founders recognized the risk that the office of the President would take on the trappings of imperium, and tried to put roadblocks to that path in the manner they structured our government. Unfortunately, power is a corrupting force that creates an insatiable desire for more, offering the delusion that all problems would be solved if there was only one immutable national vision.

The only solution to the detrimental shift in the mechanisms of American governance may be a Constitutional Convention, driven by the states. Even that is a "be careful what you wish for" approach, with the possibility of losing more freedom than we hope to gain.

The Liberals are much more intrusive in attempting to control the individual.

Jan

He began as a proponent of AGW...but his research changed his mind.

Jan

I have to say, I don't really see Trump as dictatorial. He always talks about making deals, he says that he will work with congress and get them to go along.

I guess when I look at Trump I think "He builds buildings in New York City -- and around the World". Building things is an incredibly cooperative activity, you need to get through an amazing amount of government red tape, get the financing and get all the parties together. You can't just issue orders -- well, you can but then you need a really good staff.

I'm not terribly impressed with the difficulty of the accomplishments that the various candidates have done except for two: Trump and his buildings and Carson and neurosurgery.

I have heard of there are canidates who have announced they are going to run for president un ther LP label. Let's see who the LP nominates after their convention. Who knows, maybe the anger against the establishment will spill over to the LP.

I find all of this facisnating and chilling at the same time. I'm particularly struck about the research linking parenting style beliefs and authoritarianism. I've long thought that those seeking a larger and larger government were often animated by a belief that we were all children and the government was a stand in for our parents, but this research explains things more succinctly. The neo-fascists like Benito Trump not only look at us as children but misbehaving children who need discipline. Shudder.

much in the same way that Germans were ripe for Hitler...Americans are ripe for the fascist/authoritarian/socialist state...whether from the right or the left...
it will collapse financially at some point...hopefully there is enough Objectivists left to pick up the pieces and try again...prepare

Of the 2 party system I tend more toward the republicans yet neither party has ever represented
My families interests. I have never voted democrat in 8 presidential elections .I have voted republican once 4 years ago because I was hoping to dethrone the current liar in chief. I will refrain from further political discussion today as its Sunday and I am in need of some peace of mind.
Peace to all reasoning people.

Thank you for the reference, I will have to listen to it when I have the time for the full version, but just grabbing some parts, it seemed she grasped the idea way before a lot of others did, and some have never. No, I did not read the book, but I did look up a synopsis, it appears that he was not a fan of the GW mantra. It is funny that 10 years later, the same arguments are still going around as to who holds the "real" truth. The Balkanization description though, seems to fit a model of reduction of public power blocks (such as the old "Southern Democrat", into smaller groups which then can be manipulated by the media much more easily.

It is not easy to parse. First, it is a matter of survival that warnings be heard, so bad news travels fast. I think that evolution is speaking there.

Also, it is a matter of what you can do with the news. If President Obama wants to seize all guns, then you better get yours while you still can. On the other hand, the ability to 3-D print a new pancreas does not translate into action for most people. So, I get that.

On the other points, again, it can be complicated. I understand the "state of fear" argument. (You have read the Crichton book, most likely.) Keeping everyone afraid of an unsolvable problem certainly invites them to acceed to the restricitions and to demand more controls. For myself, however, the question is not whether we should have a world government, but what kind of government the world should have. (The Ayn Rand Institute has her lecture on "Global Balkanization" http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-wo.... I could not find a stand-alone publication online.)

Possible. However, I disagreed with their premise that Dumbocraps oppose authoritarianism. They are the ones who continually elect people who do ram their program down your throat, abuse government agencies for their agenda and generally dictate to us what "we" need to do to satisfy "them". Pretty authoritarian to me. Republicrats are no better, but I am leaning more towards the Trump display of a powerful disregard for the current status quo, to be replaced by his version. In either case the authoritarian angle is the same on both sides controlling and making us pay for whatever they deem worthy.

I have posted some things in here that were science or technology and received good interaction, but I d see your point. Part of it seems to be media concentrates on bad news, IMHO. It did pique my curiosity as to whether this is something that has been engineered over the last 40-50 years, (and here come conspiracy theory) if it was part of a back channel government that is just using the 2 parties as tools. It would help to pull together the absolute disregard fir the individual we see across a wide range of societies and areas. An authoritative regime that was intent on the "one world government" would want to have it's people primed to have a sudden revelation of "the authority to save us" from all the manufactured evil. If not real, it would make a really good plot line for a book series.

Well, we see a lot of that here. One measure would be to look at the number of comments and the Up votes. Threats would win over Good News.

"And in the 2008 Democratic primary, the political scientist Marc Hetherington found that authoritarianism mattered more than income, ideology, gender, age and education in predicting whether voters preferred Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama." -- The MacWilliams article cited in the original VOX story: http://www.politico.com/magazine/stor...

The source of the "parenting style" theory is here:
Authoritarian Child Rearing, Parental Locus of Control, and the Child's Behavior Style.
Janssens, Jan M. A. M.
International Journal of Behavioral Development, v17 n3 p485-501 Sep 1994
Examined relationships among childrearing, parental locus of control about childrearing, and child's behavior style. Found that parents who perceived their child's behavior as either externalizing or internalizing had a weak internal locus of control and were more authoritarian. Perceived externalizing child behavior was positively related to authoritarian parental behavior, whereas parents of internalizing children were less authoritarian. (HTH)

Also: Parents' Child-Rearing Style and Child's Sociometric Status.
Dekovic, Maja; Janssens, Jan M . A . M.
Developmental Psychology, v28 n5 p925-32 Sep 1992
In a study of 112 children of 6-11 years of age and their parents, authoritative/democratic and authoritarian/restrictive factors in parent behavior predicted the child's prosocial behavior and sociometric status. Results support the idea that popular and rejected children have different family experiences. (BG)

This is interesting. It seems to rest on the idea that the parenting questions are a good predictor of support for gov't authoritarianism. That rings true, but she doesn't explain how researchers validated it. I was unclear on how the parenting questions test would correlate to the latent authoritarian tendencies that she descries as waiting to be activated by threat.

It was nice that they quantified that 65% of supporters of gov't authoritarianism are Republicans. 75% of those opposed to gov't authoritarianism were Democrats. So even though neither party wants to shrink gov't, we have one party, the Republicans, that's the clear winner for supporters of intrusive gov't..

The article makes me hopeful that authoritarian Trump will lead to a backlash of anti-authoritarianism, making the Libertarians a viable choice.