Humorlessly posing as a disinterested champion of the public weal, Dean defends his unkind words for conservatives by invoking the theory of the “authoritarian personality.” First introduced by the neo-Freudian Theodor Adorno in the 1940s but largely discredited by the 1970s, the theory evidently still has its champions, who have carried on a small, if obscure, research industry in its name. Their work does not appear to have earned widespread acceptance among academic psychologists. No matter: in Dean’s mind, as he spends the bulk of Conservatives Without Conscience arguing, the theory of the authoritarian personality establishes the malevolence of conservatives as scientific fact.

....

A more insightful book might say the following. First, the conservative movement in large part exists to promote intellectual conformity. Few writers or scholars affiliated with the movement care to risk their sinecures (or their institutions’ funding) by disagreeing too vociferously with the official movement position. Consciously or unconsciously, right-wing writers instead tend to suppress thoughts that may be deemed too eccentric or independent. Meanwhile, the movement selects and promotes the careers of young writers whose primary qualification consists of believing ab initio what the movement tells them to believe. One should not be surprised, given this incentive structure, if the movement has become increasingly bland, notwithstanding the usual humbug about how intellectually superior the Right is these days. Blandness is part of the institutional design.

Second, those at the top of the conservative movement have wide discretion to set its movement’s official positions. Bedrock or founding principles, whatever they may be, play very little role in determining what policies the conservative movement will embrace. Whatever may be said of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq, for example, they were surely not deduced from immutable conservative principles. Nevertheless, the signature achievement of the conservative movement in the past decade has been to rally—or, perhaps more accurately, manufacture—public support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. With just one or two changes in personnel, however, one could easily imagine events turning out very differently. Reckless or prudent, thoughtful or ignorant, the opinion-mongers at the top set the movement line; the other constituents—the donors, the directors, and the other writers and the consumers of opinion—then accept and promulgate whatever positions the movement tells them to.

This is, of course, precisely how ideology works.

Wikipedia: authoritarian personality wrote:

Theory of the Authoritarian Personality

Those persons who cling to fascist ideologies, according to the theory, distinguish themselves through their inappropriate, prejudice-laden view of social and political relationships. From this background in their personal history arose the assumption that the emergence of certain phenomena such as anti-Semitism and ethnocentrism stands in close connection with this particular personality structure. Because fascistic groupings get support essentially from the right-conservative camp (although that does not suggest that the right-conservative camp invariably lends these groupings such support) parts of the conservative outlook are likewise judged as an expression of this personality structure. As an instrument to measure this outlook, the AS-scale (for "anti-Semitism") the E-scale (for "Ethnocentrism") and the PEC-Scale (for "political-economic conservatism") are used.

The instrument for assessing the underlying authoritarian personality structure was the so-called F-Scale ("implicit antidemocratic tendencies and fascist potential"). This scale is comprised of the following subscales:

* Conventionalism -- the tendency to accept and obey social conventions and the rules of authority figures; adherence to the traditional and accepted
* Authoritarian Submission -- submission to authorities and authority figures
* Authoritarian Aggression -- an aggressive attitude towards individuals or groups disliked by authorities; particularly those who threaten traditional values
* Anti-Intraception -- rejection of the subjective, imaginative and aesthetic
* Substitution and Stereotypy -- superstition, cliché, categorization and fatalistic determinism
* Power and Toughness -- identification with those in power, excessive emphasis on socially advocated ego qualities
* Destructiveness and Cynicism -- general hostility, putting others down
* Projectivity -- the tendency to believe in the existence of evil in the world and to project unconscious emotional impulses outward
* Sex -- exaggerated concerns with respect to sexual activity