Get them while they're young.

I was really only subjected to a limited amount of this as a kid, but my daughter was exposed to the whole enchilada.

Christian homeschool instruction, Bible camps, overnight church sleepovers for teens, trips to the water park, paintball games, you name it she has done it.

My second wife lived a life like that as a kid as well, and told me they were not even allowed to go to the movies, watch television, or listen to modern music. Of course none of that stopped her from becoming a teen mom.

My personal feeling is if your religion is so worthy of acceptance then people should be introduced to it after they are in their late teens or early twenties and have some maturity and frame of reference. If they can be convinced at that stage of their life, then the church really has something valuable to offer.

If not then it deserves to die out.

Taking a frightening tour of the Right Wing mindset.

I'm right because I say I'm right!

I received an interesting link the other day which led me to this rather disquieting article at Truthout:

 Robert Altemeyer, a Canadian psychologist, has done extensive testing to isolate and describe the traits of the authoritarian personality. His results are distilled in his book "The Authoritarians." He describes religious fundamentalists, the core of the right-wing Republican base, as follows: 

"They are highly submissive to established authority, aggressive in the name of that authority and conventional to the point of insisting everyone should behave as their authorities decide. They are fearful and self-righteous and have a lot of hostility in them that they readily direct toward various out-groups. They are easily incited, easily led, rather un-inclined to think for themselves, largely impervious to facts and reason and rely instead on social support to maintain their beliefs. They bring strong loyalty to their in-groups, have thick-walled, highly compartmentalized minds, use a lot of double standards in their judgments, are surprisingly unprincipled at times and are often hypocrites." 

There are tens of millions of Americans who, although personally lacking the self-confidence, ambition and leadership qualities of authoritarian dominators like Gingrich or Sarah Palin, nevertheless empower the latter to achieve their goals while finding psychological fulfillment in subordination to a cause. Altemeyer describes these persons as authoritarian followers. They are socially rigid, highly conventional and strongly intolerant personalities, who, absent any self-directed goals, seek achievement and satisfaction by losing themselves in a movement greater than themselves. One finds them overrepresented in reactionary political movements, fundamentalist sects and leader cults like scientology. They are the people who responded on cue when Bush's press secretary said after the 9/11 attacks that people had better "watch what they say;" or who approved of illegal surveillance because "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear;" or who, after months of news stories saying that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, nevertheless believed the weapons were found.

If you are anything like me you have probably spent many hours trying to understand just how ANYBODY gets sucked into trusting these obvious charlatans, and how seemingly lucid people allow themselves to be convinced to vote against  their self interests time and time again.

Apparently they are raised to put their faith in those who talk with a voice of authority, despite their obvious shortcoming, or who appear to have some access to information not readily available to the masses, despite no evidence to support their claims.

So what are the circumstances in place which create these "authoritarian personalities?"