Conservatives Without Conscience

Front Cover
Viking, 2006 - Political Science - 246 pages
John Dean takes a sobering look at how radical elements are destroying the Republican Party along with the very foundations of American democracy

John DeanÂ's last New York Times bestseller, Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, offered the former White House insiderÂ's unique and telling perspective on George W. BushÂ's presidency. Once again, Dean employs his distinctive knowledge and understanding of Washington politics and process to examine the conservative movementÂ's current inner circle of radical Republican leaders—from Capitol Hill to Pennsylvania Avenue to K Street and beyond. In Conservatives Without Conscience, Dean not only highlights specific right-wing-driven GOP policies but also probes the conservative mind-set, identifying recurring qualities such as the unbridled viciousness toward those daring to disagree with them, as well as the big business favoritism that costs taxpayers billions. Dean identifies specific examples of how court packing is seeking to form a judiciary that is activist by its very nature, how religious piety is producing politics run amok, and how concealed indifference to the founding principles of liberty and equality is pushing America further and further from its constitutional foundations.

By the end, Dean paints a vivid picture of whatÂ's happening at the top levels of the Republican Party, a noble political party corrupted by its current leaders who cloak their actions in moral superiority while packaging their programs as blatant propaganda. Dean, certainly no alarmist, finds disturbing signs that current right-wing authoritarian thinking, when conflated with the dominating personalities of the conservative leadership could take the United States toward its own version of fascism.

About the author (2006)

John Dean was White House legal counsel to President Nixon for a thousand days. Dean also served as chief minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee and as an associate deputy attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice.

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