A Brutally Accurate Definition of (Many) Conservatives

It's from a poster named David Essex on Glenn Greenwald's site. I found it to be astonishingly on the money for a great many conservatives, especially male ones:

Conservatism: 1. a neurosis characterized by hypercompensating preoccupation with the trappings, postures and measures of masculinity, manliness or machismo and strongly linked with projective transference, fervid adulation of (“strong man”) figures irrationally or delusionally invested with the “masculine” qualities seized upon in the preoccupation; marked strongly with tendencies to confuse: aggression with effectiveness; cruelty with toughness; fixation with resolve or perseverance; contrarianism with originality or independence; and, above all, punitive zeal with rectitude; marked also by distrust of or hostility towards ambivalence, ambiguity, and qualities associated with the feminine such as: subtlety, sensitivity, empathy, refinement, self-consciousness, circumspection, forbearance, tolerance and forgiveness. The neurosis seems often to be based in gender-insecurity and/or failure to fully individuate as adults, resulting in a tacit, perhaps subconscious self-condemnation for lack of the very qualities, accomplishments and experiences valorized by the overarching code of “manliness.”

The conservative is strongly (if inauthentically) drawn to the role of “protector” of others from enemies or corruptive influences, for this places premium value on the martial qualities he espouses. But the strongest appeal of this role probably lies in the moral immunity it affords; defense of the (usually abstract and ill-defined) Good, or the defenseless, necessitates whatever evil the protector employs. This rationalizes, pardons, retroactively legitimizes the conservative’s arrested ethical development – always evidenced by a pronounced, even self-congratulatory lack of empathy, and the correlative predisposition towards self-pity, or feelings of persecution. Other indicators of this stunting are failure to embrace an ethic of reciprocity (usually substituting an atavistic sin-based code), and the utter devaluation of consistency and moral authority (that is, leadership by example) as components of ethical deportment. Indeed, with respect to moral authority the ethical debility is often strongly associated with pronounced self-blindness, leading often to floridly self-disclosing projections: condemnations, preoccupations, excoriations and paranoias about putative threats, ills or failings, which are rooted in the neurotic’s guilty or devalued sense of self since he or she craves, embodies or enacts that which is condemned.

2. a mutual reassurance society of said neurotics

Oh baby! I think that's CLASSIC. Maybe not all conservatives should be classified in this way, but it sure as hell applies to all the people running our government and the right wing idiots on Fox and talk radio running their mouths. Heh heh.