Probably not. As much as it flies in the face of the way I personally conceptualize the world, I have to at least entertain the idea that it's a valid point of view. To do otherwise would be illiberal of me.
(an elaboration is just one click away - and this is also crossposted at My Left Wing)
However, the subject of how belief systems propagate interests me. We adopt, variously, different political philosophies that satisfy certain psychological needs. Adorno et. al's 1950
The Authoritarian Personality is a landmark in the field, and later work, such as Jost et. al's 2003
Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, support the I would infer psychological characteristics such as:
1. dogmatism
2. intolerance of ambiguity
3. fear
4. aggression
5. need for structure
6. need for cognitive closure
7. uncertainty avoidance
8. group-based dominance
lead to the adoption of a conservative ideology, either singly or in combination. I happen to think a lot of this stuff is correlated, myself, and that many conservatives possess several of these traits to varying degrees.
When terrible ideologies are permitted to slink off and fester under their rocks, Bad Things Happen. I'm thinking, perhaps inspired by the fact that it's Passover and I'm Jewish, particularly of the correlation of historical events that inclined the German people to vote Hitler's party into office. Certainly today's America is nothing like the Germany of 80 years ago, but I think it's incumbent upon us to make sure that it stays that way.
One strategy that seems helpful to me in presenting our arguments to conservative friends and acquaintances is to separate the personality traits from one another. For example, health care uncertainty is a source of apprehension for many Americans. It's not just the 41 million uninsured but also the greater numbers of Americans with marginal, expensive, or uncertain insurance. Most simply, health care as currently implemented in the United States is a tremendous hassle for a great many people, and a well-constructed health care policy makes a lot of that hassle go away. You won't satisfy the dogmatic people (some will always say "It's socialized medicine!" "It'll lead to rationing!"), but you might very well separate them from their conservative cousins who feel simply feel uncertainty and reach out for the structure offered by the Republicans generally, though poorly on this issue. Similarly, an Iraq policy based on redeployment, as Rep. Murtha suggests, can garner support from people who need cognitive closure in their thinking about middle east policy, leaving only the aggressive and fearful to support the current policy.
Once fractured, the edifice of conservatism can be chipped away further, as people come to realize, as the Germans and Japanese did after World War II, that aggression and group-based dominance are characteristics that can safely be set aside by most people.
To be fair, it's also reasonable to observe that certain psychological traits on the above list make sense to appeal to in the difficult problem of running a large society. People prefer leaders who are decisive, who communicate unambiguously, and who offer clear solutions. And when there's a palpable external threat, fear and aggression is hardly an irrational response. But in our society, in our time, far too much has been made of the centrality of these things, and it needs to stop, for our own safety's sake. Perhaps that's my fear and need for closure talking, but this nation's direction increasingly worries me, and I think that by understanding better why our countrymen think as they do, we can better persuade them to think otherwise.
So, if we want it to remain the land of the free, let's make sure it stays the home of the brave.