Authoritarianism underlies a wide array of seemingly unrelated political attitudes

Evidence

What links trusting Nixon during Watergate, hating homosexuals, opposing abortion, liking hospitals run in traditional ways, thinking blacks are naturally violent, blaming our social problems on the Bill of Rights, being religious, and so on? To surprisingly large degrees, authoritarianism lay beneath all of these. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 589

The “connecting” particularly fetches me. What links trusting Nixon during Watergate, hating homosexuals, opposing abortion, liking hospitals run in traditional ways, thinking blacks are naturally violent, blaming our social problems on the Bill of Rights, being religious, and so on? To surprisingly large degrees, authoritarianism lay beneath all of these. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 589

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The startling breadth of a single latent construct spanning Nixon trust, homophobia, abortion views, and religiosity is a dense explanatory payoff with significant implications.
• XREF: This cluster of correlated attitudes gives empirical footing to Cooper and Whitehead & Perry’s claims about correlated conservative/religious/nationalist positions. — connects to: Typical populist movements blend egalitarian and authoritarian elements — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 7
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 589