High authoritarians endorse police power and wartime protest suppression simultaneously

Evidence

The Proposed Laws Affecting Freedom and Equality. Most of the respondents indicated they would not support the laws reducing freedoms that Americans presently enjoy. The mean responses ranged from 2.74 (outlawing Communists and other radicals) to 3.80 (giving police much wider powers). But in every case, High RWAs favored these laws more than anyone else. The correlations are printed after each item above, and ranged from . to .63. And most Highs would have voted both to give police much greater powers and keep anti-war protests small and away from view during wartime. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3628

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to vault work on authoritarianism, police power, and suppression of dissent.
• DEFINE: Illustrates how RWA scale operationalizes preference for authority-enforcing state power.