pocket1_pita | Don't Think of an Elephant

George Lakoff is a UC Berkeley linguistics professor who has been very involved in progressive politics of late as he works on the issue of framing. His book Don’t Think of an Elephant is IMO a progressive must-read. Framing is placing public policy issues within a larger ideological framework and reinforcing that framework consistently. The example he uses is “tax relief”. In order for there to be “relief” there must be an affliction. So taxes are a burden and the policy is relieving that burden. If you didn’t believe taxes were a burden from which you must be liberated, you might propose a “tax equity initiative” or “sliding scale taxation.”

One of his key ideas has to do with why conservatives and liberals believe the things they do. As so many people have pointed out, conservatives are not evil monsters who don’t care about anyone but themselves. The vast majority of people are nice caring individuals who want a safe prosperous society for everyone. I know that is a hard concept for liberals to grasp. From here, it looks like selfish meanie behavior towards anyone with less power than you. But Lakoff contends that actually it has to do with a very different moral framework.

"In the conservative worldview, it is assumed that the world is, and always will be, a dangerous and difficult place. It is a competitive world and there will always be winners and losers. Children are naturally bad since they want to do what feels good, not what is moral, so they have to be made good by being taught discipline. There is tangible evil in the world and to stand up to evil, one must be morally strong, or "disciplined."

Competition is necessary for discipline. Children are to become self-reliant through discipline and the pursuit of self-interest. Those who succeed as adults are the good (moral) people and parents are not to "meddle" in their lives. Those children who remain dependent—who were spoiled, overly willful, or recalcitrant—undergo further discipline or are turned out to face the discipline of the outside world.

When everyone is acting morally and responsibly, seeking their own self-interest in a self-disciplined fashion, everyone benefits. Thus, instilling morality and discipline in your children is also acting for the good of society as a whole.

The Role of Government: When translated into politics, the government metaphorically becomes the Strict Father. The citizens are children of two kinds: the mature, successfully disciplined, and self-reliant ones (read: wealthy businesses and individuals), whom the government should not meddle with; and the whining, undisciplined, dependent ones who must never be coddled. Just as in the family, the government must be an instrument of Moral Authority, upholding and extending policies that express Moral Strength.

The role of government is to:

• Protect the country and its interests in a dangerous world by maximizing military and political strength;
• Promote unimpeded competitive economic activity so that both the disciplined moral people and the undisciplined immoral ones are able to receive what they each deserve, based on their own choices;
• Maintain order and discipline, through severe enforcement of the rules if necessary."

http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/

So Lakoff says that people who have money have it because they have the moral virtue and discipline to accumulate that money and so they should be rewarded for that, not punished. People who don’t have money don’t have it because they are undisciplined and don’t work hard. It isn’t that Republicans are anti-poor. Their policies might be anti-poor, but that’s just a random side-effect of their philosophy which is at its heart egalitarian and based on an assumption of an accessible American Dream. Again, this sound more like a rationale than a reason to me, but Lakoff’s frame makes this more understandable than the babble that comes from most conservatives. Once you understand that the core assumptions are not only different but understandable it starts to make a lot more sense.