House of Eratosthenes

—Dedicated to the peaceful protestors in Wisconsin, February 19, 2011

The central issue in our political life is not being discussed. At stake is the moral basis of American democracy.

The individual issues are all too real: assaults on unions, public employees, women’s rights, immigrants, the environment, health care, voting rights, food safety, pensions, prenatal care, science, public broadcasting, and on and on.
Budget deficits are a ruse, as we’ve seen in Wisconsin, where the Governor turned a surplus into a deficit by providing corporate tax breaks, and then used the deficit as a ploy to break the unions, not just in Wisconsin, but seeking to be the first domino in a nationwide conservative movement.

Deficits can be addressed by raising revenue, plugging tax loopholes, putting people to work, and developing the economy long-term in all the ways the President has discussed. But deficits are not what really matters to conservatives.

Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.

In the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama accurately described the basis of American democracy: Empathy — citizens caring for each other, both social and personal responsibility — acting on that care, and an ethic of excellence. From these, our freedoms and our way of life follow, as does the role of government: to protect and empower everyone equally. Protection includes safety, health, the environment, pensions and empowerment starts with education and infrastructure. No one can be free without these, and without a commitment to care and act on that care by one’s fellow citizens.

The conservative worldview rejects all of that.

Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don’t think government should help its citizens. That is, they don’t think citizens should help each other. The part of government they want to cut is not the military (we have over 800** military bases around the world), not government subsidies to corporations, not the aspect of government that fits their worldview. They want to cut the part that helps people. Why? Because that violates individual responsibility.

But where does that view of individual responsibility alone come from?

The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don’t have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.

The market itself is seen in this way. The slogan, “Let the market decide” assumes the market itself is The Decider. The market is seen as both natural (since it is assumed that people naturally seek their self-interest) and moral (if everyone seeks their own profit, the profit of all will be maximized by the invisible hand). As the ultimate moral authority, there should be no power higher than the market that might go against market values. Thus the government can spend money to protect the market and promote market values, but should not rule over it either through (1) regulation, (2) taxation, (3) unions and worker rights, (4) environmental protection or food safety laws, and (5) tort cases. Moreover, government should not do public service. The market has service industries for that. Thus, it would be wrong for the government to provide health care, education, public broadcasting, public parks, and so on. The very idea of these things is at odds with the conservative moral system. No one should be paying for anyone else. It is individual responsibility in all arenas. Taxation is thus seen as taking money away from those who have earned it and giving it to people who don’t deserve it. Taxation cannot be seen as providing the necessities of life, a civilized society, and as necessary for business to prosper.

I found the “empathy” thing snort-worthy. It certainly isn’t true that conservatives “reject all that,” it isn’t even true that conservatives are any less accepting of it than our modern liberals. My dictionary says empathy is:

the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

And looking high & low for some stellar example of a failure of empathy, I guess I would need to inpsect…uh…oh, how about a George Lakoff editorial. Where he starts chastising democrats for helping those evil awful conservatives too much:

Democrats help radical conservatives by accepting the deficit frame and arguing about what to cut. Even arguing against specific “cuts” is working within the conservative frame. What is the alternative? Pointing out what conservatives really want. Point out that there is plenty of money in America, and in Wisconsin. It is at the top. The disparity in financial assets is un-American — the top one percent has more financial assets than the bottom 95 percent. Middle class wages have been flat for 30 years, while the wealth has floated to the top. This fits the conservative way of life, but not the American way of life.

Plenty of money up there at the top. So just go get it. Nevermind the message this sends to people starting businesses, or thinking about starting businesses, or thinking about expanding them. Good luck, suckers, if you do manage to make a buck at it you won’t be able to hang on to it for long. George Lakoff sees your money!

How un-empathic.

The thing about equality draws a sad sort of chortle out of me as well. Equality? Good heavens, Lakoff’s little masterpiece here is loaded up, from top to bottom, with good guys and bad guys. He doesn’t see people as equally virtuous, and certainly, he doesn’t see it as a noble goal that they should all participate in a democracy with an equal vote. This isn’t the work of someone who sees people as “equal”; not even close. Does he seriously think he sees people this way? If so, he’s insane.

There’s a long diatribe about midpoint about a patriarchal household or some such, with a benevolent patriarch instilling discipline in the lesser house-members by telling them what’s what & what for. Not to belabor the obvious, but…well, I’ll go ahead and belabor it. This is pure projection. Who do you see in this equation being authoritarian…knowing best…stating unequivocally who’s supposed to make the rules, who’s supposed to snap-to attention and do what they’re told without giving any lip?

In my recent memory, that would be George Lakoff. Obama and the liberal politicians will tell the businesses and the “rich” what they’re supposed to pay, and those awful rich people will just pony it up. Through some kind of system of checks & balances? Lakoff doesn’t say; it comes off looking like every tax increase is just supposed to be an itch between a pair of ears somewhere, followed by a scrawling of a pen, and it’s done-and-done. Is that what he means? If so, what could be more “strict father”-ish than that?

I wonder how many conservatives George Lakoff knows. He’s telling us what it is they want, so it’s not an entirely irrelevant question.

A grateful hat tip to my old blogger friend JoAnn (sorry if I botched your name).

Terri, not JoAnn, but I appreciate the link no matter who you call me!

I can’t believe you actually read the whole thing. I was snorting so much at the start (How does giving a corporate tax break starting next year cause a surplus to disappear in WI?) that I never did read the thing.
- tgoon | 03/01/2011 @ 20:41
Actually I thought you were JudyAnn from back in the olden days. Oh well, it’s your name, I’m sure you know how to spell it.
- mkfreeberg | 03/01/2011 @ 20:51
Budget deficits are a ruse, as we’ve seen in Wisconsin, where the Governor turned a surplus into a deficit by providing corporate tax breaks, and then used the deficit as a ploy to break the unions, not just in Wisconsin, but seeking to be the first domino in a nationwide conservative movement.

Oh no! He’s on to us!!!

Actually, I remember the whole “fake ’em out with corporate tax breaks so that we can shitcan the unions ten years down the road” plan from my last Vast Right Wing Conspiracy meeting. My chapter (the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Wingnuts, Freemasons, and Dittoheads Local #678) actually voted against it, as it wasn’t hard enough on widows, orphans, and the disabled. Looks like we got overruled by the national committee, though. Can I file a grievance with my shop steward?

[Confidential to George Lakoff: that was satire, you gormless twit. Jeeesh… paranoid much? Is everyone on the left a borderline schizophrenic, or just its “intellectuals?”]
- Severian | 03/02/2011 @ 06:06
Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don’t think government should help its citizens. That is, they don’t think citizens should help each other.

Au contraire! . Right on the first count. We don’t believe “the government should help its citizens”. But the next part not only does not follow, it is 180 degrees from the truth. That is, they don’t think citizens should help each other.

This is just the liberal narrative to justify putting themselves in charge of who gets helped and how and how much.

Conservatives believe that the people doing the actual helping should be in charge of that.
- philmon | 03/02/2011 @ 09:06
George Lakoff’s position is noteworthy because…?
Sounds like “Those evil Conservatives will kill your babies and use their blood for their rituals…” kinda’ stuff.

I’m just waiting for a “mysterious fire” to engulf the (very nice) AFL-CIO (Let’s seeeeee…, National (check) “Labor”(check) Social “Justice”(check)) headquarters to “PROVE” it.

Who exactly was that “shop steward” putting the (unexpectedly unaired or reported by “jurno-lista” ilk) beat down on the “designated liars” media? Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes?

Communism/ Socialism/Fascism “Workers Unite” will work THIS time because…we know exactly why it went wrong every other time?
- CaptDMO | 03/02/2011 @ 14:21
Lakoff is noteworthy because he’s something of a court intellectual in certain segments of the left. He’s a linguist, and his idea of “frames,” referenced in that blog post, is one of the latest Grand Unified Theories of Everything that leftists use to explain why their promised utopia has yet to arrive. If I recall it correctly (from the 2004 election cycle), it’s basically an elaboration of the “code words” argument — when conservatives talk about “reducing waste,” say, what they really mean is “rending disabled illegal immigrant orphans down for axle grease.” But fancier. And, of course, irrefutable, since who can ever really tell what’s going on in another’s mind?

For instance, here’s what wiki gives as an example:

“…in intellectual debate the underlying metaphor is usually that argument is war (later revised as “argument is struggle”):

* He won the argument.
* Your claims are indefensible.
* He shot down all my arguments.
* His criticisms were right on target.
* If you use that strategy, he’ll wipe you out.

For Lakoff, the development of thought has been the process of developing better metaphors. The application of one domain of knowledge to another domain of knowledge offers new perceptions and understandings.”

Extended to the political realm, “developing better metaphors” is a way to reeducate right-wing troglodytes while simultaneously wresting control of the media-industrial complex from the far right.

[Yes, this idiot actually seems to believe this, and in fact is good and prettying up with five-dollar words the common leftist fallacy that being “to the right of me” makes one objectively “right wing.” This is a great comfort to people who can’t get the dumbass American public to put them in charge — it’s not that their ideas suck, it’s that we Reich-wingers control the cultural and intellectual megaphone through such bastions of free-market economics and rugged individualism as the New York Times, NPR, Hollywood, and the Department of Education]
- Severian | 03/02/2011 @ 15:46
Severian–

Our chapter of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy had to dissolve because we’re all so greedy that when we started comparing the payouts checks that we get from Blackwater and Haliburton, we became so insanely jealous that we started shooting at each other. You know, because we’re all armed and if you have a gun, eventually you’re going to start looking for excuses to use it. Thankfully the bullets were all stopped by the Bibles that we all carry next to our hearts–or where our hearts would be if we had them.
- Jason | 03/02/2011 @ 18:42
Rush Limbaugh always introduces this guy as “George Lakoff, rhymes-with.”

I couldn’t get past the first paragraph of that inane, inSane rambling. It sounds like every other “we care about poor and working man, the Rethug-licans don’t” line of bull I’ve heard throughout my adult life. No matter how contrary to the facts that this worthless piece of propaganda runs, it gets repeated over and over and over.

What was that thing that Hitler used to say about telling a lie big enough and often enough and loud enough? They oughta know…he’s over there on the Left with the rest of these fascist idiots.
- cylarz | 03/03/2011 @ 00:11

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