Monday, June 28, 2010

Understanding Conservatives

I have been reading "The Political Mind" by George Lakoff and highly recommend it.

Lakoff postulates that people view their nation as a family and way a person structures the idea of family in their mind determines whether they are a conservative or progressive. When reading please understand that I am paraphrasing Lakoff's argument and that the views in the conservative model are his hypothesis for the basis of conservative thought.

The Conservative family model is based around the idea of a Strict Father who is the moral leader of the family and needs to be obeyed if he is to protect them from the evil in the world. He must 'win' in a competitive world in order to provide for his family. The father has to do this since "mommy can't do it." Children are born bad and need can only learn right from wrong if they are strictly and painfully punished to create an incentive to do right and avoid more punishment. This is how they build discipline, which enables them to do right and when they grow up they will use this discipline to be successful in the market and become strict fathers themselves without having to anyone meddling in their family affairs (including their own fathers).

Fathers need authority to rule and dole out punishment, children need to be obedient to learn discipline. This explains why conservatives are against homosexuality and abortion. The strict father model is highly dependent on a specific view of masculinity and any deviation from it threatens this type of family, thus homosexuality cannot be permitted.

Similarly, abortion is about choices made by women: between career and motherhood, whether or not to have premarital sex, etc. These are an affront to the strict father. Conservatives believe that the husband should determine whether his wife gives birth (hence husband notification laws), and the pregnant teenager has disobeyed her father and needs to be punished (hence parental notification laws).

There is an underlying presumption that discipline = winning competitions = success. This makes competition important as the forum to test and hone one's discipline. A father deserves his authority because he has earned it. Hierarchy is important to conservatives, but the logic works both ways.

If one is disciplined they will be successful.
If one is successful they must have been disciplined enough to earn it

I'm sure you'll agree that these aren't the same thing.

Similarly, in competitions there can only be a few winners so only the most disciplined will win and anyone who loses wasn't disciplined enough.

Therefore: Wealth = winning = discipline = moral
so wealth = morality.

In politic this means that the President or PM is the father, and we are the children and only byobeying the father can we be good citizens. Which explains why conservatives are so blindly supportive of their political masters.

Lakoff expands on this idea much more than I have and I encourage people to get this book and read it. I'll post about the progressive model later on.

5 comments:

  1. And as a necessary correlation: poor=immoral. You deserve your lot in life, and damned if my tax dollars go to your doctor's bills, that type of thing.

    The focus on individual morality blinds them to the role of structural advantage and disadvantage, and helps reinforce their own conception of themselves as good, moral people.

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  2. I think speculating on how "conservatives" think and why, is a dangerous practice - not that far off of asking how "women" think or how "aboriginals" think.

    Beyond that - there are broad and significant differences within the "conservative" tent as to what "conservative" even means.

    I posted actually this morning, ironically enough, that what I believe to be a loud, but vocal minority of Christian "theocrats" - as with the black block insuating itself amongst otherwise responsible protestors - , need to be identified and ostracized from my own view of conservative, which means a soft-libertarian point of view, which chooses not to ignore the complexities of society, but not either to assume the arrogance that we can control and manipulate it either.

    Where we don't try to dictate what people should or shouldn't believe.

    Where we lean towards individual initiative and personal responsibility to propel society forward as opposed to state directed ideas of morality and responsibility.

    My own take is that I have seen as many "progressives" who treat Global Warming as fervently and mindlessly as any Evengelical Christian treats their interpretation of the bible, so the suggestion of "blind support" isn't necessarily confined to the right side of the spectrum.

    Witness the recent partisan criticism of the PM for the actions of the RCMP in Torono last weekend.. blithly ignoring the not-so-distant dressing down of the RCMP under Jean Chretien during the APEC summit of 1997.

    The point beign that a healthy piece of introspection often starts with minding the weeds in our own backyard first.

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  3. BTW.. nice blog and thanks for coming by my own area of policital rambling.

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  4. "I think speculating on how "conservatives" think and why, is a dangerous practice - not that far off of asking how "women" think or how "aboriginals" think."

    Not really. Conservatism is a political philosophy, it implies a certain mode of thought. Being a woman or an aboriginal has nothing to do with any kind of philosophy.

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  5. "My own take is that I have seen as many "progressives" who treat Global Warming as fervently and mindlessly as any Evengelical Christian treats their interpretation of the bible, so the suggestion of "blind support" isn't necessarily confined to the right side of the spectrum."

    Yes the problem which Lakoff also identifies is that people are never purely conservative or progressive. Thus they can and do use both modes of thought on different issues. Thus, the supporter of a progressive topic can use a conservative mode of thought to do so.

    You'll agree that people can be more or less progress/conservative and Lakoff states that this means that they are more or less likely to express a conservative or liberal narrative in their thought.

    For example I believe in many forms of social progressivism but also think that need to be done in a financially responsible way. This expresses both progressive and conservative idea, but reflects on me, not the topic.

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