What Conservatives Really Want

--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 174 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.

In conservative family life, the strict father rules. Fathers and husbands should have control over reproduction; hence, parental and spousal notification laws and opposition to abortion. In conservative religion, God is seen as the strict father, the Lord, who rewards and punishes according to individual responsibility in following his Biblical word.

Above all, the authority of conservatism itself must be maintained. The country should be ruled by conservative values, and progressive values are seen as evil. Science should not have authority over the market, and so the science of global warming and evolution must be denied. Facts that are inconsistent with the authority of conservatism must be ignored or denied or explained away. To protect and extend conservative values themselves, the devil's own means can be used again conservatism's immoral enemies, whether lies, intimidation, torture, or even death, say, for women's doctors.

Freedom is defined as being your own strict father -- with individual not social responsibility, and without any government authority telling you what you can and cannot do. To defend that freedom as an individual, you will of course need a gun.

This is the America that conservatives really want. Budget deficits are convenient ruses for destroying American democracy and replacing it with conservative rule in all areas of life.
What is saddest of all is to see Democrats helping them.

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.

Democrats help conservatives by not shouting out loud over and over that it was conservative values that caused the global economic collapse: lack of regulation and a greed-is-good ethic.

Democrats also help conservatives by what a friend has called Democratic Communication Disorder. Republican conservatives have constructed a vast and effective communication system, with think tanks, framing experts, training institutes, a system of trained speakers, vast holdings of media, and booking agents. Eighty percent of the talking heads on TV are conservatives. Talk matters because language heard over and over changes brains. Democrats have not built the communication system they need, and many are relatively clueless about how to frame their deepest values and complex truths.

And Democrats help conservatives when they function as policy wonks -- talking policy without communicating the moral values behind the policies. They help conservatives when they neglect to remind us that pensions are deferred payments for work done. "Benefits" are pay for work, not a handout. Pensions and benefits are arranged by contract. If there is not enough money for them, it is because the contracted funds have been taken by conservative officials and given to wealthy people and corporations instead of to the people who have earned them.

Democrats help conservatives when they use conservative words like "entitlements" instead of "earnings" and speak of government as providing "services" instead of "necessities."

Is there hope?

I see it in Wisconsin, where tens of thousands citizens see through the conservative frames and are willing to flood the streets of their capital to stand up for their rights. They understand that democracy is about citizens uniting to take care of each other, about social responsibility as well as individual responsibility, and about work -- not just for your own profit, but to help create a civilized society. They appreciate their teachers, nurses, firemen, police, and other public servants. They are flooding the streets to demand real democracy -- the democracy of caring, of social responsibility, and of excellence, where prosperity is to be shared by those who work and those who serve.

George Lakoff is the author of The Political Mind. His website is GeorgeLakoff.com.

 

Comments

[Margaret Cadogan]

05:02 PM on 04/11/2011

Thank you Lakoff, for inspiring such an informative, unusually intelligent exchange.
Most of American discourse has become a giant food fight designed to keep us at each others throats and thus distracted from the fact that a few of us have a great financial interest in America's decline. What's the point in debating with someone you have no hope of convincing and indeed consider an "idiot"? Imagine if all intelligent patriots of the many (not just two) ideologies in the us, rejected this artificial polarization of extremes. Most Americans are neither communists or free market absolutists. If the tax rates and regulations of America's most prosperous century equaled socialism (as many now claim) it seemed to be serving us well.

[Heidi McClure]

01:44 AM on 03/10/2011

You know, this is the whole problem right here. Because this IS the conservative agenda. Is this what all conservatives think? Obviously not. But this is how their leaders think. This bleak, corporate world is what is at the bottom of their slippery slope.

By contrast, what's at the bottom of ours? A form of socialism where everyone has food, water, shelter, health care, education, emergency services and other necessities? Where workers have rights? Where we are judged by the content of our character? If so, good. That is the kind of world I want to live in.

[Tom Merle]

02:17 PM on 03/05/2011

More than anything else, conservatives despise government bureaucrats as having their own agenda that runs counter to the values mainstream America hold dear. They would agree to having the wealthy pay more for assisting the less fortunate and providing other services--income redistribution-- if they thought that these resources would reach the end beneficiary. But too much, in their view, goes to "overhead" which seeks mostly to justify their jobs. Alternative solutions involving smart philanthropy would be embraced.

[Ammon Crossette]

04:53 AM on 03/05/2011

If you're attempting to describe conservative extremism then I absolutely agree with your assesment. But if you mean to put all conservatives in the same pool as what's described above, I believe you are far from the truth. It is true that many conservatives have a strong patriarchal belief system. However, to assume that all conservatives come from abusive fathers is absurd. Conservatives are not simply the product of a forceful patriarch. That is a rediculously dismissive view of other peoples opinion. It's also not true that conservatives don't accept science. They typically just put more faith in their God. Another point you seem to misunderstand of the conservative veiw is that of social responsibility. We have social responsibility to eachother as human beings, but it can not be imposed. It isn't the governments place or function to take care of it's people, but rather to protect their rights. This is were i disagree with hardline conservatives. I believe we as a people have a responsibility to create programs to help one another, being careful not to enable them, but rather empower them to acheive. I believe government is the only resource that can do this, since there is a severe lack of moral fiber in this world. That said, if we were all good people in this world, we could get along much better with less government.

[basketcaseMN]

08:25 AM on 03/01/2011

Good points in diagnosing our current problems. Bad points in painting a broad brush of "conservatives." You describe a conservative capitalist of the old school—like a lot of nineteenth and early 20th-century industrialists. But there are also conservative religionists... some are as you describe, but these are the religious faction invested in the Church (in its many forms). There are plenty of conservative religionsists (from a variety of religions besides Christianity, notably Islam), for whom we are all equal before an overwhelmingly powerful God. Their central lesson is against pride: don't go setting yourself up as better then anyone else because eventually God is going to cut you down too.

What you describe—and I think your description accurately describes what's going on in the center of the current storm—is not conservatism per se, but a throwback to the idea of personal authority.
The attitude you describe is a reactionary one. It says, let's go back to the days when... We may think this is what conservatism is about, and for some it is. But for some it means trying to hew to a code of responsibility and modesty and humility that we've never actually achieved... it's a different kind of idealism.

So please narrow that brush a bit, will ya?

[Bart DePalma]

08:16 PM on 02/27/2011

I am always fascinated to see what progressives think conservatives such as myself really want. Let's see how Professor Lakoff's effort stacks up:

1) Conservatives do not care about deficits or they would raise taxes.

Our primary concern is with the power of government over our lives and properly consider both taxation and deferred taxation in the form of borrowing to be equally destructive.

2. "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."

Outside of prohibiting folks from harming one another, we conservatives do not want government to be running America at all. This is a progressive goal.

3. "The market itself is seen in this way. The slogan, "Let the market decide" assumes the market itself is The Decider."

The market is millions of consumers deciding for themselves what goods and services they would like to purchase. It is a far, far more small "d" democratic system than our current government.

4. "Taxation is thus seen as taking money away from those who have earned it and giving it to people who don't deserve it."

There is a consensus supporting the purchase general public goods available to the general population (roads, etc) and social insurance meant to help everyone if they become unemployed, disabled or elderly.

Progressives support directing and taxing the economy to take wealth from those who earn it and give it to those the government supports.

[tonystigliano]

05:20 PM on 02/28/2011

Mr. De Palma's response to Lakoff's article evades the issues being raised by events. His response is merely a reiteration of abstract conservative theory, not an argument. Conservatives historically and empirically (not according to professed ideology) have used government (especially police powers) to suppress any protest or organization that threatens their political, social and economic status. Conservative ideology reduces social needs to individual needs; in practice conservatives will remove virtually all the services that have made America a free and livable nation: education, health, transportation, human rights, welfare and social justice among others. Historically, even the "free market" requires government regulation to protect the health of workers, to prevent fraud, and to prevent monopolies from taking over the economy. Conservative laws all but eliminated regulation leading to the present recession. Since Reagan, America's standings in health and education have fallen alarmingly (e.g., the US is first in infant mortality). Government has been used to advance corporate advantages. Ronald Reagan oversaw the second largest transfer of wealth and property in US history from "those who earn it" to the top .01 per cent of the population. According to Free Market theory, wages are based on productivity meeting demand. Working people have increased productivity by 700% over the last 30 years, but their wages have declined some 20% The "Free Market" is a fantasy, Mr. De Palma. After 1947, the American middle class was created by the GI Bill and a militant union movement, not by conservative ideology.

[Bart DePalma]

09:28 AM on 03/02/2011

tony:

"Conservatives historically and empirically (not according to professed ideology) have used government (especiall y police powers) to suppress any protest or organizati on that threatens their political, social and economic status."

Yup, that evil Governor Walker sure sent in the police to bust union heads.

"Conservative ideology reduces social needs to individual needs."

Not quite. We recognize that all needs are individual. Social needs is a socialist concept.

"Historically, even the "free market" requires government regulation to protect the health of workers, to prevent fraud, and to prevent monopolies from taking over the economy."

Conservatives are not anarchists. We believe in laws which prohibit folks from harming one another. Where we part with progressives is in rejecting your project to run the economy to redistribute wealth.

"Conservative laws all but eliminated regulation leading to the present recession."

Which "conservative laws" might those be? You might want to educate yourself concerning the extensive role progressive government played in creating the artificial subprime mortgage market. http://c0182732.cdn1.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/fcic_final_report_wallison_dissent.pdf

"Ronald Reagan oversaw the second largest transfer of wealth and property in US history from "those who earn it" to the top .01 per cent of the population."

Really? Precisely what Reagan law or tax took money earned by anyone and gave it to the top .01%? You might want to note that the top quintile of earners pay over half the federal taxes.

[tonystigliano]

04:24 PM on 03/03/2011

Governor Walker isn't "evil" -- that's a religious concept; he is merely maintaining a system of unfairness based on the refusal to recognize "social needs", which, by the way, aren't "socialist." In fact, they arose from Christian ethics. Civil rights, for example, are not a matter of "individual needs." Moreover, The top "quartile of earners," who you defend, represent not an individual, but a collective. Your claim that conservatives are only interested in individual needs is exactly my point. Only one person's needs at a time need to be addressed, which fits nicely with the "divide and conquer" strategy used by conservatives to disempower people. In reality, it is the middle class and working class (oh, wait! you don't think they exist) that pay the majority of the taxes. Finally, while Reagan did manage to raise taxes 12 times during his tenure, and began the borrowing that made the US a debtor nation, the statistics which you can get from the OMB and other sources, indicates precisely that shift in wealth. The average income of the the top .01 percent per family is $27m, the bottom 20% is $33K. Of course, the "rich" the "middle class" and the "poor" don't exist -- those are socialist concepts. The difficulty conservatives have with their individualism makes people into atoms floating in a void, who cannot see beyond their own interests, which makes conservatives morally blind.

[8arrows]

06:36 PM on 02/28/2011

1. Liar! If that were true, you would have decried the power granted to the government by the Patriot Act in 2001. Not to mention the outlandish deficits racked up by the Bush administration.

2. The vast majority of market regulations conservatives oppose are entirely about preventing corporations from harming people. I suppose that's OK because corporations aren't "folks."

3. The market is far more complex than that. Since you aren't going to do anything but paint with the broadest stroke possible I will just point out that a central assumption of the market: everyone acts in their own best interest is debunked by the advertising industry, which exists purely to convince people to act against their own best interest.

4. Is the work done by a hedge fund manager that much more valuable than work done by a teacher? Does the capitalist do more than the laborer?

[Bart DePalma]

09:41 AM on 03/02/2011

8arrows:

1) The Patriot Act does not direct anyone to do anything, nor does it violate the Constitution. What the PA accomplished was a partial rollback of post-Watergate and Clinton era federal regulations restricting law enforcement. If the police actually abuse the act, I am game to reform it.

2) The problem with the regulatory state is accountability. Regulators are unelected and their decisions are defended from elected Presidents by unelected courts. The vast majority of law is now enacted by regulators and not our elected Congress. Finally, we have no need for the current roughly 150,000 fine print pages of regulations to ensure basic public safety. The rest is economy hobbling overkill.

4) "Is the work done by a hedge fund manager that much more valuable than work done by a teacher? Does the capitalist do more than the laborer?"

Far more valuable. The key to making money in a free market is leveraging scale. Let's compare a rock star and a teacher and assume that the teacher offers a product which is twice as valuable as the music offered by the rock star. The teacher is limited to reaching maybe 150 students a year, while the rock star can reach millions. Thus, even if you value the music lower than the teaching, the rock star can and should earn far more because she is providing a good desired and consumed by far more people.

[llstudent]

06:20 PM on 02/26/2011

Excellent once again Mr. Lakoff, so true and so sad.

[bonnetteblj]

01:09 PM on 02/26/2011

Excellent article....I plan to pass it on to my state reps and to my Congressional reps.

[jjchambless]

06:29 PM on 02/25/2011

On TweetDeck, Maverick (@spoony35) asked @jjch54:
John where do you actually stand on Tax Cuts for Corp. & Cuts to Medicare funding to pay for it. @JohnD1967 @OneLiberalGirl @KontraCreative

I feel relatively new @ commenting in GREATER THAN 140char chunks… still, plunging off a cliff can be…

Corporations (like governments) are artificial entities. They are neither good nor bad; they ARE. Taxes benefiting “We the People” LONG TERM are, I believe, good.

Regarding Medicare funding… I think long term. (Am I repeating myself?) In 1775, some Bostonians felt celebrating their thoughts on King George (Monarchy/Plutocracy/Oligarchy—take your pick) were in order. WITH HELP, “We the People” tried a couple of things. The Articles of Confederation sent “We the People” in many different directions. Thankfully, “We the People” had enough commonality and common sense to try at least once more; and now we have a constitution.

In the intervening years, our Congress, representing “We the People” passed the 1945 McCarran–Ferguson Act. Twenty years later, Congress, again representing “We the People” passed Medicare. Now I’m not a political science expert or doubt called to serve on our SCOTUS. That said, I wonder at the cause/effect on/by a growing (at least monetarily) Oligarchy/Plutocratic Corporotacracy. Why do the KochBros, FoxNews, NRA, et al revere Reagan over Eisenhower?

[An American Citizen]

12:22 PM on 02/25/2011

It is said in the scriptures; You can not serve God and mammon, You will cling to one and despise the other - It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for rich man to go to heaven..
I have a family member that is republican. When I brought this to her attention, her responce was..but in God all things are possible..Free isn't free...she took the word of God out of context for her own benefit
They are wolves in sheep clothing...beware and be aware of them.......Democrats must arise and stand up
We must have a voice...not letting them bring us to distruction

[willruss]

12:01 PM on 03/16/2011

I am surpised she didn't say "let them eat cake"

[An American Citizen]

02:02 PM on 03/16/2011

Then I would have had to chop off her head, They want their cake and eat it too.
We really need to get every democrat to vote in all elections... not just for president,
but also for senate and house....

[Vyvyan]

11:44 PM on 02/24/2011

Lakoff makes an important point: so-called "common sense" is a product of an internalized (and largely unconscious) narrative about the world and the self: in short, common sense is ideology. This is why it's to a conservative it's as plain as a pie that "socialism" (which they don't bother to define) doesn't work, that taxes kill the economy, and that climate change is a liberal plot. Arguing with them by offering contrary facts is useless because these facts do not fit into their rigid ideological worldview. Liberals and intellectuals also have ideological narratives, of course, but these narratives are more flexible and take into account the complexity of the world. Conservatives are religious fundamentalists not evil: they are just unable to accept that evil is a relative concept and that between white and black there are many shades of gray.

[benhines]

02:18 PM on 02/24/2011

There is a conflict of interest when government workers unionize...It is a way to buy votes from politicians. The difference in the private sector is that when unions go on strike and push too hard they run the risk of collapsing the company which can put them out of work...that creates a fair balancing act. In the government sector when the union pushes the politicians for more and more money which is a technically buying votes..That is a problem in itself but the major problem is that is not the politicians to give....The politicians will keep on stealing from peter to buy a vote from paul.

[amanofmanyfaucets]

01:01 PM on 02/24/2011

While I would agree with many of the things that George is saying, I don't think that his thesis is the central flaw of our government. The central flaw is the notion that the job of the government is to increase its power for the benefit of oil, the military and other big money. Power is at the center of the fake-conservatives philosophy. The stated purpose of our government is to enable the "pursuit of happiness". Certainly a weak government cannot do its proper job of stewarding our pursuit of happiness. However that power should exist for the benefit of the people at large.

BTW: A real Conservative is someone like Barry Goldwater, a genuine tower of a man that makes George Bush look like a squirming weasel. Conservative means a strict adherence to the intent of the Constitution as opposed to a do-anything-you-want approach to the Constitution.

[rayStJames]

03:53 PM on 02/24/2011

There are some capitalists in this country that manage to buy politicians and public opinion through their wealth and influence. No question about it. However not all capitalists are conservative republicans. For every Ken Lay or Koch Brother on the right - there is a George Soros and Herb Sandler on the left. They all take advantage of the support they get in order to profit of the backs of the system (average middle class americans).

[amanofmanyfaucets]

07:53 PM on 02/24/2011

True enough but most are not so enlightened. The truth is that most corporations are greedy. By that I mean that their pursuit of profit is so rapacious that they make less money compared to a more enlightened pursuit of profit.

That doesn't mean that I think that they are evil but I do think that allowed to express their fundamental behavior they would destroy the markets from which they profit. The best example of that is the big meltdown. That is why they can't be allowed to run the government.

[thegreenhornet]

08:40 AM on 02/24/2011

And employee works for not only their salary but their fringe benefits as well. An employee that receives no fringe benefits will demand a higher wage to provide them for himself/herself. Anyone who feels the disparity in negotiating power with their employer has a right to join or form a union. Safety and security in numbers.

[rayStJames]

03:32 PM on 02/24/2011

In theory, when supply and demand on are you side - Higher wages and fringe benefts can be demanded. However business is cyclical for private workers, but not for unionized government workers who through collective bargaining have bypassed the real economcs that their fellow countryman live under by negotiating long term higher than the prevailing rate guaranteed fixed rate of return on ther pension/annuities with the difference between the current rate of say 1.3% and their 7% guaranteed rate all subsidized by the taxpayer. These "fringe benefits" provide taxpayer subsidizes in terms of their health insurance premiums and in the case of teachers - they can't really be let go once tenured.


BTW, who pays for the self employeed 401k/pensions and fringe benefits for "work done"?

[capitalismisntamoral]

08:43 PM on 02/26/2011

Yes, but what you are (conveniently) leaving out is that government employees - in good times - sacrifice the chance to make more money in private enterprise - via better salaries, job-hopping, stock options, etc - for the (presumed) job security and (typically) good benefits of a government job.

Btw, tenure does not mean someone can't be let go, it means they can't be fired without justification and without due process.

The entire anti-union, teacher-vilifying "movement" we're experiencing strikes me as such mean-spirited selfishness: hey! I've been working for private companies, and I'm getting screwed with flat wages and jobs shipped overseas, and economic insecurity, so I'm damned if anyone else is going to have it any better....
Never mind that teachers are the people who spend more time with your children than you do. So, you want your precious snowflakes to be surrounded by stressed out insecure adults ALL of the time .... ??

[rayStJames]

10:41 PM on 02/23/2011

If one were to accept the premise that pensions are deferred payments for "work done". Then government pensions are really IOU's by taxpayers for "work done".

So what about the private sector worker who fund their own 401K pension for "work done" ? What about the private sector employee who can't afford to fund it themselves. They have performed the "work done" theory you write about? Who pays them for "work done"?

Or is it the union contract that government workers have negotiated through collective bargaining with slap happy politicians that allow for the pensions to be funded by taxpayers - not the so called payment for "work done" you write about?

Well if it is the contract then why can't there be an admission that their are merits and benefits to taxpayers in removing collective bargaining in government? After all even the private sector Taxpayers that can't even afford to fund their own 401k pension are on the hook to pay the government pensions through increased property and other taxes.