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Title: Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think
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Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
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| Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think by University Of Chicago Press Excellent Book, but biased | This is an excellent book, even though the author is biased towards liberalism. His great contribution is to introduce the possibility of objective neutrality into the discussion of politics, and then to provide a unifying theory on the nature of the differences between liberals and conservatives. According to Lakoff, this difference lies in two different views of the nature of the nuclear family, and the connection to politics is the result of people projecting their "family values" onto the political stage. Lakoff describes the conservative as favoring a "strict father" model of the nuclear family, while a liberal favors a "nurturing parent" model. It is here, at the very beginning, that Lakoff's bias begins to show. His names for the two family models immediately introduces an ideological and gendered bias. Why not moral-PARENT as conservative and permissive-MOTHER as liberal, the way an unapologetic conservative might have framed the problem? The way Lakoff frames the problem, a value judgement has already been implied. Of course the strict-father family is dysfunctional when compared to a nurturing-parent family, but so is the permissive-mother family compared to a moral-parent family.
From a sociobiological point of view, the two dysfunctional families (strict father, permissive mother) are dysfunctional because the respective parent has opted for power and control and has become predatory upon the children, the strict-father requiring obedience through the use of force and the permissive-mother through the inducement of crippling dependence. Non-dysfunctional families require that children be nurtured AND taught to be self-reliant, so that they may one day become functioning adults, replacing the parents as family representatives. From a sociobiological point of view, the power grab inside the family is pathological because the predatory actions of the parent, who will not live forever, and whose only genetic legacy is the family, serve to destroy that very legacy. Governments on the other hand, do not die a natural death.
Lakoff introduces the link to politics by seeing correctly that people tend to view the nation as a large tribe or family. The nation-as-family metaphor, with the government in the role of parent, has only variations along the mother-father or, equivalently, liberal-conservative dimension. But both are authoritarian in nature, with the citizen as child. What about the other possibility of citizen-as-adult? The idea of nation-as-family probably comes from our thousands of years of evolution under the tribe-as-family metaphor which is valid because the tribe is essentially an extended family of genetically close individuals. The leader of a tribe could be depended upon to not engage in too much predatory behavior on the members of his own tribe because it would be pathological in an evolutionary sense and therefore selected against. The same is not true of a genetically diverse nation.
The metaphor of government-as-parent is less appropriate for the modern nation to the degree that the nation is genetically inhomogeneous. For a genetically diverse democracy like the United States, the paradigm of nation-as-parent is particularly pathological. The advantage to be gained by a "parent" (politician) doing a power grab, which would be dysfunctional in a family, becomes very advantageous for the parent (politician) in such a genetically diverse environment, resulting in a liberal government-as-shepherd or conservative government-as-wolf predatory metaphor in which the government represents itself to the electorate as a caring parent, but in fact is engaged in a sophisticated form of predation upon the citizen-as-sheep. (I know, the shepherd metaphor is generally an emotionally positive metaphor but I never heard of a vegetarian shepherd, if you get my drift).
In summary, Lakoff has opened a new way of thinking about politics which, if his bias can be successfully ignored, can be very enlightening and valuable to any politically minded person, no matter what their political persuasion. | | Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think by University Of Chicago Press The vaccum of conservatism | | A major reason that it has been difficult for self professed conservatives (of various stripes including libertarian)to make headway in normal society is that they have no principles, only bunches of whining excuses for social and economic Darwinism. Conservatism is nothing but a set of excuses for "Screw you, I got mine," only now they don't feel the need for any cover whatsoever. Conservatives and their roach motel "think tanks" write ideologically prescribed papers based solely on references to other demented conservative nonthinkers. A curse on those mutants who cannot tolerate any iota of uncertainty and worship at the altar of Reagan, a true idiot, coversational savant though he may have been. So, now this pack of craven curs takes it upon themselves to excoriate Lakoff--like Swiftboat liars. | | Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think by University Of Chicago Press I have a history of liberalism and yet I hated this book. | As a practicing Unitarian Universalist, this book was recommended to me very highly by two UU ministers whom ordinarily I trusted. However, I'm sorry to say when I read this book, I was appalled at how poor it was. I'm not saying that because I'm a right-winger sort. Far from it. I would describe myself as someone with a history of being leftist in my adult life, and still am on many issues. But in recent years I have questioned my earlier liberalism and have come to embrace views on some issues that resemble conservative ideas.
The first thing Lakoff did to offend me was that he failed to live up to his promise that he would be impartial to both liberals and conservatives. He said he would do so until the last chapter, where he would then give himself license to give his own opinion as to which view he preferred. He did okay for the first few chapters, but his thinly disguised agenda became more obvious as the book went on. You would think someone who was supposed to be an expert on metaphor would have better skills at hiding his own bias.
But that wasn't the worst of it. Lakoff uses the "stern father" as his key metaphor for conservatives and the "nurturing mother" metaphor for liberalism. Fair enough up to a point. But after a while, to hammer away at the reader with the same two simplistic metaphors amounts to a gross injustice to the subject in question. There comes a point where one should realize that metaphor is only a tool of limited application. It's only an idea that at best approximately illustrates the reality we find around us. Lakoff's method apparently is to invent a metaphor, then treat his metaphor as though it were an independent source of insight, even more so than the empirical object to which the metaphor originally referred. That's getting the cart in front of the horse, to use a classic metaphor myself. This book might itself be studied as a case study of the danger of over-extrapolation.
But the thing I found to be an outrage and an insult to my intelligence was this: I was told that Lakoff is the metaphor expert. The man has devoted his whole career to the idea of metaphor as a key to making sense of reality. Yet Lakoff himself is guilty of the most obvious misuses of metaphor, i.e. reckless over-extrapolation, and confusing the map with the territory itself. For my money, this book was embarrassingly bad.
| | Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think by University Of Chicago Press A book for the weak-minded who want to pretend they are something more | | A compendium of weak, foolish arguments disguised as scholarly thought. If you REALLY want to read Al Franken, but would rather pretend that you're better than that, then this is the book for you. | | Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think by University Of Chicago Press Good insights but misses the essential libertarian principle | I'm sorry, but I almost find myself laughing at how Lakoff so obviously stacks the deck in his terminology. The SF model for conservatives is clearly pathological right out of the chute, while the NP model for liberals is all sweetness and light. No wonder he ultimately asserts his NP liberalism against the SF model.
There is a model for liberals that would be comparably pathological to Lakoff's SF model, and I would name it something like Arrogant Social Meddler (ASM). ASMs are similarly authoritarian to the SFs, only the authority lies within a nebulous collective called society, the village, the school board, the people, etc.--to which the ASM is connected! The pathological incarnation of ASM is what has been termed by writers on totalitarianism: matriarchal collectivist. Communism comes to mind.
But I like the book...
For my complete review of this book and for other book and movie
reviews, please visit my site [...]
Brian Wright
Copyright 2007
| | Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think by University Of Chicago Press Product Description | In this classic text, the first full-scale application of cognitive science to politics, George Lakoff analyzes the unconscious and rhetorical worldviews of liberals and conservatives, discovering radically different but remarkably consistent conceptions of morality on both the left and right. For this new edition, Lakoff adds a preface and an afterword extending his observations to major ideological conflicts since the book's original publication, from the impeachment of Bill Clinton to the 2000 presidential election and its aftermath.
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