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Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Top of the Blog, Ma! 
| | The headline is a semi-obscure reference to the movie White Heat, with James Cagney at his bad-guy best. |
| | How 2 links at Kottke and The Presurfer growed to 840 links and 200.000 visitors in 24 days. |
Metacracy
| | If the Democrats want to win in '04, George points the way. |
| | This book is required reading for campaign staffers and volunteers for Dean, Kucinich and every other candidate who wants to touch, and appeal to, what they know are the deeply democratic ideals of the American public — but still don't know how to say. Or say as convincingly as conservatives do when they're talking about republican ideals. |
| | It's not about rhetoric, folks. It's about what induces rhetoric. It's about metaphor. It's about the stuff we talk in terms of. There isn't a lot of choice about this, because it's not just about what we believe. It's about what we understand. And we often understand things differently. Conservatives and liberals understand morality, and politics, differently. They understand politics and morality in terms of different models of the family. |
| | When republicans talk about "homeland security" and "punishing wrongdoers" and "standing up to" terrorists, they are speaking in terms of a nation-as-family conceptual metaphor. And they conceive the family itself on what Lakoff calls a "strict father model." |
| | That model holds, basically, that the world is a dangerous place. Here's George: |
| | Life is seen as fundamentally difficult and the world as fundamentally dangerous. Evil is conceptualized as a force in the world, and it is the father's job to support his family and protect it from evils — both external and internal. External evils include enemies, hardships, and temptations. Internal evils come in the form of uncontrolled desires and are as threatening as external ones. The father embodies the values needed to make one's way in the world and to support a family: he is morally strong, self-disciplined, frugal, temperate, and restrained. He sets an example by holding himself to high standards. He insists on his moral authority, commands obedience, and when he doesn't get it, metes out retribution as fairly and justly as he knows how. It is his job to protect and support his family, and he believes that safety comes out of strength. |
| | When liberals talk about "opportunity" and "community" and "fairness" and "empathy" and "caring," they are speaking in terms of a nurturant parent model of the family. |
| | Nurturant parenting proceeds from the understanding that the world is basically a good place. There are evils, sure; but the ones that matter aren't the ones you protect against with guns and armies: |
| | The primal experience behind this model is one of being cared for and cared about, having one's desires for loving interactions met, living as happily as possible, and deriving meaning from one's community and from caring for and about others. |
| | People are realized in and through their "secure attachments": through their positive relationships to others, through their contribution to their community, and through the ways in which they develop their potential and find joy in life. Work is a means toward these ends, and it is through work that these forms of meaning are realized. All of this requires strength and self-discipline, which are fostered by the constant support of, and attachment to, those who love and care about you. |
| | Protection is a form of caring, and protection from external dangers takes up a significant part of the nurturant parent's attention. The world is filled with evils that can harm a child, and it is the nurturant parent's duty to be ward them off. Crime and drugs are, of course, significant, but so are less obvious dangers: cigarettes, cars without seat belts, dangerous toys, inflammable clothing, pollution, asbestos, lead paint, pesticides in food, diseases, unscrupulous businessmen, and so on. Protection of innocent and helpless children from such evils is a major part of a nurturant parent's job. |
| | When George wrote Moral Politics eight years ago, he said that conservatives are much more clear about the degree to which their politics derives from a model of the family. Liberals resist believing the same thing. |
| | Here's the challenge to democrats: if you don't like leveraging your family model (George says you don't have much choice in the matter, since it's all mostly unconscious anyway), find another that has a rich vocabulary. |
| | And good luck. You'll need it. |
| | Bonus Link (also required reading): George Lakoff on the First Gulf War. Scroll down to the "Fairy Tale of the Just War." It's an Explain-O-Matic for the Bush Administration's obsession with convenient villians rather than the inconvenient conditions that fostered them. |
| | [Later...] I just got an email from a blogging friend who recalled for me why I dislike ideologues from both parties: they treat us like children. On one side they restrict individual rights to protect the country's household. On the other side they legislate fairness by regulating the crap out of everything. |
| | Almost speaking of which, here's a good Ed Cone editorial about John Edwards. There's a smart and tough and kind-hearted middle ground to a lot of issues, and Ed does an outstanding job of articulating it. Also notice how he nails Edwards for ignoring weblogging and the grass roots mojo that blogs are giving Howard Dean. |
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