Heard it on NPR: How liberals and conservatives think

Fascinating host on Talk of the Nation today. George Lakoff, author of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think" talked about the differing worldviews of the right and the left. Lakoff is a Professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley (all my favorite people are linguists ). There's a link at the bottom so you can hear the conversation in RealAudio, but here's the gist of Lakoff's paradigm:


A family metaphor is used to describe how each side, liberal and conservative, sees our nation.

Two different paradigms:

1. Strict Father Family - Assumptions: the world is a dangerous and difficult place, there will always be winners and losers, there's competition, children are born bad (i.e. want to do only what they want to do and not what is right) and they need to be made good. You need a strict "father" (e.g. G.W. Bush) who will protect "the family", win competitions, and teach children what is right and wrong with punishment, physical or withdawl of affection.

Assumed Result: "children" will develop discipline through punishment. Moral discipline will allow them to make their way in the world, seek their self-interest, become self-reliant and prosperous. Morality=Prosperity. If you're not prosperous, you're not disciplined, and if you're not disciplined you're probably not moral - so you deserve not to be prosperous. You deserve your poverty. The result is that you go against social programs because they give people something they haven't earned and it causes even more dependence and less discipline - you hurt the people you try to help. That's the conservative argument.

2. Nurturing Parent Family - Liberal way to raise a family. Assumptions: Both parents are necessary and equal. Their job is to nurture their children and raise their children to be nurturers of others. Nurturing teaches empahty (how to connect to your children's needs) and responsibility (you have to be able to take care of yourself to care for others and be responsible for others).

Progressive moral system: All progressive principles follow from empathy and responsibility (e.g. empathizing with your child makes you want to protect your child, thus political values of worker protection, consumer protection, environmental protection. You want your child to be fulfilled in life - fulfillment become an important value which cannot come without freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Fairness is also an important value for fulfillment. There's no freedom without opportunity and no opportunity without prosperity so opportunity and prosperity are important progressive values. "It takes a village" - Community building, community maintenance and community service are important progressive values. Cooperation, trust, honesty and open communication.

Other points:

•Most thought processes are unconscious. Cognitive science teaches that people think metaphorically first, then in conceptual frames (bundles of ideas about one thing). Using the conservative notion of "tax relief", the word "relief" is part of a conceptual frame that includes the idea of an "afflction". The tax is an "affliction" that needs "relief". The person that brings "relief" is a hero (i.e. the good guy) and anyone who tries to stop the relief is part of the "affliction" (i.e. the bad guy). That is a conservative idea.

• Each of these seemingly competing philosophies are internally consistent and define common sense to their respective paradigm. This is physically structured in your brain - you cannot change it. But everyone has both tendencies either passively (for understanding) or actively (for living). Most people have both tendencies in different parts of their lives.

• Liberals and conservatives use unique language that reflects their morality paradigm. e.g. Zell Miller's use of the phrase, "Spine of tempered steel, " to describe Bush reflects the "Strict Father" paradigm which requires that a leader be morally strong internally and that character is defined by internal strength. The opposite of "Spine of Tempered Steel" is "flip flopper" - an insult from somebody with a "Strict Father" paradigm. Conservative character is defined by internal moral strength and progressive character is defined by caring and responsibility.

Listen for yourself @ Talk Of The Nation (Tuesday, Oct 12th)