The Unwelcome Conversation PI Destroys the Socialist Fallacies of Berkeley Professor George Lakoff PI Symposium + Rebuttal
M. Harrison: George Lakoff is a UC Berkeley linguist who believes he knows the reason why Democrats have been losing elections as of late. This reason, as he astutely realizes, is that the American liberals are not controlling the political conversation. That is to say, they are not getting the American people to talk about the things they want to talk about - and the conservatives are. Beyond that, however, he is mostly full of logical fallacies and socialist sophistries. So we decided to drop in on his conversation with the UC Berkeley News to set him straight.
Berkeley News: How does language influence the terms of political debate?
G. Lakoff: Language always comes with what is called "framing." Every word is defined relative to a conceptual framework. If you have something like "revolt," that implies a population that is being ruled unfairly, or assumes it is being ruled unfairly, and that they are throwing off their rulers, which would be considered a good thing. That's a frame.
If you then add the word "voter" in front of "revolt," you get a metaphorical meaning saying that the voters are the oppressed people, the governor is the oppressive ruler, that they have ousted him and this is a good thing and all things are good now. All of that comes up when you see a headline like "voter revolt" — something that most people read and never notice. But these things can be affected by reporters and very often, by the campaign people themselves.
MH: This is the beginning and end of the factual part of the discussion.
BN: Why haven't progressives [been able to successfully control framing, as opposed to conservatives]?
GL: There's a systematic reason for that. You can see it in the way that conservative foundations and progressive foundations work. Conservative foundations give large block grants year after year to their think tanks. They say, 'Here's several million dollars, do what you need to do.' And basically, they build infrastructure, they build TV studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot of books to get them on the best-seller lists, hire research assistants for their intellectuals so they do well on TV, and hire agents to put them on TV. They do all of that. Why? Because the conservative moral system, which I analyzed in "Moral Politics," has as its highest value preserving and defending the "strict father" system itself. And that means building infrastructure. As businessmen, they know how to do this very well.
Meanwhile, liberals' conceptual system of the "nurturant parent" has as its highest value helping individuals who need help. The progressive foundations and donors give their money to a variety of grassroots organizations. They say, 'We're giving you $25,000, but don't waste a penny of it. Make sure it all goes to the cause, don't use it for administration, communication, infrastructure, or career development.' So there's actually a structural reason built into the worldviews that explains why conservatives have done better.
BN: Back up for a second and explain what you mean by the strict father and nurturant parent frameworks.
GL: Well, the progressive worldview is modeled on a nurturant parent family. Briefly, it assumes that the world is basically good and can be made better and that one must work toward that. Children are born good; parents can make them better.”
J. Hartfield: No one is born “good.” No one is born “bad.” We are just born. Genetics, society, and upbringing all play in a role in determining the general disposition of an individual. To say that Hitler was born “bad” would be a fallacy. Hitler was born and he committed atrocities that society would later deem inappropriate. However, at the time there were millions of German citizens who cheerfully accepted his ideas and considered his policies not just “good” but morally superior to all other policies before him. Were the millions of German soldiers and citizens born “bad”? Or were they just born and had their identities shaped by a powerfully charismatic man who seemed to have ready access to the solutions for the societal ills which plagued early 20th century Germany?
Similarly, the world has no predefined moral value attached to it. It is whatever the beholder wills it to be. Consider this example: Person A believes that the human animal is weak and frail and needs governmental protection in order to survive. Person B believes that the human animal is strong-willed and robust and believes the best government is one that interferes the least with their true nature as a human. They are both right. All Person A requires is a change in perspective, not a change in the fundamental truths of human nature.
Dr. Lakoff assigns the word “nurtuant” to his value system and “strict” to the opposing system. Great example of framing, Dr. Lakoff! In fact, Dr. Lakoff’s arguments are nothing new, they are just old socialist ideas repackaged and made more palatable to the American audience. I don’t believe he would deny this. Hell, even the word “progressive” is a frame targeted at a decidedly American audience. But, like Shakespeare once said, “a dog turd called by any other name is still a piece of shit.” Or something very similar.
BN: Nurturing involves empathy, and the responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom we are responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies follow, such as governmental protection in form of a social safety net and government regulation, universal education (to ensure competence, fairness), civil liberties and equal treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability (derived from trust), public service (from responsibility), open government (from open communication), and the promotion of an economy that benefits all and functions to promote these values, which are traditional progressive values in American politics.
JH: Not all humans are born with identical abilities. Each of us have particular strengths and weaknesses that are predetermined by our genetics. This is what makes the world such an interesting place. Perfection is boring. Why try to force equality when it is our very nature to contrast? Why force fairness when it is clearly not beneficial to the market and society? Equal treatment and freedom are not, and should not, be homologous terms. On the contrary, true freedom means the ability to discriminate by whatever means one so chooses. So in a sense, forcing fairness is just another way of saying accepting mediocrity.
On a not-at-all tangentially related note, did anyone else notice that the words “traditional progressive” are antonyms and make absolutely no sense paired together in that sentence? Look Ma, its “framing” in action again! What a powerful literary device, indeed. He almost tricked me into becoming a socialist.
GL: The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline — physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once grown, the self-reliant, disciplined children are on their own.
JH: The strict father is not the “moral authority.” The “moral authority” is a figment of the imagination and absolute fiction. In the US, citizens are free to determine their own moral codes. Libertarians (unlike some conservatives) believe that morals and ethics should be an individual's preference rather than a government mandate. What meaning do morals have when they are dictated to the country? What meaning is there to life when an individual must adopt the moral standard (which doesn’t exist but bear with me) of their father?
Apparently to ‘progressives,’ discipline is a dirty word. How unfortunate. Growing up and not being dependent on the welfare of the state is apparently also sheer evil. Interestingly, in my own personal experience, my father was extremely strict but never once did he inflict physical punishment to teach me a life lesson. Through kinder-cuddlier foresight humans can learn to avoid the mistakes of their fathers had to learn through painful experience. The “good” people are not the disciplined people - only the smart ones.
GL: So, project this onto the nation and you see that to the right wing, the good citizens are the disciplined ones — those who have already become wealthy or at least self-reliant — and those who are on the way. Social programs, meanwhile, "spoil" people by giving them things they haven't earned and keeping them dependent. The government is there only to protect the nation, maintain order, administer justice (punishment), and to provide for the promotion and orderly conduct of business. In this way, disciplined people become self-reliant. Wealth is a measure of discipline. Taxes beyond the minimum needed for such government take away from the good, disciplined people rewards that they have earned and spend it on those who have not earned it.
JH: I agree 100%.
MH: To any extent Mr. Lakoff's pseudo-Freudian claptrap is true, it shows how liberals and conservatives are incomplete influences, and identification with either exclusively is analogous to a single-parent upbringing. The libertarians, by contrast, get the lesson of self-reliance from Daddy Rightwing and temper it with Mommy Leftwing’s lessons of humanitarianism, but without inhibiting the most important engine of growth and development. That's a healthy family.
BN: You've written a lot about "tax relief" as a frame. How does it work?
GL: The phrase "Tax relief" began coming out of the White House starting on the very day of Bush's inauguration. It got picked up by the newspapers as if it were a neutral term, which it is not. First, you have the frame for "relief." For there to be relief, there has to be an affliction, an afflicted party, somebody who administers the relief, and an act in which you are relieved of the affliction. The reliever is the hero, and anybody who tries to stop them is the bad guy intent on keeping the affliction going. So, add "tax" to "relief" and you get a metaphor that taxation is an affliction, and anybody against relieving this affliction is a villain.
BN: So what should they be calling it?
GL: It's not just about what you call it, if it's the same "it." There's actually a whole other way to think about it. Taxes are what you pay to be an American, to live in a civilized society that is democratic and offers opportunity, and where there's an infrastructure that has been paid for by previous taxpayers. This is a huge infrastructure. The highway system, the Internet, the TV system, the public education system, the power grid, the system for training scientists — vast amounts of infrastructure that we all use, which has to be maintained and paid for. Taxes are your dues — you pay your dues to be an American. In addition, the wealthiest Americans use that infrastructure more than anyone else, and they use parts of it that other people don't. The federal justice system, for example, is nine-tenths devoted to corporate law. The Securities and Exchange Commission and all the apparatus of the Commerce Department are mainly used by the wealthy. And we're all paying for it.
MH: So what? Who likes dues? Who likes paying dues? Why do you think people search for low interest rates on mortgages and lease deals on cars? People know they need to pay for things, but they want to do do so as efficiently as possible to maximize gains and minimize personal expenditure. Socialists will win elections by publicly raising America Dues as soon as car dealerships will start making money by publicly raising interest rates. Ever heard of the law of demand, genius?
BN: So taxes could be framed as an issue of patriotism.
GL: It is an issue of patriotism! Are you paying your dues, or are you trying to get something for free at the expense of your country? It's about being a member. People pay a membership fee to join a country club, for which they get to use the swimming pool and the golf course. But they didn't pay for them in their membership. They were built and paid for by other people and by this collectivity. It's the same thing with our country — the country as country club, being a member of a remarkable nation. But what would it take to make the discussion about that? Every Democratic senator and all of their aides and every candidate would have to learn how to talk about it that way. There would have to be a manual. Republicans have one. They have a guy named Frank Luntz, who puts out a 500-page manual every year that goes issue by issue on what the logic of the position is from the Republican side, what the other guys' logic is, how to attack it, and what language to use.
MH: " Are you paying your dues?" Unless these voters you’re courting are evading the federal income tax, they are paying their dues. The only people who are getting something “for free” are illegal immigrants and tax-evading billionaires, and not the tax-paying majority (who pay lower tax rates thanks to our framing). Tax cuts don't work with your "paying dues" fantasy, simply because tax cuts still make people pay their "dues". They don't get something for nothing. They just get more for less - which has always, and will always be the American way, and thus will always be why tax cuts are politically popular in America.
By the way, watch that country club analogy before you find yourself supporting assimilation of immigrants by the logical extension of your own analogies. If America is a country club, then we can pick who we want to join, right?
BN: Are "progressive" and "liberal" different, or is Rockridge trying to sidestep the conservatives' successfully having framed "liberal" as pejorative?
GL: Well, there is some of that, but both terms are kind of mushy and vague. After World War II and the Vietnam War, "liberal" came to mean someone who supports [Franklin Delano Roosevelt's] New Deal, and a strong military and foreign policy.
MH: Yeah, because you guys stole the moniker from the free-market, civil libertarians of the 19th century and used it to disingenuously re-label socialism so that FDR could sell it to the American public.
GL: The term "progressive" originated from people who were Democratic Socialists, but the socialism aspect has dropped away, and it's come to mean what I call "nurturant morality." It includes choosing peace whenever possible, environmentalism, civil liberties, minority rights, notions like social justice through living wages, et cetera. "Progressive" has been chosen, in part, to contrast in a forward-looking way with "conservative" — for example, as when Podesta chose the name "The Center for American Progress" for his new think tank.
MH: Socialism has dropped away from progressives? Socialism is the entire economic platform of progressives, sir.
Plus, “Choosing peace whenever possible” is no different than George W. Bush’s military philosophy - he just happens to view appeasement impossible - with good reasons. If you think that’s framing anything differently, you’re deluding yourself.
“Minority rights” are another one. There’s no one running for office in America stumping with speeches calling for a recision of minority rights. You just happen to think there are more things to call minority rights than do conservatives, but you’re still not framing anything helpfully.
And “Social justice through living wages”, by the way, would pass for an effective socialist campaign slogan in nearly any country in the world, a reality which has eluded the latte-fueled philosophizing of Dr. George Lakoff, who still passes off the canard that socialism has been "dropped" from progressive policies.
Hey, friend. I’ll give you the number one reason why you leftists are losing the framing battle. Because the original frame you picked, your name, has backfired. You call yourself progressives but your policy ideas come from the Bolsheviks. Take a gander at history. People scaled walls to escape the implementation of your “progressive” ideas. Tough to reframe that reality, even with your lattes and slick think tanks.
GL: Also, within traditional liberalism you have a history of rational thought that was born out of the Enlightenment: all meanings should be literal, and everything should follow logically. So if you just tell people the facts, that should be enough — the truth shall set you free. All people are fully rational, so if you tell them the truth, they should reach the right conclusions. That, of course, has been a disaster.
MH: Two points.
First, the traditional liberalism of which you speak is the true liberalism, i.e. libertarianism, not the post-New Deal liberalism. By the way, why don’t you international-consensus-happy Leftists observe the dictional conventions of every other country in the world, where Leftists are proud to call themselves socialists and happily rip on “liberalism”, which, as the derivative “liberalization,” implies free-markets, of all things?
Second, the proof that the romantic Enlightenment mindset is nothing like your political philosophy is that you don’t think people are rational. You don’t think they’re rational consumers, you think they must be told how to spend their money (or have their money spent for them), you don’t think they can raise their children, you think a federal structure must operate in loco parentis, and the list goes on.
BN: Meaning, for example, that if you tell people that the tax cuts are overwhelmingly benefiting the richest 1 percent of Americans at the expense of a balanced budget, liberals think people will naturally revolt against the measure.
GL: Exactly. It never works. And liberals don't know why. They don't understand that there's another frame involved. Here's another example: I've been working with a lot of nongovernmental organizations and advocacy groups of various kinds, including an environmental health group researching what they called the "body burden."
MH: Wrong answer, fella. Why that argument doesn’t work is because you’re talking about two entirely separate issues - tax cuts and balanced budgets. You can cut taxes and adjust the budget accordingly, and a Republican inability to do so merely proves them to be fiscally irresponsible. But the potential for tax cuts to be implemented by fiscal ignoramuses in Washington isn’t an argument against tax cuts - it's an argument against Republicans.
BN: But is this a failure of framing, or a failure of infrastructure, as in no public relations team, no properly prepared talk-show guests on staff?
GL: It's a failure of the whole thing: not taking communication seriously and not taking conceptualization seriously. Anyway, they came back to me a couple of months later and asked how they should run a campaign on it. I said, "It's very simple. You call your campaign Be Poison-Free."
Why use the word "poison"? Because the framing of poison has a poisoner. It makes you look at who is doing the poisoning. Everyone knows what poison is — it kills you. Everybody knows that. Now of course you then have to run a serious campaign and have the money to do that and have the public relations support, which is harder, but the first step is understanding how to frame it.
MH: This is called demagogy. This is the type of framing that gets fascists popular. It is also antithetical to those aforementioned classical Enlightenment ideas of logic and reason. If you have to scare people into thinking like you, your ideas are weak.
No wonder - your ideas are weak.
JH: When I read this article I was left with an abundant amount of questions, most of which I’ve included above. Some questions, I’m afraid, may never be answered. Like how can Mr. Lakoff enjoy his double mocha-latte so immensely, when it is clearly a symbol of Western capitalistic imperialism? Or how can he renounce capitalism when it is the sale of his books that has allowed him to lead a life of comfort and gentle contemplation in his beautiful northern California estate?
The above work is the opinion of the authors, and not necessarily that of the Prometheus Institute.
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