"Conservatives" definitely are not conserving our country's founding values; witness the recent murder of the habeas corpus writ and the radical curtailment of civil liberties in the name of (false) security. Would American "conservatives" support a president who is a dictator in all but name?
The Right have forfeited the rights to use "conservative" as a label, just as they so tainted the word `liberal' that the left now uses `progressive' to describe itself.
They have also forfeited the rights to use "Republican", since a republic uses representative government. What we have under the so-called Republican Party today is much closer to an empire or even a dictatorship.
So then if we who want to move forward are Progressive, what do we call those who want to take things back? To move backwards is to regress. Those who advocate regression are regressive. The opposite of a Progressive is not a Republican, Conservative, Libertarian or other. It is a Regressive.
How do Progressives and Regressives differ? George Lakoff has put forth a useful analysis of political behavior based on two family models (the book Don't Think of An Elephant, and other works). His metaphor for the formerly "conservative" Regressive value system is that of a family ruled by the strict or stern father as opposed to a "nurturing parent" metaphor for Progressive values.
Strict Father in a Bad World
The strict father model assumes that the world is dangerous, evil, and difficult because it is competitive. Thus the family needs a strong strict father who can protect them from it, support them in it and teach his children right from wrong. Children are inherently bad and have to be punished to force them to be good and obedient. Punishment instills internal restraint, which later becomes self-discipline. "Do-gooders" are meddlers who disrupt the proper workings of the system and must be prohibited. The economy must be free-market, with no government intervention on behalf of the weak and less fortunate. They are that way because they lack discipline. Only through punishment and discipline can people achieve morality and only through discipline combined with pursuit of self-interest can people and the nation prosper.
(Note - this worldview does not prohibit government intervention on behalf of the wealthy. They have earned their place and it is not wrong to assist them. Which is one of the reasons we are here now.)
God is the ideal Strict Father, using punishment and fear to instill moral discipline.
Fear of Being Hurt
The strict father worldview of the world is based on fear of being hurt or having loved ones harmed (which is just another way to hurt someone). The hurt person steps back, regresses. They can't trust or hope. They fear the natural world, human nature, women, and the nature of children. They fear freedom for others, since that means the others are free to wreak harm. They turn to control to alleviate fear and emphasize submission and obedience. Women become chattels, housewives, dumb blondes and walking vaginas. Children are possessions to be manipulated at will or wild young animals that must be beaten and harangued to become civilized.
Control becomes authoritarianism and eventually tyranny. Mastery and obedience becomes hierarchy and license to abuse. Dominance becomes dictatorship.
(Such a climate encourages the sexual dominance and abuse of children, as another diarist has mentioned. Hence such scandals as Foleygate.)
Regressives want to move BACK in terms of social history.
To a time when strong wealthy men ruled by force, God was the all-powerful Father, everyone knew their place and didn't challenge it, kings had a divine right to rule, most women had little control of their lives and in some circles were not even thought to have souls.
To a time when authority was not challenged, the under-classes were grateful for what they got, a man was wealthy because he deserved to be and the poor were either lazy or intrinsically unfit.
Regressives want to undo many of the major strides, such as extending the vote to minorities and women, giving workers power through collective bargaining and banning child labor in factories. They would prefer that the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Liberation, "alternative culture", student protest and the environmental movement had never happened.
They want to go back to coat-hanger self-abortions by ashamed and desperate women.
Regressives want to, and have, reinstated violence as the major means of policy. They would prefer to retreat to the Cold War era of threats, brinkmanship and crisis. Since war and preparation for war spurs a free market, Regressives want enemies and if there are none, Regressives create them.
Regressives believe that the world has always been divided into haves and have-nots. There is not enough to go around, so if the have-nots try to take what they need, the haves are justified in killing or suppressing them. Not all can survive, so the ones who do must be the haves, namely us.
There is no room for negotiation or compromise, for this is not the way of strong men, only weaklings and wimps. For them, Martin Luther King and Gandhi were at worst, meddlers and at best impractical dreamers.
For Regressives, nature is theirs to be twisted to their will and there are no limits. God the Father has given them dominion over the earth and its abundance, even to the point of destroying the lives we share the planet with and its ability to sustain of our own kind.
Fear As the Motivator
These are the thoughts and values of someone who has been harmed by the world and reacts to it with fear. Early on in social history such an attitude was justified and helped people and their families survive. If you didn't fight and control the bad guys and the wild animals, you and your family wouldn't make it. If you didn't force your kids to work, to learn and to know their place, they wouldn't make it.
Fear was the motivating force, passed down through generations. As your father feared his father, so you feared yours. You feared the Church, the Black Death, the Devil and your overlord.
Yes, fear and coercion worked and still does, but at a terrible cost of suffering, wasted and barren lives, murdered dreams, blood and death.
The modern world holds more possibilities than the bleak Regressive view allows. Growths, development, knowledge, accumulation of wealth (by whatever means, to be sure), have brought us to the point where fear need not be the main emotion driving our acts and relationships.
Nurturing Parents in a Promising World
The modern world has given birth to the more optimistic and humanistic Progressive view. Progressives use a different family model, that of the "nurturant parent". To paraphrase Lakeoff again:
The nurturant parent worldview is gender-neutral, both parents are equal partners, children are born good and can be helped to be better. The world can be made better and our task is to do so. Parents must nurture their children and raise them to nurture others. Nurturance means empathy and responsibility, and requires strength and competence.
From those basics, Lakoff constructs the Progressive values of freedom, opportunity, prosperity, fairness, honest communication, community-building, service to community and co-operation. These require trust, honesty and open two-way communication. In addition, in order to teach your child to be happy and fulfilled, you need to be the same and it is your moral duty to seek self-fulfillment.
These are nurturant values and thus Progressive. All Progressives share these basic values, which should, Lakoff says, draw all Progressives together despite differences in emphasis or methodology.
Progressives, as the name implies, want to move FORWARD in social history.
Trust and Hope Replace Fear
Caring and nurturing are direct opposites of fearing and suppressing. They take trust and hope rather than fear. Fear remembers the evils of the past; trust and hope look to the future. They also work in the present to help build the future.
That work for the future also implies that resources can be increased so that all can share them.
People who can care and nurture are not wounded by past harm, or if they are, they have managed to overcome the effects. They are not ruled by fear and the overwhelming need to control. They can also see the damage that a fear-centered world-view has done and can envision alternatives. Negotiation instead of war. Education and exploration instead of indoctrination. Co-operation and assistance rather than exploitation. Freedom rather than suppression.
It should be pointed out as well that this dichotomy refers to world-views, not individuals. As Lakoff himself has said, an individual may adopt one or the other view in various spheres of life. He or she may be a nurturant parent to their own children, yet adopt the strict father view towards criminals.
The Frame
So the frame is:
Progressive - trust-centered. Wants to move FORWARD in the timeline of social history
Regressive - fear-centered. Wants to move BACK in the timeline of social history.
Define Them in OUR Frame
The idea in developing this terminology is to define the opposition in OUR frame rather than theirs. Also to replace misleading labels such as "Conservative" or "Republican".
In addition, one hopes to bring a little less rage to political discussions by not using the inventive but provocative terms such as "Republithugs" and the "Wrong-wing" etc. that have cropped up in dKos and other blogs. (I recognize that most of these are a product of justified long-term anger and frustration and can accept them as such, but insults won't work over the long-term.)
Fear into Hope
It also encourages the idea that by showing an individual with a fear-centered view what trust and nurturing can do, they might be won over to a hope-centered one. Fear, coercion and violence can never accomplish the task of making an enemy into a friend. And that, in the long run, is what we, on this embattled earth, need to do in order to survive.
(Perhaps even the word "Regressive" is still too confrontational, but I have chosen it as a structural opposite to "Progressive.")
Dinaelurus illumina
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