The other night I watched Scarborough knock out Bernstein in under one round.
Carl was doing great: good footwork, landing punches, nothing cocky. All of the sudden, Joe's right hook came outta nowhere: "Ya' see, this is why Dems lose. When the majority of voters have Middle America values (
POW! Carl's teeth go flying)--they just don't get what's being thrown at 'em by a bunch of bi-coastal elites."
Get up, Champ! Shake it off! Hit back!! Uh...Champ? But it was too late. Carl was out cold. Broken jaw. Moral TKO in round one.
Red State values? Middle America mindset? East Coast Elitism? While Dems search in vain for a morality counterpunch--while we anxiously rifle through old boxes filled with the causes we champion--the GOP floors us by forcing everyone to talk about morality is if it were a map.
And yet, in
Don't Think of an Elephant, Lakoff says the key to controling political debates is to speak from our moral perspective at all times. How
do we speak from our moral perspective without getting clocked by that right hook?
For starters, we need to throw out that map and start solving puzzles.
The Morality Map
The metaphor of morality as a map is one of the most effective GOP frames controlling political debate, today. It works. Period. We can't beat it. We can't change it. For now, all we can do is stop using it.
Ah, but it's hard to give it up.
Just the other day Zel Miller lashed out at Maureen Dowd, saying she was a "highbrow hussy from New York" and that the more she wrote the "redder these states get." Maureen replied: "I'm a highbrow hussy from Washington."
We all still love Maureen. But the problem isn't solved by correcting Miller's moral geography, or by making light of it.
Miller unfolded the morality map, and Dowd jumped right up to help him use it.
The morality map has been in print for a while, but it's been a best seller since Gore v. Bush 2000. In the past few months, the whole country has taken their map out and left it unfolded on the kitchen table. Some people have posted theirs in the bedroom. My parents have a TV in just about every room of their house, so they have a morality map in every room, too.
We know this map is wrong, but since last Wednesday morning, Dems have embraced it. Responding to moral geography by speaking terms of the map is still using the map. Redrawing the map in a thousand variations to complicate the red-state:blue-state divide--is still using the map.
When we talk about the map we advancing the GOP frame for talking about values. It doesn't even matter anymore if we talk actual issues. The map has become the super metaphor that keeps the whole GOP morality frame in play.
Throw out that morality map you have in your house, and the one your car, too. Throw them in the dumpster. Toss them out the window. No more morality maps.
The Puzzle of Positions
According to Lakoff, the best way to understand our moral perspective is to think about how various groupings of political positions on issues can seem illogical and puzzling.
Here are some common conservative and progressive puzzles--seemingly contradictory political positions whose logical relationship makes no sense to the opposition:
- Liberal Puzzle: Conservative "Right-to-Life" advocates also tend to be in favor of capital punishment (huh?)
- Conservative Puzzle: Liberal "child welfare" advocates also tend to support the right to murder unborn children (whuh?)
The starting point for understanding the progressive moral perspective--and by contrast, the moral perspective of conservatives--is to solve these puzzles, to figure out what these positions have to do with each other.
No simple map with two colors will provide the answer to these puzzles. Instead, we need to think bigger and more basic at the same time. We need to think of a fundamental logic, a worldview that frames all the political stands of the two dominant political ideologies in our current system.
Ultimately, the goal of Lakoff's work on the language of American politics is to describe conservative and progressive worldviews (e.g., their moral perspectives) with enough detail to help us make sense of these puzzles.
Now, Lakoff's goal is not to provide the ultimate answer to what makes us think and act. He is not arguing what is right or wrong. Instead, he is providing a model that explains these three things, and these three things only:
- Why certain political positions go together
- Why the puzzles for conservatives are not the puzzles for progressives and vice-versa
- Why people use particular words in political debate
Warning: To consider the full ramifications of Lakoff's model, we must trust him when he tells us that there are real, on the ground, political gains to be had if we first--only for a moment--allow our political feet leave the ground. His model of two worldviews and their subsequent moral perspectives is abstract, and that may make us impatient. Trust him for today. We will land back down, tomorrow, but we first need to listen to what he says.
Two Worldviews, Two Moral Perspectives
Lakoff's description of Conservative and Liberal worldviews is organized around a very simple idea: The Family. Keep in mind, this is just one way to describe what's in people's heads that motivating their words and actions in political debate, but it's a good description worth considering.
The Conservative worldview is centered on a "Strict Father" model of the family, which posits a traditional nuclear family, with the father having primary responsibility for supporting and protecting the family, and the authority to set policy, impose strict rules, and enforce them. Children must respect and obey their parents, whereby they build character. The principle goal is to raise children that are self-reliant in a dangerous world.
The Liberal worldview is centered on a "Nurturing Parent model of the family, which posits an empathetic and nurturing parent (male or female) who teaches children respect and caring for others--both in and out of the family. Children are obedient because nurturing parents' teach respect, care and even the questioning of their authority. The principle goal is for children to be happy and fulfilled in thier lives.
Each model gives rise to a particular morality.
In Strict Father morality, the highest priorities are moral strength, respect for authority and strict behavioral norms, and insuring that the pursuit of self-interes is always maximized.
In Nurturent Parent morality, the highest priorities are empathy for others, taking care of oneself, nurturing social ties, and helping those who need help.
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I don't agree with everything in Lakoff's two models. But the power of his argument lies less in their being 100% correct, then in the way they help us radically change our approach to talking about morality and values in political debate.
We are not consciously aware of these models and we are not actively using these models in our lives to make moral choices. They are descriptions that help us make sense of what conservatives are saying, why we respond the way we do. They are descriptions of conservative and liberal morality, not prescriptions of a list of conservative and liberal.
Are they useful? You bet they are.
Try this puzzle: If the GOP just won the election, why are they so combative all of the sudden, and why are Dems the only ones who notice this?
The Strict Father model suggests that what we are witnessing is not just angry conservatives. Rather, people like Bill Maher, Carl Berstein, and Maureen Dowd are being punished by the conservatives for being disobedient, and we are being punished through them.
Each time Scarborough scolds a liberal on TV, he is doing two things. He is reinfocing the message that morality is a map, and he is invoking the frame of the Strong Father family, a moral system where children are taught to respect not question authority, where to question the father is to endanger the lives of children who the father is preparing to protect themselves in a dangerous world.
As for Dems--we respond by accepting the frame of morality as a map, and invoking the morality of the Nurturing Parent family, a value system where children are taught to help those who can't help themselves, and that the world is better when we use our strength to teach respect.
Strict Father in the White House
In a country where we imagine the nation through the metaphor of the family, the victory of the GOP is the victory of Strong Father morality. So if we hear George Bush speaking in the language of nurturing and caring--of reaching out to allies and extending his hand across the aisle--you can bet he's doing this just to make Dems feel warm inside.
In reality, according to Lakoff, we all have both of these models in our heads, and there are very few situations were we think exclusively through one moral perspective. But we use the language made available to us, and if that language invokes one model over another, than we leave ourselves open to a knockout blow.
But those days of lying face down on the mat next to a pile of our own teeth are coming to a close. Once we've tossed out that morality map, once we start listening for the logic of Strong Father morality and understand the logic of our own nurturing positions--then we won't just be hitting back. We will be anticipating each GOP punch.
