Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don't [Hardcover]

George Lakoff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1996

Moral Politics takes a fresh look at how we think and talk about political and moral ideas. George Lakoff analyzed recent political discussion to find that the family—especially the ideal family—is the most powerful metaphor in politics today. Revealing how family-based moral values determine views on diverse issues as crime, gun control, taxation, social programs, and the environment, George Lakoff looks at how conservatives and liberals link morality to politics through the concept of family and how these ideals diverge. Arguing that conservatives have exploited the connection between morality, the family, and politics, while liberals have failed to recognized it, Lakoff explains why conservative moral position has not been effectively challenged. A wake up call to political pundits on both the left and the right, this work redefines how Americans think and talk about politics.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this book, Lakoff, a professor of linguistics and cognitive science at UC-Berkeley and author of Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, examines the "unconscious system of concepts" underlying American political discourse. Basing his contention on a rhetorical analysis of that discourse, Lakoff argues that what conservatives know that liberals don't is that American politics is about family values. He observes that conservatives and liberals have very different notions of what constitutes an ideal family: while conservatives gravitate to the "Strict Father" model, wherein a strict, patriarchal structure is meant to foster responsibility in children, liberals favor the "Nurturant Parent" scenario, which prefers open, caring family interaction. Conservatives, Lakoff contends, have developed their own partisan moral-political concepts and language-a metaphor-based discourse that harkens to the conservative family model-while liberals have failed to do so. This is a failing Lakoff adduces to liberalism's Enlightenment tradition. In order to counter conservatives, he writes, liberals "must get over their view that all thought is literal and that straightforward rational literal debate on an issue is always possible." In the final, most interesting chapters of the book, Lakoff argues that liberalism is empirically superior to conservatism, offering proof in the form of childrearing studies and other research. Moral Politics is written in a dry, academic style, but it offers an intelligent take on the way politics is conducted in America.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A study, part academic and part popular, of the differences in moral conceptual systems that underlie the conservative-liberal debate. If your baby cries at night, do you pick him up? The answer to that question, suggests cognitive scientist Lakoff (Univ. of Calif., Berkeley), is the single best indicator of liberal or conservative values. Driven by curiosity about how liberals and conservatives can ``seem to be talking about the same things and yet reach opposite conclusions'' and why conservatives ``like to talk about discipline and toughness, while liberals like to talk about need and help,'' Lakoff sets out to discover where the difference lies in the two moral visions. He finds it in models of the family and of family-based values: Conservatives favor the ``Strict Father'' model, while liberals conceive of the family as a ``Nurturant Parent.'' That difference, Lakoff argues, yields systems of logic so disparate that liberals and conservatives cannot even begin to understand their opponents' reasoning on issues like abortion, welfare, capital punishment, and gay rights. That much is, on the surface, reasonable enough. Lakoff's argument steers onto more controversial ground, however, when he suggests that ``conservatives have a deeper insight into their worldview than liberals have into theirs,'' inasmuch as conservatives talk constantly of family values whereas liberals shy from discussions of hearth-and-home morality. The ``new understanding of American politics'' that he proposes, not surprisingly, favors conservative values. Lakoff concludes with the observation that ``public political discourse is so impoverished at present that it cannot accommodate'' discussions of matters like family-based moralities- -unless, that is, liberals and conservatives begin to develop a ``meta-language'' that will enable them to speak of such things. That conservatives and liberals see the world differently comes as no news to most, but Lakoff's look into just why that should be so makes for interesting reading. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 421 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; First Printing edition (May 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226467961
• ISBN-13: 978-0226467962
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,211,198 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An original and thought-provoking treatment., July 22, 1998

By 

Steven Yates "free your mind" (Greenville, South Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don't (Paperback)

In this book George Lakoff applies insights from contemporary cognitive science and the study of metaphor in an effort to explain why conservatives and liberals think as they do, why their positions on certain issues seem inconsistent with their positions on other issues, and why debates between the two always seem to generate more heat than light. According to Lakoff, liberalism and conservatism presuppose incompatible worldviews proceeding from conflicting moral premises about the family and childrearing--transferred to the political realm via a metaphor which leads advocates of each to see the nation as akin to a family and its government as akin to a parent.

The conservative worldview proceeds from a Strict Father conception of the family, one with the father at the head of the household, the mother subservient in a hierarchy, and the children expected to obey authority without question. The liberal worldview presupposes a Nurturing Parent model which sees parents as equals and their role as nurturers instead of taskmasters. Competing moral beliefs dictate the language of each. Thus the role in conservative writings of terms like independence, personal responsibility, self-reliance, tough love, strength, discipline, and so on; and the role in liberal writings of other terms: compassion, social responsibility, care, helping, sensitivity, social forces, and so on. This further explains conservative and liberal demons, why conservatives despise feminists and homosexuals whose very existence seems to subvert their conception of a morally correct family structure; and why liberals despise Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh as persons who confound their view of nurturer as a proper function of government in a humane society.

Lakoff reaches some provocative conclusions as he applies this conceptual machinery to various issues: abortion, gun-control, capital punishment, affirmative action and the culture wars, and so on. He explains why conservatives oppose abortion but favor capital punishment even though each (on their terms) takes a human life, and why they oppose government spending on welfare but support it for the military. His argument would also account for why liberals favor government intervention to help the poor and minorities but see it as having no right to interfere with a woman's right to choose. He suggests explanations for the many variants on conservative and liberal themes, some of the former focusing on the religion and others mostly ignoring it, with some of the latter focusing on, e.g., women's issues and others focusing elsewhere. (Libertarians, according to Lakoff, are much closer to mainstream conservatives than they think; their moral focus is on keeping government small, but within a Strict Father conception of society.) Lakoff even finds contrasting Strict Father versus Nurturing Parent views of God, leading to interpretations of Christianity other than those of conservative groups such as the Christian Coalition. He observes that Jesus himself did not ignore the poor and destitute. In the end it is wrong and simplistic, however, to dismiss conservatives merely as heartless, self-interested apologists for the rich, and it is equally wrong to dismiss liberals as whining promoters of bureaucracy and large, intrusive government.

Examining the dispute between the two in light of the findings of behavioral science on childrearing and of cognitive science on how the mind operates, Lakoff concludes that current scientific research favors the Nurturing Parent model. Thus he is a committed and unapologetic liberal. He does not, however, claim to have the final word on the subject. His book issues an implicit challenge to conservatives to back up their views on the family and by extension, on society, by producing quality research of their own. Right now, he contends, advocates of Strict Father morality are allowing Christian fundamentalists to set their agenda for the family and for communities. (Libertarians, I had noticed before encountering this book, have little to say about family systems at all.)

I confess to being one of those people who has, until recently at least, operated from a Strict Father perspective of the (more or less) libertarian variety. As such, Lakoff has given me a great deal to think about, and I will never again look at conservatism, liberalism or libertarianism in the same way. Lakoff is thoughtful, intellectually honest about where he stands, and never becomes shrill or strident. When he states an opinion he always has a reason. He even has an explanation for why liberal politics has retreated somewhat in the 1990s, at least at the state and local levels. This is implied in the book's subtitle. Conservatives, Lakoff believes, have greater intuitive insight into the moral structure of their position and how to use it to maximum effect in communities than do liberals. Thus conservatives' highly successful appeals to "family values" which have won them so many state and local elections. Lakoff urges that we create a "metalanguage" for the discussion of political issues which takes into account how conservatives and liberals operate from different moral premises, but sees today's political discourse as so impoverished that he is pessimistic about this happening, at least right now.

I offer only these reservations. The psychologist Abraham Maslow observed that "if your only tool is a hammar, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail." Reductive approaches which use vast, expansive categories as their primary means of explanation are always vulnerable to this sort of danger. Lakoff's tools are cognitive science and his Strict Father / Nurturing Parent dichotomy. This does not really permit him to ask, on their own terms, questions like, Do conservatives (or libertarians) have, at some level, a fundamentally better grasp of economics than liberals? Do they have a better grasp of the conditions under which societies develop, flourish, and then prosper well enough to nurture all their members? After all, the natural order in which the human race invariably finds itself does not nurture us in ways which do not strain the metaphor. We have to nurture ourselves and each other, and even when this is necessary, the indifference of the universe suggests limits to the nurturing model. Finally, can any policies which achieve their goals through coercion succeed? Policies Lakoff would describe as rooted in the Nurturing Parent model have hardly abjured an authoritarianism more easily associated with Strict Father morality, after all, when their advocates could not achieve what they wanted through voluntary means. This might be all the more reason, however, why this model cannot be easily dispensed with.

Be all this as it may, Lakoff has definitely added something interesting and important to the conservative-liberal debate. Liberals will find a new and original source of support for their views in this book. Conservatives and libertarians, on the other hand, will find many of Lakoff's observations acutely uncomfortable. In this writer's view, the latter owe it to themselves to swallow their discomfort, read what Lakoff has to say, and then take up his implicit challenge!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Those liberals!" "Those conservatives!", July 2, 2001

By 

Art Kleiner (Metropolitan New York, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don't (Paperback)

"Those liberals!" "Those conservatives!" How many opportunities for community-building have been hijacked by political debates? And yet, itÕs fascinating how rarely the assumptions underlying political differences come to the surface. Cognitive scientist George Lakoff has built this political book around a reinforcing process: Attitudes about child-raising lead to attitudes about government, which lead to attitudes about child-raising again. Conservatives see morality as a matter of strength and discipline (Lakoff calls it "strict father morality"). Liberals see it as a matter of empathy and protection (Lakoff calls it "nurturant parent morality"). Both groups believe that the other groupÕs attitudes lead to danger, and both believe that a government should be to its people as a parent is to their children. Both groups, in the end, know a piece of truth about the world that the other groups lack. (Lakoff makes this clear although he, himself, falls on the side of the nurturant parents, and argues for liberalism on those grounds.) If you are trying to pull together (or simply to understand) a community full of both "strict fathers" and "nurturant parents," especially in the United States, then you need this book... Ð

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars interesting and useful, March 2, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don't (Hardcover)

In this book Lakoff is attempting explain the difference in the constellation of policies embraced by the 'liberal' and 'conservative' sides in US politics, by the use of the theories of cognitive linguistics. He also hopes that this might lead to increased understanding and communication between the sides, which I guess marks him out as a liberal straight away.

Basically he argues that the prime determiner of the type of policies a person will embrace depends upon the particular metaphor of the family that they apply to morals and government. Thus conservatives apply what he calls a 'strict father morality' which involves a theory of the use of strict rules, and inculcation of self reliance through punishment. Liberals apply 'nurturant parent morality' where the prime directives are empathy and inculcation of self and mutual reliance through nurturance and reward.

These theories are surprisingly enlightening when it comes to explaining why particular sides hold what might otherwise be perceived as incoherent and contradictory policies. Differences between people with the same allegiences come about through their focusing on different aspects of the basic model. These models are also shown to describe major differences in the way that we perceive God as well.

He finishes the book with a short argument that research shows that the 'strict father morality' does not work in either the family or the social sphere, and that it is based upon erroneous conceptions of how the mind operates.

The book is well and simply written. The theoretical parts should not prove difficult for people with no prior exposure to cognitive linguistics, though they may not find the theories that convincing without looking at other work. Occasionally I have to disagree with the author, but the disagreements are productive, and his way of looking at things has changed my own way of looking at things. This is about the highest recommendation I can think of for a book.