Read Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea Online
Authors: George Lakoff
Finally, there are militants. Militants distinguish means and ends. They have nurturant ends; their goals are progressive. But they have strict father means. For example, they may have anti-authoritarian principles but run their organizations in an authoritarian way. As men, they may fight for feminist principles but are patriarchal in their personal lives, insisting that they alone set the rules. They may be peace activists but engage in violent protests for the sake of peace.
Authoritarian antiauthoritarians may logically contradict each other, but pure logic isn’t at issue in the human brain. They are using two different logics—strict and nurturant—for what is to them two different conceptual arenas: means and ends. It is no more contradictory from a cognitive perspective than conservatives who are both pro-life and pro–death penalty.
Progressives tend to be divided by issues, modes of thought, and attitude. They focus on their differences more than their similarities. Conservatives are much more effective in coming together. What unites them cognitively is strict father morality and their view of freedom. Progressives have an overall cognitive and moral vision that is just as unified, and just as coherent a view of freedom, but it mostly remains unconscious. It has not been made explicit and articulated to themselves and others. If we progressives continue to dote on difference and insist on individuality rather than a common vision, we will let the conservatives take freedom from us—not just the word but also the idea and the reality.
It is time to begin our discussion of what the radical right means by freedom. It is important at the outset to note how very often right-wing Republicans use the words “freedom” and “liberty.” If their version of freedom and liberty were generally recognized, they would not have to. They could just assume that everyone recognized that they were the natural inheritors of those ideas. The reason they have to say “freedom” and “liberty” over and over is that the progressive versions of those ideas have always dominated American life, and it is the progressive versions that Americans still hold in their hearts. Republican radicals call themselves “conservatives” to try to convince the rest of the country that their view of freedom, built upon their values, is really the traditional American one. The fact is that their idea of freedom is radical and outside the mainstream of American history and American life today.
When they talk about freedom and liberty, they assume that they are not free and are oppressed. Who are they oppressed by? Americans. Americans who view freedom as most Americans always have.
The radical right, or “conservative,” view of freedom can be seen as arising from simple freedom with the blanks filled in by the conservative worldview. That worldview is structured, as conservatives regularly point out, by family values—in particular, the values of the strict father family applied to politics via the nation-as-family metaphor.
The strict father family is, like the nurturant parent family, an idealization of family life, a cognitive model that serves as an ideal. In the strict father family, the major elements of the conservative worldviews are structured as an organic whole. It is that organic whole that makes the conservative worldview fit together.
There are two parents, a father and a mother. Morally, there is absolute right and absolute wrong. The strict father is the moral authority in the family; he knows right from wrong, is inherently moral, and has the authority to be head of the household. A family needs a strict father because:
The family should be run on a moral basis and the authority should be a moral authority. The authority of the father must not be seriously challenged.
There is evil in the world, and the family needs a father strong enough to protect it from evil.
There is competition in the world. There will always be winners and losers. To support the family, a father has to be able to win in a competitive world.
Children are born bad, in the sense that they want to do whatever feels good, not what’s right. They need a strict father to teach them right from wrong. Moral action
is obedience to the moral authority, the father. Children learn right from wrong and become moral beings in only one way: punishment when they do wrong—punishment painful enough, either physically or psychologically, to give them an incentive to do right. Only in that way will they develop the internal discipline needed to function as moral beings. Such punishment is seen as an expression of love and is called tough love.
The authority should be the father, since “Mommy” is not strong enough to protect the family, not able to win competitions and support the family, and not strict enough to discipline the children sufficiently.
The mother’s role is to uphold the authority of the father, take care of the household, and comfort the children when they need it.
Affection is important, either as a reward for obedience or to prevent alienation through a show of love despite painful punishment.
Discipline has an important secondary effect. If you are disciplined, you can pursue your self-interest to become prosperous.
The mechanism for this is a version of free-market capitalism: If everybody pursues his or her own self-interest, then the self-interests of all will be maximized, as a law of nature (as Adam Smith said, by the invisible hand). It is therefore moral to pursue your self-interest, since by doing so you are helping everyone.
Correspondingly, it is wrong to give people things they haven’t earned, since it will take away their incentive to be disciplined, which will make them dependent and less capable of acting morally. It is also wrong to take away the rewards of discipline, since it removes the incentive to be disciplined.
Since both morality and prosperity come from self-discipline,
morality correlates with prosperity. If you’re not disciplined enough to be prosperous, you’re not disciplined enough to be moral, so you deserve your poverty. This creates a natural hierarchy of morality paired with wealth and power. In a well-ordered world, those in authority should be the moral people, since they deserve to be in authority.
Mature children should ideally have become sufficiently disciplined to function on their own, support themselves, and be their own moral authorities. At that point, they are their own moral authorities, free of obedience to the strict father, and from then on he should not “meddle” in their lives.
A mature child who is not sufficiently disciplined is never coddled but needs more tough love and so is sent out to face the discipline of the world.
Ideally, the father will protect and support the family, exercise his authority well, and raise disciplined, moral, well-behaved, obedient children who can prosper in the world and form their own strict father families. He will never coddle or spoil his children, never show weakness or indecision, never yield his authority, never allow himself to be manipulated. This is tough love, but it
is
what love is in this model.
That is the ideal model. In real families, the model fails on its own terms when the father goes over the line—when he is abusive, unrealistic, lies to hide disturbing truths, betrays the family’s trust, weakens the family, gets the family into financial trouble, or harms and alienates the children. This happens often enough to be a recognized social phenomenon. Strict father families have high rates of spousal and child abuse and divorce.
The strict father model of the family unites many themes into an intuitive seamless whole and, via the nation-as-family metaphor, structures right-wing politics in terms of the political
version of those themes. The themes, translated into political terms, are
The naturalness and primacy of the moral system itself.
The unchallengeable moral authority of the leader.
Morality as obedience to moral authority.
The fight against evil. Evil resides not just in the threat of harm, but especially in the rejection of the moral system itself. (“They hate our freedoms.”)
Behavior as naturally governed by rewards and punishments.
Discipline as the basis of morality.
Discipline as the basis of prosperity and power.
Discipline as the basis for winning in competitive situations.
The free market as the mechanism of fair competition—the mechanism by which those who are moral, and hence disciplined, can become prosperous and thus be rewarded.
The natural link between morality and wealth and power.
The moral order—the hierarchy of authority and wealth is a moral hierarchy.
Freedom as the means to achieving one’s own moral authority.
Freedom as the means to achieving wealth and power.
The strict father family model is a mechanism for running a family and raising children. Beyond that, it organizes and makes sense of these moral, economic, and political themes, and contributes to a society that is organized according to those themes.
It is extremely common in the American Midwest for political conservatives on national issues to want to live in a nurturant community. In an ideal nurturant community, the community leaders care about the community members and are responsible to and for them, and community members do community service, care about each other, respect each other, and act responsibly to help each other. Many conservatives in America prefer to live in such a community rather than in a strict father community, where there is a community leader who runs things and you’d better do things his way, or else.
Though there certainly are conservative communities run on a strict father model, it is striking that there is another prominent model for conservative communities: in-group nurturance; out-group strictness. If you accept the community values, develop the requisite discipline, and show loyalty to the values and the community, then you are treated nurturantly. Strict father families can be extremely loving and caring toward children who measure up. Fundamentalist communities can be nurturant and loving toward members who fit in. And even the military, the strictest of institutions, has an internal nurturant creed: Group members are loyal to each other and take care of each other. Families on military bases get housing, good schooling, health care, and low prices at the PX. Conservative think tanks treat their talent well; some pay their interns and have apartments for them. Nurturance in such communities is a reward for doing all the right things. Such communities also show little tolerance for those who do not fit in.
In short, many conservatives prefer to live in a caring community of like-minded people who share strict father morality as a way of life. As long as you go along with the mores of the group, you are treated well, cared about, and, when necessary,
cared for. Charity and compassion are important values in such communities, as is hospitality.
A central idea here is the “worthy poor.” These people need help and are worth helping—fine, God-fearing people who happen to be down on their luck, wiped out financially by a flood or fire, lost their job, or had an illness. Missionary zeal is for people who have “lost their way”—taken to alcohol or drugs and need rehabilitation—who can be made worthy, usually through fundamentalist religion.
This is, for the most part, real compassion and real charity—but limited. You get to choose who you are charitable toward. It is often not compassionate toward African-American welfare mothers, young girls who have gotten pregnant and want an abortion, gays and others who are not counted as worthy. Being helped through such compassion and charity is very different from being helped just because you are a human being and have a right to be treated as such.
Marvin Olasky, author of
The Tragedy of American Compassion
, is credited with coining the term “compassionate conservative.” Like many other conservatives, he sees social programs as immoral—as giving people things they haven’t earned, making people dependent on the government, and robbing them of their discipline. True compassion, he says, is tough love—eliminating government social programs and forcing the poor to go out and make it on their own. Only charity that is directly personal, requires the able-bodied to work, and includes explicit spiritual counseling has any hope of success.
Just as the nurturant parent family motivates the commonwealth principle, so the strict father family motivates a set of individualist
principles that are the very opposite of the commonwealth principle.
It’s individual initiative that has made this country great.
The unfettered free market is the engine of American prosperity. It is natural and moral.
Everyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Responsibility is individual responsibility.
The government just gets in the way; it is inefficient, bureaucratic, and wasteful.
It’s your money; you can spend it better than the government can.
The good people—the moral ones—are disciplined. They can become prosperous via the market if the government doesn’t get in the way. The government can mess up the free market in three ways:
Government regulation: stopping entrepreneurs from using their own judgment
Taxation: taking away the incentive to make money by taxing initiative
Lawsuits: Permitting juries to grant very high awards that threaten the rewards for individual initiative
Freedom here is the freedom to become disciplined, freedom from government interference, and the freedom to enter the free market and become prosperous.