Scan barcode
A review by sjgrodsky
Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff
Did not finish book.
4.0
Densely written, hard to read, I read a little more than half before I quit.
I don’t quite believe the author’s assertion that all differences in conservative versus liberal outlook can be explained by the “strict father” versus “nurturing parent” analogy that he presents.
But they are good paradigms and they do seem to explain quite a bit.
Conservatives believe the world is a challenging place, full of people that will take advantage of you if you’re not smart and suspicious. They place a great deal of value on strict upbringing. They like hierarchical organizations such as the military. They don’t want to give welfare to people because they think people should rise and fall on their own efforts. But they don’t have a problem giving subsidies to businesses, because businesses offer jobs to people. People who run successful businesses are much to be admired. Even though they are getting handouts from the government in the form of subsidies or favorable tax structures, conservatives think that is fine.
They don’t have a problem spending huge amounts of money on prisons, because prisons punish people who’ve done wrong. And people who’ve done wrong deserve to be punished. Anything else is coddling them.
All of this sounds like malarkey to someone with my point of view. But Lakoff explains these contradictory positions with an overarching paradigm that is consistent.
I don’t quite believe the author’s assertion that all differences in conservative versus liberal outlook can be explained by the “strict father” versus “nurturing parent” analogy that he presents.
But they are good paradigms and they do seem to explain quite a bit.
Conservatives believe the world is a challenging place, full of people that will take advantage of you if you’re not smart and suspicious. They place a great deal of value on strict upbringing. They like hierarchical organizations such as the military. They don’t want to give welfare to people because they think people should rise and fall on their own efforts. But they don’t have a problem giving subsidies to businesses, because businesses offer jobs to people. People who run successful businesses are much to be admired. Even though they are getting handouts from the government in the form of subsidies or favorable tax structures, conservatives think that is fine.
They don’t have a problem spending huge amounts of money on prisons, because prisons punish people who’ve done wrong. And people who’ve done wrong deserve to be punished. Anything else is coddling them.
All of this sounds like malarkey to someone with my point of view. But Lakoff explains these contradictory positions with an overarching paradigm that is consistent.