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A review by alfia
Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff
2.0
While I greatly appreciate George Lakoff's contribution to the understanding of conceptual metaphor, this book demonstrates how metaphoric theory can also be used to paint stark and politically unhelpful subjective stereotypes. These serve more to elucidate the mind of the theorist than they do to accurately depict an electorate. It may indeed be that a certain sector of the liberal electorate has a worldview informed by a "nurturant parent" model, but the average democratically-leaning American is nowhere as groovy as the bi-coastal Berkeley-based model Lakoff draws. Contrasted with this beatific, nurturant, Earth-loving intellectual is the "strict father" model of Lakoff's prototypical Republican. The strict father model depicts the opposite extreme, which is, you guessed it, the child-beating, Bible-thumping, money-grubbing, pollution-spewing eugenicist of MSNBC nightmares. The average Republican-leaning American is nowhere as draconian as this model. "But these people exist!", you may aver. Sure they do. Read "Strangers in their Own Land" for an excellent, and much more measured treatment of this demographic. Both extremes are clearly over-represented in politics.
My main objection is that these models of liberal and conservative are not presented as extremes in the book, and the fact that the default liberal view is presented positively (no overly indulgent, anti-vaxxer bubble-dwellers here!) and the default conservative negatively (the traditional family and environmentalism are mutually exclusive in this world) shows egregious bias in my opinion. This is not the way to the center; it's the way to generalize and demonize political opponents, and to pander to liberals who want to feel self-righteous.
My main objection is that these models of liberal and conservative are not presented as extremes in the book, and the fact that the default liberal view is presented positively (no overly indulgent, anti-vaxxer bubble-dwellers here!) and the default conservative negatively (the traditional family and environmentalism are mutually exclusive in this world) shows egregious bias in my opinion. This is not the way to the center; it's the way to generalize and demonize political opponents, and to pander to liberals who want to feel self-righteous.