Progressively more liberal

I've managed to avoid George Lakoff for most of my life.  I frequently spend weeks, months, even years entirely Lakoff-free.  But every once in a while, despite my best efforts, I find myself knee-deep in Lakoff—most recently thanks to an article of his about Obama's shift to the right.

This is Lakoff writing in "Metaphor, Morality, and Politics" (the precursor to his book Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think):

...there is a worldview that underlies liberal thought that is every bit as unified as the conservative worldview.

The family-based morality that structures liberal thought is diametrically opposed to Strict Father morality. It centers around the Nurturant Parent model of the family.

But here's Lakoff harping on the same theme in his recent article:

There are two major modes of thought in American politics -- conservative and progressive, what I've called "strict" and "nurturant."

I bet you've spotted the subtle difference, haven't you?  And if you read through the article you'll find 15 instances of "progressive" but only one of "liberal" (used pejoratively, in the phrase "too liberal").  Gilbert and Sullivan would be surprised to learn that we're now all little progressives or little conservatives, but that's Lakoff's frame, and he's pimping it as hard as he can.  He's even gone so far as to gainsay the content and the very title of his own book, which he now describes as an "analysis...of conservative and progressive ideologies."

In poking around a bit I found that Lakoff takes his "liberal"-excommunication to ludicrous extremes, as in this taxonomy from his 2006 call for liberal unity ("unity" here meaning unity around the Democratic Party, naturally):

Those on the Democratic right break down into a number of types:

1. Progressives who are genuinely pragmatic and adopt right-wing views for reasons of real-world pragmatism: They want things to work and they honestly think that in certain cases the right's policies may work better.
2. Progressives who are politically pragmatic: ...
3. Biconceptuals: partially progressive and partially conservative in their views.

Note that this entire taxonomy addresses the "Democratic right", and even here we find nothing but progressives in the Democratic party.

I've kvetched several times before about the determined efforts of liberals to shake off their centuries-old yet fatally-tainted label.  If I ever had any doubts about how serious they were about it, though, they're gone now; Lakoff is the high priest of framing, and so his fervid leg-humping of "progressive" basically seals its demise as a meaningful political term.

There's at least one important point behind the triviality here, if you'll permit me to analogize: when organic foods started becoming more popular, rather than adopting organic practices the food industry started trying to redefine the word "organic" to include the full gamut of Frankensteinian techniques (GMOs, irradiation, and so on).  They didn't care about the core concepts behind the word—they just wanted to piggyback on its cachet.  And so it is with modern Democrats and their liberal fellow travellers, who want to latch parasitically onto "progressive" and suck it dry without embracing any of the principles that make it a meaningfully distinct political philosophy in the first place.  Every time I hear yet another conservative Democrat self-describing as a "progressive", it just cements the fact that the party is little more than a marketing machine, using every trick in the PR handbook to spin its pro-corporate positions into something palatable enough to mollify its much-abused base.

And that's just the point, of course.  There's no chance that Lakoff and the Democrats he so admires will be able to remove "liberal" from the popular lexicon; if nothing else, the conservatives who've worked so diligently to turn it into a political swear word will make sure they fail.  But in terms of the real purpose of this rebranding—namely, gulling the more liberal segments of the Democratic base into seeing themselves and the party in a new and better light—it's a success already.

Comments

[angryman@24:10]

Damn, John -- that post is so right on the money. You get a gold sticker.

[Thomas Daulton]

John Caruso: And so it is with modern Democrats and their liberal fellow travellers, who want to latch parasitically onto "progressive" and suck it dry without embracing any of the principles...

This is only the logical consequence of 30+ years of Democrats trying to slip under a very low bar: years of Democrats saying "Vote for us because the other guys are Eeeeevil" rather than Democrats actually standing for something. Jimmy Carter, perhaps, maybe, had some substance to his positions, but ever since he got creamed by Ronald Reagan, the Democrats have done basically nothing but react to Republican positions. Sucking the government teat dry -- which involves active participation in imperialism and oppression at home, as you've shown many times -- meanwhile trying to convince voters that they are the marginally less evil option. Having it both ways -- in other words, lack of principles.