Initial Post

2007-06-21T11:47:00.001-07:00

Dear George Lakoff has provided us with an extensive example of this pattern of thinking and behavior in his 8 chapter web-published book entitled “Thinking Points, Communicating our American Values and Vision”. by George Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute.”See “Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision, A Progressive's Handbook

(http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/rockridge/thinkingpoints)

In “Thinking Points”, George Lakoff employs this premise extensively but never mentions it. This is significant because George and the Rockridge Institute that sponsors him are major promoters of the Progressive Philosophy and have a substantial following. Lakoff presents many aspects of the belief systems of Progressives. The book is in effect a training manual for old and new Progressives. Thus, the “Thinking Points” book credibly represents the belief system of Progressives.

George and others like him have long been told that their ideas do not comport with “human nature”, but that does not seem to have affected their behavior. One of two possibilities might explain this. George and his followers do not realize the significance of that critique, or they do, and do not wish to acknowledge it (and apparently wish that others would follow their lead).

So this critique genuinely tries to explain to George Lakoff and his followers the significance and important impact of this “hidden premise”. It may also help those considering what the Progressives have to sell. Mr. Lakoff’s “Thinking Points” book will be used to illustrate how the “hidden premise” effects his conclusions and perceptions.

The “hidden premise” is that:

Human nature is fundamentally good and trustworthy, and is rarely unjustly self-serving at the expense of other human beings. So generally, humans may be trusted to faithfully serve the good of humanity.

Its opposite is that:

Human nature is fundamentally self-serving and too often is not trustworthy as people make selfish decisions that may have harmful consequences on the lives of other people.

When the temptation is sufficient and the opportunity presents itself, and likelihood of detection is remote, people may unjustly serve themselves at the expense of others (often furtively). Such conduct is herein called human corruption, or just “corruption”. To overstate the point, corrupt people are not trustworthy.

If this “hidden premise” is in fact not true, society has a serious problem with human corruption. Evidence that in fact it really is not true is offered in a new book by Dick Morris titled “Outrage” which details many instances of broken public trust.

Therefore, sustaining the trustworthiness needed for important roles in government, business, social institutions, and society in general, has required overt effort to deter corruption. Consequently, individuals and society have significantly diminished temptations to unjustly serve self as that society:

Promotes a culture of personal morality that honors honesty and personal trustworthyness at both the inter-personal and impersonal (Systemic) levels.
Establishes laws that constrain greed, dishonesty, abuse, and the like. And establishes a working justice system to effectively enforce those laws.

This effort appears to have been successful in minimizing the destructive impact of human corruption on western society. But human corruption is still a serious problem at all levels of social activity as Morris’ book illustrates. The very fact that society has implemented such overt efforts to constrain human corruption is a strong indicator that the “hidden premise” is not true.

:: EMPLOYING THE HIDDEN PREMISE

Apparently, Progressives are a very trusting folk, at least, trusting of other Progressives. Evidence to that effect is clear in George Lakoff’s “Thinking Points” book. What follows is a brief look at the Progressive ideals described by George that depend upon people being trustworthy as they discharge their Progressive administrative responsibilities.

According to Lakoff the guiding principle of Progressivism is “The common wealth for the common good”.(See Chapter 4 under “The Common Good Principle”) That sounds fine, until you realize that in the mind of Lakoff and Progressives the “common good” is not just the cost of infrastructure and today’s mercy provisions, but also a host of new government socialistic services. (Far more than those already covered by current taxes.)

In chapter 5 of “Thinking Points”, in the “MORALITY AND THE MARKET” section, George says that “Markets are the institutions for the exchange of ‘goods and services.’” But markets are not institutions! Not in the taxable sense, no more than are black markets taxable institutions. So by “markets” George is speaking collectively of businesses and other institutions that buy and sell “goods and services” in a market environment. To certify that that is his meaning, Lakoff says “Even one’s labor is conceptualized as a product that one, or one’s union, sells in a labor market.”

In Chapter 5’s “PROGRESSIVE MORALITY” section Lakoff asserts “And those (businesses) that benefit from markets have a moral obligation to replenish the common wealth” and “Progressives see markets (businesses) as serving a moral purpose—a progressive moral purpose. And they recognize a truth that conservative ideology hides: Markets (businesses) can’t thrive and serve the common good without the constructive role of government.” … where the bold case, underlines and the word “(businesses)” were inserted here for clarity. Here, George makes it sound like businesses can’t thrive without the “constructive role of government”.

But American Markets thrive when American businesses thrive, as they are doing right now (circa 2005-2007). And they are doing that without the Progressive “constructive role of government” in force. So the appended “and serve the common good” phrase explains what George is really talking about. When businesses thrive, it is the “common good” that “can’t also thrive” without “the constructive role of government”. Just how government might be “constructive” to the market (businesses) and help them “thrive” is not mentioned, because that is not precisely what Lakoff is saying! A careless reader might think Lakoff intends Progressive policies to be help businesses thrive. But alas… since businesses are already thriving, he can only mean that it is the “common good” that is to “thrive” from “the constructive role of government”. You may need to go back and read that sentence again! This is language crafted to be misleading at its best. And, there is more of that to come.

Notice that “…conservative ideology hides” nothing here. Conservatives simply do not want government to make them give more money to the Progressive “common good”.

When Lakoff says that all businesses have a “moral obligation to replenish the ‘common wealth’” of its host society, that is OK with conservatives. Many corporations currently volunteer to do exactly that. It is worth mentioning in this context that many corporations and conservative individuals view the paying of taxes as paying their fair share for the society’s infrastructure and mercy services from which they benefit. There is of course some debate about what constitutes a fair share.

However, if business’ contribution to the “common good” is determined by government, it becomes involuntary and thus a hidden tax on society. That confuses the debate on what constitutes a fair share!

Nonetheless, Lakoff goes on to passionately assert government should do exactly that. As he says: “Progressives are focused on where markets depart from the idealization, where markets fail to meet expectations, and where government is necessary.” Clarifying this sentence with parenthesized additions to explain the contextual implications”, this sentence reads like this: “Progressives are focused on where markets (businesses) depart from the idealization (of supporting the Progressive ‘common good’), where markets (businesses) fail to meet (our Progressive) expectations, and where government is necessary (to force* companies to meet those expectations.) Again, this is language crafted to mislead or at least to hide what is really being said. Did Arianna even notice this?

Mr. Lakoff is disingenuous when he does not use the word “force”*. But instead says “… a government role to allow markets to function and serve the common good”. And “…progressives see as absolutely necessary government support for the success of markets” where “success” means: successfully supporting the “common good”. We added those underlines. Just how government would “allow” or “support” markets is not mentioned, since as above, it is not markets of which he speaks. He speaks of the “common good”.

* That “force” is a correct reading of the original version of this sentence above is confirmed in the next section in chapter 5 titled “GOVERNMENT VS. MARKET”. There Lakoff states that “In the public sphere, decisions should be made through democratic institutions – who our elected leaders will be, where and how the government will spend its money, what our environment will look like, and what are acceptable standards for those participating in the market”. (The underlines were added here).

The voting public determines “acceptable standards for participating in the market”? That clearly speaks of government enforcing those standards! That has to mean that government personnel would have the power to pass judgment on businesses and shut down (deny permission to “participate in the market”) those businesses whom they judge to be less than “acceptable” relative to those “standards” in their contribution to the “common good”. That constitutes “force” by the power and authority of government!

How do we estimate the trustworthiness of George Lakoff, given the evasive and overtly misleading language we have just cited? Why does he not directly say what he means?

Lakoff is proposing that “the constructive role of government” is to monitor the contributions of businesses to the “common good” (as progressives define the “common good”). And where those contributions are judged by progressives to “fail to meet expectations” relative to those “standards”, government would constrain their freedom to “participate in the market.” That is, prevent their buying or selling in their respective markets!

Since there is a huge number of businesses, Lakoff is speaking of a huge bureaucracy the size of the IRS! One with license to judge businesses and extract arbitrary amounts of money or services from them. Notice that since this wealth is not openly a tax, as government never actually holds these funds, so these funds are not subject to voters opinions on how government should allocate its funds! So there would be even more government bureaucracy to decide where and how the Progressive “common good” would benefit from those funds.

That is an incredible amount of power to be in the hands of government personnel! Those government people would have to be wholly motivated by the Progressive Vision or else this whole scheme could fail to serve the “common good” as much as it could or should. Apparently the Progressive expectation is that these progressive workers would never or rarely abuse that power for personal or political gain, since no overt effort at resisting such corruption appears to be involved!

But the temptations to engage in corruption in these proposed bureaucracies are huge! Taking bribes is extremely likely because businesses could not stand the threat of being shut down. And, since government personnel are can specify their “expectations” of just how and where those funds are to be “contributed”, the opportunity for misallocation of funds is enormous. So belief in the “hidden premise” is essential here, whether the Progressives are aware of it or not!

That is the point of this section…:

Progressives do believe in the “hidden premise”

at least as it pertains to themselves,

whether they recognize it in those terms or not!

In many places in the “Thinking Points” book, Lakoff complains about how so many people acting in their self interest have caused problems in our society. Why does he (do you Progressives) believe that Progressives will not also fall to temptation and serve themselves at the expense of society, even at the expense of the “common good”?

Why do progressives think that the “hidden premise” applies to them but not to others?

::THE SUBTLETY OF THE HIDDEN PREMISE

In Chapter 8 of “Thinking Points” Lakoff says a story is really needed to drive a point home. So here is a relevant story.

Several decades ago, a couple met and married while they were students at the University of California at Berkeley. Even before they married they had a plan, a plan to become fund raisers for popular causes. They would make their living doing this and become progressive(Liberalism’s) heroes at the same time! This they did, and were quite successful. As planned, they paid themselves what they thought would be a fair salary. They wore nice clothes, lived in nice houses, drove new cars, and took many expensive trips, and attended many up-scale social functions, all in the name of presenting themselves appropriately for their job. They frequently complained about being overcharged by businesses they dealt with. But in the end they took for themselves over 40% of what they raised. Some say they benefited even more through investments they made based on contacts they made in their higher social circles.

Concurrently another couple also raised funds for charity and got paid a small fraction of what the first couple took for themselves. They lived humbly, owned one used but decent car at a time, and had no public hero status, let alone high social status. Still, they lived happy, peaceful and pleasant lives. They raised and managed even more money than did the first couple, but they were accountable to their employer as to how much they collected and how they allocated money from their employer’s pooled funds. Most of the travel they did was to conferences in other American cities. These conferences were attended by others who were similarly employed. The conferences featured training sessions, progress reports, and inspirational speakers. But the benevolent institution which employed them boasted an overhead of no more than 20% of all funds collected.

The first couple never considered themselves thieves, but others thought they were unjustly “skimming” the flow of money that moved through their hands. What do you think? Check out http://www.conservativetruth.org/article.php?id=663.

This story illustrates how easily the assumption of the “hidden premise” can operate subliminally in the minds of people who consider themselves to be good folks. That first couple never saw their decisions as based on the assumption of their own trustworthiness. So they never challenged their idea that 40% was too much to pay themselves. Blindly, they cheated the “common good” to benefit themselves.

Even if you think the first couple was unjust, it is still a very mild case of self service at the expense of other people. Other cases could involve bribery, and misappropriations amounting to grand larceny, or political abuse that compromises or even betrays their mission. Read on!

:: IF THE “HIDDEN PREMISE IS FALSE…FOR EVERYONE

If the “hidden premise” is in fact false, corruption would be rampant in the bureaucracy proposed by Lakoff (the kind that is abundantly exemplified in the Morris‘s book: “Outrage”.) In the long run Lakofff’s bureaucracy will be no more effective than the United Nations which is shot through with corruption.

The only thing the U. N. has been good for is being generous with other people’s money, while many billions of dollars of that money has been misappropriated. Even U.N.’s Secretary-General Kofi Annan exhibits corruption as he managed to get his New York apartment rent subsidized by money intended for the needy. (Do a yahoo or google searches on “ ‘U. N. corruption’ ” and “Kofi Annan apartment rent”.)

So Progressives should realize (if they don’t already) that Conservatives are going to see Lakoff’s proposed bureaucracies as yet another huge opportunity for bribery, misappropriation of funds, and political misdeeds. Note that in Lakoff’s bureaucracies, the public does NOT get to vote on how much each business would be taxed or on how those funds may be allocated! The Progressives, who supposedly know what the common good really is, get to make all of those decisions! But you can be assured that Conservatives would disagree with the arbitrary taxes and much of the official list of new socialist allocations included in the “progressive common good”. And, they would be suspicious that unofficial allocations would be hidden from the public view.

Again, if the “hidden premise” is false, and if there are no credible deterrents to corruption, then where money flows, corruption grows. And, there are no such deterrents in Lakoff’s bureaucracy!

But even if there is no corruption (legally speaking), it is so easy for people to rationalize said funds allocations in ways that not only appear to advance the “common good”, but allocate in ways and places that advance the political power of those in charge. All very legal, but vastly unfair since they are doing so with commonwealth money! Even those people who allocate unfairly are likely to believe that they are doing “good” … by working some disadvantage to those “evil Conservatives”. That too is corruption, legal corruption!

Another Conservative nightmare is the possibly of incompetent government personnel “judges” who completely disrupt business operations as they impose additional burdens and requirements that make the business model impossible to succeed. Much could be written about that… but not here.

A Conservative view of Lakoff’s proposed bureaucracy would percieve that Lakoff’s proposal is just old fashioned socialism…with a twist! Letting voters set those “standards” by which businesses are judged does not change the fact of what happens afterwards. When government imposes arbitrary taxes on businesses and is unaccountable (to the public) for allocations of those funds. It is no more than “legal” robbery by the force of government authority to support the socialist agenda, in this case, the “Progressive Vision”. That is a real economy killer. And it contains many strong temptations to engage in corruption.

Socialism has often been tried before, and it has always failed in history. Even now it is slowly rendering several European countries toward impotency. Socialism’s economic death is always caused by human corruption and its lack of appropriate human incentives.

:: COMPETITION: AN IMPERFECT SOLUTION FOR SERIOUS PROBLEMS

The most successful social tactic yet to deal with self-serving human nature has been to employ that great force of self service to be a force for improving the society. That is, to mitigate that force by pitting human nature in people one against another in a competition that benefits society.

That competition works at all levels of human endeavor without supervised incentives. It stimulates efficiency and creativity that ultimately manifests their benefits in the market. That is, let self interest battle self interest with just enough constraints to keep abuse and unfairness out of the struggle. The result of that competition in the market is the key to success in western culture. In fact it is the engine that drives western culture, and societies without it are far less accomplished. Now even X-Communist China is learning these lessons!

Yes, “the market” is far from perfect; and those imperfections generally arise from the self-service instinct of humanity. Even our attempts to constrain market forces towards fairness and constructive results are fraught with flaws that emanate from the human self-service instinct.

Again, these flaws are mitigated by pitting one interest against a competing interest in our legal system, where lawyer battles lawyer before juries of supposedly uninvolved peers. That too is far from perfect for the same reason, but it is still the best and most just legal system ever achieved!

Many Christian conservatives generally agree that the markets, and Capitalism, are often too harsh a solution. In fact, that capitalism without benevolence is too mean a system to be tolerated. Decent people therefore invest their own wealth to mitigate that harshness by introducing various forms of benevolence into society. Conservatives support both voluntary benevolence and constrained governmental benevolence. But they insist that the latter be subject to the overall control of voters and their elected representatives.

Progressives are famous for supporting mainly government benevolence and have poor records of personal giving relative to conservatives, especially Christian conservatives. Progressives are often chided for “being so willing to be generous with other people’s money”, and eager to presume that makes them appear to be the “good people”.

:: PRESUMING THE “HIDDEN PREMISE” IS TRUE

Overtly or unconsciously presuming the “hidden premise” implicitly denies its opposite. That is, the person making that presumption is in denial that they themselves are fundamentally self-serving and too often not trustworthy. This is a denial that there is anything unjust in their own human emotional constitution.

More bluntly stated, they are in denial of evil from within themselves.

This subtle conviction leads to denying the very existence of personal evil. E.g., if I have no evil inclinations, why should I presume that anyone else has evil inclinations? That leads to assigning all evil to external causes, causes from outside any person’s personal makeup that ultimately leads a person to willfully harm other people.

Agreement or disagreement on this simple conclusion divides humanity into two groups: Those who believe evil springs from the deep inclinations of human nature, and those who believe that all evil is imposed on people from external injustices of some kind. These two distinct conceptual seeds grow into two dramatically different world views whose adherents can hardly communicate effectively across these two world views.

Those who deny their own evil often come to the point of even denying evil as a concept.

:: DENYING EVIL

Roughly speaking, Progressives (liberals) deny that evil springs from within human nature, while Conservatives are likely to admit their own deep human inclinations to make choices that have evil consequences for themselves and others. Again, those two conflicting beliefs shape their entire world views so differently that the two can barely communicate with each other meaningfully.

So, denying or admitting that evil springs from human nature is the REAL issue between these political groups. Lakoff’s theories trying to explain the same thing with his Parenting Models are way off the mark. Lakoff is wrong when he asserts that nurturance is exclusively a progressive value. He simply cannot grasp that discipline and nurturing love are complementary forces that can deal effectively with human nature as it really is.

In Christianity, admitting human evil is called the “Offense of Jesus Christ”, since Jesus calls people to admit their own sin and repent of it to accept His forgiveness. So we may say that the Offense of Jesus Christ is the REAL issue between these groups, whether they believe in God or not! No one wants to be accountable for sin... to people, or to God.

This “Offense” has caused “Christianity” to be split into two major groups: liberal “Christians” who eschew talk of Jesus’s need to suffer to pay the price of justice for human sin (since they believe it was not really all that necessary), and conservative Christians who admit their evil inclinations (and deeds) and are grateful that He did make that payment as an act of love to sinful humans, to which they can (and many do) respond in appreciative love and acceptance of His Lordship over their lives.

Wisdom’s Fear Of God

The REAL issue between Conservatives and Progressives. It is not parenting models.

Initial Post