Thinking Points Discussion of Chapter 4 - Part 1: Progressive Morality

I think progressives could really benefit from Salavador Minuchin's theory of families:

"According to Minuchin, a family is functional or dysfunctional based upon its ability to adapt to various stressors (extra-familial, idiosyncratic, developmental); which, in turn rests upon the clarity and appropriateness of its subsystem boundaries. Boundaries are characterized along a continuum from enmeshment through semi-diffuse permeability to rigidity. In addition, family subsystems are characterized by a hierarchy of power, typically with the parental subsystem “on top” vis-à-vis the offspring subsystem. In healthy families, parent-children boundaries are both clear and semi-diffuse, allowing the parents to interact together with some degree of authority in negotiating between themselves the methods and goals of parenting; from the children’s side the parents are sufficiently unmeshed from the children to allow for the degree of autonomous sibling and peer interactions that produce socialization, yet not so rigid or aloof as to ignore childhood needs for support, nurturance and guidance. Dysfunctional families exhibit mixed subsystems (i.e, coalitions) and improper power hierarchies, as for example when an older child is brought in to the parental subsystem to replace a physically or emotionally absent spouse."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Minuchin

I'm new to ideas on framing. When I first became exposed to Lakoff's ideas, I immediately took the liberty of adding, "abusive parent model", and equated it with totalitarian regimes.

The reason I bring this up, is because I find it difficult to converse with certain people, and even shy away from the nervousness I feel that comes from being broad-sided by such emotional outrage over a discussion on religion or politics.

I realize that there are certain people one should not engage in conversation with. My concern, is that, this may be the psychology of our institutions. Hence, going up against abusive parent model. I love the idea of refraiming our institutions from strict father model to nurturing parent model, but worry we may not be dealing with the ability to reason with institutons that act like abusive parents who don't want critisism, or may fly into a rage when confronted. Hence, governments turning to a police state, and eventually genocide.

Perhaps when it comes to refraiming, we progressives can push for some kind of legislation that promotes a mainstream media that is paid for by taxpayer money, and not owned by a corporation that doesn't want to hear it. Well I'll keep hoping for miracles.

  

 

One thing I do not see fully addressed here.... While empathy, fairness, dignity are all great and important... I believe these lead to a better, safer, more enabling society. Not only are they morale, but there make for more sound policies. But we don't discuss that as much.

Conservatives talk about tough love and cutting welfare. Now one could argue this is a false frame, or a smoke screen, but they at least back it up with the narrative of poor people becoming dependent on the govt, and you get bigger welfare roles, and more depdendent people. We need to take this next step with our values and frame.

For example....
I think we miss the boat if we do not talk about the common wealth vision of education leading to a more educated and more enabled and more informed population. This would lead to a better democracy, groups and cultures which are more understanding of one another, etc. We should talk about enabling diversity as keeping our nation from becoming dangerously polarized (as other nations have become). I am not arguing for gloom and doom at all, but rather progressives are already painted as hippy, naive, emotional, and coddling. We certainly need to talk about the positive, enabling properties of these values, but also about the dangers of not implementing them. If we only talk about dignity, and fairness, without talking about the important and positive ramifications of these value, we do ourselves a great disservice.
Thoughts?

Thanks Joe, and I re-read my post, and realized my tone sounded more aggressive than I had intended, so I apologize for that. My primary motivation behind my push for narratives is that they stick. Whenever I debate with my conservative friends, they often have these little nuggets which demonstrate their point of view. They discuss them as if they are commonn sense, as opposed to being manufactured somewhere.
Thanks!

The Lakoffian perspective offers a lot to political science and the science of communication.

On the issue of barriers to adoption I tend to think it is always worth segmenting our audience to look at how differing members of the progressive ‘family’ will respond, their capacities and perspectives. Given limited resources this is difficult to do upfront and would tend to rely on adapting the approach with the help of peers within each social network to speak to each group as capacity and need allow.

There is very much a folk theory of framing out there. ‘Framing’ is very much in the colloquial lexicon and appears to be especially common amongst communication professionals. As a consequence one barrier may be the ‘well I already know about framing’ response. And in many cases they probably do, intuitively at least.

I applaud Rockridge’s aim to target journalism schools. This is a strategic response given limited resources. I do believe there is a place (which I consider to be strategic) for peer-to-peer education through social networks, making use of dedicated tools designed for social learning and learning-by-doing (you can feel a workbook/on-line resources plug coming on).

Daniel

I would like to add a European perspective to the Nation as Family debate.

I live in the Netherlands, where the main issue fueling much of the country’s political activity and seriously disrupting existing party structures, is the effect of a relatively large immigrant, Muslim population.

Presently, the right has hijacked the entire issue by framing the debate in terms of a “threat to traditional Western European values of secularism, humanism and democracy.” We are told to be fearful of a kind of fifth column, a band of anti-democratic, religious fanatics who are just waiting for the right moment to take over the country and turn it into a Muslim theocracy. This fear is palpable and widespread, even among the educated classes.

Especially since the murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh three years ago by a Muslim fanatic, anyone expressing progressive views about how to address the issue of integration and civil responsibility amongst Muslim immigrants, is labeled with terms expressing weakness such as naïve, overly politically correct, gullible, etc.

The right’s reasoning, expressed within the Nation as Family metaphor, is that successive governments have failed to “make it clear” to the immigrants that they must abandon their conservative worldview and adapt to the European, individualistic, secular outlook. Now, finally, the time has come to wake up and take a stand.

In an interesting paradox, the right is saying, “We must be a strict father in order to force these people to accept the nurturing parent model.” The result is a plethora of proposals for legislation which will force Muslim immigrants, one way or another, to assimilate and become first and foremost European citizens and secondly Muslims. Their “loyalty” must lie primarily with the state they live in and only after that to their religion.

In the current political atmosphere in Holland (and the situation is similar in many Western European countries), it is almost impossible to seriously challenge the notion that “the” Muslim immigrants are a threat to our centuries’ old humanistic values of tolerance, individual freedom and human rights.

In my opinion the question is not how to force European Muslims to adopt a more humanistic worldview, but how to make them feel welcome and at the same time aware of their civic rights and responsibilities as part of the Dutch/European nation.

I am myself a parent of three children, and I know that there are times when a child will take advantage of a parent’s desire to remain reasonable in the face of provocation. These are occasions when it makes more sense to dish out a punishment than to continue reasoning with the child. But for me, this is a last resort, to be used only if the child is obviously taking advantage of the parent’s urge to avoid force.

The right is suggesting that Muslim immigrants are taking advantage of the desire of (leftist) politicians to appear reasonable and politically correct. It has even been put in these terms: By being so unreasonably tolerant of unacceptable behaviour among Muslim immigrants (such as anti-gay, anti-Semitic, and generally anti-democratic rhetoric) the left has created a monster, which is now in danger of destroying its creators. The old Frankenstein image!

Although I am principally a progressive, I wonder this: In the Nation as Family metaphor, is there room to consider that sometimes one approach is necessary and other times another? When the population (the “children”) are so diverse in terms of their background (perhaps comparable to adoptive children?), perhaps it’s impossible to adhere entirely to just one model. I don’t know, and I’m interested hear what others have to say.

Regards,

Dave Herman
Amsterdam
The Netherlands.

I want to build on what Dave Herman has said by talking a little bit about my background.

I was born to a Danish mother and Japanese father and went to an international school (American) in Tokyo where I'm from and now hold U.S. citizenship. So you could say I grew up with three cultures at the same time.

First, let me talk about Denmark (and before I continue, let me emphasize that Denmark/Danish is not the same country as Dutch/Netherlands/Holland as many people always confuse the two). Like the Netherlands, Denmark used to be considered liberal but a wave of xenophobia has swept over the country. There is this fear that the Muslim minority that immigrated there to work low-end jobs that no one else wanted to do will change their culture. The Danish People's Party, a populist conservative party, has rode this wave to power. Pia Kjærsgaard, the current leader of the party, has once said in parliament: "There is only one civilization, and that is ours." In one of their party posters, they showed a little Danish girl with words that said when she becomes an adult, she will become a minority in her own country. This is all tolerated in the name of "free speech," much as the cartoon controversy in 2006. Danes tend to consider "free speech" sacred and almost something that they invented. And this "free speech" basically covers anything hateful. Many proudly mention that Denmark even has a Nazi Party, to show how big they are on "free speech." A lot of this is rooted in the fact that Denmark is still a very homogeneous society and therefore there is not such wide differences in viewpoints as you may find in the U.S.

Yet, despite all this, Denmark is still left leaning like the rest of the Western Europe. The mainstream view in Western Europe is that after centuries of war, it is time for Europe to unite and stop fighting. Fascism and nationalism are seen as antithetical to this unity. Also, secularism is considered sacred after years of the Church's stranglehold over people's lives. The Renaissance is part of their history and every European looks up to it.

But as you've heard by now, a new right wing movement is chipping away at Europe by blaming non-Europeans living amongst as threatening their way of life. And they've been pretty successful so far. They prey on people's fears, using Islamic phobia to scare people into adopting hostile policies towards Muslims. There has also been much talk of mentioning Christianity in the EU constitution. And many member countries are against Turkey joining the EU.

Now let me turn to Japan. Japan is big on strict father morality. But it takes on a somewhat different form there, as it has a different history from the West. Japan has a history of catching up to the world around them after closing off for centuries. The latest example can be seen in the aftermath of WWII. The country was driven to build up the country again after their humiliating defeat. The society is geared towards self-sacrifice in the name of the country. Group think and conformity are praised. The reason why everything is so expensive in Japan is because the government makes it that way. In order to make the country rich and prosperous, they created a trade surplus by squeezing what their own citizens could buy. This is all considered acceptable by the Japanese.

The same conservative party, the Liberal Democratic Party (don't get confused by the word liberal), has been in power since WWII all but two times and only briefly were they out of power. Japan is essentially a one party system, but not by force. The vast majority of Japanese vote for the same party even though it is plagued by scandals and corruption. There is this mindset in their culture to keep doing what they've always been doing, to not challenge authority. "It can't be helped," is a typical saying amongst the Japanese.

So it probably won't come as a surprise that my political views are a mishmash of progressive and libertarian views, as my mother was liberal and my father was libertarian. Though I've found that as I've gotten older, I've become more and more progressive, mainly due to my abusive family dynamics and realizing that those who have issues are not weak or stupid, but rather have been raised in dysfunctional family systems and have difficulty coping with life's problems.

Anyway, that's me in a nutshell. I guess that's enough for now. ;)

In relation to the toxic business I’m reminded of Joel Bakan’s famous analysis of the corporation. He draws our attention to the metaphor in law:

                         A corporation is a legal person.

The analysis elaborates the personalisation metaphor by examining its conduct against criteria of pathological behaviour. The conclusion is overwhelming: this legal person behaves like a sociopath.

What is the Nurturant response to a sociopath? Empathy and responsibility requires that the Nation Parent must protect the family by preventing harm. It follows that we have to curtail corporate behaviour to prevent harm. Since this sociopath is a legal entity the law is the medium for this purpose. Typically, sociopaths do not exhibit pro-social behaviour such as volunteerism and, consistent with the mapping, the evidence for corporate volunteerism on the scale required to prevent harm is sadly lacking. For example, corporations will not voluntarily stop greenhouse pollution. Programs of this kind are reliably dismal in their failure. So recourse to law and its sanctions are unavoidably necessary. But, preventing harm necessarily entails a short-term response and a systemic response.

As a politician I would frame the response as “preventing harmful behaviour”; “protecting our community and natural heritage from harmful behaviour”; “people who behave harmfully must be taught how to behave responsibly.” In the short-term I would probably only have recourse to some of the more blunter instruments of the law. But the issue can be used as a platform to advocate a strategic initiative along the lines proposed in Thinking Points like: Clean and Fair Business.
 
Necessarily the framing may entail co-option of SF legal instruments for its purpose, it may be unavoidable, and I believe the risk of reinforcing the SF frame by doing so is minimal (after all, the SF mob co-opt our frames and structures all the time). Ultimately the case does highlight that the NP politician is working within and against many SF structures and raises the question as to whether SF organisations such as corporations are at all compatible within the NP society we aspire to.

Another thought that comes to mind is from being a parent. There was a time when my four-year old daughter was being very bossy to her younger cousin. We talked to her about how that may make her cousin feel. That is showing her the consequences of harm, cultivating her empathy, teaching about sharing. Part of a strategic response could incorporate community stakeholders within the corporate governance structure to ensure feedback about the consequences of harmful actions and prevent them before they happen. But it’s an open question as to whether this mapping will work for a sociopath.

Daniel

On reflection, the reform to corporate governance along the lines suggested above is more like changing the personality of the legal person from certifiable to responsible citizen.

Daniel

At risk of sounding like a total liberal snob, I think the Nurturant Parent model is more evolved.

I mean, that is sort of the point of being progressive, no? That someday we can all have a slice of the pie, maintain dignity, comfort, and peace. That we could contribute our best to society and be paid back at least as much.

The Strict Father model is much more focused on the individual units and members of society. Your pool of knowledge, skills and resources are much smaller when you don't want to share. Without a societal establishment of cooperation, society would never have been able to make so many leaps of civilization.

However, I am first to admit that I think all beings have some of both models within them. I think that the more you are able to behave according to NP, the greater long term accomplishment you will get with your counterparts. When you use SF behavior, it can appear to have the best short term benefit, but is more likely to be problematic in the short and long term.

A literal example is when I can maintain an NP parental style, my children learn patience and deeply understand what is going on because I am educating them along the way. I am honest, open and sympathetic. When I am not supported (get no nurturance) and get overwhelmed and frustrated, I start to digress and go SF. I am more likely to threaten, to make nonsense authoritarian statements, to shut them out of discussions, to punish them.

I don't think SF parents are inferior because we are all SF at some level, just as we are all NP at some level. Perhaps I would even go so far as to say that if you don't have some of both models in your past it may be detrimental for you in that you need the reference in today's society. The point of progressivism is to push society further NP.

Joe Brewer’s very gripping and to the point theme:"Progressive Morality" begs an earlier question:why so many progressives have been unable to express their values?

U.S. progressives are so swamped keeping up with answering the false agenda of corporate governance projected by that governance’s locked-in-step conglomerate entertainment/news media, that they have very little time or energy left to promote the more intelligent and historically honest agenda of their own. In order to express their values, our progressives would logically have to be addressing an honest agenda, which would be in most ways quite unrelated and in contradistinction to the profits-related so- called important news issues presented daily on commercial television.

Rather than disregard the sensationalist and captivating propaganda of a mindless, desperate for profit, criminally insane corporate governance, our progressives are drawn into debating straw man issues set up to complicate and distract from the ongoing imperialist homicide and thievery abroad, and the iniquities of real life situations at home.

3 Feeling constrained to consider our pseudo-democracy as having potential to be otherwise, and desiring to keep as wide an audience as possible, too many progressives in North America compromise virility, and speak and write from an ‘acceptable’ in-house loyal opposition standpoint of seeking moderate reform from within the present illegal system of corporate governance. (This is like hoping to reform an Al Capone gang by using inside influence, while accepting and going along with what it was doing and asking it for a bigger cut for the public.)

 Although our generation has witnessed the media sanitizing the term ‘capitalism’, until recently the word ‘capitalist’ has had a severely pejorative connotation. Network anchors would have us take for granted that all Americans are all capitalists, but this is absolutely not the case. Media personalities cite capitalism as the giver of freedom, democracy and prosperity, hoping to rope us all into blindness and forgetfulness.

But there is an enormous part of the U.S. population that is not capitalist and not imperialist, by and large not politically active, a substantial portion of which is not even registered to vote, that most probably constitutes a self-unaware majority in the U.S. This is the sector of American society that logically should be a prime target audience for progressives to be expressing universal human values to.

Progressives are mostly speaking among themselves to the already educated choir, or busy getting progressive corrective values across to spiritually compromised academia and to liberal Democrats (i.e. liberal capitalists), with a goal of either convincing the latter to bolt capitalism for socially minded governance, or of inspiring them to beg their reactionary co-capitalists colleagues to permit token reforms within a virulently destructive to humanity capitalist system - the same system of institutionalized greed the past excesses of which spawned the slavery of colonialism, the suppression of democratic socialism, the birth, in radical reaction, of communism, and the present desperate suicidal use of terror against officially sanctioned state terror.
  
The current progressive counterproductive quasi collaboration with capitalists in power, although unintended, disregards a majority of Americans, ceding over the more practical minded members of the blue collar work force and whole new generations of U.S. immigrants to the unchallenged influence of powerful commercial media’s rampant imperialist and ignorant jingoist extreme right wing bias.

At the same time there is no quid pro quo. Corporate governance allows progressives little or no access to publicly owned, but conglomerate leased, broadcasting frequencies of TV, radio, nor to its newspapers; no platform, beyond small book publishing firms and internet blogs to reach out to that growing segment of the public that is becoming suspicious of dominant reactionary circles of corporate control euphemistically labeling themselves ‘conservatives’.
 
How will progressives eventually succeed in getting across honest values to a more substantial audience?

By focusing on educating anyone who will listen to the fact that the news selecting and managing conglomerate owned and controlled mass media is keeping a public majority ignorant while promoting self-indulgent hedonism; that ‘our’ mass media is THEIR agency for manufacturing consent to the unjust cooption of the commonweal and political and financial power by a mentally unhealthy and morally indifferent minority of the privileged.

By desisting from debating concocted fears featured in THEIR media and by avoiding being sucked into arguing around some deceptive theme of THEIRS and will instead counter with hammered on our own historical sound bites, and not be conned into discussions of, obvious falsehoods thus giving those falsehoods some kind of moot life. Instead of being pulled into disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction, wary progressives would have emphasized the Reagan-Saddam collaboration in, and facilitation of, all Saddam’s crimes.

By refusing to join in, or even countenance indiscriminate praise of the military. It is not a federal crime to ABSTAIN from praising those who have been tricked by lies into considering it noble to bomb and invade innocent foreign countries. It is on the contrary highly moral and truly believing in one’s country’s real honor to withhold praise for those disgracing it. These progressive values are what so many Americans are dying to hear about.

By disassociating ourselves from pseudo-democracy as practiced within an unconstitutional dual party monopoly of power lavishing funded by corporate America. By ceasing to be scammed into working for the Democratic Party, and looking to be loyal to (small ‘d’) real democrats.

Rather than unproductively attacking the criminals in office by the military-industrial complex, progressives will attack the media that cleverly protects and promotes such criminals as living icons of Americanism. Progressives will challenge the media’s obscuring of historical condemnations of U.S. violent foreign policy and internal injustice by esteemed international figures, while highlighting the constant hype (lie) of the U.S. being the greatest country and freest country in the world. Picasso’s “Guernica” painting of fascist terror in Spain enjoys the highest media visibility, while Picasso’s “Massacre in Korea” depicting U.S. imperialist terror in Korea is almost entirely unknown to a public which is familiar with and fascinated by anything and everything else created by this renown artist.
Progressives now already no longer just watch MLK Jr.’ “I Have a Dream” speech bury the King the progressive’s “America is the Greatest Purveyor of Violence speech. Progressives are now bringing King back to life.

As honest citizens, progressives must come to criticize, as unacceptable, government aided thievery and corporate illegalities made ‘legal’ by all three branches of government acting in consort outside the provisions and intentions of the Constitution. Progressives will watch government with the eyes of Thomas Jefferson and listen to its spokespersons with the ears of Thomas Paine.

American progressives will gain serious attention when they begin writing and speaking from a planetary point of view; the U.S. point of view has become provincial and anathema to the truth. When progressives address the crimes of two centuries of predator foreign policy protecting ‘business interests’, there will an appreciative domestic audience of millions of recent immigrant citizens, desiring an honorable setting of the record straight, the restoration of decency toward their previous home counties and a rectification of names of both their noble and honorable heroes and the ignoble persecutors of their families.

[?] This expatriate writer suggests that the number one obstacle stateside progressives effectively expressing their values is not so much conglomerate media blacking them out, but their own wish to gain admittance to, and be included in, conglomerate media’s rank criminality as a protesting left wing. The extremely rare occasions of such inclusion merely play well for public deception, promoting a false appearance of fairness in media programing. Of course such rare opportunities for maximum visibility must be welcomed and used to present progressive values, but keeping in mind that ingratiating oneself into debating within the system gives credence and even enhanced believable stature to their establishment defending crony spokesmen counterpart, and can be woefully destructive to the sense of purpose of our independent progressives’ self-incumbency, which is to defend humanity and to aid U.S. citizenry in its dire circumstance of having had an ignorant and tyrannical face bared to the rest of the world.

When progressives totally refuse any dialogue concerning murderous invasions of third world nations not yet recovered from centuries of colonial plunder and exploitation, the killing Afghanis, Iraqis, Somali in their very own countries, as was previously done to Koreans, Laotians, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Panamanians, Cubans, Libyans, Dominicans, Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, Haitians, Congolese, Angolans, - whew, and a quarter million dead in Central America, all in this writers short lifetime! – there will be a burgeoning overseas audience for American progressive writings above and beyond the present foreign fans of our few top dissidents. what there is now. We have not heard enough from progressives on the millions of the dead and dying from cruel American special interest trade policies backed up by CIA assassinations and other form of violence and intervention accomplished under the direct authorization of one or another President of the U.S.A.

Progressives do the abjectly politically undereducated and misled silent majority no service by a stance of loyal opposition vis a vis a government which has become a criminality abetted by the disinterest in citizen accountability foisted upon the captive audiences of TV viewers, seemingly no matter how much terror the US military and CIA puts out.

Progressives could project their values as the only sector of society unafraid to be honest about our history, sober, not drunk, dazed and dazzled by the myth of the U.S. as a great civilized nation that we were taught as children and continue hear as adults, namely that desperate public relations industry cry, "the greatest country in the world" - never mind how this boast sounds to the citizens of more cultured and civilized nations.

One can be encouraged by progressives to start at any number of places to get a reality check:

Howard Zinn, “A Peoples History of the United States.”
Noam Chomsky, “The Year 501, the Conquest Continues.”
William Blum, Killing Hope – “U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WWII.”
David Korten, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community
Alternatively, progressives should encourage reading the entry on U.S. history in the Encyclopedia Britannica or Wikipedia and just scanning for amazing accounts of prevalent perfidy and horrible deeds of the U.S. Governments, deeds which have cost an enormous loss lives at home and abroad, along with accompanying misery for families.

Progressives must explain the present status quo of the for-insider-profit insane criminal corporate governance of the nation and greater parts of the world firstly through conglomerate owned entertainment/news media control of information that reaches into school and university, secondly only by its dominance of the dual capitalist parties monopoly of power within all three branches of government, thirdly through its controlling interest in the national and international fiduciary and finance institutions, and ultimately by an interwoven relationship between the military, arms manufacture and use of its secret conspiratorial access to the presidents authority to order criminal actions by the unconstitutional CIA.

Let's have progressives demand more universal human rights in the space age. Reject the privileges Americans have unjustly, with great violence taken for themselves, putting themselves ahead of the rest of our precious humanity. Progressives must grapple with ‘the greatest country in the world’ myth and replace it with something more serving of our shared sense of wonder at the miracle of life as experienced everywhere on this planet. Confront the lie of the U.S. love for democracy and false face of U.S. superiority that big media presents.

By doing all the aforementioned progressives can then step outside of part of one’s collective complicity in the ongoing national and international thievery and the murderous use of the military. Notice, ‘THE’ military", not ‘OUR’ military, an initial small semantic corrective step projecting progressive values into citizen responsibility for our governments dastardly deeds. The second step is that the progressive audience be swept with the same feeling so of shame and guilt for its inaction and indifference to the slaughter of foreigners in their very own towns and villages, that progressive authors feel and speak to in their writings. Thirdly, is to refrain from considering oneself an American firstly and a human being on earth secondly. Step four, the most basic, is appreciating one's six billion plus brothers and sisters, of which only three hundred million are letting themselves be sucked into supporting a conspiracy of profit and murder against their (unrecognized) planetary siblings.

Let us see progressives winning the so called ‘war against terror’, by putting American military and the CIA terrorist organization to stand trial in court for violation of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights and thereby cause a change in the assumption held by our present attackers, namely, that Arabs and others can only get justice for their people through the use of terror and counter-counter-terrorism.

“The CIA is not a rogue organization, out of control, as media seeks portray it when its bloody hand is exposed. The CIA implements the policies of the President of the United States. The CIA carries out unofficial U.S. government policy. That the CIA is a terrorist organization implies that the United States is a terrorist state. Considering the millions of deaths that the U.S. has caused and the enormous suffering that its international policies produce, its hypocrisy in condemning other countries as "terrorist states" would be ludicrous if it were not so tragic." (Quoted from Jim Morrison, Serendipity, Amsterdam)

Do progressive forces want to mix in with this criminal insanity or remain outside of it? This is the principle question. If one and answers in the positive, accepting one’s share of collective complicity is worst than meaningless. If one answers in the negative, feeling the shame, guilt and anger of one’s share of collective complicity can be an engine of energy to work in an imaginative manner to blunt the attack on humanity by one’s embarrassing and lethal compatriots, and to steel oneself to spare no effort in compassionately educating them to the perfidy of theft and slaughter being committed in the name of ignorance and falsehoods

This expatriate writer suggests that the number one difficulty for stateside progressives to effectively express their values is not so much conglomerate media blacking them out, but their own wish to gain admittance to, and be included in, conglomerate media’s rank criminality as a protesting left wing. The extremely rare occasions of such inclusion merely play well for public deception, promoting a false appearance of fairness. Of course such rare opportunities for maximum visibility will be welcomed and used to present progressive values, but keeping in mind that ingratiating oneself into debating within the system gives credence and even enhanced believable stature to their establishment defending crony spokesmen counterpart, and can be woefully destructive to the sense of purpose of our independent progressives’ self-incumbency, which is to defend humanity and to aid U.S. citizenry in its dire circumstances of having had an ignorant and tyrannical face bared to the rest of the world.

Quote our martyred Progressive Martin Luther King Jr.' condemnation of the government's war crimes and use of the military and intelligence agencies overseas to promoting unfair trade with the former colonized nations. Don't join in.





 

Hi Joe,

The problem with both the "Strict Father" and "Nurturant Parent" models is that both assume We the People are mere children to be guided to and fro, by either a strict father or a "nurturant parent" (whatever that verbal gobbledygook means).

We're not. We the People ARE the government. You will not find the word "leader" anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. There's a reason for that. We don't elect our "leaders." We elect our "representatives." They are our deputies. They hold those positions by our consent, and are sworn to act on our behalf.

We the People are the source of civil legitimacy, and thus We the People are morally responsible for what our representatives, our deputies do.

And we have to watch them very carefully. Lord Acton famously said "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." That is a penetrating observation of human weakness. When we elect representatives, we give them power to act on our behalf. But like all human beings, they're prone to see the "we give them power" and ignore the "to act on our behalf." This is an inevitable, universal temptation.

In that sense, our elected representatives become our CHILDREN, not our parents. We've put them into a position of extreme temptation, rather like taking a child into a candy store. With all of that temptation around, we have a duty to babysit our representatives every bit as much as the parent must babysit the child in the candy store. Our elected representatives are just as irresistably enticed by power as the child would be by the candy. Not because those representatives are "bad," but just because they're human beings with human weaknesses ... just like us.

When we buy into the metaphor of government as "strict father" or "loving mother" (nurturant parent), we've already failed in our civic and moral duty as citizens in a representative democracy. We've already failed to recognize that WE must be both "strict father" and "loving mother" to our elected representatives. WE are responsible for them. WE cast them into temptation, deputizing them to act on our collective will. WE must make sure we know what challenges our country faces, make good collective decisions, communicate those decisions to our representatives, and ensure that our representatives respond and act on our behalf.

If we abdicate that moral duty, we become a nation of victims. Worse, if we abdicate that duty, we never learn how to be responsible citizens in a representative democracy. If We the People decide to do X, and our government acts on our behalf and does X, and X goes terribly wrong ... We the People must learn from our mistake and teach our children that X isn't a good strategy to deal with that kind of situation.

But we can't do that if we assume that we are children, that Government is Daddy or Mommy, that Government knows more than we do, that Government should make our choices for us, that Strong Leaders "don't blow with the wind of public opinion," and thus that We the People are just victims whose only hope is to choose a Wise And Perfect Leader

a civic Messiah -- who will show us the way to the Promised Land.

Our problem is not that our government is a "strict father" rather than a "loving mother." Our problem is that We the People have forgotten to be -- or are too lazy or apathetic to be -- We the Parents.

Crissie

Hi Joe,

Thank you for the thoughtul reply. Yes, I'm aware that most of our deep frames are imprinted in childhood, apart from those which are imprinted genetically. But we can and do change our frames. We're not inescapably trapped in our childhood views of the world. Every time we ask important questions and force ourselves to "think outside the box," we rewire those neural networks. Every time we force ourselves to examine a problem in light of that new insight, we reinforce and spread the scope of those new neural networks. Quite literally, we "change our minds."

And if we're talking about political framing - the importance of choosing frames that encourage better thinking and better decision-making in the context of our representative democracy - I think it's important to challenge some of the deepest frames we carry, including the frame of "Nation as Family" where the government is Parent and the people are Children.

Because just as repeated use can reinforce and spread the scope of new frames, it also reinforces and spreads the scope of existing ones. To think through our civic and moral views in terms of "Nation as Family" where government is Parent and the people are Children - even in exploring differences between the "Strict Father" and "Nurturant Parent" models of government-as-Parent - is to reinforce that neural network, that pattern of analysis wherein we are Children and government is Parent. To do so is, quite literally, to teach one's self to think that way.

The gaping hole in the Conservative frame of "Nation as Family," with government as "Parent (Strict Father)," is not the parenthetical "Strict Father." The gaping hole is casting government in the Parent role. Calling for a change to government as "Parent (Loving Mother)" - which is what "Nurturant Parent" seems to translate to in concrete terms - doesn't address that fundamental casting error.

Changing that fundamental casting error is the essence of democracy. Democracy - as a theory of government - is about casting the people as Parent and the government as Child. A democratic government has no inherent right to rule, nor even an inherent right to exist. Its legitimacy derives solely from the consent of the people. That seems like an "obvious" statement. In fact, it expresses an idea that is profound beyond measure ... so much so that the mere IDEA provoked spasms of violence across the world through much of the 19th and 20th centuries.

For too many of us, the power of that idea has been lost in the mists of history. It has become a rosy gloss, less a matter of civic practice than "honored in the breach." We talk about it as if we believe it, and complain about it when we feel put upon, but we don't ACT on it. We don't ACT AS IF we are the Parents. We don't ACT AS IF our government exists by our consent, to turn our collective means toward our collective goals. We don't ACT AS IF we have an ongoing, unavoidable duty to monitor and supervise our elected officials; indeed, we too often plaintively ask why they don't simply "do the right thing" ... as if we shouldn't be obligated to babysit them.

But monitoring and supervising our elected officials - babysitting government - is central to the theory of democracy. Accepting the role of Parents, and casting our government as Child, is the essence of the civics experiment we call "Democracy." When we fail to accept that role, when we cast government as Parent and adopt for ourselves the role of Children, we "break" democracy at its most fundamental level.

What values and morals derive from a "Nation as Family" frame where the people are Parents and the government is Child?

First, obviously, is the notion that We the People have a duty to impart our morals on our government. Our government is not an amoral actor; it does not exist in a system where "morality" does not apply. Our federal, state, and local budgets are MORAL documents; they express the relative values we place on the tasks government should do. Our tax code is a MORAL document; it expresses the differing obligations of our people to fund those government tasks. Our foreign and domestic policies are MORAL schemes; they express how we believe we should deal with challenges or seize upon opportunities.

Just as biological parents have a duty to teach, encourage, and support moral behavior in their children, civic Parent-people have a duty to teach, encourage, and support moral behavior in our Child-government.

Just as biological parents have a duty to supervise their children, especially in the face of danger or temptation, we Parent-people have a duty to supervise our Child-government.

Just as biological parents must ensure their children study and do their homework, we Parent-people have a duty to ensure that our Child-government diligently studies our world.

Casting the people as Parent and government as Child up-ends issues of privacy. The question is no longer whether we should be allowed to keep secrets from government, whether government should intrude on and dictate our most private lives, but whether government should be allowed to keep secrets from us.

And that climate of secrecy is the MOST dangerous, MOST far-reaching cancer in our government today. Parents are allowed to keep secrets; children are not, not when they're keeping those secrets and sneaking around trying to do things their parents wouldn't allow.

Recasting the "Nation as Family" frame with the people as Parents and government as Child fundamentally changes the civic debate. It makes us responsible. It grants to us the moral authority enshrined in our Constitution. It reclaims our democracy.

Crissie

Hi Chrissie,

Thanks for your insightful and provocative commentary. I agree with your arguement about the legitimacy of government in democracy deriving from the people, democracy in a nutshell. Further, there is a lot to be said for the metaphor in which the people give birth to democracy. I am also a big fan of participatory democracy and believe that the representative form of governance can be made more responsive and relevant by the formal incorporation of civic participatory forums. I believe this is the next wave of democratic reforms that has to happen to representative liberal democracies.

Your analysis of the Nation as Family methaphor calls into question the mapping and aptness of the metaphor. I'd have to agree with Joe on the point about literality though. All metaphors have their limitations, as your commentary so clearly explains, however the assignment of roles under the NP paradigm: parental to deputised government and children to citizenry does not imply that the citizenry are literally childlike. It implies that government must care for the people according to explicit nurturant values. Or else. For example the mapping ends abruptly at that perfect democratic point where the citizen children get to choose their governing parent.

The issues you touch on go to the tension between representativeness and participatory citizenry. I agree with your observations. In my view this tension rests on the issue of trust and the distribution of risk that accrues from government decisions made by a once-removed representative entity. If we accept that there will be a representative governing entity then necessarity we have to invest our trust that it will govern on our behalf. Conversely it means that we the people won't be governing - at least not in the sovreign sense that national government entails.

And, though in no way wanting to take away from the fact that vigilance is necessary, trust seems to be the default mode that humans like to and probably have to assume: towards government and in most social relations, until proven contrary to well-being. Trust underwrites the possibility for representativeness and the opportunity for diversified roles in a complex society. Though as I pointed out above, I believe we can to a lot better.

This leads me to question the aptness of the metaphor you propose. I struggle with the implied source domain for the CHILD as GOVERNMENT metaphor (recognising that it is a complimentary half to PARENT as CITIZENRY). A government governs, it has sovereign powers and responsibility to act on behalf of the people. As a parent(who, like most of us are learning on the hop)attempting to conjure a source domain for this metaphor presents some dilemmas. In my INexpert opinion, to accord a child a duty of care runs contrary to what constitutes healthy family dynamics.

I fear that the embodied experience of the family would make the CHILD as GOVERNMENT metaphor unsalable because it can't become a frame.

Kind regards,

Daniel