Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision by George Lakoff

Author:George Lakoff
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: American Government, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780374530907
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2006-10-02T21:00:00+00:00

6

FUNDAMENTAL VALUES

These two models of the conservative and progressive worldviews show a drastically divergent set of principles. And yet over and over, we find that both conservative and progressive politicians talk about the same set of values—fairness, equality, responsibility, freedom, integrity, and security. Often, there is agreement about what they are saying. For all our political differences, we share far more ideals in common as Americans than one would think from all the harsh rhetoric of Sunday morning talk shows.

In some cases, though, conservatives and progressives have very different ideas about what a value means.

For example, Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania was seen by progressives as courageous for coming out in late 2005 against continuing the American occupation of Iraq. They saw him as supporting American troops in an impossible situation. They believed the occupation should end. But conservatives saw Murtha as a coward for taking what they labeled a “cut and run” position, which they saw as failing to support our troops. One person’s paragon of courage became another person’s coward.

Another example is what we might call the “freedom to marry” movement, which sees same-sex marriage as an issue of personal freedom. The government should not be involved in perhaps the most important moral and personal decision in your life: whom you marry. Progressives liken the situation to the expansion of freedom when the old laws banning interracial marriage were overturned.

George W. Bush also considers this a “freedom” issue, but he argued it to the opposite conclusion on June 5, 2006, when Congress took up a constitutional amendment to ban “gay marriage”:

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