Freedom

Toe_Tag · October 28, 2006, 10:39am

[quote]To many progressives, the right’s use of “freedom” is pure hypocrisy, and George W. Bush is the leading hypocrite. How, liberals ask, can Bush mean anything at all by “freedom” when he imprisons hundreds of people in Guantanamo indefinitely with no due process in the name of freedom; when he sanctions torture in the name of freedom; when he starts a preemptive war in false premises and retroactively claims it is being waged in the name of freedom; when he causes the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians in the name of freedom; when he supports oppressive regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, while claming to promote freedom in the Islamic world; when he sanctions the disenfranchisement of African-American voters in Florida and Ohio in the name of freedom; when he orders spying on American citizens in America without a warrant in the name of freedom; when, in the name of freedom, he seeks to prevent women from making their own medical decisions, to stop loving couples who want to marry, to stop families from being able to remove life supports when their loved ones are all but technically dead.

How can Bush mean anything by “freedom” when he works against Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s four freedoms: freedom of speech and religion and freedom from want and fear? His policies work against freedom from want by pushing more Americans into poverty, by denying even a minuscule increase in the minimum wage, by seeking to end Social Security. By promoting a siege mentality - announcing orange alerts and talking relentlessly about “terror” - he creates and maintains a sense of fear, virtually a permanent state of emergency, rather than offering freedom from fear. The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed at the height of this fear, provides new police powers to the government, abridging personal freedoms. He works against freedom of speech by encouraging media consolidation, by spying on telephone calls, by having the IRS threaten the tax status of groups that speak out against him, by requiring all attendees at his public speeches to sign oaths of loyalty to him, and by classifying more government documents than any other recent administration. He works against freedom of the press by secretly paying journalists to promote his policies and by denying access to reporters who criticize his policies. And he works against freedom of religion by seeking to impose school prayer upon those who don’t want to pray, by allowing federal funds to be used to promote one religion (Christianity), by tacit support of bringing a religious idea - “intelligent design” - into the classroom, and by pushing faith-based governmental programs of all kinds, programs that put taxpayer money and social control into the hands of churches approved by his administration. How, progressives ask, can he possibly mean what he says when he claims that such actions promote “freedom”? The conclusion of many progressives is that the use of the word in the face of these policies tends to make the word meaningless.[/quote]

[color=darkblue]George Lakoff’s new book, Whose Freedom? offers some answers to these rhetorical questions. To some degree his model appears too broad, but I found in it real insights into the conservative mind.

Of course, I can’t help but view this conservative mind as simplistic, blind, selfish, arrogant, pigheaded, patriarchal, medieval, manipulative, and to take a page from their playbook… EVIL.

Still, I would actually like to find the conservative mirror image of Lakoff’s book if anyone knows of one. It would be interesting to see the conservative frames and how they in turn view liberals. The closest I’ve come is those leaked Luntz memos where the Republicans use focus groups to carefully select the best words and phrases to manipulate voters.

politbureau · October 28, 2006, 1:31pm

[quote=“Toe Tag”][quote]To many progressives, the right’s use of “freedom” is pure hypocrisy, and George W. Bush is the leading hypocrite. How, liberals ask, can Bush mean anything at all by “freedom” when he imprisons hundreds of people in Guantanamo indefinitely with no due process in the name of freedom; when he sanctions torture in the name of freedom; when he starts a preemptive war in false premises and retroactively claims it is being waged in the name of freedom; when he causes the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians in the name of freedom; when he supports oppressive regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, while claming to promote freedom in the Islamic world; when he sanctions the disenfranchisement of African-American voters in Florida and Ohio in the name of freedom; when he orders spying on American citizens in America without a warrant in the name of freedom; when, in the name of freedom, he seeks to prevent women from making their own medical decisions, to stop loving couples who want to marry, to stop families from being able to remove life supports when their loved ones are all but technically dead.

How can Bush mean anything by “freedom” when he works against Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s four freedoms: freedom of speech and religion and freedom from want and fear? His policies work against freedom from want by pushing more Americans into poverty, by denying even a minuscule increase in the minimum wage, by seeking to end Social Security. By promoting a siege mentality - announcing orange alerts and talking relentlessly about “terror” - he creates and maintains a sense of fear, virtually a permanent state of emergency, rather than offering freedom from fear. The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed at the height of this fear, provides new police powers to the government, abridging personal freedoms. He works against freedom of speech by encouraging media consolidation, by spying on telephone calls, by having the IRS threaten the tax status of groups that speak out against him, by requiring all attendees at his public speeches to sign oaths of loyalty to him, and by classifying more government documents than any other recent administration. He works against freedom of the press by secretly paying journalists to promote his policies and by denying access to reporters who criticize his policies. And he works against freedom of religion by seeking to impose school prayer upon those who don’t want to pray, by allowing federal funds to be used to promote one religion (Christianity), by tacit support of bringing a religious idea - “intelligent design” - into the classroom, and by pushing faith-based governmental programs of all kinds, programs that put taxpayer money and social control into the hands of churches approved by his administration. How, progressives ask, can he possibly mean what he says when he claims that such actions promote “freedom”? The conclusion of many progressives is that the use of the word in the face of these policies tends to make the word meaningless.[/quote]

[color=darkblue]George Lakoff’s new book, Whose Freedom? offers some answers to these rhetorical questions. To some degree his model appears too broad, but I found in it real insights into the conservative mind.

Of course, I can’t help but view this conservative mind as simplistic, blind, selfish, arrogant, pigheaded, patriarchal, medieval, manipulative, and to take a page from their playbook… EVIL.

Still, I would actually like to find the conservative mirror image of Lakoff’s book if anyone knows of one. It would be interesting to see the conservative frames and how they in turn view liberals. The closest I’ve come is those leaked Luntz memos where the Republicans use focus groups to carefully select the best words and phrases to manipulate voters.

Which of those evil policies above does the likely Democratic Party nominee for president in 2008, Hillary Clinton, either not support or speak out against?

dearpeter · October 28, 2006, 4:17pm

That’s a nice excerpt, if a bit tedious to read. The point is certainly well taken.

But ToeTag, could you perhaps edit your post to provide a clean link to the original source, and the second reference as well?

It is quite Orwellianly scary how Bush plays with language. Have you seen the latest on how Bush recently claimed “…it’s never been a stay the course strategy”? Check it out here on video.

Black is white. War is peace. Bush is freedom. Life is fun.

Toe_Tag · October 28, 2006, 4:39pm

My reaction to both of the above: this is about Bush. Lakoff only has a longwinded discussion of freedom because Bush in the first place raped freedom 8-ways-till-Sunday. And again, with Hillary, the topic is Bush commiting this litany of atrocities, not how a variety of democrats didn’t say or do enough to stop him; they certainly wouldn’t have embarked on such a cluster-f*ck of policies in the first place.

I typed that passage in by hand. The link is for using eMule or aMule to download the book. I think its also out there on BitTorrent at the moment. www.slyck.com has guides explaining how to use these programs. Or, one can buy the book (or audiobook). Or Google for George Lakoff and find a few articles about his theories.

Actually, its bigger than Bush, its about the framework he comes from. Its about the conservative, and liberal mind. As a liberal, I often wonder how conservatives can possibly think the way they do. And vice-versa probably for the 2 or 3 conservatives on Forumosa. And Lakoff has given me some insight. If anyone has any better explanations let’s discuss it. Or let’s discuss Lakoff’s ideas. Or lets discuss what freedom means. And how radical conservatives should not be allowed to even use that word.

dearpeter · October 28, 2006, 5:06pm

And how!

2 or 3? :roflmao:

I agree. Good topic. I like the first suggestion. Discussing the meaning of freedom sounds like a headbutting contest. Let me think…

Uh… Stephen Colbert! Perhaps these things can only be understood through counterpoint.

dearpeter · October 28, 2006, 5:34pm

I recently discussed this issue with my high-level private student (language exchange, of course!). We both wondered why the conservative mindset holds such appeal in a world that is so fu©ked up. I mean, yeah, since we have ozone holes, global warming, spreading disease, acceleration of wealth disparity and a host of other enormous problems, why does a consistent 50% or more of the population of developed countries cling to the premise that it is best to keep following old paradigms? It is baffling isn’t it?

I recently ventured deep into the comments section of a very popular right-wing blog. I was blown away by the shallowness of the postings I found there. It was like everyone chose their political and philosophical positions according to some sense of smell. They could smell something was wrong because it smelled of liberalism. What’s with that? To use the word dittohead to describe the nature of those posters is almost too forgiving. It was more like a club of fanatical British football hooligans taking it out on their rival team. In this case the rival team was anyone who suggested America could improve its behavior. The team has a name of course: the DEMS!!! Rah, rah!!! Grrr. Grrr.

I myself have read Ayn Rand, and I liked her writing. She had a lot of valid things to say about the dangers of trying to help others rather than abide by the norms of competition. But it is fiction. It is art. The real world demands that we accept deep truths like this one: Simplistic all-or-nothing policy adages will seldom produce good results. There are publicly shared needs that may not be best served by a laisez-faire attitude.

I have even read entire books by Milton Friedman (one anyway, maybe more) and actually liked his work too, despite the fact that I think he’s a loon. He also had good points to make. But why are there so many people who long for the golden rule that will let us off the hook of investigating policy and basing future policy on the results?

A lot of so-called liberals have explored many schools of thought. This can be seen by the amount of debate taking place on liberal blogs. The same cannot be said for the readers of conservative blogs. Why?

I believe it is true that as we get older, we tend to become more conservative, for most people anyway. But there seems to be some strange line that some people cross where intelligence gets thrown out the window and their beliefs become determined mainly by some left-right boundary they draw in their minds.

This seems to me to apply to the right-wing posters on Forumosa, as intelligent as some of them obviously are. They are more likely than the other posters to use the left-right analogy, and quicker to bring every issue of American politics back to some imaginary GOP vs. DEM divide even when the discussion got started on an open-ended subject rather than a GOP-DEM policy difference, of which there aren’t that many in my opinion.

Perhaps it is biological. That’s the best I can offer.

politbureau · October 29, 2006, 12:30am

I’m a conservative. I support the key principles of the Republican Party and have voted Republican all my voting life, including for George W. Bush his first term, so I offer my psyche up as a lab rat in your “what makes a conservative tick” thought experiments.

I don’t consider the current Bush administration ‘conservative’ though because it’s gone so far right on the political spectrum that it’s entered that zone where far right and far left converge in a totalitarian nightmare.

One major advantage I have when I intellectually joust with fellow conservatives gone wild is that I know how they think so I have a headstart over liberals in that regard.

I’m as mystified by the liberal mindset itself though as you are by the conservative mindset so the payback I would hope for from being your lab rat is some insight into what makes you guys tick. For example, Toe Tag’s seminal post above begins “To many progressives, the right’s use of “freedom” is pure hypocrisy, and George W. Bush is the leading hypocrite. . . . " and yet when I implied that many leading liberals have been willing enablers of much of the Bush administration’s assaults on basic freedoms Toe Tag’s response is " . . . with Hillary, the topic is Bush commiting this litany of atrocities, not how a variety of democrats didn’t say or do enough to stop him . . . .”

My biological wiring leads me to read Toe Tag’s central argument being one of the hypocrisy of proclaiming “freedom” while actually imposing totalitarian injustices and what could be more hypocritical than willingly and actively participating in that process while attempting to appear against it? That, according to my biological wiring, is the height of the moral hypocrisy central to Toe Tag’s thesis.

Toe_Tag · October 29, 2006, 1:26am

Well, to me the height of hypocrisy is Bush initiating all of those freedom-violating hypocrisies in the first place, while wrapping yourself in the flag and using the word freedom in a way that makes Orwell roll over in his grave. The Democrats have been outvoted in congress anyway. At least until the upcoming election kicks in. One problem, according to Lakoff, is that the Democrats have let the Republicans set so many of the “frames” for public issues. This puts Hillary etc. in an awkward position. Its sort of like they have to answer the question “have you stopped beating your wife”. The problem lies in the framing question. It also seems like a classic conservative tactic to change the subject and try to get everyone talking about Hillary instead of Bush. So we should ignore this from here on out. Its a bit like their attempt to blame the Foley scandal on the Democrats. Folks, the Democrats weren’t the ones seducing young pages, then covering it up. I certainly feel that Republicans and, what Lakoff calls, radical conservatives, are ruthless and cynical in a race to the bottom of dirty politics and campaigning.

dearpeter, Lakoff adds many new dimensions elucidating the cave-man simplicity of the conservative position. To me its a bit like the bumper sticker “God said it, I believe it, that settles it”. People are looking for answers, and somehow they resort to a fundamentalism… of religion, of politics, of patriarchy. And the Republicans do nothing but stoke this culture of fear. It is immature, intellectually debased… and effective. I grieve for the abysmal stupidity of mankind, and America. I resent the cynical schemes of filthy bottom-feeding liars like Rove.

politbureau · October 29, 2006, 3:36am

It’s a classic partisan tactic to change the subject when it hits too close to home.

If the subject is civil-rights bashing hypocrites in high office then both Clinton and Bush should be fair game for discussion.

If the subject is civil-right bashing hypocrites from one group of partisans only then this discussion is essentially trivial partisanship masquerading as objective commentary.

Fox · October 29, 2006, 3:59am

I was digging through some Catch 22 quotes today; This one seems to fit this topic nicely:

Tigerman · October 29, 2006, 10:38am

Toe Tag,

You just got OWNED by spook.

Toe_Tag · October 29, 2006, 12:51pm

Its hard for me to talk about this stuff without venting my feelings.

One thing that would be interesting would be for someone to actually address even one of the issues raised in the original Lakoff quote.

So far, nobody else appears to have read the book or downloaded it. Actually Lakoff stopped trying to be objective in this book and its much better written. He tried to be objective in Moral Politics and he never found his voice.

Realistically, I’m probably incapable of being objective, and Tigerman seems to be back in form with his usual puerile comments and emoticons which add nothing of substance to the discussion, behaving like the football hooligans mentioned above.

To put it crudely, as may be the only way to reach certain readers, Lakoff in his book has “owned” the radical conservatives, by literally revealing the way their brains work.

The one objective thing I can take credit for is actually being interested in how conservatives can come up with the positions they take. I haven’t seen any conservatives here yet with any similar interest in liberals or offering any books or articles on the subject.

But perhaps, given a primitive “god said it, I believe it, that settles it” world view, we should not be surprised. They’re an elite that is destined for heaven, unconcerned with scientific fact, or the reality based community, disdainful of academia and of serious thought about complex issues.