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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   29649 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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TL;DR: see the bullet points at the end

Today, let's talk an old article and see if it still has relevance. Way downthread when talking about language, I was reminded of one of the language influencers of the left, George Lakoff. A linguistics professor by trade, he wrote a number of books, two which I'll mention briefly: "Moral Politics" in 1996, where he argued conservatives and liberals differed in their emotional and subconscious attitude towards government, and "Don't Think of an Elephant!" in 2004 as a rough guidebook accompanying his progressive think-tank, where he argued that the linguistic framing of the debate often would often determine who would win. Conservatives think of government like a strong and strict parent who needs to strictly raise their citizen-kids into more-responsible adults, then be hands-off from there, he argued. Liberals, however, think the government is and should be a nurturing parent, promoting good virtues and protecting against corruption and badness that encompass various common ills of society. Lakoff thought that liberals were often losing because they were using conservative linguistic frameworks. He was especially active in trying to push a certain brand of linguistics during the Bush years, but upon the 2008 crash his think tank collapsed and he more or less retired at 67.

However, for today, the year is 2011 and he comes out to pen one more article with some advice. Enter The “New Centrism” and Its Discontents. The event he's worked up about? Obama's 2011 State of the Union, with whom he disagrees about political tactics. Please note that any emphasis is purely my own.

There is no ideology of the “center.” What is called a “centrist” or a “moderate” is actually very different – a biconceptual, someone who is conservative on some issues and progressive on others, in many, many possible combinations. Why does this matter? From the perspective of how the brain works, the distinction is crucial.

Because we think with our brains, all thought is physical. Our moral and political worldviews are realized as brain circuits with strong synapses. If you have two conflicting worldviews, you have two brain circuits that are mutually inhibitory, so that when one is activated, it is strengthened and the other is shut off and weakened. When a worldview applies to a given issue, there is a neural binding circuit linking the worldview circuit to that issue circuit in such a way that the issue is understood in terms of that worldview. The right language will activate that issue as understood via that worldview. Using that language strengthens that worldview.

When a Democrat “moves to the center,” he is adopting a conservative position – or the language of a conservative position. Even if only the language is adopted and not the policy, there is an important effect. Using conservative language activates the conservative view, not only of the given issue, but the conservative worldview in general, which, in turn, strengthens the conservative worldview in the brains of those listening. That leads to more people thinking conservative thoughts, and, hence, supporting conservative positions on issues and conservative candidates. Material policy matters. Language use, over and over, affects how citizens understand policy choices, which puts pressure on legislators, and ultimately affects what policies are chosen. Language wars are policy wars.

He goes on to argue that while many Obama-style Democrats were using the playbook of using friendly-sounding packaging to sell good liberal policies, that this was bound to backfire dramatically as the packaging would become the product - or perhaps more accurately, the framing determined the (often hostile) battlefield. Well, wait, actually it's worse - he thinks that to some extent, fighting wars of words on hostile territory actually pushes moderate voters to the right in a sort of self-reinforcing cycle! He thinks not just that politics is a value conflict, but that the fight itself shifts the power of the players. This was a little bit new to me.

Conservatives are trained not to use the language of liberals. Liberals are not so trained. Liberals have to learn not to stick to their own language, and not move rightward in language use. Never use the word “entitlement” – Social Security and Medicare are earned. Taking money from them is stealing. Pensions are delayed payments for work already done. They are part of contracted pay for work. Not paying pensions is taking wages from those who have earned them. Nature isn’t free for the taking. Nature is what nurtures us, and is of ultimate value – human value as well as economic value. Pollution and deforestation are destroying nature. Privatization is not eliminating government – it is introducing government of our lives by corporations, for their profit, not ours. The mission of government is to protect and empower all citizens, because no one makes it on their own. And the more you get from government, the more you owe morally. Government is about “necessities” – health, education, housing, protection, jobs with living wages, and so on – not about “programs.” Economic success lies in human well-being, not in stock prices, or corporate and bank profits. These are truths. We need to use language that expresses those truths.

I found this especially interesting. He thinks that conservatives are really good at using the right language, partly through what elsewhere in the article he describes as a far better and more organized (or at least, disciplined) media ecosystem. Is he right? Do liberals regularly lose the language framing wars among moderates and swing voters, and thus the battle, even before they begin?

Obama’s new centrism must be viewed from the perspective of biconceptualism. In his Tucson speech, Obama started off with the conservative view of the shooting. It was a crazy, lone gunman, unpredictable, there should be no blame – as if brain-changing language did not exist. It sounded like Sarah Palin. But at the end, he became the progressive of his election campaign, bringing back the word “empathy” and describing American democracy as essentially based on empathy, social responsibility, striving for excellence and public service. This is the progressive moral worldview, believed implicitly by all progressives, but hardly ever explicitly discussed.

Whoa. Brain-changing language is quite a claim. This caught my eye a little bit because of how it makes at least a theoretically-grounded factual case for language as a thing that influences people on a physical level. Is he to be believed? I have my doubts about the scientific application, but it was interesting to see this discussion happen in 2011. However, that's not an accident! Obama was, in the referenced Tuscon speech, speaking soon after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting that is now seen as one of the earliest examples of political assassinations now frequently discussed. If language usage choices rewire the brain, are we actually to blame, at least in part, for these kinds of shootings? (I hope I'm not misrepresenting his point here)

"[Obama] is now Mr. Reasonable Centrist – except that in substance there is no reasonable center to be had. A well funded and tightly organized right wing has been pulling American politics to the right for three decades now. And with a few instructive exceptions, Democrats who respond by calling for a new centrism are just acting as the right’s enablers. What exactly is the beneficial substance of this centrism? Just how far right do we have to go for Republicans to cut any kind of deal? Isn’t the mirage of a Third Way a series of moving targets – where every compromise begets a further compromise?" [NB: This quote is lifted wholesale from a column by Robert Kuttner, a progressive writer]

Kuttner has good reason to feel this way. The conservative moral worldview has a highest principle: to preserve, defend and advance that worldview itself. Radical conservatives have taken over the Republican party. Their goal is to make the country – and the world – as conservative as they are. They want to impose strict father morality everywhere. In economics it means laissez-fair capitalism, with the rich seen as the most disciplined, moral and deserving of people, and the poor as undisciplined and unworthy of safety nets. In religion, their God as the punitive strict father God, sending you to heaven or hell depending how well you adhere to conservative moral principles – individual not social responsibility, strict authority, punitive law, the use of overwhelming force in defending conservative moral principles, and so on. Big government is fine when used to those ends, but not when used to social ends. Only “spending” on measures to help people should be cut, not the use of money to fund what conservative morality approves of. The concern for the deficit is a ruse. They regularly support ideas that would raise, not lower the deficit. Science is to be believed if new weapons systems are based on it, but not if it shows that human pollutants are causing global warming and disastrous climate change.

In a way, this seems pretty prescient. According to progressives, at least (and certainly others) radical conservatives did take over the Republican party, and they did espouse authority and overwhelming force to punish the unworthy and the enemies, and they did use the deficit as a ruse, and they did have a uniquely selective approach to which science to believe. It's all over the news these last few months. As a pretty classic centrist myself, that feels like a pretty damning indictment, if true. Is it true? And even if he's wrong, does he have some useful advice?

The "progressive" solution

He ends by giving essentially a nice bullet-point list of things that progressives need to do. (I should note that there is some question as to whether 2011-era progressives are the same group as 2025 ones, so maybe it's best to consider it more broadly). If you read nothing else, this is his thesis, distilled.

  • First, they have to recognize the reality of biconceptualism. Adopting conservative language helps conservatism. Adopting conservative programs makes the world more conservative and, so, helps drive empathy from the world, and that is disastrous.
  • Second, progressives should recognize that the business of America is business – that there are successful businesses and businesspeople with progressive values, and they should be praised and courted – and separated from radical conservatives.
  • Third, progressives have to organize around a single morality, centered on empathy, both personal and social responsibility and excellence – being the best person you can be, not just for your own sake, but for the sake of you family, community and nation. All politics is moral; it is about the right things to do. Get your morality straight, learn to talk about it, then work on policy. It is patriotic to be progressive.
  • Fourth, progressives must understand the critical need for a communication system that rivals the conservative system: An overall understanding of conservatism, effective framing of progressive beliefs and real facts, training centers on understanding and articulating progressive thought, systems of spokespeople on call, booking agencies to book speakers on radio and tv, and in local venues like schools, churches and clubs.
  • Fifth, it is progressive to be firm, articulate and gentle. You can stand up for what you believe, while being gentlemanly and ladylike.
  • Sixth, progressives have to get over the idea that conservatives are either stupid, or mean or greedy – or all three. Conservatives are mostly people who have a different moral system from progressives.

A new centrism that makes sense ought to be one that unifies progressives under a single moral system centered on empathy; that recognizes, and shows respect for, the progressive side of biconceptuals; that respects the intelligence of conservatives; that allies with progressive businesspeople as well as with unions; that builds a communication system that brings it in touch with most Americans; that calls upon the love of nature; that is gentle and firm; and that refuses to move to the right, either in language or action.

Again, strong language. Conservatism drives empathy from the world? Uncharitable, but I can kind of see it. My parents originally flipped from Republican to Democrat, even as religious social conservatives, because in the words of my dad, "they at least pretend to care about poor people, but the Republicans don't even try". There's some pragmatism here, even among the moralization, for finding good allies. His vision of morality as the wellspring of progressive vision is an interesting one that I think partially got lost in the political noise, though I'm unsure how well it would work in practice. Most of all, though, the sixth bullet point has almost objectively been flagrantly violated in the last decade. Support Trump? You must be stupid, or mean, or shortsighted. Different values? No, clearly you just didn't see all the facts. If nothing else, I think for Democrats to get their mojo back, that probably has to change. You can't persuade someone you don't even understand.

What do you think? Is he right about language choices molding the political conversation and even changing values themselves via mere reinforcement? Should Democrats focus on long-term value-change strategies? Even if he's wrong, would you appreciate a Democratic party following his six proposals? Are "progressives" still losing the language battle? Food for thought.

To me, the most interesting point is how Lakoff's programme interacted the change in what the left-wing project was about between then and now.

In 2011, centre-left politicians thought they were in politics to deliver rising material standards of living for the bottom 99%. The activist base had started to shift to social issues (the tipping point was the failure of Occupy in late 2011) but the establishment wouldn't for a few more years. The frame that Lakoff was telling the Democrats to adopt was to fully lean into their role as the Mummy Party. (It isn't in the excerpt above, but Lakoff explicitly said was that the correct frame was that the nation was a family and the State was a "nurturant parent"). Of the six points, 2 is "accept support from successful businessmen who offer it", 4, and 5 are "git gud" and 1, 3, and 6 are "always talk like Mummy, talking like Daddy only benefits the Daddy party".

What actually happened is that the broader left-wing ecosystem of which the Democratic Party is part did embrace the spirit of points 1 and 3. They did organise around a single morality, optimise their communication to reinforce the frame of that morality, try to change the world through brain-changing morality etc. But the morality they adopted wasn't egalitarian therapy culture with the State as mother, it was woke culture with the State as HR lady. By 2020, centre-left politicians thought they were in politics to raise the relative social status of historically oppressed groups at the expense of white males.

But the morality they adopted wasn't egalitarian therapy culture with the State as mother, it was woke culture with the State as HR lady. By 2020, centre-left politicians thought they were in politics to raise the relative social status of historically oppressed groups at the expense of white males.

  1. Both of these are forms of nurturing. Who hasn't been told "you have to take your brother as well"? Who hasn't seen someone torn into by a teacher for being cruel or insufficiently kind towards that kid in class with some issue? Who hasn't seen attempts by the nurturing elements in school to try to raise the self-esteem or status of some of the unfortunates?
  2. Progressives attempted a synthesis of both of these positions in 2020 under Biden: strong identity politics to show support to minorities combined with infrastructure spending in an attempt to recreate some sort of FDR coalition of working class people who stick with the party because of how it serves their material interests. For various reasons it seems to have failed.

Who hasn't been told "you have to take your brother as well"?

If its occasional, yes. But making a kid his brother's keeper, and particularly making big brother responsible for little brother's fuckups, is considered abusive parenting ("parentification" is the technical term), not nurturing parenting. The ideal Mummy State makes the badly-behaved retarded kid its problem, not the healthy siblings' problem.

The ideal Mummy State makes the badly-behaved retarded kid its problem, not the healthy siblings' problem.

But that's the rub and where the analogy falls short.

The State's problem IS my problem because of how taxes work. In the mommy/sibling/bad sibling framing, the mommy who takes on the burden of the bad kid is paying out of her own pocket. She isn't demanding the good kid get a job and then bring home 25% of his or her wages to immediately be wasted on indulging the bad kid's emotional needs.

People who decry the Nanny State concept, in my mind, aren't going far enough. There is no such thing as a Nanny State. There is only confiscation of the abundance that the responsible and capable have produce on their own to be redistributed for .... reasons?

Direct, socially network charity is what I want. If I see that there's a guy in my town struggling because of some legitimate bad luck, I'd want some sort of mechanism to directly help him out over and above just me giving him cash. Local level, socially networked welfare.

Some of the counterarguments I see are:

  • Some communities, as a whole, don't have the resources to do this. Response: Then that's a broken community. They should all move. Yes, I am serious.

  • Smaller communities don't have the "resources" to "administer" such benefits. Response: This is just a thinly veiled argument for bureaucracy and PMC jobs. GoFundMes can be setup in a matter of minutes with all the necessary reporting and compliance. There's no reason Anytown, USA couldn't have their municipal government set these up - and then instantly fund them - just as easily. The not-conspiracy conspiracy is that government technology implementation is so awful party because of naked job preservation instincts by bureaucrats.

  • "What, so you want people to BEG their neighbors for money!? How despicable!" Response: "Beg" is hyperbole. Asking for an receiving charity is a pro-social act (Christians even call it Saintly). I'd rather have this be open and explicit than what we have now - covert signaling, counter-signaling, and assumptions of who is on what kind of government assistance. Furthermore, because government assistance is secured through faceless paperwork, people do not feel the same sense of humility and become, eventually, entitled.

Again, a Nanny State doesn't exist. The reality is far worse. We could solve these problems by admitting that PMC'ism is rampant and that individual emotional self-preservation, currently, outweighs pro-social society wide benefit. That's liberal, "humanist" individualism for you.

I'd want some sort of mechanism to directly help him out over and above just me giving him cash

What if giving him cash is just mathematically the most effective option? I occasionally donate to GiveDirectly because I believe in their premise: that the administrative efficiency of just distributing cash directly is so high that enabling the occasional bad behavior is outweighed by all the good behavior it promotes and bureaucratic behavior it avoids. I'd concede that not every individual would benefit from the cash-- I don't give money to homeless people directly because I reasonably suspect they would misuse it-- but that's a rule-proving exception. Deciding which particular individual you want to give cash to re-introduces the hated administrative burden; better to do something like a UBI or the libertarian negative tax rate.

I think I agree, morally, that no amount of government spending can ever replace charity... but some amount of government spending is just sensible economics.

What if giving him cash is just mathematically the most effective option?

I mean, it is theoretically possible if you have the rare case of a guy who was fired from his job for no fault of his own and needs some money for food and shelter until he gets another job. In that hypothetical you are preserving the theoretical productivity of a person just long enough until they return to productivity.

In practice even unemployment insurance as implemented is not even this. Last I checked, most users of UI are repeat users. The rest of the redistribution programs fail even harder. The problem with giving money to people to keep them alive is it doesn't wean them off. Its just a self licking ice cream cone in social program form. That is, unfortunately, the Achilles heel of EA as currently styled as well. You have to account for future expenses as well.

You're considering redistributive programs in a vacuum, but I contend that that's not the best way to understand my proposal. My position is that the best way to perform welfare is unconditional wealth transfers, and to various degrees UI, SS, and even GiveDirectly are all conditional. That naturally leads to problems, like your mention of the "repeat users" thing, but that's proof of the conditionality being the problem, not the nature of transferring cash. Consider if, alternatively, these programs were administered as deliveries of particular baskets of goods. Think of how much more room there would be for corruption and inefficiency. Cash is better than food stamps is better than a council of politicians getting bribed by ag lobbyists to buy specifically high fructose corn syrup and distribute it. Anti-welfare people look at poor people choosing to buy inefficient luxuries and claim that that's proof that programs should be reformed to give politicians more control over program administration... but the alternative isn't poor people getting a healthier diet, the alternative is financially motivated politicians forcing poor people to buy even more inefficient luxuries.

And yes, "giving people money to stay alive" does result in dependency, for the uncontreversial reason that if you pay someone to do something, they will keep doing it. If you only provide wealth transfers to poor people, they will remain poor. But if you pay people independent of their actions, their incentive is to put the money to the most personally productive use possible. And given that capitalism provides a network of incentives to align personal greed to societal benefit, that in turn funnels money toward what's better for society.

But to give everyone money you either have to tax at such exorbitant rates that you are going to cripple the economy, or you are going to be giving out so little that it doesn't help anyone but the very poor anyways.

So unless you are the first politician in centuries to figure out a way to tax the underclass to give some extra money to private sector upper middle class families, your redistribution program is going to be bad for society.

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