“Reality has a well-known liberal bias,” says Stephen Colbert. In turn, you might feel that the word “freedom” has a conservative bias. According to George Lakoff, professor of cognitive linguistics and author of Whose Freedom?, that's because conservatives have subtly but systematically changed the meaning of “freedom” to make it fit a radical right-wing agenda. TAP spoke with Professor Lakoff from his office at the Rockridge Institute, where he is a founding senior fellow.
You claim that every progressive issue is ultimately about freedom. How's that?
Freedom is central to every major idea that is important in American life, whether it's justice, rights, harm, or things like the market, or religion. No matter what you touch in American life, freedom becomes an issue in one way or the other. The idea of a government itself in a democracy -- especially in American democracy -- is to maximize the freedom of its citizens. Ideas like opportunity have to do with the freedom to take part fully in civil society. Economic opportunity has to do with the fact that wealth and property contribute to your freedom. Just about every issue concerns freedom, and it's hard to imagine one that doesn't.
Tell me about the difference between conservative and liberal conceptions of freedom.
To understand that you have to understand the difference between the liberal and conservative understandings of the world. I talk about this in the book in terms of the strict father and nurturant parent model. Freedom is mostly about whether you can satisfy your goals and needs, and whether there's anything stopping that. To have the freedom to satisfy your goals means that you both have the ability and that there is nothing standing in your way. So the question is: In governments and other kinds of social institutions, what kind of structure optimizes your freedom overall?
The conservative view says a hierarchical structure. It's one in which there is a strict, powerful leader – in a family it would be a strict father – who knows right from wrong, who is a moral authority, and who carries this out through the use of force. Discipline is what's really necessary in such an organization, to function so as to be maximally free -- that is, to satisfy your needs and desires. And the idea of this sort of institution is to use a hierarchical structure to impose discipline. That's the conservative idea. There is a version of it in the family, and we understand other social institutions as metaphorical versions of the family.
The liberal idea is that the best way to satisfy your needs and desires in a social institution is through care and cooperation and acting responsibly. Your leaders do this through exercising a leadership where they have empathy. Care and empathy are central to leadership. This is a two-way proposition: There needs to be an open and honest discussion, you need community, you need trust, you need cooperation. Out of this comes notions like protection, and fairness, and so on.
That said, there is a core concept of freedom that everybody agrees upon. There is a core set of cases where people will simply agree. That is, you're not free if you're tied up or in jail, or if you've been harmed, or if your resources have been taken away. It's really based on the physical understanding of freedom, which is why it's so visceral. Freedom of movement is the basis of the idea. Nothing is so infuriating to someone as to be held down, held from moving, kept from moving to where they want to go, getting the objects they need, and performing the actions they want to perform.
Tell me about the free market, the “economic liberty myth,” and the “cheap labor trap.”
There is a set of very important ideas about economics in here. The right wing constantly talks about economic liberty. That liberty myth assumes that it is individual initiative and individual responsibility that have made the country great, and that it's access and free participation in “free markets” that is essential, and that “free markets” are both natural and moral -- the idea that if everyone pursues his own profit, the profit of all will be maximized as a law of nature. The assumption is that free markets are competitive and competition maximizes sufficiency and minimizes waste and benefits everybody.
There are other assumptions that go as part of this myth. That is, it works best without any constraints that interfere with its operation. The government constraints are taxes, regulations, consumer lawsuits, and benefits like pension and medical care that companies have to give. This makes government a problem that gets in the way of the free market and waste taxpayers' money. The assumption is that private is more efficient and less wasteful, and therefore you should privatize as much of government as possible.
In this myth, economic freedom is seen as the central freedom, because it leads inevitably to other freedoms. If you want to have economic freedom, you better have free speech, free elections, civil control with the military, civil liberties, and so on. This is part of the myth. And there's a lot that is hidden by the myth. And it's exactly those things that progressives look at when they look at freedom.
It is recognized by both sides that wealth and property contributes to freedom. That's the part that is assumed in both cases. The question is, what is the role of government in all of this? And what is being hidden by the right-wing economic myth? Many things. First, there is what I call the commonwealth principle. From the beginning of America, we called our states commonwealths, because there was a principle that we put together our common wealth for the common good, to build an infrastructure that benefits everybody, benefits each person's goals. So you built railroads, schools, and libraries, and so on. Nowadays, that has grown enormously. For example, if you want to start a business, you need to get a bank loan. What secures the banks? The common wealth. Taxpayer money. If you want to sell stock in a business, you need to have a stock market, which has to be run honestly and sufficiently according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is funded by taxpayer money. It's run by the government. In the courts, nine-tenths of the publicly supported costs go for business law. If you want to ship goods, you need highways. That's supported by taxpayer money. If you want to communicate with people, you need the Internet, the satellite system, and other parts of the communications system -- which were put together and maintained by taxpayer money.
The more money you make, the more you're using that infrastructure. But what's happened is that the right wing takes the infrastructure for granted, doesn't know that it's there. But no one makes it on their own. No one becomes rich by themselves. There is no such thing as a self-made man. If you've made a lot of money, you've used the common wealth, and you have a duty to replenish it. You have a duty to keep it there so that other people can use it. And that is one of the things not said in the economic liberty myth.
Your concept of “dynamic progressivism” will likely contradict the beliefs of many Americans. Basically, it's the old question of whether it's the spirit of the word of the Constitution that counts, isn't it?
There is no such thing as an original meaning of the Constitution that covers all cases. How does a case go to the Supreme Court? An ordinary murder or robbery case will never get to the Supreme Court, because it fits the categories. It only gets to the Supreme Court if it doesn't fit any existing categories. Then the Supreme Court makes a judgment, and no matter what judgment it makes, it either extends or contracts a category. That changes the category structure, and that's a change in the world. So every judge on the Supreme Court is an “activist judge.” They change the world.
Progressives have, throughout our history, insisted on the expansion of freedoms. And these progressives constitute most of America. So if you look at the ways that freedom has been expanded because Americans have insisted that they be, there are a great many of these expansions.
One is the expansion of voting rights. It used to be that only white, male property owners could vote. Then, by Andrew Jackson's time, the property owner restriction was dropped out. After the Emancipation Proclamation, the white constraint was dropped out. With women's suffrage the male constraint was dropped out. You had a successive expansion of freedom. The same is true in civil liberties and other kinds of freedom. Education is the freedom of access to knowledge. We've insisted over time that there be more and more education guaranteed to our citizens, from an eighth-grade education to a high-school education to a junior college to a college education to, in many cases now, some sort of graduate education. Our population has insisted on this expansion of freedom.
In case after case, what you find is that Americans have insisted on the expansion of freedom -- that freedom be increased, not just kept the same. And this has not been recognized, but each of these freedoms is a progressive form of freedom.
You use the terms “traditional progressives” and “radical conservatives.” Aren't these oxymora?
Not at all. And they're used for a very good reason. Progressivism is a tradition in America. We have an activist population. In exactly this sense: our population wants progressively more freedom. That's what America is about: keep increasing freedom. Freedom of communication, ease of starting a business, access to credit. Increasing freedom is at the heart of the country, it's a tradition to be progressive about freedom. The word conservative is supposed to be about conserving things, but that's not the content of current conservatism. Current conservatism is a radical movement to change things, to undo the progressive freedoms that we have, to turn the clock back on these things, and to make changes of a kind we've never really had before. To privatize things in a way in ways that they've never been privatized, for example -- like privatizing the military.
Your critics say linguistic framing is superficial. How do you respond to that?
Framing is about ideas. There are ideas that go with individual words, those are the surface frames. And there are deep frames, deep ideas. Surface frames can't be used without the deep frames. They have to have the deep frames to give them sensibility, to make them cohere. I'm mainly concerned with the deep frames. The book on freedom is all about the deepest frame we have: freedom. It's about an idea.
In the Prospect's May issue, editor Mike Tomasky proposed “the common good” as an over-arching, unifying idea for the Democratic Party. How's that for a deep frame?
Tomasky didn't get it completely right. I mean, he's in the right direction, but it isn't the common good as opposed to individual goods. The general principle is this: You use the common wealth for the common good, in order to build an infrastructure for individual goods. Individual well-being and individual goals depend on the use of the common wealth for the common good. That point wasn't clear. And he kept talking about sacrifice. Wrong idea. The common good is not a call for sacrifice. The common good says to support the individual aspirations of our people. It's not a call to sacrifice at all. It's a call to help support the individual aspirations of everybody.
What are the first principles of the progressivism that you propose?
Nurturant morality is the basis. The basic ideas are empathy and responsibility. We care about people. We act responsibly on that, both to take care of ourselves, and to engage in social responsibility. We want a society where that is done, and we want a government based on those principles. That's the basic idea. Out of that you get the principle of the common wealth. Use the common wealth for the common good, so that everybody can seek their own individual goals better. And you have a principle of freedom, you want progressive freedom to be expanded as much as possible over time. The third principle is one of human dignity. There is a minimum standard of human dignity that must be met in a civilized country, and the government must do everything in its power to guarantee that that standard is met. Those are the principles.
Molly Ivins recently wrote that David Sirota (author of Hostile Takeover) is “a new-generation populist who instinctively understands that the only real questions are ‘Who's getting screwed' and ‘Who's doing the screwing?'” What do you make of such a revival of economic populism?
I think David Sirota is one of our great public servants, I praise him to the skies for the work he is doing. That being said, I think the idea that we can have an economic populism is false. It's a very, very common liberal mistake to assume that people just vote on the basis of their economic self-interest and that you can appeal to them that way.
You really have to understand what conservative populism is about. Republican conservatives have been saying for 30 years that conservatives are being oppressed by liberals. Conservative populists are mad because they see snooty liberals looking down their noses at ordinary people, thinking that they're stupid, telling them what they should be doing. “Politically correct” liberals oppressing them with “the liberal media.” “Limousine liberals,” “Hollywood liberals.” This is cultural populism, it's not economic populism. Populism in this country is cultural right now.
There may once have been an economic populism, but I even doubt that. I think at that time, the elite was just seen as the robber barons -- it was a social and economic elitism put together. Just going out and telling poor conservatives that you're in favor of them being better off economically won't change anything, because their very identities are forged in terms of a cultural identity -- an identity as having strict father morality, and an identity as being culturally oppressed.
You have to understand what conservatism is about, and why conservative populists love the word “liberty” -- why “liberty” is most used by conservative populists. And I put aside something like “civil liberties,” which is kind of an idiom -- a different thing than just using the word “liberty.” Conservative populism is based on a certain set of principles. First, that people assume a strict father morality in at least some important part of their lives, and identify with strict father morality. And because of that, they use direct causation in their arguments, as opposed to systemic causation. This is extremely important, because a lot of progressives' arguments are all based on systemic causation. Like environmental arguments, for example. Or if you ask, what are the causes of crime? The right wing says “bad people,” and the left wing talks about problems in society. That's direct versus systemic causation.
Regarding Iraq, there seems to be a lot of good-faith disagreement among Democrats who sit down and try to understand what is going on. Meanwhile, decisions are made by Republicans who don't seem very curious, who don't seem, from a liberal perspective, to understand what's going on -- don't want to look at the facts.
Well there's a reason for this, and it's built into the moral system. The highest value of the conservative moral system is preserving that system itself. The highest value on the other side is helping individuals who need help. It is caring about people. So if you care about people, you've got to find out what's going on out there. If you want to preserve a certain moral system, then you don't want facts that contradict it. You're not looking for contradictions, you're not trying to test it. There are conservatives who talk about reality being a liberal idea. What they want to do is create reality.
A lot of people bring up, and talk about in different terms, the notion that we're at a historical crossroads in American political history. Mike Tomasky, Barack Obama, Ken Baer and Andrei Cherny, among others, have stressed this point recently. Do you agree?
I absolutely agree with that. If you want the most basic difference, it's “are we all in this together, or are you on your own?” That's the most basic difference. Do we care about each other, are we cooperating, working together, being responsible for each other? Or do we say that it's everybody for themselves? That is about as basic a difference as you can get. And I think Obama and Tomasky get it right on that. There's a lot more to be said, but I agree entirely with them that if you ask what the most basic difference is, that's it.
Who do you hope the most will read this book?
Oh, I'm for everybody, or course. The book is written for as popular an audience as possible. I think, certainly, every progressive should read this book. But I think everybody should.
And by the way, one of the biggest points in the book that we haven't discussed is the idea of biconceptuals. There are people who are partial progressives and partial conservatives. There is an old theory of individualism saying that there's a bunch of people in the Midwest who're just “individualists,” whatever that means. But it turns out, when you analyze it, they're actually biconceptuals. They're conservatives in certain aspects of life, but they're very progressive in other aspects of life.
Do you think ideas trickle down or crawl up?
It's the wrong metaphor. The wrong frame. Notice how that metaphor hides the most important fact which is, most ideas are unconscious. Most thought is unconscious. The basic finding in cognitive science is that most thought is unconscious. What I'm trying to do is make our conceptual system -- that is, the system of concepts we use in thought -- I'm trying to make that conscious.
You say the conservative infrastructure is crucial. With the conservative machine being so powerful, what do progressives do to fight it? Will the better idea win in the end, simply because it deserves to? Or because more people are actually latently progressive? How do you turn it around?
I think there are more progressives out there than conservatives. But they have to know that they are, and they have to know what to do, and how to argue, and how to defend themselves. When they feel they're right, they have to be able to articulate why they're right. This book is a tool for doing that.
You write, “There is a lot of cognitive work to do, no just among ordinary citizens, but also among the journalists, political leaders, educators, and clergy who shape public discourse.” How optimistic are you about this? In 2003, a reporter from Berkeley's NewsCenter asked you if any of the 2004 Democratic presidential contenders grasped the importance of framing. Your answer was “none.” How do you feel now about the 2006 and 2008 elections?
First of all, in the short term it's not going to happen very easily. In the long term, I'm very optimistic. And the short term does matter, but there is something very remarkable happening here. The concept of a frame has gotten out there. Even if it's misunderstood, at least the basic idea is out there that there is framing is out there. This book is to get out the idea that there is deep framing, and that framing is about your most fundamental ideas. If, in two years, we can get out there the idea that framing exists at all, that's amazing. The question is if, in the next two years, can we get out the idea that deep framing exists? And that freedom, the most important thing in American life, has to be understood in terms of a certain set of deep frames. And it's not impossible, it's a conceivable goal.
Ulrik Jørstad Gade is a Prospect intern.
