RickJay answered as I would have. If you find it inoffensive when someone describes the common parent-chld relationship in a group you belong to as demanding and “militaristic,” we have vastly different sensibilities. If you think such a characteristic is typical for Republicans or conservatives, my first response remains the same–you’re seeing what you expect to see, nothing more.
Perhaps the OP will someday return to this thread and explain what he means by “militaristic”. I’m not sure that will be sufficient to ensure a reasonable discussion can take place, but it is certainly necessary.
I think this is part of it. “Obedience-oriented parenting” would be one check-mark in the definition of conservative. Families that don’t do this are by definition less conservative. Of course there are a lot of exceptions because there are many other factors that make one a conservative other than parenting style.
Well there’s a reason I asked “is this a thing?”. I am well aware that I have a regional bias and a relatively small sample size. I will say that it corresponded more with social conservatives who tended to be highly religious. Much less so with economic conservatives.
My region of experience is mostly Orange Country California if you want to know.
The OP used the word “most” and included “(obviously these are generalities with muddle room)” - and I used the phrase “usually tend to” in my comment.
“Militaristic” isn’t the word I would’ve used, but if you interpret it as “strict” it works for me. That you “know Republicans who have nothing that could be even remotely described as a militaristic relationship with their children” isn’t contrary or probative of anything anybody said.
If someone said people in the military tend to be Republicans/conservative, you saying “I know plenty of Democrats/liberals that serve in the military.” doesn’t really prove them wrong, and seems to be denying the obvious.
I’ll concede that the OP was not artfully stated and “militaristic” was a bit over the top, but I think the intended meaning was still pretty clear.
If the OP had stated that conservative parents tend to be more strict and disciplinarian, would it even raise an eyebrow? I guess I can understand your objection to the phrasing, but I don’t get the denial of the larger point. I think a lot of conservative/strict parents would be proud to “own” that characterization.
I usually see what I expect to see, but that doesn’t mean I’m usually hallucinating.
[hijack]
I’m just glad you managed to read my post despite my having missed out TWO whole words! :smack:
[/hijack]
Why would that be conservative “by definition”?
[QUOTE=voltaire]
The OP used the word “most” and included “(obviously these are generalities with muddle room)” - and I used the phrase “usually tend to” in my comment.
“Militaristic” isn’t the word I would’ve used, but if you interpret it as “strict” it works for me.
[/QUOTE]
First of all, “militaristic” and “strict” are not the same term. The OP said “militaristic” and you defended it, so that’s what I was referring to.
But even “strict” is, frankly, way, way beyond “the plainly obvious.” I don’t buy it. If it’s planly obvious, you shouldn’t have any problems clearly defining your terms and then showing me the evidence.
Because one hallmark of conservatives is tradition, and obedience to authority is not only a tradition in its own right, it is one way in which to instill these traditions. Of course if you disagree with this, you are free to posit your own definition, which I may or may not agree with.
The world is filled with people whose prejudices are always reinforced by unambiguous, incontrovertible evidence. As far as they’re concerned, anyway.
But strictness with children isn’t necessarily a universally held tradition, and can be defined in a lot of different ways. I’m sure you’d agree Americans were more conservative in the 19th century than they are today and yet Americans were famously - it was noted again and again by European travellers - indulgent with their children. Ulysses S. Grant notes in his autobiography how his parents barely disciplined him at all.
Yet at the same time. there’s little doubt Grant was sent off to West Point quite against his own wishes. So his family was by our standards today almost bizarrely permissive (in barely disciplining him as a child) and at the same time unusually demanding, in forcing him into a career path he didn’t want.
“Obedience to authority” is such a broad term that I could argue it applies to virtually all parents; I know many parents, most of them politically liberal by American standards, and know of NO parents who do not expect obedience from their children. I honestly cannot think of a single example to the contrary with whcih I am personally familiar. I certainly am liberal-moderate but of course I expect my daughter to do as I say, when I say it. I don’t hit her or berate her or play Tiger Dad, but what I say is the law. How can a household run otherwise? So does that make me conservative, despite being pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage, and all that sort of thing?
You can be strict or lenient with kids in a million different ways, and argue over the very concept of what “discipline” is. Benjamin Spock is famously thought of as advocating undisciplined parenting, and yet if you actually read his book his position is flatly that parents are in charge and must be obeyed without question; he goes as far as saying that children should not be paid allowance for doing chores, but instead should be made to do chores solely because they should. Spock, indeed, is very much an advocate of discipline, but he just advocates a type that is different from what some people expect.
I haven’t read the book, would you elaborate on how Lakoff makes the case the liberal method is superior?
Assuming religiosity is greater with conservatives, I wonder how the importance of any god as a father figure in a person’s personal life affects that persons belief about government’s role as ‘head of the family’, like a child having to endure a stepfather only to wish his biological father would come home. Nurturing isn’t even desirable from someone who has no business being in charge, the best that child would hope for is that he stays out of his way as much as possible.
Sitnam, Lakoff’s books about this subject are not primarily about showing that the liberal model is superior. Lakoff’s main point is that most arguments from both liberals and conservatives are framed in terms of metaphors which are all-encompassing. These metaphors explain for liberals and conservatives how the world works (where by “the world” I mean the social world, the human world of governments, families, etc.). He thus says that neither side can change the mind of the other simply by expressing their arguments offered to the other side in terms of their own metaphors. The other side doesn’t accept those metaphors and thus isn’t persuaded by them. To change the mind of the other side, you can do three things. You can persuade them by framing your arguments in terms of their own metaphors and show that even within their own metaphorical system their ideas don’t work. Or you can jump out of both metaphorical systems and show that your ideas produce better results according to statistics accepted by both sides and that regardless of what metaphors you use it’s clear that your ideas work better. Or (with greater difficulty) you can show that your opponent’s metaphorical system is simply completely inconsistent and that it would be best to drop it and accept your metaphors instead.
Lakoff’s ideas in his political works aren’t really about persuading anyone of his political ideas. They’re about showing how political arguments usually work and why they often don’t succeed in changing anyone’s mind. They’re an extension of his work in linguistics. Lakoff’s work in cognitive grammar was largely about showing that much of how meaning in language works has to do with metaphors. Argumentation for most people has little to do with the sort of well-defined logical development that you might think it does. It doesn’t work by setting up a system of axioms and established facts and arguing on a formally logical basis from them. In general, it works by comparing new situations to old ones according to various metaphors and trying to see what those metaphors predict for the new situation.
I dunno, Wendell. I’ve just read that wiki and viewed the YouTube video and I have significant doubts.
If I’ve learned anything in the political arena it’s that most people don’t start out monolithically conservative or liberal but rather are forced into competing camps by the existing political narrative. That is, if one begins to establish an identity as a liberal but is against abortion eventually the pressure to conform forces one to bury or alter that stance to fit in. The same could be said on the other side of the issue as well: hanging out (active in politics or not) with conservatives brings one towards the pro-life stance just because of the peer pressure.
I have certainly seen a great many people who consider their own beliefs to be universal because ‘everyone believes this’ but it’s more because they only hang with people who agree with them. They may have believed something else years ago but to fit it they’ve adapted.
Lakoff builds an interesting narrative, at least as far as I’ve seen, but he’s neglecting the partisanization of the American electorate over the last 20 years and the conforming requirement that BOTH mindsets are requiring these days. If you believe one part of a mindset there’s significant pressure to believe all of it.
Thank you.
I asked the question because from your cite:
It’s been several years since I read the book, and I don’t remember the details of how he shows that liberal/nurturant parent position makes better factual predictions than the conservative/strict father position. It’s possible to make Lakoff’s ideas fit with yours, Jonathan Chance. It’s possible that people start with applying strict father or nurturant parent models differently in some cases than in others, so for some issues they may have liberal/nurturant parent positions and for others they may have conservative/strict parent positions. They may then decide that they have to be consistent so they may then change one of those positions. This would say that they’re changing because they need to make their metaphors consistent rather than they’re changing so they agree more with the people they hang out with. I just don’t know myself whether people change positions to make their metaphors consistent or to make themselves consistent with other people.
Please understand that I’m not agreeing with everything that Lakoff says. I only brought this up because the OP said something similar to Lakoff’s ideas. I wasn’t even the first poster in this thread to mention Lakoff. I’m far from certain that Lakoff’s theory gives us a good way to argue about politics. It’s possible that there’s no good reason to have consistent metaphors at all. Maybe logical reasoning may produce different metaphors for different political/social/psychological areas. Lakoff is an academic and not a political pundit. He’s more concerned with showing how people think than trying to change how they think.
That is actually all most the exact opposite of how I was brought up by my larger family (and probably the reason for most of the hatred that developed between me and my parents). In an extended family greater family rules, tradiations, and customs outrank parents all the time and the child would be considered very, very wrong to violate the sanctity and safety of the larger family over something their parents asked or tried to coerce them into doing. An extended family cannot run otherwise? And if everybody abides by the structure, it works out fabulously well. The bipolar relationship I have observed in nuclear families where the children are afraid of their parents because they can punish them, but likewise have only their parents for comfort and caring doesn’t arise.
Lakoff has, I maintain, been cut out of the national discourse because he points fingers in more than one direction, and yet implies too much subtlety. Neither stance makes for good blog discussion, cocktail conversation, or television talk.
We conservatives got tired of them a long time ago. But since there’s only a half dozen or so of us left, I don’t see them stopping any time in the near future.