Progressive Morals with Examples

Progressive Morals with Examples

Our morals are better. Let’s fight for them.

The right wing has a strategy to change American culture to adopt their abhorrent, often self conflicted, “strict father” moral world view. That strategy is well formed with a clear goal, and a specific method to achieve that goal. It’s based on science, to control the cultural narrative. Progressives don’t understand what this strategy is based on, how it works, or why we keep losing every battle. We let the right wing define the terms of every conflict, react to that, and then lose. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can lead again?—?but we have to understand the rules of engagement, and exactly what the right wing is doing. It’s not that complicated, but it involves understanding world views, and that’s especially hard when the new information conflicts with your own world view.

Progressives have a moral world view based primarily on empathy and support. George Lakoff calls it “progressive family morality.” We have an authority model based on open inquiry and accountability. Conservatives don’t have any of this. Their moral world view, “strict father morality” is different. It’s based on discipline through punishment, and an authority model based on a mix of in-group seniority and gender, and often (but not always) other characteristics like religion and race, and that authority cannot be challenged, except on the basis of discipline or lack thereof. That last bit is important?—?it’s not important to them that their precepts are correct, only that they remain unchallenged. Now think about how progressive authority works?—?you might already see some conflict.

A moral world view is the basis for all political views?—?the starting point, the premise of every political arguments is a moral truth defined by your world view, and a moral cannot be challenged or proven rationally. What is right (righteous) just is. This is the hardest part of all this for rational “centrists” and progressives to accept. We want to help immigrants because it is righteous to support and care for people who need help, according to our moral world view. Conservatives want to punish them for a perceived slight (crossing the border without paperwork, or really, for just being part of an “other” out-group). That’s the starting point.

The thing with progressives and liberals is we are rationalists, and that partly makes up our world view. We tend to think we can logically arrive at the proper set of morals after reason, but that’s demonstrably not how it works. It’s a jagged pill to swallow for rationalists, but it’s simple and it’s true. All politics, and all political issues are filtered through our moral world view. The rest are arguments meant to justify the moral judgement. Progressives rationalize away the drug traffickers among the illegal immigrants as refugees. Conservatives rationalize away the refugees as drug traffickers. The facts don’t matter here?—?the judgment is decided earlier than the argument, by your moral world view. The truth about immigrants is a mix of these facts.

So, how do we win, or at least make sure our preferences are considered on an issue like immigration? We understand why we want what we want, and we just explain that. Yes, there is a mix of bad actors in a mostly victimized group of people that we want to help in undocumented immigrants. The morals say, how we treat them is not only about them. It’s also about what it says about us. Americans help people. America’s culture IS nurturing. They need help, so we help them. And we are good, strong, and capability people who have the capacity to help them. Scarcity is a nonsensical conservative idea. How we treat people in need says everything about us. It says everything about us, to us, but also to the rest of the world. Conservatives can take their “all the world is a nail” punishment and stuff it. We are helping these people, because it’s the right thing to do. (The facts are on our side?—?feel free to explain that, but only after making the moral argument to frame the facts.)

Which argument do you think will win? We should live up to our morals, or we should punch down on desperate people? If we talk about these issues morally, we’d make progress— but we can’t just react to focus group tested, right wing talking points?—?we can’t call them “illegal immigrants”. Their legal status is not the most important aspect. Our need to live up to our higher morals is.

You might have noticed how easy it is in the previous section to conjure conservative values labels, and how comparatively weak the progressive labels feel. This is not an accident. Conservatives have been promoting their moral world view, systemically and successfully, for decades, while progressives and liberals have not. They have use focus groups and polling to both push and test for specific short phrases they can use to activate the compatible moral world view on their chosen issues. The result is that they are absolutely dominating the contest to change American character. Idiotic conservative drivel like DILLIGAF (do I look like I give a f***) is now dominating American culture. yes, I do give a f***. And you know what? Most American do too.

But why is this effective? It’s because we all have multiple world views in our brains at the same time, and we make decisions based on which one is active at the moment of a moral question, and we do it almost completely unaware?—?unconsciously. And, they are activated by simply saying words?—?even when you then argue against them. If I say, “Don’t Think of an Elephant,” you can’t do it. That’s the science, and it’s another jagged pill for rationalists. It used to be that Americans exercised progressive morality in some contexts, like maybe a labor union meeting, or school, and exercised conservative values in other contexts?—?the home, or at work. It used to be that we saw those morals expressed in art and movies and writing, based on that experience, and the intuition that comes from experience. But its getting harder to find it in pop culture any more. All those “grounded” and “dark” TV shows? Yeah, they are pushing a particularly nasty conservative world view. Everything is conservative, action movie morality.

Most people, even if they feel conservative values aren’t quite right for a given issue, seem unable to really explain an alternative. They certainly can’t explain issues in language other than conservative frames they’ve been given. They fall repeatedly, and frustratingly, into conservative framing traps, and don’t seem particularly aware of how it works. That makes sense. Conservatives and Republicans have entire institutions whose job is exclusively to propagate their moral world view. Progressives have exactly 0 matching institutions?—?all progressive institutions are tied to specific issues or electoral outcomes. As a result, everyone has an easy time explaining conservative morals, and applying them to policy?—?including the media?—?but cannot even begin to describe the better, more American morals beneath progressive policy.

It’s no wonder the media can’t make any sense of the words Nancy Pelosi speaks and keep asking for her “message.” They say “message”, but really, they are asking for her moral world view, or for a brand message, and she’s been unable or unwilling to articulate one. In a recent presser, after getting frustrated, she does get half-way there?—?she says the word responsibility repeatedly?—?but responsibility is defined differently by the two moral world views. To progressives, responsibility is to nurture and support. To conservatives, responsibility is more like obedience to their moral authority. It’s not enough to just say “we have responsibility”?—?responsibility to what moral truth? It’s not enough to say some policy is better than some other?—?better at achieving what moral outcome? Nancy Pelosi’s responsibility is defined by liberal notions of individual responsiblity, and progressive notions of compassion, nurture, and support. But she never said these words, and the reporters, were left scratching their heads. (Honestly, Nancy Pelosi shouldn’t have to explain her world view, journalists should know about this stuff, but that’s another issue.)

All of that is just context, and it doesn’t really show how to apply this in specific issues. So here are some quick and dirty examples of how to apply all to political messaging. Again, you’ll notice how much more work I have to do to set the moral frame than a conservative counter point. It’s not because it’s more complex?—?we just don’t have the decades of consistent tactics to build the labels.

We empathize with those stricken with sickness and understand it can happen to anyone, at any time, without reason or discrimination. We must care for and protect each other in tough times, especially (but not limited to) those tough times over which we have no control, so we will provide health insurance to all. Conservatives want to punish the sick, because they see them as deserving their sickness?—?they must have done something wrong, or failed to prepare, or had no discipline, or some other twisted logic. Conservatives are not greedy on the issue of healthcare— it’s not about money. In fact, they are willing to spend more to punish the unworthy?—?and we do. They want to punish the sick, and they are willing to pay for it.

We see CEOs who take home billions while paying their workers less than they can live on, as disloyal wage thieves, exploiting those who do the real work to build their companies. We see billionaire freeloaders who take and take, and don’t give back, no reciprocation. They can call their ill-gotten gains “earnings” all they want, we see right through that. Conservatives see folks like Jeff Bezos or Donald Trump not as exploiters, or obvious con men, but as disciplined strict authorities, and therefor deserving of the riches they greedily stuff in their own pockets. Greed is good to conservatives. To progressives, it’s obviously theft and unbalanced moral equation.

Progressives want to take care of veterans, folks to whom we owe a moral debt for their service, and their sacrifice, especially those who have been injured in any way. Progressive nurture and support?—?even veterans. Conservatives want to let them suffer, because they weren’t disciplined enough, not ruthless enough, to take care of themselves after they are no longer of use in the military, or some other twisted logic. Veterans are not enough like Donald Trump to conservatives, not disciplined enough to deserve dignity after service. Trump once said, “Americans who died in ware are ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’”. To a strict father world view, that makes total sense?—?it’s all about discipline, empathy is not relevant. Every conservative, and every Republican ate that right up. Donald Trump is a very disciplined brand marketer. Extremely disciplined. It’s the entire reason conservatives love him. They don’t need anything more. It has made him the perfect strict father for conservatives. Not vets, who have sacrificed for us, and who deserve our respect for their service. Every voter who would side with Donald Trump, or any other Republican, after saying something like that has betrayed us all, but most especially veterans.

I could go on?—?but you can see how knowing our morals, and those of our opposition can help explain the truth about why we believe these things are righteous. It’s not enough to explain the mechanics of how a policy works. It’s great that Democrats wan to provide day care to all workers. But why? What’s the moral underpinning of that? It’s to nurture and support. If it’s about discipline, then parents shouldn’t have had children until they were financially ready (we’d have almost no new babies if we did that…) We have to communicate the moral intent?—?and we have to do that FIRST?—?then we can explain the details of how it achieves that moral end until midnight.

Once we internalize this, and use it to frame our arguments, we’ll start to win, and I believe there are a LOT more of us than the hateful conservatives. Until we do it, we’ll continue to get our butts kicked, decade after decade. Our morals are better, but we have to state them, at the beginning of every argument, repeatedly, every time?—?until we are sick of it, then repeat it some more. If we keep trying to sell policy through rationalism, without communicating the moral foundation on which those policies are built, we’ll keep losing every battle. We can already see where that leads.

We can’t challenge the ascendancy of the right wing if we don’t understand them?—?and they are not that hard to understand. We also can’t beat them if we don’t understand ourselves. We aren’t much more complicated, but what we do is harder to pull off, yet produces greater rewards than the often self-defeating right wing “strict father” ideology will even allow itself to dream of. Our morals are better. Let’s fight for them.