IT'S NOT THE INCOMPETENCE; IT'S THE CONSERVATISM

From AlterNet, UC Berkeley linguist George Lakoff on how Bush isn't really incompetent; instead, he's been wildly successful advancing the tenents of modern conservatism, which, in turn, is causing everything to go to hell:

Conservative philosophy has three fundamental tenets: individual initiative, that is, government's positive role in people's lives outside of the military and police should be minimized; the President is the moral authority; and free markets are enough to foster freedom and opportunity.

The conservative vision for government is to shrink it - to "starve the beast" in Conservative Grover Norquist's words. The conservative tagline for this rationale is that "you can spend your money better than the government can." Social programs are considered unnecessary or "discretionary" since the primary role of government is to defend the country's border and police its interior. Stewardship of the commons, such as allocation of healthcare or energy policy, is left to people's own initiative within the free market. Where profits cannot be made -- conservation, healthcare for the poor -- charity is meant to replace justice and the government should not be involved.

Given this philosophy, then, is it any wonder that the government wasn't there for the residents of Louisiana and Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? Conservative philosophy places emphasis on the individual acting alone, independent of anything the government could provide. Some conservative Sunday morning talk show guests suggested that those who chose to live in New Orleans accepted the risk of a devastating hurricane, the implication being that they thus forfeited any entitlement to government assistance. If the people of New Orleans suffered, it was because of their own actions, their own choices and their own lack of preparedness. Bush couldn't have failed if he bore no responsibility.

Click here for the rest.

Lakoff was one of the first academics in public discourse to analyze the way that conservatives frame themselves and their issues--it was just a hop, skip, and jump from that analysis to his urgent assertion that liberals, who stand to do much better in this game than conservatives, ought to start doing the same thing immediately, or face extinction. Nearly three years after I initially heard about his work, it looks like it's starting to pay off: numerous left-wing essays are now talking about the framing concept for liberals; others are rhetorically assaulting right-wing frames, generally coming to the conclusion that conservatism, as a philosophy, is simply ill-suited for modern governance.

Really, it's kind of sad what's happened. Don't get me wrong; in no way do I consider myself to be a conservative. However, conservatism was my foundational understanding of politics and culture, and, in principle, there are some good things about right-wing thinking. That is, in addition to keeping liberalism honest by continually challenging it, conservatism's sense of caution when approaching social change is just good common sense. I'm also quite fond of conservatism's reverence for tradition and history, and its love of country, even though I'm usually in complete disagreement with how that love has been manifesting itself lately.

Conservatism today, however, seems to be stripped of most of the principles it once championed, moribund in it's new cult of personality, power, and everlasting pique. Somewhere along the line, contempt for the idea of government itself, rather than than simple vigilance, took hold of the conservative imagination, and this one kind of contempt, which ultimately made the right wing the joke it now is, begat other forms of contempt. True conservatism is now dead, leaving as its legacy a public discourse dominated by bile and venom, a once proud nation crumbling from neglect, and a world in utter chaos.

Like I said, sad.

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