(This article is dedicated to the former Libertarian in our software development team who just retired and has provided the seed for other postings.)

To what extent should the government protect its citizens?

Conservatives without Conscience (CWCs), including Libertarians, want citizen protection by the government limited to national defense. CWCs even start wars on false pretenses and empower their enemies – anyone not like them – by exaggerating their capabilities and intensions. They also can’t say “9/11,” weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), or “war on terror” enough times in any given discussion about national security.

Beyond protection from foreign invaders, CWCs leave protection up to each individual citizen – “you’re on your own” and you deserve the consequences of ‘your’ failures not to get protection.

To give them some credit, however, the CWCs are very willing to provide a free enterprise solution for many forms of self protection. Insurance is one example. In fact, once in a while they even allow a government form of insurance. This is only for special situations where free enterprise can’t charge enough to make a profit – like flood insurance.

However, even here CWCs are more interesting in protecting free enterprise over the best interests of the citizen. They have allowed limited government-backed flood insurance. However, it’s a unanimous “NO” to limited government backed health insurance.

Leaving protection up to the individual also explains why CWCs are against gun control. Individuals must provide for their own defense. Remember, “you’re on your own.” Combine gun ownership with their desire to protect citizens from international terrorists and you get: Weapons are great but WMD’s are not. (This reminds me of a quote from comedian George Carlin back when ‘the enemy’ was communism, “Gabby Hayes had whiskers! Lenin had a beard!” Whiskers are good, a beard is bad.)

Progressives, on the other hand, know that there are factors in every individuals life that are beyond their control. Because progressives understand systemic causation, they realize that citizen protection by the government is much broader than national defense. Citizens not only need protection from actual – not imaginary – enemies of the state, they need protection from other forms of abuse that can grow out of concentrated power.

These abuses can exist in any manmade institution where no checks and balances exist to prevent them. Checks and balances are necessary to protect citizens from: any of our three branches of government, an abusive spouse, an abusive employer, an abusive preacher, an abusive producer or manufacturer that puts profit before the health and safety of citizens, banks too big to fail, or health insurance companies that deny coverage and drop citizens to maintain profit.

Despite popular dogma, progressives know that profit is necessary and vital to the success of the nation. That’s why the government must protect that ability by providing a court system. Combine the protection of profit with profit that abuses citizens and you get: Profits are great but PMDs, profits of mass destruction, are not.

And now with the recent decision by our activist United States Supreme Court and its five CWCs to eliminate the checks and balances on corporate political contributions, we also need protection from laws of mass destruction (LMDs). Add this decision to the actions of the GWB’s unitary presidency like wire tapping citizens, excessive signing statements that ignored Congressional law and the torture memos of John Yoo, and citizens have lost many of their hard won progressive protections.

Because of this broader view of protection of the citizenry, progressives not only want to protect citizens from WMDs, they want to protect citizens from PMDs, LMDs and many other elements of mass destruction.

In my article on November 12, 2008, I discussed the need to build a progressive empathetic foundation to at least match if not surpass the well developed and obesely funded conservative single-party foundation that brought us torture, preemptive war and now an economic disaster to compare with no less than The Great Depression. In my article on November 25, 2008, I discussed replacing the “you’re on your own,” “empathy deficit,” conservative cognitive policy with an empathic progressive cognitive policy. In this posting, I will try to describe the two individual worldviews behind these policies.

We are a country with basically a two party system. These two parties have come to represent two worldviews: conservative and progressive. We are also a country where our brains have two modes of thought which coincide with these two worldviews. These worldview are impacted by our capacity, or lack there of, for empathy, which can easily be killed by fear.

This posting reviews the history of these two worldviews, what some of the latest research says about the two modes of thought which support these two worldviews and what research on the brain says about empathy and its affect on these worldviews.

Thom Hartmann’s book Cracking the Code provides a detailed history of the conservative and progressive worldviews. It also includes footnotes and excerpts from historical writings by the authors that laid the foundation for conservative and progressive worldviews.

Here is Hartmann’s summary on the history of the conservative worldview from chapter one of Cracking the Code:

Conservatives, believing [Thomas] Hobbes‘s view of human nature to be inviolable cannot conceive of the possibility that civilizations can exist without constant warfare or an iron-fisted Church or State to prevent that warfare. This is the original modern conservative story. Conservatives believe in what Riane Eisler and others have called the dominator culture. They believe that human nature must be dominated for human societies to flourish because without constraint by domination the essentially evil nature of humans will emerge and society will dissolve into chaos.

Conservatives believe that government must be restrained and controlled precisely because it’s made up of flawed human beings, “the governed.” This is why they’re willing to allow corporations to take powers — like controlling our health-care system — that they would never allow to government. Corporations are essentially independent entities and totally without morality (and, thus, without immorality or evil). Being amoral they’re less dangerous in the conservative mind than a government controlled by humans, particularly the vast majority of people (whom John Adams called “the rabble”) because those people are, at their core, evil.

The conservatives’ core belief is that if our essential (evil) human nature is not restrained by something — God or priests or corporate bosses [? also humans] — harm will come to society. This is why conservative morality is nearly always focused on restraining individual behavior, particularly private behavior (With whom you are having sex and in what positions or ways? What you are smoking, drinking or snorting? Is there a fetus growing inside you?). And why they’re enthusiastic to “privatize” functions of government [privateering is what is happening], taking the commons out of the hands of We the (evil) People and putting it into the hands of morality-neutral corporations that, in their minds, answer only to a mechanistic and morally neutral “free market.”

In the 1600s, when Thomas Hobbes developed his philosophy, England was suffering from significant social, economic and political turmoil. His major work, Leviathan, was written during the English Civil War. Here is the essence of Leviathan:

Beginning from a mechanistic understanding of human beings and their passions, Hobbes postulates what life would be like without government, a condition which he calls the state of nature. In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. This inevitably leads to conflict, a “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes), and thus lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (xiii).

To escape this state of war, men in the state of nature accede to a social contract and establish a civil society. According to Hobbes, society is a population beneath a sovereign authority, to whom all individuals in that society cede their natural rights for the sake of protection. Any abuses of power by this authority are to be accepted as the price of peace. However, he also states that in severe cases of abuse, rebellion is expected. In particular, the doctrine of separation of powers is rejected: the sovereign must control civil, military, judicial and ecclesiastical powers. [This reminds me of the unitary presidency of George Bush.]

Later in chapter 1 of Cracking the Code, Hartmann references another British philosopher from the 1600s, and Thomas Jefferson. This British philosopher, John Locke, who was born when Hobbes was 44 years old and about 14 years before the publication of Leviathan, provided the foundation for progressive philosophy to rebut Hobbes. Around 1689 Locke wrote Two Treatises on Government.

The First Treatise is focused on the refutation of Sir Robert Filmer, in particular his Patriarcha which argued that civil society was founded on a divinely-sanctioned patriarchalism. Locke proceeds through Filmer’s arguments, contesting his proofs from Scripture and ridiculing them as senseless, until concluding that no government can be justified by an appeal to the divine right of kings.

The Second Treatise outlines a theory of civil society. Locke begins by describing the state of nature, a picture much more stable than Thomas Hobbes’ state of “war of every man against every man,” and argues that all men are created equal in the state of nature by God. From this, he goes on to explain the hypothetical rise of property and civilization, in the process explaining that the only legitimate governments are those which have the consent of the people. Thus, any government that rules without the consent of the people can, in theory, be overthrown.

Thomas Jefferson based some of our Declaration of Independence on Locke’s writings. As documented in Cracking the Code, Locke wrote the following:

Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom, and an uncontrouled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate against the injuries and attempts of other men …

From this, Jefferson wrote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …

Here are Hartmann’s statements on progressives, also from chapter 1 of Cracking the Code:

Liberals speak of using the government for positive ends, but they don’t mean to further restrain people. Instead liberals believe that the role of government is to provide a framework within which individuals can achieve their maximum potential.

The closer we can all come to our true human nature, the better, liberals believe. Instead of restraining human nature, liberals want to promote it.

What should be restrained, in the liberal worldview, are those amoral institutions — like corporations — that serve to lock humans into particular social and/or economic roles that prevent both individual and societal self-realization and achievement of our essential human nature (Jefferson’s happiness).

This is why liberal morality is nearly always focused on providing for the needs of individuals within society — and was so well articulated by Jesus in the Beatitudes and Matthew 25 when He said, essentially, that we couldn’t claim morality if there were hungry, homeless, sick, thirsty, or imprisoned people among us whose needs are not being met.

(Does the word empathy come to mind after reading these statements on the liberal worldview?)

As a lead-in to the brain’s modes of thought that represent the conservative and progressive worldviews, here are a few more statements from Hartmann on Hobbes and Locke:

It’s interesting to note that Hobbes was born in a time of great poverty and upheaval in the England of the 1630s (which was then a third-rate power, its economy eclipsed by the Dutch and Spanish trading companies until the mid-1600s, when the British East India Company began successfully competing world-wide). He noted how poverty makes people desperate, and desperate people can be dangerous people. London was filled with them. And he assumed that such poverty and “criminal” behavior was the norm of all societies that preceded “civilization.”

Locke, on the other hand, was writing as the East India Company and British colonialism were having considerable economic successes, the Enlightenment was taking hold, and a more substantial middle class was emerging in England. He looked at the behavior of London’s emerging middle class as a more accurate reflection of the “natural” state of humanity.

Conservatives may well be right about the “true nature” of people — when they’re desperate. Liberals may well be right about the “true nature” of people — when their basic needs are met and they feel safe and secure.

The above excerpt implies that the conservative or progressive worldview could be driven by the environment that one grows up in and is surrounded by. Well, recent research by George Lakoff and others into cognitive linguistics shows that the conservative and progressive worldviews are actually programmed into the brain as we grow.

Their research, as documented in The Political Mind and on the RockRidge Institute web site, resulted in two idealized models of the family. These two models “come with distinct moral systems that are founded on different assumptions about the world, interpret shared values such as responsibility or fairness differently, and center around different moral priorities.” (Sound like something else you just read?)

(An interesting and related occurrence: When I googled “wiki The Political Mind,” the first result was a link to George Lakoff. The second was a link to John Locke.)

In The Nation as a Family, the Rockridge Institute concludes part 1 with:

In other words, our beliefs about what a family should be exert a powerful influence over our beliefs about what kind of society we should build. For instance, those with a strong Strict Father model are likely to support a more punitive welfare or foreign policy than someone with a strong Nurturant Parent model, who are likely to favor more cooperative approaches. Those with a strong Nurturant Parent model are more likely to favor social policies that ensure the well-being of people such as health care and education, whereas someone with a strong Strict Father model would object to social programs in favor of promoting self-reliance ["You're on your own."].

In part three of The Nation as a Family, the strong Strict Father model results in the conservative worldview:

• “The world is, and always will be, a dangerous and difficult place.”
• “It is a competitive world and there will always be winners and losers.”
• “Children are naturally bad since they want to do what feels good, not what is moral, so they have to be made good by being taught discipline.”
• “There is tangible evil in the world and to stand up to evil, one must be morally strong, or ‘disciplined.’”

In part two of The Nation as a Family, the strong Nurturant Parent model results in the progressive worldview:

• “It is assumed that the world is basically good.”
• “… however dangerous and difficult the world may be at present, it can be made better, and it is your responsibility to help make it better.”
• “… children are born good, and parents can make them better, and it is their responsibility to do so.”
• “Both parents (if there are two) are responsible for running the household and raising the children, although they may divide their activities. “
• “The parents’ job is to be responsive to their children, nurture them, and raise their children to nurture others.”
• “Nurturance requires empathy and responsibility.”

In The Political Mind, Lakoff discusses empathy and its importance in promoting the progressive worldview:

Empathy is at the center of the progressive moral worldview. …

… Empathy is normal, and it takes special education (such as basic training in the army), a special heartlessness, or a brain injury to disengage it.

In short, empathy is morally powerful, and its political power seems to arise from its moral force, which in turn is a consequence of the brain structure …

There is a moral here for progressives: The more they can activate empathy in the public, the more support will be available to them and the worse conservatives will do. Correspondingly, the more conservatives can generate fear in the public, the more support they will generate, and the more they will inhibit support for progressives.

If this is true, then progressives should be talking more about their moral worldview — about empathy, responsibility, and hope — rather than accepting fear-based frames to think and talk within. Instead of moving to the right and activating the conservative worldview, stay without your own moral universe and activate the progressive world view.

… We are born to empathize and cooperate.

American democracy was founded on the politics of empathy and responsibility, with the role of government being protection and empowerment. From these flow the progressive ideals of equality, freedom, fairness, opportunity, general prosperity, accountability, and so on.

Over the past few years, I have had discussions with my daughter about religions and what causes them to go bad or do good. I have had similar discussions with a libertarian coworker about government versus corporations and which is more likely to go bad or do good. Whether it is religion, government, large corporations, a family, or anything in between, they are all controlled or supported by all of us. And we have the ability to use these institutions for good or bad. One religion can be used against another or it can be used to help the least of us. One government can wage war against another or even against it’s own citizens, or it can help bring peace to other waring nations. Corporations can put profit above all else or work with it’s stakeholders to still make a profit. One member of a family can abuse another or can treat all family members with respect.

Either way, we Americans, with our history and worldviews, are responsible for what these institutions accomplish – good or bad – and empathy and fear are critical factors.

I close with a quote from George Washington, our first liberal president, “As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality [The trait of being generous in behavior and temperament].”

The talk of change is all around. We are seeing its potential in the transition from one president to the next. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of change that will rekindle the ideas of our founding fathers and their desire for liberty and justice for all.

Here is one more look at where we have been, but is is followed by a look at where we could be going with this change.

The following quotes from Senator, now President-elect, Barack Obama provide his perspective on what has gone wrong under the rule of Conservatives Without Conscience. He refers often to our empathy deficit brought to us by our authoritarian leaders and followers within The Republican Party.

In June 2006, at the Northwestern University Commencement Address, Obama said:

… for me the first lesson of growing up:

The world doesn’t just revolve around you. There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit – the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us – the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.

A month later Senator Barack Obama Urges Students to Reverse ‘Empathy Deficit’:

Obama also railed against what he called an “empathy deficit,” which he said blinds many to the plight of struggling members of society. He urged students to put themselves in the shoes of the despondent and downtrodden, adding that true personal fulfillment only comes through working towards the public good.

In January 2008, Obama spoke on The Great Need of the Hour:

I’m not talking about a budget deficit. I’m not talking about a trade deficit. I’m not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans.

I’m talking about a moral deficit. I’m talking about an empathy deficit. I’m taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother’s keeper; we are our sister’s keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.

We have an empathy deficit when we’re still sending our children down corridors of shame – schools in the forgotten corners of America where the color of your skin still affects the content of your education.

Because if Dr. King could love his jailor; if he could call on the faithful who once sat where you do to forgive those who set dogs and fire hoses upon them, then surely we can look past what divides us in our time, and bind up our wounds, and erase the empathy deficit that exists in our hearts.

More recently, President-Elect Obama reframed the empathy deficit in his nomination acceptance speech:

For over two decades, he’s [John McCain] subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy – give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is – you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps – even if you don’t have boots. You’re on your own.

Others have also written about the authoritarian conservative rule of our federal executive and legislative branches of government and the history of this empathy deficit. John Dean (referenced frequently in this blog) wrote Conservatives Without Conscience (or Empathy) in which he writes about what has happened to the Republican party and the authoritarians that are responsible.

In another more recent book, The Political Mind by George Lakoff, Professor Lakoff explains the how and why Republican authoritarians gained control. In doing so, Lakoff also provides an understanding of the mind and how it changes, how to avoid falling into empathy deficit traps of the conservative mind set and how to rekindle your empathy and promote a progressive mind set.

Dr. Lakoff, professor of cognitive linguistics at UC Berkeley, hopes that we will learn to recognize the “conservative cognitive policy” that has plagued our country for decades and replace it with a “progressive cognitive policy” based on empathy for our fellow humans. Lakoff defines cognitive policy as “getting an idea into the normal public discourse.”

This conservative ‘you’re on your own’ public discourse, which has been promoted through an “explicit, well organized, and well funded” conservative (non-caring) cognitive policy, has attempted to:

• Replace medicare and social security with private medical and retirement accounts
• Replace public schools with school vouchers
• Replace progressive taxes, which impose higher taxes on those who benefit most from America’s infrastructure, with a Flat tax for the rich
• Use big government to attack social programs from within
• Use profit oriented private contractors to replace the protection and empowerment provided via our government
• Use the bad apple frame to transfer responsibility from those in charge to those placed in the bad barrel

Lakoff also writes of his hopes of replacing the empathy deficit with responsible and strong empathetic actions. Lakoff hopes a progressive cognitive policy will grow to support the “change we need.” This “conscious” change includes realizations that:

• “… empathy is at the heart of American democracy” and “ecological consciousness.” Empathy is caring “about fundamental human rights,” caring “about protecting our people in all ways,” caring “about empowerment of both individuals and businesses” and caring “about checks and balances against authoritarian power.”
• The moral base of progressive thought is the “politics of empathy, with the responsibility and strength necessary to act on that empathy.”
• Conservative politics is based on “authority, discipline and obedience”
• “The question of whether American politics should be based on empathy or authority will not disappear.” Both mindsets will continue to exist but both will be understood.
• “… there is no right-to-left line between progressive and conservative views …” There is a conservative strong-father mode of thought and a progressive nurturant mode of thought which can be mixed in varying proportions depending on one’s life experiences.
• “… nurturant upbringing is far better for children – and society …”
• “Advocates of strict father upbringing … would be recognized as being harmful to children.”
• Progressives would learn to “avoid using frames [and words or phrases] that best fit the other side’s values …”
• Progressive foreign policy will be focused “on people, not just states …”
• “Kinds of common wealth – the air, the airwaves, the rivers, streams, and aquifers, the oceans, the national forests – would be recognized as more valuable preserved than used and as property owned by all and kept in trust, with permits for use sold at auction and caps placed on pollution and reasonable use.”
• “Privateering would be a recognizable conservative strategy. … Deregulation and privatization would be understood not as elimination of government, but as a shift from … public government with a moral mission (protection and empowerment) to private government with only the mission of maximizing profits.”
• “Taxes would be seen as payment for both continuing protection and empowerment [by government].”
• “The immorality of the vast divide between the ultra-wealthy and the middle and lower classes would be manifest.”
• “Health would be seen as a matter of protection [like the military, police and EMTs], not insurance.”
• “Education would be seen as a matter of empowerment [like highways, the internet, banking system and the courts].”
• “Accountability would flow upward – toward those in charge, not downward to those who are powerless or subordinate.”

After detailing the above points in the last chapter of The Political Mind, George Lakoff concludes with:

… A new understanding is emerging about what it means to be human. Our political institutions and practices reflect our collective self-understanding. When that changes dramatically, so should our politics.

But, we’d better hurry up. The ice caps are melting.

If you would like to learn more about changing minds, there are many articles by and videos with George Lakoff available on the web. You can also visit The RockRidge Institute and the new Cognitive Policy Works. A related book you might also find of interest is Cracking the Code by Thom Hartmann.

The primary effort of this blog, with the help of John Dean, Robert Altemeyer, Shadia Drury, Philip Zimbardo and many others, has been about our close call with becoming a single-party state under the likes of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and other conservatives without conscience. This history has spanned almost 40 years and has been described relative to the Executive and Legislative branches of our federal government. It has been about a minority of the Republican Party that is strongly authoritarian; born-again white evangelicals lead by neocons that favor preemptive continuous war, fear mongering and rule by the unitary bully pulpit. It has been about what has happened and could have happened under the rule by this totalitarian minority.

Now that the nation has reached a major turning point, I will be taking this blog around that corner away from the “you’re on your own” me society toward a more empathetic society where a limited federal government empowers and protects its citizens from various abusive power brokers including big business and big government.

As we turn, I will do my best to explain why the authoritarians are who they are and what we can learn from them to replace their conservative infrastructure with a new progressive one. The conservatives have spent almost 40 years building this infrastructure and progressives have just laid a foundation for building theirs. Are we ready to build on this foundation?

“This [presidential] victory alone is not the change we seek – it is only the chance for us to make that change.” – President Elect Barack Obama, 11/4/08.

Senator Obama made the following during his acceptance speech on August 28, 2008:

For over two decades, he’s [John McCain] subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy - give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is – you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps – even if you don’t have boots. You’re on your own.

Here are some more ‘you’re-on-your-own’ examples:

• If you believe as the social conservative Republicans believe, John & Sarah will support you. If not, you’re on your own.
• If your a business man of any level of wealth, J&S will support cutting your taxes so you don’t have to support the infrastructure that helps their business succeed. If you’re unemployed, you’re on your own because you must have screwed up.
• If you are unborn, they support your life over all others. If you were raped, by anyone, and you think the rapist shouldn’t be a father or your own life is at risk and you have other children that need you, you’re on your own.
• If your company makes excessive profits and pays excessive executive salaries, you and the company should be given more tax breaks. If you have to pay an excessive amount of your income on high priced gasoline, you’re on your own.
• If you’re from a nation with resources that make our economy run and are suffering from a cruel dictator who might implement the next holocaust, J&S will send your children to dump the dictator, save you from evil and prevent some future imaginary 9/11. If you’re from a nation with nothing and those you love are being killed by fellow citizens, you’re on your own.
• If you can provide information about enemies of interest to them, J&S will protect you from prosecution for violation of our laws. If your name ends up on the terrorist watch list, you’re on your own.
• If a company sells patented drugs and it pays high fees to other companies for expensive television advertising, J&S will prevent access to generic drugs. If you need patented drugs and you don’t have health insurance, you’re on your own.
• If you use torture on our enemies because the enemy does, J&S approve and will protect you from prosecution. If you’re tortured, you’re not only on your own, you’re presumed guilty, so torture is OK.
• If you own a company and want to cut costs, J&S are OK with anything you do. If your place of work has has been shut down and your job has left the country, you’re on your own. If your employer doesn’t provide or no longer offers a retirement plan, you’re on your own. If your employer doesn’t provide or no longer offers paid sick leave, you’re on your own.
• If you have done a lousy job managing your large investment company, J&S will rescue you and your excessive unwarranted salary and benefits. If you were coned into a home loan from this same company, you’re on your own.
• If you do ‘right,’ as they define it, J&S will make sure you are free from persecution. If they redefine what is wrong or accuse you of a wrong, you’re on your own.
• If you’re a self starter or just born into a rich family that helps them get elected, J&S will help you any way they can. If you need some coaching and and might vote against them, you’re on your own.
• If you’re a born-again Christian with unquestioning respect for authority figures, welcome to the J&S fan club. If not, watch your step – you’re on your own.
• If you accepted another reassignment to a battle zone, they have a ribbon on the back of their truck to remember you by. If you’re suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome, you’re on your own.
• If you’re are arrested as an enemy combatant based on hearsay, you’re on your own.

It all comes down to this: If you don’t believe in, believe as and do as they do, you’re on your own.