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…
