Excerpts from Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, 2
University of Chicago Press, 1996, 2002
nd
edition, by George Lakoff,
Part I: Introduction
Chapter 1 - The Mind and Politics
p. 3 Contemporary American politics is about worldview. Conservatives simply see the world differently
than do liberals, and both often have a difficult time understanding accurately what the other’s worldview
is…. I work in a discipline that studies how people conceptualize the world. It is called cognitive science,
which is the interdisciplinary study of the mind.
Chapter 2 – The Worldview Problem for American Politics
p. 33 Those worldviews center on two opposing models of the family. At the center of the conservative
worldview is a Strict Father model. … The liberal worldview centers on a very different ideal of family life,
the Nurturant Parent model.
Part II: Moral Conceptual Systems
Chapter 3 – Experiential Morality
p. 41 The most fundamental form of morality concerns promoting the experiential well-being of others and
the avoidance and prevention of experiential harm to others or the disruption of the well-being of others.
Chapter 4 – Keeping the Moral Books
p. 62 There is a fundamental economic metaphor behind much of morality, the ubiquitous conception of
Well-Being As Wealth… Linguistically, the metaphor is made manifest by the use of economic words like
owe, debt, and pay in the moral domain.
Chapter 5 – Strict Father Morality
p. 65 Here is the model: [traditional nuclear family; father supports and protects; strict rules; corporal
punishment; absolute obedience; learn self-discipline so can compete in the world.]
Chapter 6 – Nurturant Parent Morality
p. 108 [Being cared for and cared about; positive relationships; two-way communication; be fulfilled and
become nurturant to others.]
Part III: From Family-Based Morality to Politics
Chapter 7 – Why We Need a New Understanding of American Politics
Chapter 8 – The Nature of the Model
p. 153 Part of our conceptual systems, whether we are liberals, conservatives, or neither, is a common
metaphorical conception of the Nation As Family, with the government, or head of state representing the
government, seen as an older male authority figure, typically a father. p. 155 The Nation As Family
metaphor, in applying to the family models, also applies to the family-based moral systems, yielding
conservative and liberal political worldviews.
Chapter 9 – Moral Categories in Politics
p. 162 One of the major ways in which a moral system characterizes worldview is through categorization.
Each moral system creates a number of fixed major categories for moral action. Those major categories
allow us to classify actions instantly into those that are moral and those that are not, with little or no
reflection.
p. 163 Conservative categories of moral action: 1) Promoting Strict Father morality in general. 2)
Promoting self-discipline, responsibility, and self-reliance. 3) Upholding the Morality of Reward and
Punishment – a) Preventing interference with the pursuit of self-interest by self-disciplined, self-reliant
people. b) Promoting punishment as a means of upholding authority. c) Insuring punishment for lack of
self-discipline. 4) Protecting moral people from external evils. 5) Upholding the Moral Order.
p. 165 Liberal categories of moral action: 1) Empathetic behavior and promoting fairness. 2) Helping
those who cannot help themselves. 3) Protecting those who cannot protect themselves. 4) Promoting
fulfillment in life. 5) Nurturing and strengthening oneself in order to do the above.
Book summary courtesy of the Progressive Women’s Alliance of West Michigan.
Part IV: The Hard Issues
Chapter 10 – Social Programs and Taxes
p. 179 It is natural for liberals to see the federal government as a strong nurturant parent, responsible for
making sure that the basic needs of its citizens are met…. Social programs are also seen by liberals as
ways for the government to simultaneously help people and strengthen itself. p. 180 Liberals also
conceptualize social programs as investments in communities…. Liberals also see many social programs
as functioning to promote fairness.
p. 180 Conservatives, on the other hand, apply the Strict Father model of parenting to the Nation As
Family metaphor. To them, social programs amount to coddling people – spoiling them. Instead of having
to learn to fend for themselves, people can depend on the public dole. This makes them morally weak,
removing the need for self-discipline and willpower. Such moral weakness is a form of immorality. And so,
conservatives see social programs as immoral, affirmative action included.
p. 189 Dan Quayle, in his acceptance speech at the 1992 Republican convention, attacked the idea of
progressive taxation, in which the rich are taxed at a higher rate than the poor. His argument went like
this: “Why,” he asked, “should the best people be punished?” The line brought thunderous applause….
Taxation of the rich is, to conservatives, punishment for doing what is right and succeeding at it. It is a
violation of the Morality of Reward and Punishment.
p. 192 Why are conservatives, who say they want to spend less on government, allocating much more to
the military than it even requests in inflated estimates?… In the Strict Father model, it is the duty of the
strict father to protect his family above all else. p. 196 The ultimate conservative agenda… is moral, not
financial. It is a thorough political revamping of America in the service of a moral revolution, a revolution
that conservatives believe will make Americans better people and improve American life.
Chapter 11 – Crime and the Death Penalty
p. 197 Strict Father morality sees the cure for violent crime simply as strict punishment…. It assumes the
Morality of Reward and Punishment, which says that punishment is the moral alternative. And it also
assumes a behaviorist theory of human nature that says punishment will work to eliminate violence. p.
198 Painful corporal punishment, the nurturant model says, does just the opposite of what it is intended to
do. It teaches violence and violence begets violence.
p. 201 Conservatives tend not to use explanations based on the concepts of class and social causes, nor
do they recommend policy based on those notions. p. 203 In that [conservative] worldview, the class
hierarchy is simply a ladder, there to be climbed by anybody with the talent and self-discipline to climb it.
Whether or not you climb the ladder of wealth and privilege is only a matter of whether you have the
moral strength, character, and inherent talent to do so.
Chapter 12 – Regulation and the Environment
p. 210 Liberals conceptualize government regulation as the protection of those who cannot protect
themselves…. p. 211 In the system of conservative moral categories, government regulation falls under
interference with the pursuit of self-interest by people trying to make living, people using their selfdiscipline to become self-reliant (and, if possible, rich).
Chapter 13 – The Culture Wars: From Affirmative Action to the Arts
[Liberal vs. conservative views on affirmative action, gay rights, multiculturalism, education, art, moral
education]
Chapter 14 – Two Models of Christianity
p. 260 In Strict Parent Christianity, God is a moral authority, and the role of human beings is to obey his
strict commandments. The way you learn to obey is by being punished for not obeying and by developing
the self-discipline to obey through self-denial. In Nurturant Parent Christianity, God is a nurturer and the
proper relationship to God is to accept his nurturance (Grace) and follow Christ’s example of how to act
nurturantly to others. p. 261 The two forms of Christianity assume very different views of human nature…
different ideas of what a good person is…. have very different understandings of what the world should
be like so that such ideal persons can be produced. Strict Father Christianity requires that the world be
Book summary courtesy of the Progressive Women’s Alliance of West Michigan.
competitive and survival difficult if the right kind of people (strong people) are to be produced and
rewarded. Nurturant Parent Christianity requires that the world be as interdependent, nurturant and
benign as possible, if the right kind of people – nurturant people – are to be produced.
Chapter 15 – Abortion
p. 264 [Liberals] are defenders of the morality of removing from a mother a group of cells that is not an
independent, viable, and recognizable human being. Opponents of abortion use the word baby to refer to
the cluster of cells, the embryo, and the fetus alike…. The issue of the morality of abortion is settled once
the words are chosen.
Chapter 16 – How Can You Love Your Country and Hate Your Government?
Part V: Summing Up
Chapter 17 – Varieties of Liberals and Conservatives
Chapter 18 – Pathologies, Stereotypes, and Distortions
Chapter 19 – Can There Be a Politics without Family Values?
Part VI: Who’s Right? And How Can You Tell?
Chapter 20 – Nonideological Reasons for Being a Liberal
p. 337 There are good reasons to choose liberalism…. Reason 1. The Nurturant Parent model is superior
as a method of childrearing. Reason 2. Strict Father morality requires a view of human thought that is at
odds with what we know about the way the mind works. Reason 3. Strict Father morality often finds
morality in harm; Nurturant Parent morality does not.
Chapter 21 – Raising Real Children
p. 340 [C]onservative family values, which are the basis for conservative morality and political thought,
are not supported by either research in child development or the mainstream childrearing experts in the
country.
Chapter 22 – The Human Mind
p. 369 Thus, Strict Father morality requires that four conditions in the human mind and human behavior
must be met: 1. Absolute categorization: Everything is either in or out of a category. 2. Literality: All moral
rules must be literal. 3. Perfect communication: The hearer receives exactly the same meaning as the
speaker intends to communicate. 4. Folk behaviorism: According to human nature, people normally act
effectively to get rewards and avoid punishments. Cognitive science has shown that all of these are false.
The human mind simply does not work this way.
Chapter 23 – Basic Humanity
Epilogue: Problems for Public Discourse
p. 384 Public political discourse is so impoverished at present that it cannot accommodate most of what
we have been discussing here. It has no adequate moral vocabulary, no adequate analysis of our moral
conceptual systems, no way to sensibly discuss the link between the family, morality, and politics – and
no way to provide an understanding of why conservatives and liberals have the positions they have. p.
385 The best that can be done for the sake of a balanced discourse is to develop a meta-language – a
language about the concepts and language used in morality and politics. p. 388 What requires special
effort is discussing the unconscious conceptual framework behind the discussion.
Afterword
p. 394 [T]he very term “middle” is misleading. It suggests that there is a line from Left to Right with some
people in “the middle” who are neither progressive nor conservative. This is not the case. p. 396 I think it
is more realistic to replace terms like “center,” “middle,” and “moderate” with “multi-dimensional” in
thinking about the complex 20 percent who are neither pure progressives nor pure conservatives. Much
of public discourse is aimed at this multidimensional 20 percent. It is with this population that framing has
its greatest effect and must be done with the greatest care.
Book summary courtesy of the Progressive Women’s Alliance of West Michigan.