[P2P-F] Fwd: Lakoff: How to Rescue the American Dream from the GOP's Nightmare

Thu Aug 11 09:40:23 CEST 2011

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From: Tikkun/Network of Spiritual Progressives <
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Date: Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 9:43 PM
Subject: Lakoff: How to Rescue the American Dream from the GOP's Nightmare
To: Michelsub2004 at gmail.com

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 Lakoff: How to Rescue the American Dream from the GOP's Nightmare
The Republicans are redefining "democracy"--but it's time to remember what
the real dream of democracy meant.  By George Lakoff and Glenn Smith
 *July 28, 2011*  |

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Democracy, in the American tradition, has been defined by a simple morality:
We Americans care about our fellow citizens, we act on that care and build
trust, and we do our best not just for ourselves, our families, our friends
and our neighbors, but for our country, for each other, for people we have
never met and never will meet.

American democracy has, over our history, called upon citizens to share an
equal responsibility to work together to secure a safe and prosperous future
for their families and nation. This is the central work of our democracy and
it is a public enterprise. This, the American Dream, is the dream of a
functioning democracy.

Public refers to people, acting together to provide what we all depend on:
roads and bridges, public buildings and parks, a system of education, a
strong economic system, a system of law and order with a fair and effective
judiciary, dams, sewers, and a power grid, agencies to monitor disease,
weather, food safety, clean air and water, and on and on. That is what we,
as a people who care about each other, have given to each other.

Only a free people can take up the necessary tasks, and only a people who
trust and care for one another can get the job done. The American Dream is
built upon mutual care and trust.

Our tradition has not just been to share the tasks, but to share the tools
as well. We come together to provide a quality education for our children.
We come together to protect each other’s health and safety. We come together
to build a strong, open and honest financial system. We come together to
protect the institutions of democracy to guarantee that all who share in
these responsibilities have an equal voice in deciding how they will be met.

What this means is that there is no such thing as a “self-made” man or woman
or business. No one makes it on their own. No matter how much wealth you
amass, you depend on all the things the public has provided — roads, water,
law enforcement, fire and disease protection, food safety, government
research, and all the rest. The only question is whether you have paid your
fair share for what we all have given you.

We are now faced with a nontraditional, radical view of “democracy” coming
from the Republican party. It says democracy means that nobody should care
about anybody else, that democracy means only personal responsibility, not
responsibility for anyone else, and it means no trust. If America accepts
this radical view of democracy, then all that we have given each other in
the past under traditional democracy will be lost: all that we have called
public. Public roads and bridges: gone. Public schools: gone. Publicly
funded police and firemen: gone. Safe food, air, and water: gone. Public
health: gone. Everything that made America America, the crucial things that
you and your family and your friends have taken for granted: gone.

The democracy of care, shared responsibility and trust is the democracy of
the American Dream. The democracy of no care, no shared responsibility, and
no trust has produced the American Nightmare that so many of our citizens
are living through.

Nightmare it is, but there is no denying credit to Republicans for their
skills at framing. The recent Republican “Contract from America,” for
instance, begins with a statement of their moral principles. The
recommendations are special cases of those principles. It is a strategic
initiative. Instead of a laundry list, each recommendation is a special case
of a general strategy — to defund our American government.

Furthermore, they understand that about 20 percent of the electorate
consists of people who are conservative in some ways and progressive in
others. These are biconceptuals, sometimes referred to loosely by political
professionals as “independents” or “swing voters.” Republicans know their
job is to activate the conservative part of the brains of the biconceptuals,
and they do that by sticking strictly to conservative moral principles and a
clear conservative strategy. They never make the mistake of ignoring
biconceptuals.

Progressives too often fail to clearly state the moral principles behind the
American tradition. Our arguments often sound like an abstract defense of
distant “government” rather than a celebration of our people, our public,
and the moral views that have defined our tradition and the real human
beings who work every day to carry them out.

There is a distinction between government as the administration of what we,
as a public, provide each other, as opposed to government control. The Right
wants to focus only upon control, not upon all that our tradition has given
us. They do not just hide the vast positives, but they also hide the fact
that governmental control, control over our daily lives, is more private
than public. Private government for profit runs our lives – the health care
we receive, the food we eat, the cars we can drive and the gas to fuel them,
the news we get, loans for our homes, and on and on. Public government is
for the benefit of all of us. Private (especially corporate) government is
for the private profit of top management and stockholders. If you are
concerned about your life being controlled for the benefit of others, look
to the private sphere.

The institution of government, however, is not the point. We must instead
defend the moral principles we seek to advance through our American
government  — and through ethical business practices, voluntary associations
etc. The traditional view of American democracy sees government as embodying
these moral goals, to protect and empower everyone equally.

If we are to successfully overcome the Republican demonizing of government
and shared responsibility, we must restore faith in the mutual enterprise
itself. Rather than simply defend government or government programs, we must
positively advance the moral values of American democracy and the Dream, not
the Nightmare.

That is why we support a renewed focus on public life, a public life that
includes all Americans. We should focus on the public nature of our shared
responsibilities.

Public life means meeting our shared responsibilities, caring for one
another, and building the mutual trust upon which democracy depends. The
recommendations below are special cases of these moral principles. They also
represent a special case of a general strategy – to restore public life to
American democracy.

   1. We must return the public to our political system and end the corrupt
   influence of selfish interests that have abandoned our shared
   responsibilities. This means public finance of campaigns, strict enforcement
   of the highest ethical standards in public life, and protection of the
   sacred right to vote.

   1. Our nation has vast national wealth: a huge continental landmass with
   wealth in minerals, agricultural land, forests, cities, beautiful places, as
   well as its public wealth, that is, the creative wealth of its educated
   citizenry and the collective wealth of all its citizens and corporations.
   We, the public, can put our nation’s vast wealth to use in creating jobs
   that make the lives of all better: building, educating, curing, and
   imagining. That is the Dream. To realize the Dream, we must end the
   Nightmare.

   1. We must turn back the Right’s assault on public and higher education
   and meet our traditional commitment to education. Our children are
   tomorrow’s public. The future of democracy depends upon them.

   1. We must rebuild our public infrastructure, a fancy term for the
   necessities we share: roads, bridges, dams, parks, fair grounds, water
   mains, sewers, and the power grid; public agencies that monitor disease,
   weather and food safety. Government that works for all of us can and should
   create jobs that serve us all by rebuilding our shared necessities.

   1. We must come together publically to mutually ensure the health of all
   America. Health is not a private matter. It is a public one.

   1. We must protect the prior earnings of American workers set aside in
   Social Security or private pensions. They have been earned through hard work
   and discipline. Taking these earnings away is theft, despite the Right’s use
   of the word “entitlements.”

   1. A public of unequal voices is not a democratic public. We need a
   progressive tax system through which all Americans pay their fair share and
   a business ethics that fairly rewards those whose work creates productivity
   and profit.

   1. We must put the American individual above abstract corporate entities.
   We must end “corporate personhood,” which gives transnational corporations a
   greater voice than individuals in our public deliberations.

   1. We must end the move to “privatize” institutions through which we meet
   our shared responsibilities. When the public is removed, the private sphere
   takes over, charging more, and often creating unaccountable monopolies that
   bilk the public. Privatization of the public typically means that most
   citizens just pay more, often a lot more.

   1. Discrimination of all kinds must be overcome. Public life depends upon
   recognition of our equal humanity.

This is why Democracy is, and must remain, public. This is why America has
traditionally been a beacon to the world. This is the example America has
set. We dare not give it up. The alternative is the Nightmare.
George Lakoff is the author of Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values
and Frame the Debate<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=qaMuWgVBQD%2Bigd9nFC3xzpN1X1Js1%2B1D>'
(Chelsea Green). He is professor of linguistics at the University of
California at Berkeley. Glenn Smith is the author of "The Politics of
Deceit: Saving Freedom and Democracy from Extinction." He runs
DriveDemocracy.org<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=vVOn6XaupryjINYDgsbD%2F%2BLvsSSUgMaZ>
 and the Texas Progress Council, a message and political research lab in
Austin, Tex.
Reprinted from Alternet.org
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