Reductionism Ad Absurdam

Long-time readers with good memories will recall that on several occasions I have not been kind, to put it mildly, to the ridiculously reductionist psychologizing of Berkeley linguist (and adviser to Democrats) George Lakoff. (See especially here and here.)

If you’re not a long-timer or you don’t recall you should read those posts, but, briefly, Lakoff describes conservatives as demented, uncaring, authoritarian brutes who were raised by — or if not, at least admire and identify with — strict, rigid, disciplinarian fathers. Liberals, by contrast, are like their compassionate, caring, nurturant mothers. There is no better description of the “nanny state” (and of the Democrats as the “mommy” party) derided by conservatives than Lakoff’s endorsement of it (quoted in the first linked post above):

Protection is an important value. Think of the things that nurturing parents want to protect their children from, not just crime and drugs but also cars without seat belts, tobacco, chemicals in the environment, unscrupulous businesses, namely all the things that liberals would like the government to protect citizens from.

Indeed, Lakoff’s writings are filled with passages that would be dismissed as defamatory, overheated parodies if written by critics describing his arguments.

Alas, psychological reductionism is an analytical malady that is not confined to the left wards of the political looney bin, as demonstrated today on Townhall.com by columnist and shrink Lyle Rossiter’s “The Psychodynamics of the Radical Liberal Mind.” Rossiter, in fact, is Lakoff in reverse, his doppelgänger, which Wikipedia defines as an “evil twin” or “the ghostly double of a living person.”

First, Rossiter describes the liberal mind and goals in ways that could have been lifted directly from Lakoff:

The first step toward an in-depth understanding of adult behavior is to comprehend its origins in childhood. Whether adaptive or maladaptive, the enduring patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that define adult personality begin in the early years of life….

The dispositions of the liberal mind are no exception: his hopes and fears, beliefs and passions, values and morals are in great measure the legacy of his childhood from birth through adolescence…..

The radical liberal mind’s goals are now familiar, of course, but another brief summary will prove useful in highlighting their essentially childlike nature … the grandiose goals of providing for everyone’s material welfare and healthcare, protecting everyone’s self-esteem correcting all social and political disadvantages, educating all citizens, and eliminating all class distinctions.

In his pursuit of these goals, he intends to construct a universal human family, one united in bonds of mutual love, concern, caretaking and tolerance. Through drastic government action the radical liberal seeks the following:

• A powerful parental government to provide everyone with a good life and a caring presence
• An elite corps of surrogate parents that will manage the lives of the people through approximately equal distributions of goods and services, just as real parents provide equally for the needs of their children
• A guarantee of material security from the state, similar to that which a child expects from his parents
• A form of parental social justice that cures or mitigates all states of deprivation, inequality, suffering and disadvantage….
• Government directives from wise and caring officials that channel the citizen’s initiative and industry through social programs and tax incentives, just as wise parents determine the directions of the family’s labors….
• Government welfare programs that free the citizen-child from the duties of altruism, just as parents do
• An international caring agenda that will enhance the family of nations by understanding everyone’s hardships, tolerating destructive actions by others, and empathizing with aggressors to bring them to the negotiating table, just as good parents do in resolving family disputes.

The difference, of course, is that where Lakoff regards such an agenda as exactly what one would want and expect from a nurturing mother, Rossiter sees it as the product of an immature, whining brat of a child.

These and other goals dear to the modern liberal heart are remarkable for the childhood needs they address and the adult needs they ignore…. [W]hat the radical liberal mind really longs for, as revealed in his political goals, is a child’s relationship to a loving family whose caretaking compensates him for the injuries he suffered in his early years. He seeks all of this in the contemporary political arena….

[The radical liberal] seeks through the state that degree of coercion needed to redress the trauma, injustice, helplessness and humiliation experienced at the hands of his original caretakers. He hopes to do this by passing laws that indulge his impulses and exempt him from the proper obligations of mature adulthood.

Where Lakoff sees opposition to the nanny state as rooted in the uncaring, authoritarian meanness of the rabidly dictatorial father, Rossiter finds it in the reasonable resistance of confident, healthy adults who naturally resist the shrill demands of narcissistic children.

The major problem [the radical liberal] faces is that a substantial portion of the population is still competent: it is a population that deeply reveres individual liberty, readily accepts its responsibilities, and passionately opposes its destruction. It is not about to yield to the liberal’s mad dream. Because competent people know that they can direct their own lives and provide for their own security through voluntary cooperation, and because they love a world of freedom in which to live as they choose, they have no need for, and indeed vehemently reject, the oppressive intrusions of liberal government.

Lakoff and Rossiter deserve each other. Perhaps they both deserve parallel couches in some neutral shrink’s office, although my whole point is to oppose reducing legitimate political disagreements to alleged psychological dysfunction.

Our political debate would be a lot healthier (even I find it hard to avoid improper medical analogies!) if those on both the Left and, alas, the Right would simply recognize that people can disagree with them without being evil, stupid, or psychologically deranged.

UPDATE

I have a great deal of respect for John Hawkins and his Right Wing News, but he provides another example (also here) of the style of argument that I think we could, and should, do without.

It takes a lot more integrity, character, and courage to be a conservative than it does to be a liberal. That’s because at its most basic level, liberalism is nothing more than childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues.

Going to war is mean, so we shouldn’t do it. That person is poor and it would be nice to give him money, so the government should do it. Somebody wants to have an abortion, have a gay marriage, or wants to come into the U.S. illegally and it would be mean to say, “no,” so we should let them. I am nice because I care about global warming! Those people want to kill us? But, don’t they know we’re nice? If they did, they would like us! Bill has more toys, money than Harry, so take half of Bill’s money and give it to Harry.

The only exception to this rule is for people who aren’t liberals. They’re racists, bigots, homophobes, Nazis, fascists, etc., etc., etc. They might as well just say that conservatives have “cooties” for disagreeing with them, because there really isn’t any more thought or reasoning that goes into it than that.

Actually, this last paragraph is a pretty good description of the Lakoff argument. The trouble is, Hawkins proceeds to make the same style of argument with only the villains reversed.

Now, that’s not to say that conservatives never make emotion based arguments or that emotion based arguments are always wrong. But, when you try to deal with complex, real world issues, using little more than simplistic emotionalism that’s primarily designed to make the people advocating it feel good rather than to deal with problems, it can, and often has had disastrous consequences. Liberals never seem to learn from this.

After mentioning what he regards as problems with the liberal position on the withdrawal from Vietnam and the poverty program (“war on poverty”), Hawkins writes:

You could go on and on with these sort of examples — rent control, which causes housing shortages, the minimum wage, which costs poor people jobs, the liberal insistence on putting “making nice at the U.N.” above looking out for American interests. That’s what happens when you make decisions based on emotion and wanting people to like you, rather than using logic and doing the right thing….

In the end, that’s what liberalism versus conservatism all comes down to: sappy, feel good emotionalism that sounds appealing, but doesn’t work versus doing things the right way, even when it’s not easy.

In addition to the fact that this analysis is, um, not altogether accurate — many liberals are perfectly well-adjusted and are neither sappy nor overly emotional — this sort of name-calling dressed up with psychological jargon will persuade no one who does not already agree with conservative positions.

UPDATE II

And this, from today’s Washington Post piece on Michelle Malkin in the Style section:

“The donkey party,” she wrote last fall, “is led by thumb-sucking demagogues in prominent positions who equate Bush with Hitler and Jim Crow, call him a liar in front of high school students and the world, fantasize about impeachment and fetishize the human rights of terrorists who want to kill me. Put simply: There are no grown-ups in the Democrat Party.”

I like Michelle, but I don’t like this. Actually, I don’t mind the “thumb-sucking demagogues” so much, although I try to avoid such language myself, and Bush of course is called a liar in front of high school audiences, etc. But to say there are no “grown-ups” among the Democrats is not to say they are wrong or misguided but suffer from arrested development, or at best that they are wrong because they suffer from arrested development.

As argued above and elsewhere, I find this sort of psychologizing not only unappealing but juvenile.

Oops….