LAKOFF AGAIN

A message has come down from an ivory tower in the People's Republic of Berkeley in the form of an article in The Nation by linguistics professor George Lakoff. He is trying to do what he calls "framing" -- what others might call "agenda-setting". He has seized on the survey results that show moral values to have been important to some people who voted for GWB in the last election. He wants to convince Democrats to campaign on moral values too -- but different moral values. He wants Democrats to proclaim that their moral values are better and truer and more American than those silly conservative moral values.

Nice try, George! But it won't wash. Why? Because one of the most consistently proclaimed assertions of Leftist intellectuals like George is that there is no such thing as right and wrong and that all values are arbitrary. So who is going to believe that all these preachers of moral relativism have suddenly become committed to high moral values? George is trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Sudden conversion to morality will be seen for the hypocrisy that it is.

And I have to laugh at George's first sentence: "We are the 55 million progressives who came together in this election, voted for Kerry and rejected the Bush agenda". Is that a Royal "we" George? The presumption of a Berkeley professor pretending to speak for 55 million diverse Americans is hilarious -- and his claim that the 55 million were all progressives certainly strains beyond breaking point the meaning of that much-abused word. The vast majority of the Kerry voters were minorities who think the Dems will give them more handouts. And a lot of those minorities have very punitive views on many things -- such as wanting homosexuals to be castrated. Is that "progressive"? If you say so, George.

In reality, of course, the only thing the Left of politics believe in is power -- as I pointed out yesterday. They may claim to have such values as "tolerance" but as Christ said: "By their fruits ye shall know them" (Matthew 7:20) and never has there been such an outpouring of intolerance and hate-speech from the Left as what we have seen recently. As this Australian writer says: "It's amazing the amount of vitriol that has been launched by people who paint themselves as "tolerant liberals" against evangelical Christians in recent months. There are pages of this stuff in the Sydney Morning Herald's "Webdiary". In almost all cases these critics have not spent two minutes actually investigating what Family First Party or evangelical Christians actually support. Is this not the very definition of ignorant prejudice?" And we all know how much "tolerance" Christians and conservatives get on American university campuses. Read here if you don't.

Dennis Prager is also good on the divergence between normal American values and what the Left do and advocate. One excerpt: "To most Americans, Michael Moore is a Marxist who has utter contempt for most of his fellow Americans, who goes abroad and tells huge audiences how stupid and venal his country is, and in his dishonest propaganda film, portrays the American military as callous buffoons. Yet, this radical was given the most honored seat at the Democratic Party convention in Boston, next to former President Jimmy Carter. To most Americans, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are race-baiting demagogues. Yet they are heroes to the Democratic Party. Most Americans do not see their country as the bigoted and racist nation regularly depicted by both black and white Democratic leaders. To most Americans, a man who wears women's clothing to work is a pathetic person in need of psychotherapy. To the Democratic Party, he is a man whose cross-dressing is merely another expression of multiculturalism. The California legislature, controlled by Democrats, passed a law prohibiting employers from firing a man who shows up to work wearing women's clothing."

I have more on Lakoff 's Mommy/Daddy theory of values here. (Hint: In Lakoff's predictable Leftist world, Daddies are hopeless unless they become like Mommies. Maybe Lakoff's father used to beat the tar out of young George and every Daddy in the world now gets the blame. Given Lakoff's talent for overgeneralization, I would not be at all surprised).

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