Keys To Victory #2: Constructing Liberal Identity, Values & Narrative For A Political Realignment

by: Paul Rosenberg

Mon Aug 13, 2007 at 21:08

In Part One, I presented the argument for viewing conservatism as a form of identity politics, showed how differences on issues between liberals and conservatives are much smaller than differences on candidates, and showed that conservatives-even self-identified extreme conservatives-support welfare state spending. 

In this part, I will begin to address the task of creating a countervailing liberal identity politics by developing a clearer picture of liberal and conservative identity. I will look at two different models from cognitive science, and what they tell us about the differences between liberalism and conservatism.

In the next installment, I'm going to discuss values and a pair of issue areas that I think hold enormous promise for liberals/progressives specifically, and for Democrats generally.  I call them dignity and security for all. This installment may seem a bit abstract, but it's laying the groundwork for an argument that would otherwise seem much more arbitrary than it really is-if, indeed, it could be made at all.

A Context For Conservative Identity Politics

As described in Part One, conservative identity politics is reflected in dis-identification with WASP outgroups-blacks, Catholics, Jews, Unions.  But this doesn't address the question of its positive content, or of what makes it tick.  Demonizing outgroups certainly comes to the fore when it is under threat, but what about when it is not?

The short answer is that it is about how the world is supposed to be run, no questions asked.  This is how traditional theocratic governments have routinely justified themselves.

Before proposing a counter to this view, I want to introduce two different perspectives to help us understand the logic of this politics presents itself. The first centers around George Lakoff's Strict Father/Nurturant Parent model of conservatism and liberalism, but places it into the context of a more conventional sort of theory of group dominance and social structure.  The second involves a refined version of developmental psychology theories, which got their start with the work of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget in the early 1900s.  Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan has developed an elegant model that reveals a simple structure much the same way that the Periodic Table of Elements reveals regularities underlying a vast profusion of different chemicals.

Even a cursory explanation of the inner workings of either model could easily overwhelm this diary, so instead I'll focus on primarily on why they are relevant and what they have to tell us, keeping any technical discussion to the miimum needed to press my main points.

Lakoff's Strict Father/Nurturant Parent Dichotomy And Social Dominance Theory

Lakoff's model is valuable because its a means of understanding the structure of diverse issue positions.  He uses family models to describe political ideology based on the general principle that more abstract realms are structured in terms of more concrete ones.
This principle was discovered and elaborated in his earlier work on cognitive metaphor, which preceeded his writing on politics by about 15 years. For example, our basic up/down experience of physical orientation structures good as up/bad as down: health (top shape, falling sick, coming down with a cold), emotions (high spirits, down in the dumps); our experience of physical closeness structures our experience of psychic/emotional closeness (they drifted apart, we reconnected, he stayed in touch); our experience of physical journeys structures our experience of purposeful activity (let's jump-start the project, then speed things up, and stay on track, we decided to go another way, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it), and so forth.  Literally hundreds of such systematic examples had been categorized by Lakoff, his students and colleagues before he ever considered trying to understand liberalism and conservatism.

Thus, there is nothing fanciful or arbitrary in Lakoff's use of family models to describe political ideology, it is completely consistent with his earlier work.  They describe the same abstract reality, but highlight different things, and structure them in different ways.  In particular, the "Strict Father" model is based on a fearful perception of a dangerous world, one in which evil is a powerful force that needs to be fought without quarter, and shapes childrearing accordingly.  The "Nurturant Parent" model has a much more benign view, centered on the child itself and the development of its capacities, not just for survival, but for discovery, self-expression, creativity, community-building, etc.  The Nurturant Parent may actually be aware of more dangers--such as pollution, unsafe toys junk food, etc.--which the Strict Father is likely to reject as just so much "politically correct" nonsense.  But they are not seen as different manifestations of evil that needs to be fought.  They are seen naturalistically, as parts of the world that need to be understood in order to be effectively avoided.

With its two family models, Lakoff's theory explains the internal organizing of two contrasting processes which are found in all societies, though in widely different states of balance.  One process is that of enhancing hierarchy and submission to authority, the other process is that of attenuating them in favor of greater indvidual freedom and equality. 

These processes and the tensions between them lie at the heart of one of the most powerful general theories of social organization developed in recent years revolves.  It is called Social Dominance Theory (SDT), developed primarily by researchers Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto.  It has an individual attitudinal component, social dominance orientation (SDO) which has been empirically studied across cultures, as well as a theoretical framework relating individual attitudes to the larger societies in which individuals live.  At the center of the theory is the role of ideological "legitimating myths" which can range from broad overarching principles and cultural narratives that endure for generations to ideas with the fluidity of urban legends.  LMs are either hierarchy-enhancing (HE-LMs) or hierarchy-attenuating (HA-LMs). Here is an overview of SDT's major structural components:

Within the above framework of SDT, Lakoff's Strict Father/Nurturant Parent models can readily be understood as ways of organizing the two contrasting sets of LMs.  SDO has been shown to correlate with a wide range of conservative attitudes and beliefs.  In this respect, it is similar to another attitudinal construct, rightwing authoritarianism (RWA).  RWA has an even longer and broader history of empirical exploration, though it lacks a sophisticated theory like SDT.  However, it seems highly probable that RWA can be integrated into SDT as an attitudinal influencing roughly paralleling SDO in a virtually identitical structure of influence.  Thus, Lakoff's model can be understood as presenting a magnified picture of how these two attitudinal clusters combine to structure the realm of LM's at the core of social dominance theory.

In turn, this helps us further understand conservative identity politics.  Not only does the Strict Father model present an idealized model of how the moral and political order should be run, via SDT it appears to explain how the moral and political order are already run, and indeed how they must run.  That is the whole point of their being such a thing as HE-LMs in the first place: they explain the existing hierarchical order as necessary, just and inevitable-things could not possibly be other than they are.

From this point of view, liberals are not simply advocates of a different system of thinking.  No such different system is possible.  They are, quite simply, agents of chaos and confusion at best--threatening to weaken the understanding and resolve of the Strict Father-lead masses.  At worst, they are intentional agents of evil, seekng to tear down the only possible system of world order.

Robert Kegan and Cognitive Development

Robert Kegan's theoretical model of cognitive development provides a whole different perspective on where conservative identity politics derives its sense of being an unquestionable politics of identity.  Building on the work of earlier theorists begining with Jean Piaget in the early 20th Century, Kegan argues that human cognition develops in a series of stages of increasingly complexity.  At each stage, that which formed the background context of consciousness becomes foreground content for conscious manipulation by a new set of background processes.  Here is a simplified chart of this development process:

Stage	Subject	Object
0: Incorporative	reflexes	nothing
1: Impulsive	impulses, perceptions	reflexes
2: Imperial	needs, interests, desires	impulsive, perceptions
3: Interpersonal	interpersonal relationships, mutuality	needs, interests, desires
4: Institutional	authorship, identity, ideology	interpersonal relationships, mutuality
5: Inter-individual	the interpenetrability of self-systems	authorship, identity, ideology

A full explanation of this chart would take us too far afield.  What's important is simply to see the logic of how subject at one level becomes object at next.  I'm now going to complicate things further by introducing a similar, but more complicated chart.  Again, the important thing is to observe the patterns.  I will explain a few of the terms that are most important for our purposes:

Stage / Characteristic	Subject	Object	Underlying Structure
1	perception SOCIAL PERCEPTIONS impulses	Movement Sensation	Single Point/ Immediate Atomistic
2 [Tribalism]	concrete POINT OF VIEW enduring dispositions	Perceptions Social Perceptions Impulses	Durable Category
3 Traditionalism	Traditionalism abstractions MUTUALITY/ INTERPERSONALISM inner states	Concrete Point of View Enduring dispositions Needs Preferences	Cross- Categorical Trans- Categorical
4 Modernism	Modernism abstract systems INSTITUTION self authorship	Abstractions Mutuality/ Interpersonalism Inner states Subjectivity Self-consciousness	System/ Complex
5 Post- Modernism	Post- Modernism dialectical INTER-INSTITUTIONAL self-transformation	Abstract system Ideology Institution Relationship- Regulating Forms Self authorship Self regulation Self formation	Trans-System Trans-Complex

The point for us to focus on in the chart above is the relationship between stages 3 and 4: traditionalism and modernism.  Stage 3 is the normal state of adult development in traditional societies.  What is subject for it--what constitutes the unquestionable background context of the self at this stage--is the very society in which the adult lives: to be an adult is to fully reflect the society and culture one is a part of.  One is defined by the traditions and social roles (mutuality/interpersonalism) of the society, one is guided by its abstractions--its values, its gods, its categorical superstructure for understanding the world--and one shares and values the same inner states as others in the society do.

A self perfectly fused with its social surround--it's the very definition of conservative identity politics: there is no other identity (other than imperfection) and there can be no other politics (other than falling into disarray).

In contrast, the stage 4 modern self sees all these things as objects to be reflected on, examined, even manipulated--which, from a stage 3 perspective means "violated."  Historically, the stage 4 self emerged out of necessity, due to a qualitative increase in social complexity that the traditional self was simply incapable of dealing with.  (Indeed, Kegan argues that the world today is so complex that even the stage 4 self is inadequate.  Hence, the name of his 1994 book, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life.)

This process began at least in the middle of the last millenium, if not several centuries earlier with the Renaissance. Both the emerging politically centralized state and the growing urban centers of commerce involved a pace of life that traditional fuedal structures and norms could no longer contain. New tasks, new functions, new roles were needed to cope with the pace of change, the complexity of decisions faced exceeded the range of guidance offered by tradition, simply following the same life course as ones parent had was not always a reliable-or sometimes even feasible guide.

In short, the forces of modernization accelerated the pace of social change so much that it was literally impossible for the old forms to continue ensuring social order. Because of their closed nature, it was impossible for those at stage 3 to distinguish between the forces they could no longer contain or control and the emerging consciousness and its products which sought to fashion new means of coping with the chaos.  To them, it was all an abomination, particularly when it took on theological form. The emergence of Protestantism was a watershed event signalling the accumulation of such changes, even if most Protetants were not at stage 4 and early Protestantism was as often as authoritarian and bound by its own newly-created traditions as the Roman Catholicism it opposed.

The conflict between modernizing and traditional forces across Europe stretched out over a period of more than 500 years, and is still going on today.  While the division between Kegan's Stage 3 and Stage 4 sheds significant light on this conflict, it should not be used as a substitute for other sources of understanding.  To a large extent, these struggles were rooted in institutions or ways of life, with land-based aristocracies holding firm to traditional ways and urban centers--especially trade-oriented ones--being centers of modernization.  Yet, Kegan's typology can shed new light, which is not limited to the Stage 3/Stage 4 divide.

Further Regression: The Conservative Retreat to Stage 2

For example, confronted with a bewildering new situation, a common Stage 3 response was regression back to Stage 2 types of thinking. This can be seen in two significant ways.  First, Stage 3 has the capacity to encompass multiple points of view, at least within the framework of the existing society.  They are objects for it.  However, confronted with modernizing complexity, and with an emerging non-traditional way of dealing with it. Many Stage 3 individuals regressed to a more simplistic approach.  Incapable of incorporating these news points of view and reflecting on them, they began to assume a simplistic, relatively fixed point of view rejecting modernizing complexity in its entirety--both the chaotic conditions they could not cope with, and the new ways of thinking and acting that emerging Stage 4 thinking was constructing to deal with that chaos.

This regression is also manifested in a more general fall-back on a more primative way of thinking.  The second chart above identifies the underlying structure of Stage 2 as "durable category." A point of view is an example of what is meant by durable--it represents a constant persperspective on the world, compared to the flux of events oberved from the point of view.  Similarly, "ednuring dispositions" are  attitudes, character traits and preferences that become noticeably more fixed in late childhood, the period when Stage 2 thinking replaces the more fluid thinking of Stage 1.  This is the stage at which virtuous traits like honesty, loyalty, obedience, etc. become the particular focus of attention, as opposed to an earlier focus on particular acts.

The organizing of thingss within categories is strikingly visible in the tendency of children at this stage (from around seven till the onset of puberty) to collect things--marbles, dolls, coins, stamps, baseball cards, etc. Stage 2 thinking is subject to such unchanging categories of things, it can reflect on them only minimally--to identify something as belonging to the category, for example.

It is only with Stage 3 that one gans the capactity to criticially examine such categires and relate them to one another. Because of this, Stage 3 thinking is capable of understanding the world in terms of heterogrenous categories, and processes by which things change from breing one sort of thing into anothers.  However, Stage 3's capacity to comperehend change is limited by the store of traditional knowledge. Confronted with the sort of overwhelming change brought by the forces of modernization, Stage 3 thinking is easily overwhelmed. 

One striking example of this is the way that political conservatives readily turn reactionary when encountering threatening political change.  For example, the French Revolution was a complex, and frightening process for all concerned, which had its roots in several generations of failed governance.  Conservatives, with their faith in divine sanction for the crown (supported by the Divine Right of Kings doctrine), were incapable of grasping the notion that a King and the class of those around him could so fundamentally misunderstand and mismanage a country.  Instead of accepting a naturalistic mode of explanation, and trying to understand what had happened, they fell back on the only mode of political explanation they were familiar with--the palace intrigue or conspiracy--and attributed the social chaos to some grand verrsion of such conspiracy.  There was, of course, a significant problem with this--the utter lack of any such conspiracy.  But the need was so great that a vast conspiracy was soon invented anyway, with the relatively small, powerless, foreign and extinct Bavarian Illuminati at its core. 

Explaining the French Revolution in this manner commonly represented a reversion to Stage 2 thinking.  The conspiracy was understood in self-containted terms: conspirators were motivated by simple Stage 2 types of reasons, particularly the opposites of the sorts of virtues--honesty, loyalty, obedience, etc.--that are commonly learned at Stage 2.  In short, the conspirators were seen as "evildoers," and simply calling them such was explanation enough for why they behaved as they did.

The parallel to how movement conservatives commonly demonize liberals is obvious.  Also obvious is why liberals have such a hard time returning the favor: Stage 4 is a very long way from Stage 2.  It's not just next door.  No matter how mean-spirited, ignorant or bigoted movement conservatism may be, the same folks who buy into such a world view have other parts of their lives that can be virtually untouched by their politics--a fact which liberals are usually quite aware of, and which makes it difficult for them to respond to conservatievs in kind.  Try as we might, we just can't see three-dimensional people as two-dimensional cartoons--even when their political thinking is maddeninigly two-dimensional--or worse.

The bottom line is that, unlike natural conservatism, shaped by the inherent limitations of Stage 3 thinking, movement conservatism comes to be defined by Stage Two thinking.  The world is divided into good conservatives, and everyone else.  Liberals are particularly despised because they consciously side with--or at least refuse to catetgorially demonize--the various forces of social chaos: foreigners, blacks, the unworthy poor, gays and lesbians, etc., etc., etc.  While individuals from each of those despised groups can be redeemed by rejecting their group identity and embracing the conservative ideal, liberals clearly cannot do this, except of course, by renouncing their liberalism.  It's this Stage 2 way of thinking about liberal and conservative identity that adds another dimension of impenetrability to conservative identity politics.

What This Means for liberal Identity Politics

Both the above models lead to the same conclusion, but for different reasons: From within the framework of conservative thought, it is simply impossible for liberals to be right.  If they are right about X, it can only be because even liberals must admit that conservatives are right about X.  There is no possibility that liberals can be right about X because of their own system of ideas, because conservative thinking categorically excludes this possibility.

From this, we can conclude that it is simply futile to try to convince conservatives--at least movement conservatives--of anything.  Rational argumentation will get us nowhere.  But this does not mean we cannot reach moderates, nor even self-identified conservatives who haven't become habitual kool-aid drinkers.  What's more, even movement conservatives can be reached another way--not by convincing, but by persuading.

What this means, in essence, is that while we have to fight back against conservative attacks, and we have to stand up for what we believe, we can only hope to hold our own at best by meeting movement conservatives on their own terms.  We cannot afford to do less, and leave their attacks unanswered, but answering their attacks blow-for-flow is merely a defensive necessity for us.  It is not our principal task. We have to create--and make visible a more appealing alternative.  Our principal task is our principle task--elaborating what we stand for, and showing how it leads to a better life and a better world.