Lakoff on Conservative thought...

as reading Lakoff's new book "The Political Mind: why you can't understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-century brain. I highly recommend it!

pg. 60

Conservative thought has a very different moral basis than progressive thought. It begins with the notion that morality is obedience to an authority--assumed to be a legitimate authority who is inherently good, knows right from wrong, functions to protect us from evil in the world, and has both the right and duty to use force to command obedience and fight evil. He is "the Decider." Obedience to legitimate authority requires both personal responsibility and discipline, which are prime conservative virtues. Obedience is enforced through punishment. In large institutions, there will be a hierarchy of authority, used, among others things, to maintain order. Loyalty is required to maintain the hierarchy. Freedom is seen as functioning within such an order. As long as you follow the rules laid down for you, you are free to act within that order...

For conservatives, the market is seen metaphorically as an institution personified as a legitimate authority who makes rational decisions ("Let the market decide"), as imposing market discipline, and as regarding discipline and punishing the lack of it. Prosperity is seen as a mark of discipline, which is in turn seen as moral, since discipline is required to obey moral laws and whatever is required by those in authority. By the logic of this system of thought, if you are not prosperous, you are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve your poverty. It follows that if people are given thing they have not earned, they become dependent and lose their discipline and with it their capacity to obey moral laws and legitimate authority.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com