Is America Essentially A Progressive Nation?
George Lakoff is author of "Don't Think of An Elephant: Know Your Values, Frame the Debate," a professor of linguistics at Berkeley and an informal advisor to Barack Obama. He recently visited North Carolina at the behest of several progressive groups, and according to a column by Rob Schofield, reminded NC progressives what they are all about.
Lakoff is trying to get progressives to think more about the language they use. He believes 'progressives' should speak of their values first, and policy prescriptions second: "There is no left-to-right linear spectrum in the American political life," he writes. "There are two systems of values and modes of thought - call them progressive and conservative (or nurturant and strict, as I have)....Barack Obama has it right: Get rid of the very idea of the right and the left and the center. American ideas are fundamentally progressive ideas - the ideas on which this country was founded and which carry forth that spirit. Progressives care about people and the earth, and act with responsibility and strength on that care...
"The progressive view of government is simple. Progressive government has two aspects: protection and empowerment. Protection is far more than the military, police and fire departments. It includes consumer protection, worker protection, environmental protection, public health, food and drug safety; Social Security and other safety nets. It also includes protection from the government itself, and hence a balance of powers, openness, fundamental rights and so on.
"Empowerments include roads and bridges; public education; government-developed communications like the internet and satellite communications systems; the banking system; the SEC and institutions that make a stock market possible, and the court system, mostly about contracts and corporate law. Progressive government makes business possible. No one makes any money in this country without progressive empowerment by government. A progressive foreign policy is not based solely, or even mainly, on the state - about the "national interest" defined as our military strength and GDP. Progressive foreign policy focuses on individual people's interests as well as national interests: on poverty, disease, refugees, education, women's and children's issues, public health and so on." Read the whole thing.
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