Whose Freedom? Counting the Cost

I’m listening to the audiobook of George Lakoff’s Whose Freedom?: The Battle Over America’s Most Important Idea, in which he contrasts the progressive and conservative ideas of freedom.

Lakoff repeats over and over again that progressive morality is built on empathy, whereas conservative morality is based on discipline. That formulation makes a certain amount of sense, but it doesn’t get him where he wants to go.

For example, Lakoff claims that progressives empathize with the poor and want to help them with social programs, whereas conservatives say that social programs will make the poor dependant on government handouts, which hurts their self-discipline.

Now I’ve heard that argument from conservatives, and like Lakoff, I’m not impressed by it, but Lakoff is leaving out a huge part of the conservative case against social programs. It’s a point that should be immediately obvious to anyone with even a passing grasp of economic reasoning: Somebody has to pay for the social programs.

If a government social program gives a single mom $1000 to take care of her children, that $1000 has to be taken away from someone else. The single mom deserves our empathy, but so does the person who earned that $1000 in the first place. It’s okay to be empathetic, but be empathetic equally.

Lakoff could try to take a number of approaches to counter this argument. He could offer an argument as to why we should pay for social programs, or he could argue that the money would come from people who don’t deserve it, or he could reject the “somebody-has-to-pay-for-it” argument as irrelevant misdirection.

However, it’s disingenuous of him to completely omit a huge part of the conservative argument in a book that purports to explain conservative thought to progressives. It mischaracterizes the conservative view, which is unfair to conservatives and a disservice to his progressive readers.