Problems for Public Discourse
Public political discourse is so impoverished at present that it cannot accommodate most of what we have been discussing here. It has no adequate moral vocabulary, no adequate analysis of our moral conceptual systems, no way to sensibly discuss the link between the family, morality, and politics—and no way to provide an understanding of why conservatives and liberals have the positions they have.
But the problem with public discourse is even deeper than that. Suppose the central theses of this book are correct, namely:
Political policies are derived from family-based moralities.
Those family-based moralities are largely constructed from unconscious conceptual metaphors.
Understanding political positions requires understanding how they fit family-based moralities.
Conservative and liberal political positions are impossible to compare on an issue-by-issue basis. Instead, understanding a political position on an issue requires fitting it into an unconscious matrix of family-based morality. The positions are impossible to compare because they presuppose opposite moral systems.
There are no neutral concepts and no neutral language for expressing political positions within a moral context. Conservatives have developed their own partisan moral-political concepts and partisan moral-political language. Liberals have not. The best that can be done for the sake of a balanced discourse is to develop a meta-language—a language about the concepts and language used in morality and politics.
These theses are inconsistent with the very format of news reporting and political discussion in the media. They are also inconsistent with traditional liberal assumptions about political discourse. There are many reasons for this.
First, news reporting assumes that concepts are literal and nonpartisan. But concepts, and the language that expresses them, are typically partisan, especially in the moral and political spheres. The who, what, when, where, and why of news reporting just does not capture the complex partisan differences in metaphorical conceptual structure that lie behind the political positions of conservatives and liberals.
Second, it is assumed that the use of language is neutral, that words are just arbitrary labels for literal ideas. But in morality and politics, that is rarely true. Language is associated with a conceptual system. To use the language of a moral or political conceptual system is to use and to reinforce that conceptual system.
Third, news reporting is issue-oriented, as if political issues could be isolated from the moral matrix in which they are embedded. But political issues are rarely, if ever, isolatable from their moral matrix.
Fourth, the very concept of a traditional debate is at odds with the theses of this book. A debate, by its very nature, combines literalness with issue-orientation. A debate is defined in terms of an isolated issue (like abortion or the balanced budget amendment), which, it is assumed, can be discussed fully and adequately using literal concepts, literal language, and neutral forms of inference. None of this is true. It is also assumed that the terms of the debate are commensurable, that the debaters are in the same conceptual universe. With respect to conservative and liberal politics, this too is false.
Fifth, because language is assumed to be neutral, it is assumed that it is always possible to report a story in neutral terms. But that is not true. To report a story in the language and conceptual system of conservatives is to reinforce and thus give support to the conservative worldview. Where liberals have a language appropriate to their moral politics, the same is true of them. The very choice of discourse form and language to report a story leads to bias. Neutrality is not always possible, though balance may be achievable, at a high cost. Imagine that national news stories were all reported from two opposing moral worldviews. Imagine a box with two columns for each major story, headed “from the conservative worldview” and “from the liberal worldview.” Readers might be enlightened, but they might just as easily be confused. And conservatives would cry foul, since, from their worldview, there cannot be another valid and sensible moral worldview.
Sixth, because language is assumed to be neutral, it is taken for granted that the mere use of language cannot put any discussant at a disadvantage. That is also false. Because conservatives have worked out an elaborate language of their moral politics while liberals have not, liberals are put at a disadvantage in any public discourse, and liberals will remain at that disadvantage until they come up with an adequate language to reflect their moral politics.
Seventh, it is assumed by the news media that all viewers, listeners, or readers share the same conceptual system. But that is false. Even the most “objective” reporting is usually done from a particular worldview, one that is typically unconscious and taken for granted by the reporter.
Eighth, the very nature of political discourse in this country makes it difficult to discuss the relationship between morality and politics at all. The separation of church and state has implicitly left the church as the institution that is seen as guarding morality. It has been assumed that all political discussions are issue-oriented and morally neutral. Once one brings morality into issue-oriented discussion, the whole matter of legislating morality is brought to the fore. Conservative support by right-wing churches raises the messy question of how one can discuss morality while maintaining the separation between church and state. Morality is too important to be left to churches. There must be a public discourse on morality, with an adequate vocabulary to show the difference between the moral systems that lie behind liberal and conservative political positions.
Ninth, liberalism itself has a view of discourse that puts it at a disadvantage. Liberalism comes from an Enlightenment tradition of supposedly literal, rational, issue-oriented discourse, a tradition of debate using “neutral” conceptual resources. Most liberals assume that metaphors are just matters of words and rhetoric, or that they cloud the issues, or that metaphors are the stuff of Orwellian language. If liberals are to create an adequate moral discourse to counter conservatives, they must get over their view that all thought is literal and that straightforward rational literal debate on an issue is always possible. That idea is false—empirically false—and if liberals stick to it they will have little hope of constructing a discourse that is a strong moral response to conservative discourse.
In short, public discourse as it currently exists is not very congenial to the discussion of the findings of this study. Analysis of metaphor and the idea of alternative conceptual systems are themselves not part of public discourse. Most people don’t even know that they have conceptual systems, much less how they are structured. This does not mean that the characterizations of conservatism and liberalism in this book cannot be discussed publicly. They can and should be. What requires special effort is discussing the unconscious conceptual framework behind the discussion.