Cognitive Disonance on Conservatism

Accuracy in Academia ^ | June 30, 2011 | Malcolm A. Kline

[Academiadotorg]

Since they don’t really want to encounter any, academics keep striking out when they attempt to figure out conservatives. Berkeley’s George Lakoff is the latest scholar to miss the boat, and the dock is getting crowded.

“Conservatives don’t dislike science or expertise inherently, Lakoff says—but for them, these are not the chief source of authority,” Chris Mooney, who interviewed the professor, writes in the July/August 2011 issue of The American Prospect. “Instead, conservatives have a moral system based on a ‘strict father’ model of the family, which is then exported to various other realms of society—the market, the government.”

Lakoff is a “congnitive linguist.” “Liberals, to Lakoff, are just different,” Mooney writes. “Science, social science, and research in general support an Enlightenment ethic—finding the best facts so as to improve the world and society and thus advance liberals’ own moral system, which is based on a caring and ‘nurturant’ parent-run family.”

Wait until you see what Lakoff views as a liberal weakness. “Here also arises a chief liberal weakness, probably amplified by an academic training: constantly trying to use factual and reasoned arguments to make the world better and being amazed to find that even though these arguments are sound, well researched, and supported, they are disregarded or even actively attacked,” Mooney writes.

Lakoff’s ratemyprofessors.com ratings show that his students don’t find him very “nurturing.” Here are a few of them:

“Went in with high interest, now completely disenchanted,” one reviewer wrote. “Has huge ego, doesn’t know how to teach. Calls on anyone raising hand, but instead of addressing question, will go on to talk about whatever he likes (often based on some keyword), sometimes even interrupting student to do so. Doesn’t accept other points of view”; and “He’s self-important in the extreme: an ego to match his girth..."

[ClearCase_guy]

Liberal world-view: I am good in every way and you are a poopy-head.

[wita]

Berkeley’s George Lakoff

...rhymes with...

[exDemMom]

“Science, social science, and research in general support an Enlightenment ethic—finding the best facts so as to improve the world and society and thus advance liberals’ own moral system, which is based on a caring and ‘nurturant’ parent-run family.”

In addition to the preceding characterization of conservatives being inaccurate, this view of liberals also strikes me as wildly off-base. What about divorce, gay "marriage", etc., is the basis of a "caring and 'nurturant' parent-run family"?

[poobear]

;D!

[This I Wonder32460]

Sounds like he is just another member of the idiocracy.

[muir_redwoods]

100,000,000 civilians were murdered by their own governments in the 20th century as those governments worked to inflict socialism on those countries.

Socialism of any form, be it National Socialism or Gramscian Socialism or Fabian Socialism or Soviet Socialism or Sino-Socialism inevitably leads to death and poverty on a grand scale.

In light of this overwhelming empirical evidence how can anyone claim to be rational and still cling to the socialist ideal the way modern Progressives do?