Whose Freedom: The Battle Over America S Most Important Idea

ALSO BY GEORGE LAKOFF Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think Metaphors We Live By More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being WHOSE FREEDOM? THE BATTLE OVER AMERICA’S MOST IMPORTANT IDEA GEORGE LAKOFF FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX / NEW YORK To Kathleen Farrar, Straus and Giroux 19 Union Square West, New York 10003 Copyright © 2006 by George Lakoff All rights reserved Distributed in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd. Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2006 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lakoff, George. Whose freedom? : the battle over America’s most important idea / George Lakoff.— 1st ed. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-0-374-15828-6 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-374-15828-2 (hardcover: alk. paper) 1. Liberty—United States. 2. Conservatism—United States. 3. Progressivism (United States politics) 4. United States—Politics and government—2001– I. Title. JC599.U5L25 2006 323.440973—dc22 2006004265 Designed by Jonathan D. Lippincott www.fsgbooks.com 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 CONTENTS Introduction: In the Name of Freedom PART I: UNCONTESTED FREEDOM 1 Freedom Is Freedom Is Freedom 2 Why Freedom Is Visceral 3 The Logic of Simple Freedom PART II: CONTESTED FREEDOM 4 The Nation-as-Family Metaphor 5 Progressive Freedom: The Basics 6 Conservative Freedom: The Basics 7 Causation and Freedom PART III: FORMS OF FREEDOM 8 Personal Freedom and Populism 9 Economic Freedom 10 Religion and Freedom 11 Foreign Policy and Freedom PART IV: IDEAS AND ACTION 12 Bush’s “Freedom” 13 Taking Back Freedom Suggested Reading Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION: IN THE NAME OF FREEDOM Ideas matter. Perhaps no idea has mattered more in American history than the idea of freedom. The central thesis of this book is simple. There are two very different views of freedom in America today, arising from two very different moral and political worldviews dividing the country. The traditional idea of freedom is progressive. One can see traditional values most clearly in the direction of change that has been demanded and applauded over two centuries. America has been a nation of activists, consistently expanding its most treasured freedoms: The expansion of citizen participation and voting rights from white male property owners to non–property owners, to former slaves, to women, to those excluded by prejudice, to younger voters The expansion of opportunity, good jobs, better working conditions, and benefits to more and more Americans, from men to women, from white to nonwhite, from native born to foreign born, from English speaking to non–English speaking The expansion of worker rights—freedom from inhumane working conditions—through unionization: from slave labor to the eight-hour day, the five-day week, worker compensation, sick leave, overtime pay, paid vacations, pregnancy leave, and so on The expansion of public education from grade school to high school to college to postgraduate education The expansion of knowledge through science from isolated figures like Benjamin Franklin to scientific institutions in the great universities and governmental institutions like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health The expansion of public health and life expectancy The expansion of consumer protection through more effective government regulation of immoral or irresponsible corporations and class acti