George Lakoff, in some book or other, argued that people could be defined with metaphors. No, wait: he argued that OTHER people use metaphors to define people. Those are the people he called THEM. They are definitionally wicked because they tend to use terms like “them” in spooky ways.
Anyway, Republicans were supposedly operating on a metaphor of government-as-father. The idea was that fathers–in Republican gender constructions, which is to say in terms so insufficiently ambiguous that they still possess meaning–were the disciplinarians, who valued structure and order over nurturing. The figurative breasts, of course, were what he presumably called “liberals”. His people, whatever word he used.
At the present moment, I have been fermenting for several weeks in the dank stink of overprotective regulation. I have been reading the OSHA site, getting drug tested, filling out form after form, and wondering how anything gets done at large corporations, when you have to develop a Quality Control process for crapping, sneezing, and masturbation (allowed during lunch and after 5pm, but only is the door is secured properly, you use an approved lotion, you use your non-dominant hand on occasion to prevent repetitive movement injury, you indicate your status on your calendar, and that you report the out-come of your efforts to management within one hour using the proper form).
I look at this, and if we are going to call this Maternalism, then it is the protection of a psychotic mother who never wants her child to leave the house. Freedom is when you get to do what you want, when you want, within reasonable limitations.
To my mind, the Department of Labor is an affront to the notion of the Constitutional restriction of the powers of the Federal Government. Governing commerce is little more than making sure no States implement tariffs, and arbitrating any disputes that may arise between sovereign governments. It is inconceivable to me that any rational mind can look at the massive bureaucratic apparatus that has been created to “protect” us, and not see it as having the power to limit us to the little black cages Max Weber saw as the ultimate outcome of a process he termed (ironically, in my view) Rationalization.
If we want to live as machines, then the ultimate in efficiency is for humans to create sentient machines, then die off. What the “Maternalists” want for us is perfect security, which can only occur in conditions of complete tyranny. They want to make it impossible for anyone to make a mistake. Always, always, always, though, it comes down to the judgement of individuals. If those individuals are competent and motivated, they will usually make the right decision. If not, the process involved won’t prevent stupidity.
I referenced psycholanalysis since in my view important things are happening. I’m circling around this issue since I am still working it out, but please just keep that word in mind as a code word for breaking through my deeper meaning here.
If we define mothering as the actual development of a sense of place, safety, and a feeling of being valued and loved, then socialism is the opposite. It is the substitution of rules for freedom, and command and control for individual judgement. It is, in a formal sense, Paternalism, and quite free of nurturing.
Witness, for example, the hue and cry that attended George Bush’s efforts to deploy social program spending through churches. His intent was to put a human face on the government, one which had an actually useful belief system meant to provide meaning to human life. Governments do not deploy meaning. They deploy money. Money does not make one happy.
Who raises our kids? Stay home moms seem often to view their kids as science projects, then they lapse into an evanescent world in which thoughts can be Twittered, and in which the actual mother is the media. Working mothers have kids who do this even quicker.
Our media world is cold. Computers do not talk. Television characters do not recognize you. Perhaps that is why social media is so popular: we are alone with our devices, and feel less alone when communicating through them with others who are also alone.
Where does the nurturing in our modern world come from? Where is the old fashioned connection, respect, and bond that was present everywhere until our lunatic modern world evolved?
We feel both connections that are there, and connections which SHOULD be there, but which aren’t. That latter induces anger, and we see hateful, vicious, evil anger expressed across our media complex. There is a Hello Kitty skull now, if I’m not mistaken.
Therapeutically, people do not suffer from Prozac (or whatever it is they use nowadays) deficiencies. Rarely do they suffer from not talking enough, or benefit from talking more. What we need is a common culture, or at least the permission to exercise the cultures we do have in public.
Socialism–the intellectuals doctrine and expression of the moral idea of egalitarianism–is a type of madness, and creates insane people.
I will add that I don’t view the countries of northern Europe as socialistic. If compliance is not compelled, that is still a type of Liberalism, although I still tend to label most versions “Sybaritic Leftism”, since there is almost always a component of moral relativism, which is to say cultural destruction.
One final note, not entirely related, but not entirely unrelated either. In classical Chinese culture, respect for one’s elders–filial piety–is very old, and very deeply rooted. Consider in that regard how much worse that made the Cultural Revolution, led by Anita Dunn’s hero, Chairman Mao, in which hordes of brainwashed and psychotic children–young kids, 10-12-14–would attack torture, and kill venerable old men, for no crime other than not being young, and not being ardently Communist. The children in a classroom, say a 6th grade classroom, would literally rise up against their teacher, take them outside, and beat them until they died. This is what that great leader Mao wanted, and no doubt something Obama’s former Propaganda Secretary admired.
But consider what a revolting, nauseating flip of the old system this was. It is evil in and of itself–self evidently, as if this is even worth saying, it accomplished nothing good anywhere–but even more horrific when one considers the esteem with which traditional Chinese society taught their children to view their elders.
What the intellectuals who run our universities and who surround our President want is nothing less–in the long run–than the sociopathy of children who never socialised, and never bonded with any mother.
In this regard, I will add one last thought: it is a strange contradiction that the entirety of Socialist theory is oriented around means, but not ends. They obsess about means of subversion, but literally cannot see that the long term outcome of their morality is to deny everyone else their right to live as they see fit. They want the death of moral agency, which I have said often. They want everyone to be forced to commit moral suicide, to renounce who they are–if they have any remaining “stains” of identity (male, female, professional/worker, Jewish/Hindu, Californian/Tennesseean, etc.)–and march in lockstep as ordered.
You can talk to nice people who espouse these ideas. The point I am making is that they don’ think through the logical and necessary outcomes of the policies they espouse, and that this in itself constitutes a major moral failure.