Calling Out the Conservative Lies on Stimulus

We
are in the midst of a major ideological battle. If progressives win,
we'll have more jobs, better schools, and the first real steps toward a
sustainable economy in our history. Conservatives in Congress don't
want this to happen. Why? Is it that they hate Americans and want us to
suffer? Maybe not. But they definitely don't want Americans to
experience a government that works. This would undermine decades of
propaganda summed up in Reagan's famous line, "Government is the
problem!"

This has to do with worldviews and modes of thought, something I've
studied extensively in recent years. Conservatives are trying to
advance their "common sense" just as they have done with gusto since
establishing their network of think tanks and media outlets in the
mid-70's. What is their common sense? Simple:

The world is filled with individuals whose worth is
determined solely by their ability to be disciplined and work hard.
These individuals go out into the world and compete for just rewards if
they prove themselves stronger and more capable than their competitors.
By implication, anyone who does not win in this "free market" of
competition is lazy and weak. Such people deserve their lot in life.
And, of course, this natural order only works without disruption by a
nanny state (the government) that gives hand outs to the undeserving.

Margaret Thatcher famously articulated this perspective when she
declared that "there is no such thing as society," making explicit the
claim that the world is filled with individuals. Unfortunately for
conservative thinkers, their ideas don't hold up very well in practice.
A few generations back they had the opportunity to prove themselves by
deregulating markets and removing caps on the "rewards" of competition.
The result: the Great Depression. Later, they got their hands on the
reigns again. Their laissez-fair approach to market capitalism resulted
in a Savings and Loan scandal. More recently, when conservatives
controlled all three branches of government, we were delivered to our
current desperate state of economic collapse.

The challenge we face now is that conservatives are very good at
hiding this history from the public. They do it by controlling the
messages of the mainstream media. And they are using the full girth of
their power now to set the discourse around Obama's stimulus package.
Not to serve the public, but to protect their ideology from the truth
of its devastation.

Conservative Lie #1: It's not the economy their protecting. It's the ideology.

Republicans in Congress will claim that they are working to improve
the stimulus plan in order to bolster the economy. This claim is false.
The truth is that they are grasping at straws in a time when most
Americans clearly see the need for government intervention. They know
that a successful economic recovery plan that comes from the government
will undermine public endorsement of their ideology. They don't want
this to happen.

Their tactic is not simply "politics as usual," a code phrase for
the meme that government cannot be trusted (conservative ideology
again!). It is part of what my former colleague George Lakoff and I
call cognitive policy.
By cognitive policy we mean strategies for getting high-level
ideas-values, frames and principles-to dominate public discourse and
shape public understanding so that future material policies will be
natural and win public support with ease. Conservatives want Americans
to think like they do. And they're willing to let cities drown, as we
saw with Katrina, to demonstrate their idea that government doesn't
work.

Conservative Lie #2: Government isn't bad. Conservative government is bad.

They'll claim that "government is the problem" and point to failures
that happened on their watch. Of course, this sleight-of-hand maneuver
only works if people don't remember our history. The truth is that
conservatives intend for government to fail. And they'll do whatever it
takes to insure that it does. An example George and I laid out in a
past article, Why Voters Aren't Motivated by a Laundry List of Positions on Issues, was the covert policy of undermining public education so that it could be privatized:

For example, take No Child Left Behind. Its stated
purpose is to improve public education, but its covert purpose has been
to undermine it so that public schools can be replaced by charter
schools, private schools, and religious schools. This would increase
conservative control over what is taught and further inculcate
conservative ideas. It would institute a two-tier educational system to
maintain and reproduce the two-tier economic system in the country, so
that children of the elite can get an elite education subsidized by the
public through vouchers, while children of the uneducated poor remain
educated just enough to continue to provide a source of cheap unskilled
or low-skilled labor. This agenda is hidden, but it is justified and
advanced via cognitive policy.

This is where progressives have our work cut out for us. Not only do
we need to promote policies that reflect our values. Unlike
conservatives, we have the additional challenge of making sure
government programs work! We have to be sure that quality jobs are
created that deliver a living wage. We have to provide for the health
security of citizens to keep our communities safe from the ravages of
disease. We have to nurture the minds of our children to be sure they
are prepared for the challenges that lay ahead. And we have to
transcend outdated relationships with Old World powers, like those in
the Middle East, by generating local, clean energy in our own cities
and towns.

Conservative Lie #3: They're not against the stimulus plan. They're against the function of government itself.

The narrow reporting on current Congressional politicking would lead
one to believe that conservatives simply want a different bill to be
passed. By now it should be clear that this just isn't the case. The
truth is that conservatives want to be sure Obama and his progressive
colleagues at all levels of government are not able to do their jobs.
Imagine what would happen if Obama succeeded at delivering money to
state and city officials to build mass transit, generate renewable
energy, and provide affordable health care to the populace. This would
be the fulfillment of government's moral mission - to protect and
empower our citizens.

Conservatives will do everything they can to stand in the way of
this progress. They are doing more than obstructing a vital infusion of
resources to save our economy. That would be sin enough to drive them
from public office if their agenda were widely know. The truth is much
more disturbing. They are obstructing the capacity of people to come
together and solve our problems through the one mechanism that makes
this possible - a functioning government.