Quotes About Conservatives

Conservatives want live babies so they can train them to be dead soldiers.

Conservatives say if you don't give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they've lost all incentive because we've given them too much money.

As a consequence, it should be true that if you just get the facts out to people, they will reason to the right conclusion. And so year after year, decade after decade, liberals keep telling facts to conservative audiences without changing many minds. This behavior by liberals is itself a form of science denial—the denial of the cognitive and brain sciences. It is simply irrational behavior by many people proud of their rationality. It

Instead, the mission of the agency is moral, and its success must be judged in significant part on moral grounds, not cost-benefit grounds. It is the moral mission of the EPA that offends conservatives. The same is true of the moral missions of the arts and humanities endowments. One

In the Strict Father model, it is the duty of the strict father to protect his family above all else. By the Nation As Family metaphor, this implies that the major function of the government is, above all else, to protect the nation. That is why conservatives see the funding of the military as moral, while the funding of social programs is seen as immoral. There

To get a sense of how equality is contested in politics, consider the constant struggle between liberals and conservatives over what equality means: equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome. Conservatives

It was Luntz who persuaded conservatives to stop talking about "global warming" because it sounded too scary and suggested human agency. Instead, he brought "climate change" into our public discourse on the grounds that "climate" sounded kind of nice (think palm trees) and change just happens, with no human agency.

What is punishment and theft to conservatives is civic duty and fairness to liberals. There

Rationalism pervades the progressive world. It is one of the reasons progressives have lately been losing to conservatives. Rationalist-based political campaigns miss the symbolic, metaphorical, moral, emotional, and frame-based aspects of political campaigns.

Pragmatic political figures are sometimes called "moderate" or "middle of the road" because of their willingness to compromise. But the term "moderate" gives the false impression that there is a linear political continuum, with people distributed along it. The continuum metaphor hides the major role played by moral systems and the fact that pragmatic politicians in America are usually pragmatic versions of either liberals or conservatives. Not

The thousands of blacks who were either purged from the voting rolls or falsely told the polls had closed were seen by many conservatives as not having been disciplined enough to make sure they voted. Metaphor

Conservatives are not against big government when use of the power of the federal government fits their moral system.

Runaway privatization of public resources. The private depends on the public, but conservatives are drastically cutting funds for public resources while successfully promoting privatization. They say that government doesn't work, and by cutting funds they can make government cease to work. And by cutting government resources for all, they can make democracy cease to work.

One way for progressives to counter such hidden agendas is to discuss them openly. We need to get beyond how conservatives are framing the issues publicly and point out their real goals. And

Tort reform is a top priority for conservatives. Why do conservatives care so much about this? Well, as soon as you see the effects, you can see why they care. Because in one stroke you prohibit all of the potential lawsuits that will be the basis of future environmental legislation and regulation.

Markets can't thrive and serve the common good without the constructive role of government. This is what conservatives ignore when they speak of the "free market." THE

Many tort lawyers are important Democratic donors. Tort "reform"—as conservatives call it—cuts off this source of money. All of a sudden three-quarters of the money going to the Texas Democratic Party is not there.

Finally, Obama's remarks are carefully constructed to undermine the arguments of conservatives, who frame the social programs funded by taxation as government handouts to the undeserving. Obama flips the taxes-as-handouts frame on its head, to yield a frame in which tax breaks are handouts to the rich, and the estate tax is a transfer of wealth from ordinary taxpayers to wealthy individuals—a frame that tells a vital truth. It

Conservatives don't merely want less government. They want to raise spending for the military—even bring back Star Wars—not reduce it. They want to build more prisons. There is no move to eliminate the drug enforcement agency.

Prototype frames. Among the most important of the commonplace frames are the prototype frames, where you reason about a category on the basis of some subcategory (real or imagined). The best known is the social stereotype. For instance, both conservatives and progressives use stereotypes of immigrants, though very different ones.

Conservatives, through their think tanks, figured out the importance of framing, and they figured out how to frame every issue. They figured out how to get those frames out there, how to get their people in the media all the time.

Conservatives figured out how to bring their people together. Every Wednesday, Grover Norquist has a group meeting—around eighty people—of leaders from the full range of the right. They are invited, and they debate.

Any policy that gives people things they haven't earned is seen as immoral, because it lessens the incentive to be self-disciplined. From this perspective, affirmative action looks immoral to conservatives, on the grounds that it gives preferential treatment to women and minorities. It is a relatively direct consequence of the Strict Father model. The

Incidentally, conservatives are attempting to destroy this system via "tort reform," the capping of damages at levels so low that the attorneys could no longer afford to function as police and prosecutors and the whole system would break down. Their motivation is to make the market "free" from the loss of profit through lawsuits for harming or defrauding the public. THE