The Lakoffian Tendency

I've written at length lately about the unfortunate habit among many liberals to explain conservative perspectives as the result of some fundamental moral or intellectual flaw. As it turns out, the folks over at National Review have a name for this approach: "the Lakoffian tendency".

This term references George Lakoff, the famous leftist linguist (why are all the "shining lights" of progressivism linguists? Chomsky, Lakoff, etc.) who first popularized the view that Conservatives can be divided "into two rough taxonomic categories: the small elite of evil geniuses who spend their days spinning sinister plots, and the masses of ignorant dupes who can be tricked into following them." (I'm quoting this article by Anthony Dick, not Lakoff himself.)

If one adopts this view, they would be suddenly freed to dismiss all Conservatives as "either evil or stupid — masters of sinister language manipulation, or hypnotized victims of it." The somewhat Alinsky-ish effect, which I think Lakoff clearly intended, has been to allow leftists to shun meaningful debate by assuring them that Conservative ideas and arguments can be totally ignored without sacrificing one's intellectual honesty.

Aside from being plainly untrue, the weakness of this approach as a political tool is clear: When the general public is more in line with a particular Conservative policy than with the "progressive" vision, those who accept Lakoff's view end up making the argument that the public is simply too stupid to know what's good for them. They even write books making those kinds of arguments.

To the perpetual surprise of some on the left, this sort of sheer condescension doesn't sit well with the American people - a fact observed by Andrew McCarthy here.