The State as Parent
Evidence for Lakoff’s hypothesis from Liberia:
“I voted for George Weah, but I accept Ellen because she is our Ma and is going take care of us,” said Benedict Newon, 19, a former child soldier. He first hoisted a weapon for the warlord Charles Taylor when he was 10, though he later switched allegiance to another rebel group.
“I never carry gun again,” Mr. Newon said, gesturing at his 8-month-old son and his pregnant wife, Fatou. “I have a future now. I got to protect it. I got to be patient with Ma Ellen.”
That notion of president as mater familias may seem new, but in Liberia politics has always been paternalistic - fighters for Mr. Taylor called him their “Papay.”
Here’s a dissertation topic for an enterprising political scientist. I conjecture there is a connection between the strength of the “state as parent” structuring metaphor, strong executives, tryanny, and war.
Take it further: Part of civilizing (quite literally) our minds is weakening the strength of this metaphor. The fact that classical liberalism—based on the metaphor of the merchant/consumer relationship—cannot be fitted into the Lakovian schema is evidence of its of its psychological foreignness, but moral superiority.
January 17th, 2006 18:40
A parental vision of the state probably tracks closely with the pernicious things you mention, since becoming a metaphoric “child” is a really effective way to put one’s moral responsibility into government escrow.
Not to get all chicken-and-egg about it, but, I’d be even more interested to see if societies with brittle, imperiled family structures have greater tendencies toward seeing the state as a metaphorical parent. If you’re a strung-out, glue-sniffing, AK-toting orphan at age 10, you might be inclined to seek a surrogate family wherever you can find it. I wonder if the same phenomenon scales up to the societal level.
January 18th, 2006 02:35
Same with God.
January 18th, 2006 12:53
I agree completely.
Oppressive leaders always try to tap into a paternal analogy. The “fatherland” — the Pope — etc…
The reason they do it is not for what it says about them, but what it says about the citizens. If the people are children, then they are irrational and we must restrain them.
Modern secular society has to implicitly reject this in order to function in a civilized fashion. The structure of the state-individual relationship must not resemble the parent-child relationship.
January 19th, 2006 23:49
[...] — Will Wilkinson, The State as Parent [...]
October 4th, 2006 10:16
God bless you.