Calling Out the Conservative Lies on Stimulus
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.
