Whiners and Losers

UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff, in the fourth and final installment of his series analyzing the framing aspects of the RNC speeches, takes on Bush's acceptance speech (snippet):

...Freedom was the thread linking his domestic policies to his foreign policy. In domestic matters, it is freedom from the United States government. George Bush: "I am running with a compassionate conservative philosophy: that government should help people improve their lives, not try to run their lives. In all these proposals, we seek to provide not just a government program, but a path -- a path to greater opportunity, more freedom, and more control over your own life. We must strengthen Social Security by allowing younger workers to save some of their taxes in a personal account nest egg you can call your own, and government can never take away." Conservatives have long sought to destroy Social Security and Medicare, for two reasons: First, from their moral perspective, all social programs take away the need for discipline and create dependency. Since discipline is seen as the basis of all morality, all such programs are immoral. Second, there is a business motive. Businesses can make more money if they can get their hands on all the Medicare and Social Security money as investments in them, not in the people whose health and future are insured. The conservative solution is to privatize both programs, creating "personal accounts." More freedom. The motivation for government-run Social Security was that each generation would pay for the next. In Medicare, as in any insurance program, the lucky (those not injured or diseased) would pay for those less lucky. In addition, there were the twin motivations of economy of scale and of protection, from stock market declines, bad judgment, and from an individual's squandering. But in conservatism, those not sufficiently disciplined deserve what happens to them. If you're undisciplined enough to squander your personal savings account or not shrewd enough to invest wisely, then you deserve to lose your health and retirement money. After all, conservatism posits a natural moral hierarchy of winners and losers. Conservatism gives you motivation (a pathway) to win. If you lose, your loss is a motivation to win in the future. If you're not disciplined enough to take advantage of the opportunities, too bad for you. You just won't make it in the opportunity society. And you don't deserve to. This frame hides the 25 percent of our work force who are stuck in low-paying jobs, jobs that 25 percent of our people will always have to do and that may never pay much more. Not having spare money to invest, they can't take advantage of the tax credits to set up these accounts. Well, the losers will always be with us....

I recommend reading this brief four-part series. It's quite enlightening.