Left Out By Right Rhetoric 

Yes, all Americans have the basic metaphor of the nation as family, where we have Founding Fathers, and we send our sons and daughters to war, and so on.

And politics is connected with the family via this metaphor, and connected very, very deeply. There are two different ideal models of the family that I'll call a Strict Father Family and a Nurturing Parent Family.... And this metaphor maps those models of the family onto our national moral and political life. And what you get are two very, very different models of the family, and with them two very, very different models of politics.

Here’s how those differences play out. If you have the Strict Father models of the family then you’re assuming that the world is a difficult place and always will be, that children are born bad and have to be made good, that the job of the father is to be a moral authority, to protect the family, to support the family....

The strict father wants his kids to become disciplined, pursue the self-interest, and become self-reliant and be good people because they are disciplined.... Now this comes into politics in many ways. First, it says that social programs are evil. Why? Because... social programs are seen as something that gives people things they don’t earn, therefore making them morally weak. Namely it hurts the people it’s supposed to help. That’s the conservative argument in politics.

In foreign policy you see this in terms of the idea of the moral authority of the father. So the father in a strict father family doesn’t give up his moral authority. He’s supposed to be in charge, period. And no back-talk. And this administration says, "Of course, we know! No back-talk! ... We know what’s right, we have the authority and the power. And we’re not going to debate it. We’re just going to tell you what’s right and if you don’t like it we’ll punish you!" This is the Bush administration’s view not only of foreign policy, but a lot of domestic policy as well.

On the progressive parents’ side, the idea of a nurturing family is very, very different. There it is assumed that the world should become a nurturing place, should become a safe place, a healthy place. And that children are born good and should be kept that way and developed. That the idea of a parent is to nurture children, and to raise children to be nurturers as well....

This implies many things.... First a nurturant parent has to be fair, promote fairness. You’re not empathetic toward someone if you’re not fair with them.... Protection is an important value. Think of the things that nurturing parents want to protect their children from, not just crime and drugs but also cars without seat belts, tobacco, chemicals in the environment, unscrupulous businesses, namely all the things that liberals would like the government to protect citizens from.
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  thanks to MyDD