The Public provides freedom...Individualism begins after the roads are built, after individualists have had an education, after medical research has cured their diseases.

George Lakoff

Categorized in : Research Disease Medical

We categorize as we do because we have the brains and bodies we have and because we interact in the world as we do.

medicine brain philosophy

Do we really think that the United States will have the protection of innocent Afghans in mind if it rains terror down on the Afghan infrastructure? We are supposedly fighting them because they immorally killed innocent civilians. That made them evil. If we do the same, are we any less immoral?

fighting rain thinking

We know that someone who has channeled his anger into something constructive has not had a cow. How do we know these things?

constructive cows knows

Empathy - that is, caring about people and acting responsibly on that care, not just for yourself, but for others - this is something that Barack Obama understands very well. He was a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago for ten years. As an expert on the Constitution and on our family values, he understands very well that the country is fundamentally about caring for one another. The day after his speech, he was interviewed on CNN, and Anderson Cooper asked him what patriotism was. He said patriotism begins with caring for one another.

caring country people

If you're a progressive, you can find lots of people who call themselves conservatives, but who agree with you on lots of things. There are people who call themselves conservatives, but who love the land as much as any environmentalist. Progressives share a number of common values with people who call themselves conservatives. Barack Obama has understood that very well. What he calls bipartisanship is not adopting conservative views, but finding where people who consider themselves conservatives share with him and other progressives these fundamental American values.

conservative common people

You see Bill Clinton, and you say: Oh, this guy cares about me. Hillary Clinton isn't the same way. You see her, and you don't necessarily have that view. She's trying to achieve the same thing without the voice and the body language, and she's having a harder time doing it. But when she's effective, that's what she's effective at.

care guy trying

Conservatives say human beings are people who are primarily concerned with self-interest, and that's what they should be concerned with - self-interest and individual responsibility. They shouldn't be paying for anybody else's health care or anything else like that. As a result, government is something that should be absolutely minimal. It's not there for your overall protection and empowerment - it's not there to offer protection against disease or natural disasters or bad products or companies who sell you fallacious mortgages and so on.

empowerment responsibility people