Leave it

The great thing about having a worldview is it allows you to quickly and generally effectively synthesize new data. You don't have to invent the wheel from scratch everytime--you simply relate something new to what you already think, figure out how well it matches, and depending on the degree and importance of the overlap either square it with your beliefs, or else put it aside as something the needs further thought.

The problem with having a worldview is it makes you predictable; and it's not always easily recognizable when new thought is required. As armies always fight the last war unless explicitly prodded otherwise, likewise humans tend to keep thinking the way they always have, especially if your worldview has always been to your benefit.

Republicans in this country tend to have a worldview that came of age in the post-WWII era, where White Male Americans staved off the Nazis and the Japanese, saving Western civilization in the process. This actually happened; although women and the Brits et al certainly played their part, WMAs provided the key muscle that knocked out Hitler and Tojo.

Once they got home, however, WMAs found a country that had changed in their absence. Women and minorities had, by necessity, gone to work in factories and had their own taste of leadership, with good results. They weren't willing to go back on the farm.

WMAs reacted poorly to this. They were used to being kings in their own castle; they felt they deserved more than gratitude for dying in Europe and the Pacific and for forging a world where America was supreme, at least in the non-Soviet sphere.

Naturally, the 'children' rebelled; the Civil Rights and later Women's Rights movement, coupled with Vietnam and actually Watergate shook WMAs' confidence in themselves. For a while, it seemed as if they might be pushed off or abdicate their top-down model (bye-bye Archie, hello Alan Alda).

But the fall of Communism and, more recently, the threat of terrorism has WMAs feeling vindicated, with many of them thinking they've been called back into the saddle.

Shows like '24' and 'House' and movies like 'Superman Returns' overtly play into WMAs' need to see a world as in peril, relying and awaiting their strong hand.

We're not. This new world is inherently changeable and diverse in all senses of the world. One worldview ain't gonna cut it anymore; we need lots of different types of people, with varied life and cultural experiences who aren't just there for window-dressing.

In this environment, the WMAs organizational chart approach to the world is outmoded. Or, in more personal terms, father doesn't always know best, and non-WMAs aren't children anyway.

George Lakoff's book Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America’s Most Important Idea seems to touch on this line of thought. I haven't read it yet, but Tobin Harshaw's brief review of it in the Times concludes this way:

Lakoff uses a parenting metaphor to explain the worldviews that produce these anathematic ideas of liberty: progressive thought stems from the “nurturant parent family” model (based on “empathy and responsibility”), while the conservative outlook is shaped by the “strict father family” model (in which the “moral authority . . . of the father must not be seriously challenged”). In case you’re wondering which household is more promising for the family politic, Lakoff helpfully informs us (without statistical attribution) that “strict father families have high rates of spousal and child abuse and divorce.”

So how does the strict father morality devolve into a political agenda? According to Lakoff, conservatives believe that “fundamental” freedoms to be cherished include “freedom from coercion by the state or by the liberal elite”; “the freedom to use any kind of vehicle anywhere”; “the freedom to hunt — regardless of whether I am hunting an endangered species.” After they get back from riding snowmobiles over northern spotted owls, these troglodytes apparently have bigger game in mind: “What they want to conserve is, in most cases, the situation prior to the expansion of traditional American ideas of freedom: before the great expansion of voting rights . . . before Social Security and Medicare.”

O.K., we can stipulate that conservatives share a distrust of government and would love to slash programs that have improved the nation over the years (as well as, perhaps, some that haven’t). But does anybody not wearing a tinfoil hat believe that Republicans really want to take the vote away from women, blacks and non-landowners? Or that President Bush’s poorly managed Medicare prescription-drug expansion was a clever ruse to destroy the program?

Of course, the GOP doesn't want to literally repeal the 14th Amendment; that'd be too messy and politically infeasible. But their emperical efforts to supress voter turnout makes that pro forma move unnecessary.

If you believe, either consciously or subconsciously, that WMAs are either biblically or culturally the natural leaders of the world, but are also open to the reality that demographically WMAs are an ever-shrinking proportion of the American electorate, the only viable solution is to try and dilute the influence of non-WMAs. Why wouldn't you, if this is the worldview you grew up on and the only one that you know?

So you take actions, coordinated or not, conscious or not, consistently or not, but all cumulatively acting to lessen and denigrate the participation of non-WMAs in the electoral system.

Or, you act to co-op non-WMAs to support the leadership of WMAs. For example, evangelical Christians opt for the latter by emphasizing the 'helpmate' role of women, in some cases barring women from teaching Sunday School to boys.

It's all in vain; the WMA backlash we're currently experience may stave off change for a while, but in the end the world changes and WMAs will have to adapt. If your worldview is built on sexist and racist foundations and brute force is slipping away, you have to be effective to maintain your grip.

But the WMA worldview no longer functions well--if it ever did in the pre-communications age--as exemplified with Bush et al having become the worldwide poster child for incompetence.

In our world today, the Allies are gonna look a lot less like Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin; and more like Gandhi, King and Chavez... and even Rodham Clinton.

Uncredited 'Leave it to Beaver' photo found in various places online.