Conservative Messaging:
Privatize, Deregulate, Eliminate (Unions, Social Services)

The message machine. In crafting the messages that we want people to hear, we recognize that the Right has a massive messaging machine (Fox News is only the most obvious part of it), and we’re competing with and countering that machine. As is true of any machine, it’s tireless and non-stop, because the money behind it is, for practical purposes, endless. (There may be a saturation point, regardless of the money available, beyond which the public simply can’t absorb any more of their messaging. Except possibly in Presidential elections, we haven’t seen that point yet.)

The conservative worldview. The Right’s messaging is based on a conservative worldview that, thanks to cognitive science, is well-understood (as is the progressive worldview, as driven by our values). Our task is to convince more progressives to adequately recognize the conservative worldview — as the driver behind their political behavior, their positions on issues — and take it into account.

Market fundamentalism. A consequence of the conservative worldview is market fundamentalism, which includes the belief that no public activity is justified if there is private profit1 to be made:

  1. Any activity of government that could be done for a profit must be privatized, that is, handed over to private interests. (The privatization of public schools, for example, is a constant effort from the Right; as is the “contracting out” to for-profit entities of other government functions — not only domestic services but even security and intelligence functions.)
  2. Any rules that restrict the behavior of private interests — government regulations at any level — must be eliminated. (That is, we must deregulate the economy.) “The market” alone will ensure that we have clean air, clean water, safe food and drugs, safe workplaces, adequate healthcare, etc. (The failure of “the market” to do this to this point in American history may be blamed on past interference with the market by…something. )
    3. The suggestion that “the market” is anything other than “natural” (magically existing without human influence — “the invisible hand”) is heresy, which is why any rules restricting corporate behavior, imposed by government, must be eliminated.
  3. The law must eliminate (or not facilitate) any competition with dependency on “the market.” (That is, providing any goods or services from government is not an acceptable alternative.)
    1. With regard to earning a living, labor unions allow working people to organize (act together, in their common interest) to balance corporate power—to negotiate their wages and working conditions with employers2. Therefore, unions must be eliminated.
    2. With regard to survival in time of hardship, any social services provided to families by any level of government reduce the need of those families to depend on “the market” alone (and their own resources alone) to meet their immediate needs. Therefore, social services provided by any level of government must be eliminated. (If people in need can find religious organizations or charities to help them, they should have to do so; but no one should be taxed to provide those services.)

Rejection of empathy. The conservative worldview rejects the primary progressive value, empathy, since empathy includes the obligation to be responsible not only for one’s self but for other people as well and to act on that empathy.

Footnotes:

  1. Profit, by definition, is what’s left over from revenues after all costs of earning that revenue have been paid — including the salaries and wages of all employees, including managers (and CEO “bonuses”). For a corporation, profit is what goes to the stockholders (investors). For an unincorporated business, profit is what’s left over for the owner(s); much of which is the equivalent of the salaries paid to corporate managers — that is, it’s what the owner(s) earn as employees or managers of the enterprise, not as investors.
  2. The Right is fond of describing corporate executives as “job creators,” implying that these jobs are provided out of generosity toward working people, to benefit the community. In fact, people are hired only because corporations can’t function without them. Someone has to do the actual work, or the executives have no one to direct. Of course, every dollar cut from salaries and wages (and from benefits such as health insurance, which are indirect wages, and pensions, which are deferred wages) is a dollar added to profits (and to executive “bonuses”). The ability of corporations to make these cuts is enhanced by the ability to send jobs to developing countries (where pay to labor and the costs of health and safety rules are much lower) and import the products back to the U.S. without restrictions (degrading our trade balance); by domestic resistance to unionization (through intimidation of employees and “right-to-work” laws that cut dues to unions from those who benefit from union negotiations); and by the maintenance of relatively high unemployment rates and the elimination of assistance to the unemployed (to keep people desperate enough that they will accept any pay and working conditions).