1. Basic elements of conservative worldview: Strict Father family model; parameters of variation.

o The Strict Father: life is difficult, the world is fundamentally dangerous. So, survival is a major concern.

o There are dangers and evils everywhere, especially in the human soul. We must learn how to fight it.

• Father has primary responsibility for supporting and protecting the family

• Father as the authority to set overall family policy.

• Father teaches children right from wrong by setting strict rules for their behavior and enforcing them through punishment – sets the morality

• Reward and punishment: The punishment is typically mild to moderate, but sufficiently painful. It is commonly corporal punishment -“tough love”. But children must never be coddled (баловать) as they become spoiled; a spoiled child will be dependent for life and will not learn proper morals.

• You should be self-reliant to survive in the dangerous world

• Obligatory hierarchy in the structure. Hierarchy is protection. The Strict Father on the top protects weaker people –his family. In politics–government is the most powerful institution to protect the citizens.

• The mother has day-to-day responsibility for the care of the house, raising the children, and upholding the father's authority.

• Children must respect and obey their parents, partly for their own safety and partly because by doing so they build character, that is, self-discipline and self-reliance.

• A mature adult becomes self-reliant through applying self-discipline in pursuing his self-interest. Only if a child learns self-discipline can he become self-reliant later in life.

• Survival is a matter of competition. In competition we see who is self-reliant and deserves success.

• The mature children of the Strict Father have to sink or swim by themselves. They are on their own and have to prove their responsibility and self-reliance.

• Hierarchy of values (metaphors):

MORAL STRENGHTH(external or internal evil should be fought; “no pain, no gain", face hardships through sufficient self-discipline because it builds moral strength; Someone who is morally weak cannot stand up to evil and so will eventually commit evil; To build moral strength you have to work at it actively through self-discipline and self-denial.)

MORAL AUTHORITY (parental authority sets the rules: A Community Is a Family; the authority figure sets standards of behavior and punishes those subject to authority if the standards are not met. Moral behavior by someone subject to authority is obedience to the authority figure.)

MORAL ORDER (hierarchy: God is more powerful than people; people – more powerful than animals and plants; adults–than children; men- than women; so they are responsible for each other)

MORAL ORDER (the same+ it legitimates certain power relations as being natural and therefore moral, and thus makes social movements like feminism appear unnatural and therefore counter to the moral order ) MORAL BOUNDARIES (sharp division between good and evil and its need for the setting of strict standards of behavior; moral/immoral (deviant) behavior)

MORAL ESSENCE (the main notion of SF morality –a“character” –a person made of a collection of properties that determined his behavior–in-born or gained during life; If you know how a person has acted, you know what his character is.)

MORAL WHOLESSNESS (Morality Is Wholeness/Immorality Is Degeneration.)

MORAL HEALTH (Morality Is Health/ Immorality Is Disease)

MORAL SELF-INTEREST (an economic idea: If each person tries to maximize his own well-being (or self-interest), the well-being of all will be maximized)

MORAL NURTURANCE (you should be self-disciplined to help yourself to survive in life)

2. Basic elements of liberal worldview: Nurturant Parent family model; parameters of variation.

Let us now turn to a second moral system built around a model of an ideal family: a Nurturant Parent family. Though this model of the family seems to have begun as a woman's model, it has now become widespread in America among both sexes.

THE NURTURANT PARENT MODEL: A family of preferably two parents, but perhaps only one. If two, the parents share household responsibilities.

- Children develop best through their positive relationships to others, through their contribution to their community, and through the ways in which they realize their potential and find joy in life. Children become responsible, self-disciplined, and self-reliant through being cared for and respected.

- The questioning of parents by children is positive, since children need to learn why their parents do what they do, since children often have good ideas that should be taken seriously, and since all family members should participate in important decisions.

- . Crime and drugs are, of course, significant, but so are less obvious dangers: cigarettes, cars without seat belts, dangerous toys, inflammable clothing, pollution, asbestos, lead paint, pesticides in food, diseases, unscrupulous businessmen, and so on. Protection of innocent and helpless children from such evils is a major part of a nurturant parent's job.

- The principal goal of nurturance is for children to be fulfilled and happy in their lives and to become nurturant themselves.

- The Nurturant Parent model does not assume that children primarily learn through reward and punishment. Instead, it is assumed that children learn through their attachments to their parents – which are, ideally, secure and loving attachments.

- If the parents are careful about making their expectations realistic and appropriately challenging – rather than overdemanding or nondemanding– the children will be able to meet them and develop mastery.

- Cooperation develops an appreciation for interdependence. An appreciation of pleasure and an aesthetic sense should be cultivated, so that one can develop one's capacity for happiness and one's ability to give to others the gift of one's own happiness

The Structure of the Model:

The centerpiece of the system is the metaphor of Morality As Nurturance, which extends morality in family life to morality in general. This metaphor induces other metaphors by structuring morality in terms of concepts intimately related to nurturance, such as empathy, self-nurturance, the nurturance of social ties, self-development, happiness, and fairness. These metaphors have the highest priority in the system.

MORALITY AS NURTURANCE: This is the most direct expression of the nurturance ethic.

MORALITY AS EMPATHY: Empathy, as a precondition for nurturance, is of preeminent importance.

MORAL SELF-NURTURANCE: Self-nurturance is a necessary condition for nurturance.

MORALITY AS THE NURTURANCE OF SOCIAL TIES: This is necessary for nurturance within a wider community.

MORALITY AS SELF-DEVELOPMENT: Since the development of the child's potential is a major object of nurturance, self-development is a major aspect of a nurturant morality.

MORALITY AS HAPPINESS: Because unhappy people are less likely to be empathetic, the cultivation of one's own happi¬ness is crucial to the cultivation of empathy.

MORALITY AS FAIR DISTRIBUTION! Just as nurturance requires fairness of distribution among one's children, so moral nurturance requires this metaphor.

MORAL GROWTH: Since an objective of literal nurturance is physical growth, an objective of moral nurturance becomes moral growth.

MORAL STRENGTH: Strength is critical to nurturance. In childrearing, strength serves nurturance; in morality, moral strength is in the service of morality conceptualized as nurturance. The subservient role of moral strength in this system vastly affects its meaning.

RETRIBUTION AND RESTITUTION: Nurturance requires protection, and fiercely nurturant parents seek retribution against those who would harm children. But when children transgress, nurturance requires the preference of restitution over retribution.

MORAL BOUNDARIES: Nurturant morality produces a different form of transgression.

MORAL AUTHORITY: It arises from your track record as a nurturer.

3. Traditional failures of liberals and conservatives to comprehend their own and opposing worldviews

We are a few steps away from denouement, why conservatives and liberals have the political policies they have.

Liberal’s attempts to understand conservative politics have failed because of three analytic failures:

1. Conservatism is "the ethos of selfishness."

2. Conservatives just believe in less government.

3. Conservatism is no more than a conspiracy of the ultrarich to protect their money and power and to make themselves even richer and more powerful.

THE SELFISHNESS HYPOTHESIS

It is right to consider progressive-liberal politics as "the ethos of caring."

But it is a mistake to regard conservative politics as "the ethos of selfishness" caused by dismissing

the conservative moral vision and dismissing the fact that American voters appear to be responding to that moral vision.

The selfishness hypothesis simply does not explain conservative policies because it

does not explain the moral fervor of the conservative majority, it does not explain the focus on family values, why they want to abolish the NEA or why they oppose abortion. So, we need to stop to point out to conservatives that these policies serve their selfish interests.

THE LESS-GOVERNMENT HYPOTHESIS

That cannot be true that conservatives want less government and liberals want more.

If conservatives simply wanted less government spending or wanted government to pay for itself, there are a myriad of other cuts and reforms they could be proposing.

Less-Government Hypothesis is simply false. It does not explain what conservatives do and don't want to spend money on. Conservatives want to spend on some things and not others.

THE CYNICAL LIBERAL RESPONSE

Looking at that list of conservative budget cuts ( repeal of the National School Lunch Act; ending the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program that has reduced infant mortality by providing nutrition to impoverished mothers and children) we can make a conclusion that conservatives do everything to enrich those who have money and power in our society and reduce the modest help this country gives to the poor and the weak.

This is an example of the cynical liberal response to conservative government.

The cynical liberal response is that conservatives want to continue spending on aspects of government that help make the rich richer (the funding of computer research, or nuclear power, or the Air Force's training of pilots).

Ultrarich are attempting to take over the intellectual life of the country to ensure their domination.

But most conservatives are not rich and see themselves as working for the benefit of the country rather than for their own benefit.

The conspiracy theory does not explain the details of conservative political positions.

Why should the death penalty be in the interest of the ultrarich?

How would orphanages serve the interests of the ultrarich?

Moreover, even where the ultrarich do benefit from conservative policies, a deeper explanation is in order. Why should conservative morality serve ultrarich interests?

There is no the answer to this questions.

Maybe because there is no the conspiracy theory.

The Conservative Failure to Understand Conservatism

There are three principal conservative descriptions of conservatism.

1. Conservatism is against big government.

2. Conservatism is for traditional values.

3. Conservatism is just what the Bible tells us.

The first is false because It does not explain what conservatives do and don't want to spend money on. Conservatives want to spend on some things and not others.

As for the second, the conservatives representative William J. Bennett told that he understand the conservatism as an attempt to conserve the best elements of the past. Moreover, it is the understanding of important role of traditions, institutions, habits and authority in our society, principles developed over time by custom, the lessons of experience. Conservatism, is based on the belief that the social order rests upon a moral base.

So, the dubious question is what is best elements of the past? Is it racism, colonialism, witch-burning, child labor, and even the sale of children? And why conservative views of morality are to count as "moral," while liberal views of morality are not to count as "moral."

The same problem is connected with the conservatism as a matter of following the Bible. The Bible cannot be applied to politics! What, exactly, characterizes a conservative interpretation of the Bible?

Lets compare liberal and conservative views of human nature:

conservatives think that people are basically rotten and have to be subject to authority and disciplined, while liberals think that people are basically good and can decide what to do for themselves.

On the other hand liberals who focuses upon liberty and equality, but this tells us nothing about why political liberals favor ecology, why they are not anti-abortion, why they defend funding for the arts, and so on.

Liberals tend to hold. Moreover, conservatives, too, "care" about many things – the morals of their children, the rights of the unborn, what is taught in our schools, the victims of crimes, the effects of our society on sex, drugs, and violence. How does the caring of conservatives differ from the caring of liberals?

The answers on all this questions at least a large part of them lie in Strict Father and Nurturant Parent morality. These two opposed moral visions lie behind the worldview differences between conservatives and liberals.