/Expand On

Little Hawk's dichotomistic model, attributing parental archetypes to political persuasions, is sort of poetic and seems harmonious with some mythological constructs, but it has little bearing on the real factors which define these tendencies in people. There are plenty of mothers who are spiteful, who pinch pennies, and who tend to be fiscally cautious; and there are plenty of fathers who are compassionate, generous, communistic or downright wastrels economically.

Liberalism in the traditional sense draws it values from a sensibility that in the stormy seas of economic life, the overall progress of the race and the society can be improved by setting and adhering to certain minimal standards of tolerance, respect and support for others in the social frame as a basic principle. Competition and games of conquest are, in the liberal philosophy, constrained by this fundamental standard, and the structure of the law is intended to safeguard those courtesies by, for example, assuring the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom not to be bludgeoned by goons or heavy-handed agents sent by your competitors. This reduces the use and value of violence and raises the use and value of dialogue, good PR, competent rhetoric, and presumably thereby makes a better exchange between the minds at work in a given social arena.

It may be that these values are more feminine than they are masculine, in some vague sense. But they were orignally articulated in our heritage by folks of a testosterone persuasion, and they have repeatedly had to be defended against other folkls whose emotional lives have led them astray into the dark wings of fear or of hatred, and who then choose to act out those dreary tides in their thinking and acting, instead of climbing back out into the realm of reason.

So I see no reason to map conservatism and liberalism (in their traditional senses) to parental archetypes, which strikes me as a sort of Freudian effort, and one which does not open the door to any deeper understanding of the real dynamics of those persuasions.

/Expand off