GEORGE LAKOFF

One of the great gurus of the American Left is linguist-turned-psychologist, George Lakoff. Most of his ideas are just corny old stuff that Leftist psychologists have been spouting for around 60 years -- and which have much evidence against them. But Lakoff shows little awareness of the research background on his subject. Like most Leftists, he just KNOWS: Evidence not necessary.

One idea he has made his own, however, is that conservatism is masculine and Leftism is feminine. It is an idea that has some intuitive appeal and conservatives come up with it from time to time too. Unfortunately, like a lot of appealing simplifications, the facts are against it. If it were true, we would expect a big sex polarization at election time -- but we usually in fact get close to a 50/50 split. George W. Bush and John Kerry split the female vote roughly 50/50 in the last presidential race, for instance. Again, however, Lakoff does not let such large facts as that get in his way.

If you Google Lakoff, however, you will find little criticism of him. He is routinely treated as a fount of wisdom and insight. I would like to put that right. I have just updated my article on him. You can find it here. If everybody reading this who has a website links to it, it might climb far enough up the Google page-rankings to get onto the first page of search results -- and thus make known that there is an alternative perspective on Lakoff.

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