In a past post, Grumpypilgrim asked : “Why do the two parties divide the issues the way they do, and who decided that the issues should be divided the way they are?”

I’ve often wondered that too.   After all, you would think that the “pro life” Republicans would also be against capital punishment.  You might think that a “conservative” Republican would be in favor of conservation, not squandering, of either the treasury or the environment.  You would think that those supporting smaller, weaker starve-the-beast government would resist laws that harass gays.  Asked in another way (regarding Democrats), what do gun control, generous welfare benefits, pro-union and pro-choice positions have in common? 

George Lakoff asked these questions too.  Writing of conservatives, he wondered:

. . . What does being against gun control have to do with being for tort reform?  What makes sense of the linkage?  I could not figure it out.  I said to myself, These are strange people.  Their collection of positions makes no sense.  But then an embarrassing thought occurred to me.  I have exactly the opposite positon on every issue.  What do my positions have to do with one another?

(p. 5) Lakoff proposed a solution to these questions in his bestseller Don’t think of an elephant!: Know your values and frame the debate (2004).  He concluded that our two different ways of understanding the nation come from two different understandings of family. 

The conservatives model government off of a “strict father” model, where the government’s …