Now is the time for all pro-empathy voters to come to the aid of their public schools, especially in limited empathy districts.
Reflections upon reading Chapter 15, Public Education Benefits All and Protects Freedom, from George Lakoff and Elizabeth Wehling's THE LITTLE BLUE BOOK
Empathy is the soul of progressive democracy, nurturing families, public education, ethical businesses, and a foundational human rights value. Public education is necessary to protect and empower the American ideal community of strong, diverse nurturing families caring for each other.1 You can be free only if you live in a free and caring society where people you don’t know want to educate you so you can thrive.
In contrast, cruelty, the soul of conservatism’s limited empathy version of governance called autocracy, is failing, harming, and killing Americans and our allies. If you don’t care about anyone other than yourself, why would you want to fund democracy, public education, or anything else that protects and empowers everyone?2 Limited empathy is what Ohio conservatives mean when they talk of limited government, specifically limited public government. At the same time, conservatives are not talking about limited private corporate government, which is why 1,000 American billionaires are ruining the rest of our lives.
So what should pro-empathy public school advocates do when their local levy fails? Go on the offensive and REFRAME their local debate around EMPATHY. We, the People, have a MORAL OBLIGATION to care for each other. As John Donne wrote hundreds of years ago, no one is self-sufficient; everyone is reliant on others. Failing public school levies are a moral failure of strict father families, unethical businesses, and unethical civic organizations to communicate empathy for and responsibility to humanity.
Therefore nurturing families must communicate our values better, as well. Empathy must become the center of the debate to promote all progressive concerns, especially a financial transaction tax system. Empathy is the soul of nurturing families, whose goal must be to raise up nurturers who govern with empathy. Making empathy the center of debate must start at home around the dinner table, so families can reinforce the S.H.O.E.S. method of cultivating empathy.3
S - SHOW UP WITH EMPATHY
H - HELP WITH EMPATHY
O - ORGANIZE WITH EMPATHY
E - EDUCATE ABOUT EMPATHY
S - START OVER EACH DAY WITH EMPATHY
Lakoff, George and Wehling, Elisabeth, The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Speaking Democratic, Chapter 15, Public Education Benefits All and Protects Freedom, p. 86-89, Free Press, New York City, 2012. This chapter is the subject of the June 6 Empathy Surplus Network USA Zoom Forum.
Lakoff, George, Why is empathy central to democracy?, FrameLab Substack, 05/19/2023, https://proempathy.us/43wP9lW
Empathy Surplus Network USA, Pro-Empathy Freedom Framing Toolkit, p. 5, https://proempathy.us/freedomkit.