@Daryl

George Lakoff is obviously aware of Edward Bernays. He must also be aware of Alfred Korzybski
who wrote a tome called "General Semantics".
Lakoff is a cognitive linguist and he uses it to his advantage, personal and political. The ending was superb. Very crafty.

One must look at the purpose of his lecture. He has a certain political view he wishes to impart to his audience. He tells you right away he is a Democrat. So what is he going to attempt to convince you of politically? How does he describe a democrat or a liberal? Obviously, they have superior thought processes and the audience applaudingly approves . Is he describing the hard left or the moderate liberal? What comes out of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's mouth doesn't appear to be a superior thought process in my view.

In defining what is morally correct he uses Adam Smith's capitalist model of self-interest but defines that very narrowly as "selfish-interest" and the thinking is that all else will be guided by the invisible hand. The morally superior democrat and/or socialist knows that he has to "help" others because that is morally correct and self interest does not provide for those in need so it is a morally inferior concept.

He defines discipline as being punishment for moral wrongdoing. He cleverly leaves out that discipline includes a reckoning of accountability and a learning experience that there are consequences to one's actions.

Firstly, I don't describe myself as a conservative. In currently popular political terms I would say I was a classical liberal or a minarchist libertarian. Had I been around at the time, I would have abandoned the Democrat party in the 1930's under FDR as many classical liberals of that era did. Any connection I have to conservatism, and there are many conservative concepts I agree with, would lie in the actual non-political definition of conservative - that of conserving. Some things I think do need conserving like the concept of limited government, national sovereignty and borders.

@Daryl Well, you are certainly well read on your subject -enough to create an ideology.

One thing, an "ideology" is a single concept. I disagree with Libertarian ideology precisely because it is an ideology. Just as communism and fascism are ideologies. Essentially, they are a perfect world, a Utopia, a Shangri-la, heaven. They are thus, as long as there are individuals, unstable and imperfect. In order for life to be enjoyable at all there must be challenges. The political spectrum of the left and right as we know it today is not a proper dichotomy but it provides a political playing field. It has nothing to do with truth. It has everything to do with politicians and their particular concept of a political field of operation. Obviously, I have read different things than you have. I have shunned the behavioral social sciences as they are political tools hoping to modify human behavior when they, in my opinion, have yet to understand it. Theories of pop psychology come and go with each decade.
Schools and the education class have nothing on their minds these days other than behavioral modification. The question being asked today is how do we eliminate the baser emotions of humanity and turn nasty, greedy, deplorable people into nice, tolerant, respectful individuals. forget about individual talents and abilities. But I really see from our elite globalists a Malthusian bent to bring the population of the world down to, in their view, a sustainable level.

Talking again about the current political spectrum, there used to be enough truth on the right and the left to provide a healthy political and governmental environment. There is not enough now and much confidence in politics and government is being lost. It appears that politicians have rigidly adopted ideologies that fit differing purposes. There is the road to freedom and the road to enslavement. The proper dichotomy for a political spectrum is from anarchy to total government. Politics becomes more understandable from that point of view - no government to big government. We can have a proper discussion if we understand this, define what government is and move from there. It is necessary, to have a dichotomy one side to play against the other. All times and all circumstances are not static, thus truths will change and perhaps there are times to act collectively and other times individually. Ideologies tend to be found at the extremes and are essentially static, yet they are unstable and even explosive.

If you are familiar with dialectical materialism, a term coined in the 1880's, and describing Hegel's dialectic and applying it to Marx's struggle of the classes. Very interesting.

@Daryl
Now, facts are almost as subjective as opinions. In that irrationality lies the possible downfall of the American experiment.

There is still the Constitution which in my view is one of the the most thoughtful documents on government that was ever devised. Democrats want to eliminate the 2nd amendment, reduce the voting age to 16, eliminate the electoral college,have open borders, legislate free speech and cancel the freedom of association by forcing society to be multicultural - as if it needed help to do that. Republicans have not provided the staunchest protection of the constitution either, GW Bush called it a worthless piece of paper as he was busy enacting the Patriot act.

Bernays was a propagandist with a penchant for manipulating the masses through trickery, not honesty. There is a difference between propaganda and Public Relations. Propaganda is for forwarding a purpose or cause that is unknown to those being propagandized, usually for personal gain or to forward a cause. PR is about building or establishing a positive image and to accomplish and sustain that requires more honesty and trustworthiness. You can't go around telling a bunch of falsehoods to build a positive image. Socialism, now being openly embraced by some Democrats are promising free healthcare and free education You can read the Communist manifesto and the manifesto of the German socialist workers party and they make the same promises as these socialist democrats. So who is a fascist?

If what one wishes to do is to fraudulently manipulate others then Bernays would be the granddaddy of the modern propagandist. He was not about public relations at all.

The right calls the left "do-gooders" as Lakoff says. It's meant as a pejorative, of course. Do-gooders though have a dual purpose - the one not disclosed is the "PR" aspect related to image and maintaining moral superiority. Maintaining that requires purporting to be the protector, friend and savior of the the poor, the needy, the less advantaged, minorities - the victim, which Lakoff did throughout his lecture. Most importantly, those disadvantaged must be defined and labelled by them. Bastiat said this relatable quote, of which you might be familiar:

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

The problem with government getting bigger is that it always resists getting smaller.