As Lakoff notes in more depth in the actual book, there's a lot more nuance within these two camps - but in general, social conservatives do equal all aspects of patriarchy - not just the gender aspect - and that goes against the type of social connection, empathy, and interdependence that got humans out of the Paleolithic in one piece. It's an extremely harmful dominance hierarchy system that is the root cause of nearly all of our social ills. The single best thing we could do for our culture and the world is to tear that shit down.
Lakoff notes at the end of the book that he tried to be balanced but the more he studied these two systems, the more he understood how harmful Strict Father morality is:
I have come to realize that conservatives are, for the most part, ordinary people who see themselves as highly moral idealists defending what they deeply believe is right. I now understand why there are so many fervently committed conservatives. I also find conservatism, now that I think I understand it reasonably well, even more frightening than I did before. My new understanding of conservatism and liberalism has made me more of a liberal than ever. I find that I now can consciously comprehend my old instincts. I can give names to things that I could not clearly articulate before, things that were part of a vague sense of what was right. What’s more important is that I understand that political liberalism comes out of a well-grounded, highly structured, and fully developed moral system that I deeply believe in.
Lakoff, George. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think (p. 336). The University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.
The fiscal aspects of conservatism have their place in a nuanced and balanced world, but the social parts are just out of alignment with current scientific understanding of how humans best function and demonstrably harmful to everyone, including the men who champion them the most.
The American Psychology Association agrees:
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/ce-corner
"The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful. Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors. For example, a 2011 study led by Kristen Springer, PhD, of Rutgers University, found that men with the strongest beliefs about masculinity were only half as likely as men with more moderate masculine beliefs to get preventive health care ( Journal of Health and Social Behavior , Vol. 52, No. 2 ). And in 2007, researchers led by James Mahalik, PhD, of Boston College, found that the more men conformed to masculine norms, the more likely they were to consider as normal risky health behaviors such as heavy drinking, using tobacco and avoiding vegetables, and to engage in these risky behaviors themselves ( Social Science and Medicine , Vol. 64, No. 11 ).
