Commonweal Institute Blog

George Lakoff may have made a big breakthrough -- it looks like he's finally getting the language right. His deep framing analysis was helpful for those of us who were willing to grapple with it intellectually, but until recently he hadn't found the right words to express the progressive frame. But listen to him now:

What is a progressive worldview? It's simple: You have empathy for others, and you act responsibly on that empathy, being both responsible for yourself and socially responsible as well. Progressives say, "We're all in this together," while conservatives say," You're on your own."

Lakoff goes on to say:

Progressive values-based reframing has begun to work, because it has been paired with authenticity (saying what you believe) and with framing that highlights the very real traumas affecting the nation. The Democrats who won Republican seats [in the November 2006 election] did so by running on progressive values. Swing voters, who have both sets of values, responded to their campaigns based on progressive values they authentically believed in. The party, as a party, therefore should not be moving to the right and adopting conservative positions, even if a number of party members happen to hold such positions. To move to the right is to give up any claim to a consistent moral vision at the heart of the party. At the same time, the party, as a party, need not, probably should not, and certainly will not adopt all progressive positions. The role of the progressive activists, grassroots, and netroots is to promote progressive values to biconceptuals both within and outside the Democratic Party to activate the progressive beliefs they already have, and to extend them further by speaking a progressive language and using progressive values, ideas, and arguments. The goal is not just to move the Democrats in a more progressive direction, but to move Republicans and independents in that direction as well. The idea is to benefit the nation, not just the party.

This move on Lakoff's part appears to be more harmonious with Frances Moore Lappe, who had earlier criticized Lakoff's nuclear family metaphors:

In this progressive moral vision we strive to live in strong communities -- safer and more viable than ones that rely on a strict father, who on deeper examination may turn out to be only a stubborn loner, a bully bringing on the very threats from which he claims to protect us? [...] Let's choose frames that capture what most people intuit: We all share one small -- shrinking -- planet, and our real hope therefore lies in creating strong communities.

This linguistic harmonization -- empathy + responsibility + community -- could be a big breakthrough for progressives. It's time we test out the language on some "real people" out there, not just us political junkies. We need to confirm that we're on the right track this time.

Terry Gross is a fabulous interviewer because she is so good at doing her homework before interviewing someone. Yet, listening to her interview with Frank Luntz on NPR's Fresh Air made me wish that I could have been asking the questions, because he got off way too easy.

Luntz had come on Fresh Air to talk about his new book, Words that Work. Here's how Terry introduced his work.

Although he works on one side of the aisle, he says that what he does is essentially nonpartisan, seeking clarity and simplicity in language.

During Luntz' discussion with Terry he talked about how he only uses words to "clarify", not to confuse. I wished I was there to help because Terry didn't have much of an answer for that statement. I would have liked to have him explain how it clarified things with his advice to the Republicans on how to talk about global warming.

Paul Abrams picked up on Gary Trudeau’s clever verbiage in his Doonesbury cartoon:

Discussing the Bush Library's unprecedented budget, one Doonesbury character suggests that it will also be a "think tank", to which others respond that it will be a "belief tank", defined as a think-tank-without-the-doubt.

Goebbels' observation about the power of the "big lie" can, with modern technology, now trickle down even to small lies.
For 30 years the radical rightwing has funded its own institutions, such as Heritage Foundation, supposedly to "investigate" social and political issues and to publish the results of those "investigations". They rigorously screen the views of potential hires to ensure they are ideologically pure (to be an intern at the Heritage Foundation, students had to pass a litmus test to ensure not a whisper of free thinking remained), and their results, curiously, always seem to support the economic interests of their funders.

Between $300 and $400 MILLION per YEAR is spent on these radical rightwing institutions. Their corporate sponsors are accustomed to getting returns-on-investment ("ROI" in the biz), and cutting funding from operations that do not produce good ROI.

Belief tanks deliver for them. Starting with a pre-ordained conclusion, the "investigation" focuses on finding those facts that can be woven into a supporting fabric. Contrary facts are ignored; if they are too powerful to be ignored, the integrity of their sources are impugned.

Abrams advocates use of a sound marketing principle – repetition through multiple channels – to take advantage of this brilliant neologism:

Frank Luntz, the rightwing linguistic guru, taught them the words to use to demean facts so that they were, at best, on a par with belief, but his main lesson was: language counts. I am no longer going to refer to groups like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Discovery Institute, Americans United for Life, as think tanks, but rather as "belief tanks".

Will you join me?

How about using the netroots, and the blogging community, to spread Gary Trudeau's brilliant insight? In my writings, I will refer to such institutions, and the people from them, like this: "John Smith, from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Belief Tank, said....". And, how about training those who appear in the MSM alongside people from the Belief Tanks to call out their institutions as "Belief Tanks", and to do so over-and-over-and-over-and-over again, so it becomes part of the background?

"We're All In This Together"
A talk by Commonweal Institute Fellow David C. Johnson to supporters of public education, presented March 7, 2007.

A couple of weeks ago I was thinking about how to start this talk, when I came across this video clip from the Sean Hannity show on Fox News:

Click to play video clip

[Clip of Fox News, Hannity & Colmes, with Neal Boortz saying that teachers unions are more dangerous to America than terrorists armed with nuclear weapons because a nuke could only wipe out 100,000 people but public schools are "destroying a generation."]

I’m showing you this because it illustrates something that we increasingly have to deal with. I’ll talk about how this uncivil hyperbole fits into the overall pattern of what we as supporters of public education are dealing with. Then I’ll talk about what we can do about it.

What you just saw was on the most-watched cable TV news network just two weeks ago.

A classic semantic frame-shifting (might we say shape-shifting?) exercise is underway, as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales seeks to evade responsibility for his and his department’s role in the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys.

At next week's Take Back America conference I will be doing a "self-organized" session, titled Reaching the Public.

Progressives need to promote the benefits of progressive values and ideas to the general public. This creates demand for progressive candidates and policy solutions.

The idea is simple - right-wingers are out there all day, every day, and through every possible channel, repeating various forms of the simple marketing message "Conservatives are good and liberals are bad." The conservatives get it: persuasion, marketing, talking to the public WORKS. Over time this has an effect.

Liberals and progressives are not responding by also talking to the general public and promoting the benefits of PROGRESSIVE values and issues. So after a few decades of this, the public has a negative view of liberals & progressives, and in surveys they say they are conservative - even though they line up with us on the facts and issues. All a conservative candidate has to do is point a finger and shout "liberal liberal" and this gives them a tremendous head start in a campaign.

Joining me will be Jeffery Feldman of Frameshop and Conor Kenny of SourceWatch.

If you are at Take Back America, please come to this session, at 4pm on Monday June 18.

Despite pointed political guidance from academic social scientists such as those at the Rockridge Institute and Drew Westen at Emory University, the Democratic presidential candidates and members of Congress still haven't gotten their minds around the need to change how they talk about issues of the day.

Hats off to Annette Nellen for the clever framing she used in her article regarding revamping California's tax laws in order to increase state income.

An individual knows that if he is content with his spending, but struggles to pay for it, he needs to rethink his income stream. Perhaps his salary hasn't kept up with inflation or he needs to retool and get a better job. An individual also knows that if he wants or needs to spend more - get a finer car or raise another child - he needs a raise, an extra job, or a better paying one.

California needs to do the same. If legislators and the governor are content with the spending side of the budget and want or need to spend more, such as on health care or education, they need to rethink the state's revenues - they need to get the state a better paying job.

Can't the state just get a "raise" by increasing tax rates? Sure, but California's personal income tax top rate of 9.3 percent is already high, as is our sales tax (8.75 percent in some California cities). Increasing these rates could lead to loss of business activity in the state, tax evasion and damage to both low-income and high-income taxpayers.

How can California get that "better paying job?" It can improve its tax structure. Three of several possibilities: improve use tax collection; broaden the sales tax; and reduce generous income tax breaks.

As you read her article, note that she never once says anything about raising taxes, which would be anathema for Republicans and many other California voters. Instead, she talks about "getting a raise" and a "better paying job". She's setting the frame of the discussion by analogy to family finances: The state of California is like an individual facing a disconnect between available financial resources and desired expenditures.

As a result, Nellen's proposed solutions not only sound eminently reasonable, they also avoid pushing that critical psychological button. Let's hope they gain traction with the legislature and the governor.

The AFL-CIO, AFSCME, SEIU, MoveOn.org, Americans United for Change, USAction, and True Majority are going to spend millions of dollars running an ad against targeted Republicans urging them to override President Bush's veto of SCHIP, the child health coverage bill. The ad says the candidates are targeted because they support "Billions of Dollars for Iraq War, But Veto for Children's Health Care"

My problem with the ad is that it does not teach a larger lesson. This is "a teachable moment." People are upset that President Bush is vetoing this bill, but they do not understand the deeper ideological principals behind what is happening to them. This is an opportunity to teach people that conservatives believe in a you-are-on-your-own, dog-eat-dog philosophy and progressives believe we are all in this together for each other.

The ad says "George Bush and his backers would rather send half a trillion to Iraq than spend a fraction of that here to keep our kids healthy." Even by changing "and his backers" to "and the conservatives" they could have let people know that it isn't just Bush and it isn't about particular politicians, it's the conservative ideology that is hurting them. This issue is about differences in philosophy between conservatives and progressives.

But instead of teaching the public a lesson about what is happening to us all, this coalition will spend millions running this ad against individual politicians, and in the end the money will literally just go up in the air(waves) and nothing will remain behind.

Thanks to the recent obvious failures of conservative policies when played out on the national scale, progressives now have an opportunity to win over many to their cause and redefine the political spectrum for generations to come. However, their potential will not be realized unless they move quickly. David Brooks’ new piece, The Republican Collapse, signals some of the tactics the conservative movement will use in defending itself and undermining the progressive advantage.

This piece originally appeared at Speak Out California

As an experiment, try substituting the words, "We, the People" every time you read or use the word "government." Or use the word "our" instead of "the" when you say "the government." Our government, us, we, the people. This really does change the way we understand the relationship between our government and ourselves, doesn't it?

The other day I brought up the example of Ronald Reagan's famous saying, "Government is the problem." When you look at that saying in this new way, he is saying "We, The People are the problem." Doesn't that sound like he is expressing a profoundly anti-democratic sentiment? Is that really what we want our leaders to be promoting?

How many other places do we discover similar anti-democratic sentiments? How about when we hear about "limited government?" Are conservatives saying that they want to limit the power of the people? What about when they talk about getting rid of government regulations? Do conservatives want to stop the people from regulating what corporations do? When you think about what their words really mean, it sure starts to sound that way.

Conservatives have worked hard to make "government" a bad word. They complain about "big government." They complain about "government schools." But what happens when we substitute a form of "We, the People" into their slogans? The whole meaning seems to change.

Behind-the-scenes conservative leader Grover Norquist is known (to some of us) for having said, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Think about what he is saying about democracy there. He wants to drown it!

Besides fewer decisions made by "the government," another thing conservatives say they want is more decisions made by the "private sector." Let's examine what these words really mean. Business.com offers this definition of "private sector": "Part of national economy made up of, and resources owned by, private enterprises." Wikipedia offers, "In economics, the private sector is that part of the economy which is both run for profit and is not controlled by the state."

So when conservatives say more decisions should be made by the private sector than by the government, aren't they saying that instead of We, The People making decisions we should hand the decision-making power over to the corporations? Is this really what we want?

Sure, the words about "smaller government" and "deregulation" sound good, but when you really think about what they are saying, maybe it isn't such a good idea after all. At least, if we think democracy is a good idea, that is.

As we envision a more progressive future, how are the voices of We the People going to be heard as we try to reclaim American democracy from the inner circles of political power, corporate domination, and profit-focused mass media infotainment? Everyone reading this has figured out the value of looking to the Internet for alternatives to the mainstream media and the punditocracy. But how many of us writing on blogs and posting our videos think of ourselves not only as individuals, with our own opinions, but also as representatives of others like ourselves?