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.

The conservatives are passing down the pain to the younger generation. Take a look at Paul Rogat Loeb's new article about how decreasing support for higher education is making it more and more unaffordable for young people, especially those who do not have family wealth to fall back on.

As you think about this, and talk and write about it, tie the need to remedy this situation to basic progressive values: empathy, responsibility, community. By using these basic themes repeatedly, we reinforce them in the minds of others as well as ourselves--we can help shape the public discourse. To get you started, here are a few suggestions:

Empathy: How would you like being in the situation of today's young people, who want to get ahead, but face a crippling debt burden if they go to college? How well do you think you could study, if you were working a full-time job while you were in school?

Responsibility: We want young people to be able to get educated, so they can be better able to support themselves and get ahead--be responsible for making the best of their abilities. And we want them to be responsible for paying for their education--to the extent that working while studying and paying off student loans does not prevent them from benefiting from that education. At the same time, we also think that the rest of us in society should be responsible, too, as we benefit from educating the next generation. After all, most of us, even those without children of our own, benefit economically from being in a country with a well-educated work force that can compete in the global economy, and by not having masses of uneducated and unemployed youth turning to drugs and crime. And finally...

Community. We're all in this together. We were young once, facing our own challenges, and in various ways, our elders helped us. The older generation is always replaced by the younger. It's our role to ensure that we care for all in society, to keep the process going.

There's a very perceptive letter to the editor in the San Jose Mercury News today, from a Bryce Johnson in Saratoga, California:

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is no grammarian. In his statement: "Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility, and endanger Americans for generations to come," he got both the mood and tense of the verbs wrong. He should have said: "Failure in Iraq at this juncture is a calamity that haunts our nation, impairs our credibility, and endangers Americans for generations to come." It is neither subjunctive nor future, it is fact and it is now.

Note the set-up that Gates was making -- that "failure" would be intolerable. We can expect this to lead to the conclusion that the US cannot afford to fail, hence measures such as continuation or even escalation are justified. Gates' statement is likely another part of the public opinion manipulation effort taking place while Bush delays on making up his mind about what to do in Iraq. Don't believe it -- Bush's mind is made up and the adminstration is telegraphing its intent.

The Democrats and wavering moderate Republicans in Congress should pay close attention to this opinion-manipulation campaign, lest they fall into the trap of colluding in escalation of the ongoing disaster in the Middle East. Reveal and resist the manipulation campaign--don't fall for it.

Cross Posted On MyDD

Hello everyone--this is my first post here. I would like to open up a discussion on the history of ideological self-identification within the American left and center-left. Specifically, I would like to take a quick look at the history of the ideological moniker "progressive," in order to develop a better grasp of what we mean by the term, how it differs from liberalism, and how it connects our current political actions to a tradition of American leftism.

I'll start the discussion with how I understand the history of the term in an American political context:

• 19th Century Roots. The term "progressive" first came into use in an American political context in the late 19th century. It was the ideological term many American leftists self-identified with, from women suffrage activists, to Teddy Roosevelt supporters, to backers of Robert LaFollette. At this time, "progressivism," was clearly distinct from "liberalism" in American political discourse. At the time, "liberalism" was a distinctly middle-class and American bourgeois view of a laissez-faire economic policies and (very) gradual movement toward universal suffrage. Progressivism was associated with the more forthright and hard-nosed suffrage and governmental accountability movements of the time, including the popular election of Senators, first wave feminism, and the implementation of ballot initiatives. Economically, it was vehemently anti-trust and pro-corporate regulation. In many ways, it is what we would now define as the differences between "neo-liberalism" and "progressivism."
  
  

• The Flip. Until FDR, "progressive" was actually the most common term used to describe the mainstream of American leftism. In what can be considered an early example of triangulation, FDR instead chose to call himself a "liberal," thereby poaching some of Hoover's turf while also distancing himself from the left-wing label "progressive." FDR thus changed the meaning of both terms in American political discourse, as the "progressive" label was rendered fringe left-wing, and the "liberal" label was tied to the economic policies of the New Deal instead of the laissez-faire and corporatist policies. From what I understand, Hoover was so outraged over FDR calling himself a liberal during the 1932 campaign, that Hoover challenged FDR to a debate entirely over who was the true "liberal" in the race. It is also important to note that when former Vice President Henry Wallace broke from the Democratic Party in 1948, he took up the banner of the "progressive" party. After that debacle, people did not call themselves "progressive" for some time.
  
  

• The 1990's revival. After nearly fifty years in the post-Wallace wilderness, the term "progressive" saw a revival in our political discourse in the 1990's primarily from two sources. First, "third way" triangulation types such as the DLC took to the term as a means to avoid being labeled as "liberal." Second, left-wing creative class types, at first primarily in the Bay Area, took to the term in order to disassociate themselves with the exiting "liberal" political infrastructure on both ideological and identity-based grounds. It must have been unpalatable for the wildly successful, and generally cutting edge, entrepreneurs of the Bay Area to self-associate with an ideological term that appeared to be old-fashioned and failing.
  
  

• The New Big-Tent Term. Entering 2007, "progressive" appears to be the new and emerging "big-tent" term for the American center-left. The term is used just as comfortably by New Dem types as it is by the Democratic Party's left-wing. Whether or not this has drained it of any significant meaning is open to debate. Whether or not it still has any significant difference from the term "liberal" is also open to debate. It certainly appears to have morphed into something of an empty vessel term that an increasingly large segment, if not the majority, of the left and center-left political activist community feels comfortable self-identifying with. That is a good thing, because it allows us a sense of unity we lacked when many would call themselves moderate and many would call themselves liberal. However, it is difficult to tell what degree of resonance the term has outside of the universe of political activists. Pollsters like to use the same question for decades, and thus are not ready to start including the term "progressive" in ideological self-identification questions anytime soon.

Personally, I far prefer the term "progressive" to the term "liberal." Logically, "progressive" is more of a direct opposite of "conservative" (or "regressive") than is "liberal." I also don't identify with the ideological position the term "liberal" posits (basically, neo-liberalism) when used in an academic sense, and coming from academic background that means a lot to me. I also like the way it is able to unite Democratic activists, and how it ties in with many of the great American political actors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

What detail can you add to this etymology? What mistakes did I make? I would like to get a better handle on how the term "progressive" is currently used, and has been used over time, within the context of American political discourse. Even if we cannot think of any other reason why this is important, if we are going to have a "progressive movement," it is probably a good idea to grasp what we mean by the term "progressive."

I’ve been thinking about the power of narrative—a story that weaves together where we have been, where we want to go, and why we want to get there—and how one progressive narrative can be used to tie together progressive values, recent new research findings, opinion pieces from other sources, and an unrelated book about protecting the commons.

The progressive narrative of a society in which all can have opportunity and thrive serves as a vehicle for bringing together our values, our past, and our dreams for the future. Conscious use of this same narrative in multiple contexts will reinforce it in the public mind, increasing its power and making it more likely to become our reality.

A comment sent in by Lew Creary:

In his "Progressive Etymology" posting, Chris Bowers sketches a history of the political usage of the term "progressive" that in effect recognizes four consecutive phases -- a classical phase that ran from the late 19th century until FDR's first campaign for president, a second phase initiated by FDR's use of the term "liberal" to describe his New Deal ideology and ending with widespread abandonment of the progressive banner after Henry Wallace's fourth-place finish in the 1948 presidential election, a third phase consisting of a 1990s revival of the term "progressive" by two quite different political groups (DLC types and Bay-Area entrepreneurs), and a fourth phase, now in progress (2007), in which the term helps to create a "big tent" in which diverse elements of the American center-left can comfortably gather.

Here, I want to call attention to a fifth significant strand in the usage-history of the term "progressive" that overlaps in time each of the four strands that figure in Bowers's account, but which goes unmentioned in that account. This fifth strand is the term's role as the name of a standard-bearing political magazine, The Progressive, which has gone by this name since 1929, and whose direct lineage goes all the way back to U.S. Senator Robert La Follette Sr. of Wisconsin, and his founding of La Follette's Weekly on January 9, 1909.

To quote from the magazine's web site, "In 1929, La Follette's Weekly changed its name to The Progressive, but the views of the magazine have remained remarkably consistent over the years. The Progressive, a monthly since 1948, has steadfastly stood against militarism, the concentration of power in corporate hands, and the disenfranchisement of the citizenry. It has continued to champion peace, social and economic justice, civil rights, civil liberties, human rights, a preserved environment, and a reinvigorated democracy. Its bedrock values remain nonviolence and freedom of speech." In 1979, the magazine successfully (and famously) defended its right under the first amendment to publish a controversial article on the hydrogen bomb [see this for the magazine issue containing (and focused on) the article, and this for a 1999/2003 retrospective analysis of the case and related issues by the author of the H-bomb article].

Bowers is happy with what he sees as the emerging "big tent" function of the term "progressive" because it contributes to a sense of unity among different types of Democrat activists. But this contribution to unity, based as it is on a potentially equivocal political label, has its limits. For example, it seems unlikely that an activist committed to reducing the concentration of power in corporate hands would be willing to compromise that goal away as the price of entering the "big tent" to collaborate with a "New Dem" type on some other, shared, goal. However, the price of such collaboration might be lower than that. Even if key value-differences exist within the big tent, principled, limited collaborations on shared goals may still be possible (and worth seeking out). And such limited collaborations may sometimes be the best we can hope for in the short run, given the values of the participating activists.

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?

I am particularly impressed by Ian Finseth’s Talking Points article in the Commonweal Institute’s newsletter this month. Excerpts:

The desire to advance human liberty is certainly laudable, but the problem is that the administration has emphasized freedom as a policy goal at the expense of clearly articulating another social value, justice, which is much more deeply rooted in Arab culture. The result has been to cloud our understanding of the conflict, to limit our options for dealing with it, and to distort badly our entire foreign policy in the Middle East.
[….]
If we’re serious about prevailing in “the decisive ideological struggle of our time,” as President Bush phrased it in his January 10 address, we can’t simply try to export our own values without a good understanding of the values of our would-be partners. The United States and even our moderate Arab friends have been talking past each other, speaking different languages, and that miscommunication makes it incredibly difficult for us to gain traction in the war of ideas.
[….]
It is probably too late for the current administration to understand any of this or to take any of it to heart, but in the years ahead the policy analysts and planners in the American government need start understanding and talking the language of the region they are dealing with. Few changes would have a more salutary effect on our relations with the Muslim and Arab worlds than explaining how our involvement in the region promotes justice there as much as freedom – assuming, of course, we don’t just talk the talk, but walk the walk. That means, above all, pushing hard for a just settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, if it’s not too late, achieving a just allocation of resources and reconstruction monies in Iraq. Then we’ll see improvement in our relations with ordinary Arabs, increasing room for our ideas to take root, and some recovery of our squandered international prestige.

American Enterprise Institute, one of the Right's "belief tanks", apparently believes that reputable scientists and economists will help them obfuscate the reality of global warming if they're paid enough. It's time for all honorable professionals to renew their personal pledges of membership in the reality-based community. How could anyone sell out their intellectual integrity and the future of the world for a suitcaseful of ExxonMobil cash?

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.

Last week, Secretary of State Debra Bowen released a report on her "top-to-bottom review" of voting systems in use in California. No sooner had the report come out than Stephen Weir, President of the California Association of Clerks & Elections Officials (CACEO), other election officials, and voting system vendors all mounted a full-throated attack against the top-to-bottom report. What’s going on here?

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.

I'm posting here a short article by Thomas Atwood, one of Commonweal Institute's supporters. In a time when fundamentalism is on the ascent in America, many progressive Christians find it difficult to know how to speak with the fellow Christians about how their political values relate to their faith. Thomas' article was an eye-opener for me.

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.

Many progressive think the public already understands a lot of what progressives stand for. But this is not the case. This thinking comes from already being a progressive, and talking to lots of other progressives. But we need to understand that the public in general is not well educated about progressives, and that communicating needs to start with basics.

I learned this in business, when I was doing direct mail marketing: It's a core mistake to think that the audience you want to reach thinks the way you and I do as we spend time on blogs like this one. You have to learn NOT to trust your instincts and instead trust market testing and other scientific methods to get a read on what the target audience is thinking - and what they hear when you talk to them. The mass market out there is very different from the people who want to reach them, both in products and political ideas.

If you think about it for a minute, this has to be the case or you wouldn't be trying to reach them in the first place - they would already know what you want them to know. The people who make a product already know what it does, how it is used, etc... So they just can't relate to people who don't yet. There are things they take for granted, but the target audience has not yet been exposed to. So in products you wouldn't need to market your product if the customers out there already understood what it is and what it does for them. In our case here we wouldn't need to explain progressive ideas and policies if the public already understood why they want them. But they don't. If we want to persuade the public to share our values and support our ideas we have to explain to them the benefits THEY will get out of doing so. To do that we have to learn what THEY hear, and how they hear things, before we can reach them.

We have to realize that the people who already understand these concepts today are fundamentally different from the rest of the public. (Try to write a product manual telling an elderly person how to use your software and you will see what I mean.) We seek out the blogs, and read lots of news. Much of the public is almost the opposite of this. They don't read newspapers, they don't watch the NewsHour, and they are not scouring the internet and critically evaluating what they find. (NO ONE but us knows about the billions in cash that were shipped to Iraq and disappeared, for example, but it is part of the foundation of our understanding of what is happening to our country.) But the right does reach them. They have figured out how to trigger the word-of-mouth channels through which people come to know what they "know." How many people STILL believe that Iraq attacked us on 9/11?

In direct mail I learned that the stuff that makes me and probably you retch is the stuff that sells the most product. I have to tell you I learned it the very hardest way because I would not expose my customers to that crap. And then a third party company did a test mailing and the sales tripled. So I learned from that.

I don't mean to sound like I am lecturing. I'm trying to share some lessons I learned in some very hard ways - that you just have to trust scientific methods to learn what your target audience thinks, and understand the we are often unable to know that ourselves.