The Little Blue Book: Quotations from Chairman Lakoff
Scientist or Partisan?
Lakoff does something throughout the book which he must think is very clever, but which is completely transparent to the reader, making for a truly cringe-worthy experience. Lakoff has two public personas: First, he is a scientist; and second, he is a partisan political advocate. He understands that when he speaks as a partisan, we the readers necessarily take what he says with a grain of salt; but when he speaks as a scientist, we are expected to accept his statements as objective truth. Throughout the book, he constantly switches back and forth between the two personas: He’ll speak for a paragraph or two as a liberal activist advising Democratic candidates and pundits, then he’ll take off that hat and put on the linguist hat to say something “official”; then switch back to his liberal hat, and so on. I guess the temptation was too great to resist abusing this dual role, because he makes a habit — a career, actually — of putting on his scientist hat and then making partisan statements, which he passes off as impartial facts. I can only imagine that he thinks he’s getting away with it, but the gambit is so glaringly obvious that it makes you almost embarrassed for the guy.
For example, right in the introduction he puts on his scientist hat and gives us a neutral and dispassionate summary of the liberal and conservative political visions, which he will refer back to repeatedly throughout the book. But the language he chooses to use reveals all: the definition of liberalism contains words like “caring,” “decent,” “moral” and “fair,” while the definition of conservatism contains phrases like “self-interest,” “no commitment,” “corporate interests,” and “sink or swim.”
Every page, every paragraph, every sentence in the entire book could be unpacked in a similar way, an unending pastiche of partisan linguistic bias masquerading as scientific or impartial verities.
Communication Breakdown
Lakoff is also the reason why liberals and conservatives never seem to be able to communicate with each other. This frustrating problem is no accident, nor a natural result of differing ideologies simply not seeing eye to eye. Rather, it’s a conscious behavior explicitly recommended by Lakoff over the years, and one which he hammers home repeatedly in The Little Blue Book. Page 43 contains the book’s core message:
“Never use your opponent’s language….Never repeat ideas that you don’t believe in, even if you are arguing against them.”
So central is this notion to Lakoff’s thesis that his publicist sent out a list of “The 10 Most Important Things Democrats Should Know” with each review copy, and guess what comes in at #1:
“Don’t repeat conservative language or ideas, even when arguing against them.”
And many politicians, pundits and talking heads have taken Lakoff’s recommendation to heart. This is why conservatives and liberals can’t seem to have the simplest conversation: liberals intentionally refuse to address or even acknowledge what conservatives say. Since (as Lakoff notes) conservatives invariably frame their own statements within their own conservative “moral frames,” every time a conservative speaks, his liberal opponent will seemingly ignore what was said and instead come back with a reply literally out of left field.
Thus, he is the progenitor of and primary advocate for the main reason why liberalism fails to win the public debate: Because it never directly confronts, disproves or negates conservative notions — it simply ignores them.
A prime example of Lakoff’s ruinous recommendations can be seen in the debate over abortion, which never seems to get resolved despite a trillion words being expended on it every day. The “conservative frame,” to use Lakoff’s language, is that a fetus is a human being who has not yet been born; thus to “abort” the fetus is to kill it, which means a human being has been killed, which is tantamount to murder. In response to this frame, Lakoff recommends — a recommendation that liberals dutifully follow — that those on the left completely ignore the conservative argument, and instead “reframe” the issue with metaphors like “freedom of choice” and “women’s independence” and “reproductive rights.” All those positive words — “freedom,” “independence,” “rights” — recast the entire debate in a different light, allowing liberals to “win” the debate by not acknowledging that the opposing side has even made a statement.
And this is Lakoff’s fundamental flaw, which unfortunately exactly coincides with his fundamental thesis (in other words, his thesis doesn’t have an error — it is an error). By intentionally refusing to challenge, disprove, understand or even acknowledge the existence of the other side’s argument, you allow that argument to grow in strength and win converts.
This would not be true if the other side’s argument were inherently weak or fallacious, which I assume is at the root of Lakoff’s blunder; he must assume that conservatives don’t have valid arguments or positions, but rather nothing more than sneakily effective ways of misrepresenting erroneous or ridiculous beliefs. In Lakoff’s universe, you can extinguish such beliefs by ignoring them completely, thus depriving them of oxygen.
This strategy of Lakoff would work if two things were true: First, that the conservative position really and truly did not have a valid point behind it; and second, that the conservative position did not have enough of a platform to reach the general public. In order to prop up his thesis, Lakoff must pretend (and insist that all his readers also pretend) that the conservative position is beneath contempt, even beneath ridicule. That solves the first potential problem. But the second one is vexatious to the liberal; Lakoff and his ilk simply cannot stand the very fact that conservative ideas are even allowed to be enunciated in public. Giving conservatives a soapbox is dangerous, even if (as Lakoff presumes) conservative arguments are nothing but a pack of lies and psychological disorders; if lies and lunacies are repeated often enough and cleverly enough, then they can successfully win the hearts and minds of the general public.
Thus the need for The Little Blue Book. While one branch of the progressive movement (led by Media Matters, which Lakoff explicitly praises on page 40) does everything it can to silence all conservative opinion, the Lakoff branch simultaneously tries a different but complementary approach: to drown out conservatives with a nonstop continuous cacophony of liberal messaging “every hour of every day of every year,” as he puts it.
And this brings us back to our example: abortion. According to Lakoff, liberals should in no way challenge the claim that abortion is murder; in fact, they shouldn’t even acknowledge that such a claim is being made. (True to form, Lakoff himself never mentions this position in his discussion of abortion.) But here’s the problem for Lakoff: It’s a really really convincing argument. And it’s also a concept that every woman on some gut-instinct level knows is at a minimum somewhat true, if not entirely true. Of course a fetus is human or a near-human; the only valid question (one which Lakoff forbids even asking) is when does it acquire individual human rights? Conception; birth; or somewhere in the middle?
So the Lakoffites can yap about “freedom of choice” and “women’s independence” and “reproductive rights” all day long, yet the listener will think: But you aren’t addressing the fundamental question. Is it murder? “Stop thinking in those terms,” cries Lakoff. But the public can’t stop, because the idea of abortion as murder has already been stated, and the idea of fetus as human existed even long before the modern political debates. Even if there were no Republican party, no conservative movement, a great many people would still have moral compunctions about abortion, because the controversy is rooted in biological realities, and was not fabricated out of thin air by reactionary rabble-rousers.
And this same insuperable problem bedevils every aspect of Lakoff’s thesis: Most of the countervailing “conservative” arguments he seeks to suppress are rooted in inescapable economic, biological or physical reality that can’t be euphemized out of existence, no matter how hard you try. This brings us to the fundamental difference between “progressivism” and “conservatism”: Progressives and their various ideological brethren have a deep belief that human nature and human culture are “constructed,” that there is no biological determinism, that mankind is a blank slate, and that human nature and human culture can be molded at will whichever way we want, if we just put our minds to it and manipulate the language cleverly enough; by contrast, conservatives and their various ideological brethren believe (correctly) that human nature is “innate,” not fabricated, not random, and arises from genetic realities that willpower cannot dissolve, no matter how hard we try. Furthermore, much of the misery we’ve experienced in the last century comes from futile attempts to create utopian societies by denying the immutability of human nature and attempting to change it by force.
Backfire
While Lakoff’s foolish insistence that liberals never repeat conservative frames means that conservative notions never get directly rebutted, this insistence backfires in other ways as well. Why? Because conservatives take the diametrically opposite strategy: They seize on every utterance that liberals make, and repeat their “frames” as loudly as possible to demonstrate how deceptive they are. So while liberals studiously avoid analyzing anything conservatives say, conservatives meanwhile are avidly dissecting every single thing liberals say. The end result is that conservatives, to their own satisfaction as least, successfully challenge and de-fang every liberal notion; but liberals never challenge or de-fang conservative notions, instead seeking to snuff them out with a lethal dose of Silent Treatment.
But it gets worse, because it is the very euphemisms and other ludicrous “conceptual metaphors” recommended by Lakoff which give conservatives so much grist for their mill. Every time a liberal talking head gets up and uncorks another howler in the Lakoff style, conservative fiskers and deconstructionists latch on and tear it to pieces, trumpeting it as further evidence of liberals’ cluelessness or mendacity. So not only does Lakoff recommend holding fire against conservative frames, the ammunition he saves only ends up being used against the liberals themselves.
And this man is considered their master strategist?
For a zombie, you’re pretty sharp. Thanks for keeping us posted on the mischief going on at Berkeley.
Conservatives, in my opinion, have the messaging problem. They should stop using the leftist euphisms “progressive” and “liberal” and start using “communist”, and “bolshevik”, and “socialist” when talking about the left. And they should be driving home the message that the policies of the left are immoral, and explaining why those officials who swear to uphold the Constitution and do the opposite are the true enemies of free people.
Some conservatives are calling them communists and socialists, but it doesn’t have much effect. My proposal is to call communism, socialism, and in fact all of leftism Rich People’s Leftism, because it is really designed more to help rich leftists more than the poor:
http://iwantanewleft.typepad.com/i-want-a-new-left/2010/07/rich-peoples-leftism-vs-poor-peoples-leftism.html
Great point, John. Rich People’s Leftism. Fantastic!
There are a number of ideas that conservative and libertarian candidates should talk about that are not “conservative” or “libertarian”, but are general truths about reality. I’ve listed a few of them here.
“Communist is good enough for me. See the widely marketed and usually favorably reviewed “biopic” on Hemingway and Gellhorn. It is blatantly “progressive” that in practice does not deviate from Soviet or Maoist orthodoxy. I wrote about its fakery here: http://clarespark.com/2012/07/09/hbo-does-gellhorn-in-red/. The New York Times mostly panned it, but not for its distortions of history, but for the writing. I go into the misconceptions of the Spanish Civil War and the civil war in China that it perpetrates.
Lakoff. Rhymes with J……
To avoid getting dragged into arguments about the details of these descriptions – e.g., whether the state owns all capital or controls all capital or privatizes gains and socializes losses such as with our current corrupt state-created, sanctioned, and funded global finance and sovereign debt cartel – it is better, as Dan Mitchell recommends (link: http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/obamas-technically-not-a-socialist-but-he-wont-like-how-thomas-sowell-describes-his-philosophy/), to use “statist” or “corporatist” or “collectivist.”
I am now not as bewildered by the curious fairly recent argument of U.S. statists that increasing control of our lives, property and incomes creates “liberty” by removing worry about how we will make our way in the world. Not a terribly new idea though; kings and dukes made it for millennia while also coercing their subjects. Awfully deceptive.
Apparent readers of this book and writings of its ilk too always blur the distinctions between appropriate roles for the federal government, states, counties or parishes, and local governments in providing services, as they clamor for greater central government control. For example, stating that the federal government should not be involved in public education, and also that its involvement has been wasteful and even damaging, will usually get a response that the speaker does not believe in education or education for the poor or similar hogwash. Public education can be organized at the state or local level without washing funds through the federal government apparatus so the response is plainly invalid. The logical fallacy? I’m going with the Straw Man (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html)
Great article.
Only thing I would add: when Liberals RESPOND to Conservative arguments, I’ve found they don’t use the SILENT TREATMENT as much as they do QUESTIONING MOTIVES.
It goes to Lakoff’s 2nd point about moral frameworks; Liberals will always talk about their PURE MOTIVES and conversely when faced with a Conservative counter-argument, they will indeed ignore what was actually said by the Conservative and will instead at all times try to turn the conversation to the Conservatives supposed evil, rotten, no good MOTIVES for holding to the contrary position.
I’ve seen Liberals do this countless times on Twitter; losing on facts they immediately turn to questioning the Conservative’s MOTIVES for arguing against the Liberal position.
I’m as liberal as they come, but they started really playing these creepy linguistic control games not long after the fall of the Soviet Union. And then Lane Kirkland was disposed of, replaced by Marxists. To me, these were pretty big signs.
Twenty years later, you can tell some of these people 2+2=4 and they’ll tell you you’re not even speaking English. You’re obviously mentally unbalanced, and a product of poor education and bigotry passed down by cultural heritage. And they can attack you, your finances, your employer.
Even a typical NY liberal Catholic and Jew like me isn’t safe anymore. You know, if they were Socialist they would simply want all wealth tied to the government. But they want all wealth and well-being tied to THE PARTY.
Oh, and my mother was the breadwinner in the family and I grew up playing with girls. You’re not crazy, or the result of cruel parenting. These people really ARE Communists, and it’s become quite mainstream Democratic party stuff.
I favor “regressive” over “progressive.” It’s truthful: “progressive” policies would take us back in time to being serfs working for the benefit of the state, and it doesn’t allow them to argue that, no, they’re not communists or socialists or some other -ist based on narrow academic definitions.
I call them liberal socialist democrats when on the message boards. That seems to set their hair on fire every time. For others, I think the word democrat needs to be linked to liberal and socialist, in order to make the connection that the two ideologies are one and the same.
Thank you for a very enlightening article. I can see this tactic used up and down other message boards, and will now post a like to the Little Blue Book when I see such tactics being used, and tell them we’re on to their little propaganda game.
That should do it.
I call them, “illiberal control freaks”. They have twisted the word ‘liberal’ to mean the exact opposite of what it used to mean. Liberal means of or pertaining to liberty. Liberals aren’t liberal, they’re illiberal. I add ‘control freaks’ on the end there, just for good measure.
I think we knuckle-dragging conservatives can message quite well when we’re of a mind to.
I think you missed something important here, Zombie. This book is actually brilliant in its approach. It is not about how-to-argue. It is about how-to-propagandize.
I think your analysis of how conservatives still manage to win some elections is the fundamental error. You see, Conservatives should win every single election, based on the facts. Liberals should never, ever win. Never. They cannot engage in a reasonable discussion or debate, because they will always lose based on demonstrable results. Just watch someone like S.E. Cupp rip into Liberal arguments when outnumbered heavily and the playing field tilted against her.
No, the Left intends to win by making purely emotional appeals. They do not have to make sense. They just have to fill their commentary with emotionally charged phrases. Of course, after awhile, they wear out the words, as the facts of things like Affirmative Action and Liberal come to light. So, they change words they use. They use positive words, but not a positive argument.
To understand Conservative arguments, you have to have extensive world experience. The Liberals, seek to win power by winning over the low-information voter. They KNOW their own arguments are BS. Know it, mind you. They simply intend to repeat the lies often enough to sway enough ignorant people to allow them to stay in power.
The problem is, facts are stubborn things. Inevitably, the situation deteriorates, and all their emotionalism falls on deaf ears. Sooner or later, the money runs out, or the economy falls apart, or whatever. Of course, it does get them into power for a good while, because “There is much ruin in a nation.”
They really only succeed at all, because they have their counterparts in the Republican Party, like Romney or McCain, et al, who believe the key to winning some of the time is to be as bland and unthreatening as possible. The Republican Party is split between the fire-eating Conservatives and the seat-at-the-table “Moderates”. Conservatives are NOT the majority; We are simply the largest plurality. We are outnumbered overall. At a time when Conservatives should have been swept into total power, we got Romney as our candidate. Huzzah.
The trick to power is to keep a sufficient percentage of the population sufficiently ignorant for long enough to be able to establish a permanent “fundamental transformation” of America.
And they have won. It is over. We have a Congress which does not do its job, not even passing a budget. We have a President ruling by executive fiat. We have a SC which does not know the meaning of the word ‘tax’, and which is so lost in the details of case law, that it has forgotten the Constitution entirely.
The Republicans will not win a large enough election victory to undo this, and will be led by… Romney. It is over. Sauve qui peut. The real financial crisis will hit during Romney’s Presidency, and the Republicans will get the blame for the mess… again. All the Dems will have to do is prevent any solutions from being implemented. Filibuster, filibuster, filibuster.
Game over. Epic fail.
I think you’re probably right, Marc, about the outcome this election cycle and in the foreseeable future. But that makes the uphill climb back even more crucial, and that’s where Zombie, once again, is doing something that too few people do well. He (or she?) is paying close attention to both the ground game and the ethical message. And it’s the Republican message that is best clarified by this article.
If we are going to have any chance this fall, I think a lot of people involved in politics need to revisit Zombie’s roadmap — to the Tea Party and the Left. If political operatives on the Right don’t spend more time understanding the people they’re going to need to persuade — respect and persuade — the result will be catastrophic. I’m worried about what I’m seeing in Florida.
I hope the bleak picture you and Marc have painted for yourselves won’t prevent you from voting. I am optimistic about Florida. Instead of doing everything possible for unqualified voters to vote early and often, as the Demunists are fighting for, Florida still has voter photo ID and clean up of the rolls ongoing.
Early. And not often.
Yeah, it must really suck to be a conservative atheist right now.
Why?
The only party arguing for an end to religious liberty in the US is the Democrat party; Republicans are quite open and loud for vigorously keeping the government out of mandating what is and is not acceptable religious practice.
“Why?” Because, as Marc points out, there is good reason to be pessimistic about the American Experiment continuing. Atheists, by definition, explicitly reject the idea of an afterlife so they’re convinced that this mortal life is all there is, as opposed to agnostics and religious believers who have _some_ hope for better things in eternity even if TSHTF down here.
I can’t speak for anyone else of course, but my life is better since I started trying to live more according to my religious beliefs and I’m pretty sure I’d be much more despondent about things if I hadn’t. Even if I’m wrong, I’ll die with more happiness, having spent less time seeking pleasure.
Oh, I don’t know. If you’re talking just about death, then I don’t think it matters, whether you believe you’ll die and meet God, or die and forget all. I don’t see how our current situation affects that particular belief.
On the other hand, I’d like to think that God has our backs, and that he’ll help us back on our feet, and help preserve our freedoms, if we do what we can to preserve them. Of course, being a God-fearing type of person, I cannot be confident that God will do that. I’d like to think that he will, at least in the end, help restore us to our Liberties and our former Glory.
But I’m also aware that God might just let us fail. Compared to Him, I’m sure, no matter how big we get, we’ll never be “to big to fail”. For that matter, He may just let us fail for a season, to chastise us for allowing our freedoms to slip away. I would not look forward to such a chastisement, even if it’s for our own good, and ultimately necessary for preserving our freedoms. Even so, if it *is* necessary to preserve freedom, I’ll say “Bring it on! And please give me the strength I’ll need to endure it, and help my family and friends through it as well!”
Thus, I’m not all that confident it’s all peaches and roses for God-fearing Conservatives, either.
I see your point; I just mean that if you utterly reject the idea of an afterlife, it’s a kind of depressing time right now to also be conservative if you think Marc’s scenario is somewhat likely. The upside for a Christian is of course that we get a chance for martyrdom (which might help the ol’ attitude a tiny bit right there at the end, because to be honest, it’s probably my best bet for a good spot in Heaven; otherwise, I’m getting in by the skin of my teeth). Of course, it also has an effect on how you live your life when TSHTF; kinda seems like atheists would be more likely to collaborate if they think this is all there is, which affects the rest of the world somewhat too. And this is somewhat off-topic from Zombie’s essay so I’m just going to leave this part alone now.
It must really suck to be a pro-life Democrat right now. As far as I know, Zombie’s agnostic. He seems to be doing fine. Good luck with your non-sequiturs.
Yes, Zombie’s previous posts indicate agnosticism. Your base assumption is false since I was aware of this already.
Yes, it DOES really suck to be a conservative atheist right now. Mainly because evangelical Christians will not, and do not, (and CAN not?), accept PRINCIPLED atheists and agnostics as legitimate comrades-in-arms.
I fight this out on the major conservative boards almost every day, to absolutely NO effect. Most folks with less real-world experience and less skill in political rhetoric gave up long ago and started voting “progressive” out of sheer frustration. Christians, of all people, should understand that!
It’s LONELY to be a conservative atheist right now. But I, for one, am sticking to my guns, no matter how futile those guns may prove. You see, precisely BECAUSE (IMHO) there is no afterlife, we have to make THIS life count by upholding — in both rhetoric and the conduct of our own lives — the principles which make Humans more than the sum of their constituent chemical/biological parts.
Recommendation: Go read Ayn Rand. You will never again grope for concepts with which to explain/defend non-religious conservatism to religionists of EITHER party.
The funny thing is, I’m not a Christian, and I don’t have a problem.
Maybe because I don’t “fight it out” every day, I just deal with the subjects at hand.
I’ve found that Christians are pretty uninterested in what I believe (or don’t) if we’re not talking about it.
As a conservative atheist, I too find it a little annoying that many Christian conservatives seem to think that “conservatism” = “the complex of late 20th Century American fundamentalist Protestant beliefs and attitudes”, as opposed to an understanding of human nature and our present location in human history, something which transcends any particular nation and historic period.
However, it’s simply not worth fighting over at the abstract level. People often act in practice in ways that are at great variance with the logical implications of their stated beliefs. (And thank God for that … otherwise the Christians would never have been able to accept the Enlightenment.)
At most, we should gently point out to religious conservatives that the Founding Fathers, and those around them like Tom Paine, covered a wide spectrum of religious and non-religious belief, but were united in their love of liberty and their understanding of how to secure it, and leave it at that.
The important thing is not to let the Left be able to portray conservatism as a movement which wants to bring back compulsory prayer in schools, outlaw homosexuality, stop public funding of education … the whole Lakoff caricature.
Frankly, those of us who are treading a spiritual rather than religious or atheist path could give a shit about who believes what unless their beliefs impinge on our freedom. I’ve noticed that atheists spend more time defending their stance than most Christians do, but whatever floats your boat. As you point out, the Founders were an eclectic bunch but they got it mostly right.
Agree,the left is never talking to conservatives, they know we can’t be swayed. They are talking to the people that are already on the reservation and the weak-kneed moderates who see power in strength. That’s why our don’t rock the boat messages fall on deaf ears.
Until Americans realize they are being fed propaganda 24-7 and decide to reject it, the conservative message will not resonate. The go along to get along mentality under the guise of tolerance has been a useful tool for the left. The left has successfully positioned anyone who speaks out against them as a right wing extremist, and the morally tolerant have bought it, hook, line and sinker.
Marc, you are brilliant but too isolated perhaps. Take heart. “The worst is not always certain,” said Paul Claudel.
Excellent article. Just to be clear, Lakoff really even doesn’t have a right to wear his scientist’s hat. His theory of language was effectively anticipated, and rebuked, by Wittgenstein over half a century ago. Lakoff believes that all those conceptual metaphors and linguistic frames he talks about boil down to a set of basic concepts that everyone shares, but are so very basic that only experts (like him) understand what they are, really. As such, only experts (like him) really know what people are saying, or trying to say. His political viewpoint doesn’t actually follow from this idea, but it is buttressed by it. Given that he has privileged access to what we are actually saying, he in is a position both to advise the left and to rebut the right–although as you point out, he does neither well. And, please, produce a few more long articles. I disagree with about 20% of what you say, but you say the rest so well it doesn’t matter.
Most of Lakof’s nonsense is a rehash (and not a very good one) of Herbert Marcuse’s “repressive tolerance” meme.
Correct. — Not to forget that that ancient meme is deeply into -or out of, your choice- Freud, with half a peppermill of Jung plus three teaspoons of Erickson’ Salt for seasoning. — Yuck! My hope is that Lakoff does not consider himself an “Intellectual”, not even of closet variety, and that nobody else does, either. To me, he is simply “Lack Of”.
Lakoff is not an intellectual. He is a linguist who discovered early in his academic career that he is severely limited by, frankly, an easy field that does not require much intellectual firepower.
So there he sits, having done pretty much all that is possible as an academic linguist, and he needs … you can see the rest of the story.
Dynamite review.
Really, the book amounts to an extensive ad hominem argument against conservativism–but one that shamelessly admits to being so. In a sinister manner, it elevates rhetoric above reality. Even if liberals and conservatives differ in their moral intuitions, those intuitions must still be held up to logical and empirical scrutiny. Lakoff clearly has no interest in doing so.
That said, I think there is something in Lakoff’s thesis. Metaphorically and psychologically, the ideal state for liberals does tend to be motherly and accommodating, whereas that for conservatives does tend to be fatherly and challenging. The further details of his thesis, which flatter liberals and impugn conservatives, are both dubious and tendentious; but the overall framework still strikes me as intuitively plausible.
As a “plumb-line” libertarian myself–one who accept portions of liberal and conservative positions while rejecting others, in a manner consistent with the prioritization of individual liberty–I wonder what metaphors “explain” my political sympathies. I appear to be picking and choosing metaphors on a principled basis.
You already fell into his trap. Government is an institution formed by adults, to serve adults. Lakoff “frames” the argument with a false choice: Mommy or Daddy. The government isn’t a parent, and accepting it either as mother or as father put citizens in the role of a child to be cared for.. which is just the false premise he wants you to accept.
Where do I send your PhD?
Seriously, you had a greater insight in your two-sentence comment that most graduates have in their vacuous 160-page PhD theses.
Sometimes I wish I could “like” these comments–Both Weisshaupt’s comment, for pointing out something very insightful, and yours, for wanting to award Weisshapt a PhD for it! As I was reading Lakoff’s take on Liberalism vs. Conservatism, it didn’t even occur to me to remember that I’m an adult. I just thought, “How ironic! My wife and I try to be equal partners, and we try to discipline our children with love (although we also discipline them with other means, as we see fit)…yet, we are Conservatives, so we don’t fit into the mold that Lakoff tries to force on us.
And a major reason we don’t fit in that mold, is that neither my wife nor I like the Government trying to be our mother, or our father. We are adults, thank you very much, and we’re going to try our darnedest to make sure our children grow up to be adults too.
You’ll be happy to hear that PJM is, as far as I have heard, actually working on getting that new feature for PJM comments. So, hopefully soon, you will be able to “like” comments!
(No, don’t ask me about the schedule. I think it’s still being worked on.)
Definitely agreeing with Zombie as well as the OP; simply brilliant.
One thing that catches my eye is that linguists seem to be pretty high up on the liberalometer. Is this Lakoff the replacement for Chomsky as the Groupthink wunderkind?
“In our dream, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding [motherly or fatherly] hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk.”
Frederick T. Gates
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/stealing_capitalism_the_crime.html
BTW, the term “Big Brother” is its self an example of Orwellian Newspeak. In reality all Socialist/Collectivist systems of government and economics are based on Big Father Tyrant or Big Mother Tyrant.
I’m not falling into any trap. Let me clarify my position.
Personally, I don’t favour a state at all; I want to minimize it to oblivion.
However, both standard liberals and conservatives *do* want the state to do something for them. Furthermore, both approve of the state taking money people off involuntarily to see that it, whatever it is, gets done.
In that sense, both support the initiation of force by the state against the people, supposedly for their own good; yet, by sheer coincidence, the application of this force reliably tends to benefit the state and its cronies too.
Colour me cynical, but this doesn’t sound like an arrangement intelligent civilized adults would ever have choose to have with one another.
In my view, there is only the government of the people, by the government, for the government, because power inevitably corrupts. Why has the U.S., which had the smallest government in the world, now got almost the biggest one? But don’t worry: Romney will sort it all out!
In this respect, I don’t know what type of person metaphorically informs the politics of standard liberals and conservatives. But, if there is such a person, then, whether male or female, parent or non-parent, it is someone someone who is arrogant, condescending, and self-righteous, but who potentially serves as a hitman to do their idealistic dirty work for them, unless outbid at the ballot box by the other side.
I hope the above puts paid to your suspicion that I’m just a gullible Lakoffian groupie.
Yet I still think there is *something* in Lakoff’s thesis. Why so?
Well, it’s hardly a controversial observation that conservatives want the state to engage in relatively more warfare than liberals do, whereas liberals want the state to engage in more relatively more welfare than conservatives do.
Now, warfare is definitely a more manly activity, and welfare somewhat a more womanly one.
Furthermore, most people are brought up by one or more parents, and these parents plausibly play a part in shaping their moral outlook.
So, at a very general level, it wouldn’t suprise me if–drawing these two facts toegether–conservatives identified more with their father, and liberals with their mothers, and furthermore, such that the moral outlook of liberals and conservatives drew respectively on more motherly or fatherly metaphors.
This, fo course, has no bearing on the normative question of the relative value of a motherly or fatherly moral approach. I emphatically don’t endorse Lakoff’s tendentious value judgments here.
However, I still think that, for all his flagrant partisanship, Lakoff’s is pointing in the direction of a relevant psychological distinction.
Doesn’t the nanny state retort strongly imply rejection of the appropriateness of a concept of government as parent? That’s not really falling into a trap, is it?
Congratulations, Zom, for this little masterpiece of criticism. From one of your early paragraphs you introduce us to the wondrous and zany world of Lakoff and his omnipotent vocabulary.
“Conceptual metaphor.” But this phrase is a redundancy. A metaphor isn’t a real thing like, you know, a rock. Can you say “conceptual idea”? This guy seems like a real dope. I hope the Demunists believe everything he tells them.
It’s conceptual metaphor in the sense that it is a using a third connecting idea relating one concept to another. This is as opposed to the idea of using a metaphorical concept to relate two tangible objects.
One of course can substitute the idea of the thing for the thing itself, but I believe in this context, it simply is a means to point out that the things being related have no tangible meaning (i.e. meaning is constructed)/
Thanks for the reply. An example of a “conceptual metaphor” might help me understand what I still don’t at this moment.
By instructing Democrats not to acknowledge opposing arguments, Lakoff intends to make them impervious to reason and fact. That may be at the heart of his strategy; it keeps desertions to a minimum.
Interesting theory! I think you may have hit on something.
The left fancies itself intellectual giants, so when Lakoff insists there’s nothing on the right worth wasting time on, he creates a self-sustaining, self-referential, self-reverential cocoon. The Emperor’s New Clothes.
Some on the Left are intellectual giants, but great intellect (High IQ) does not mean great morality (High MQ). Hitler and Stalin were served by intellectual giants – very smart lunatics.
“The German university students were among the earliest groups to back Hitler. The intellectuals were among his regime’s most ardent supporters. Professors with distinguished academic credentials, eager to pronounce their benediction on the Fuhrer’s cause, put their scholarship to work full time; they turned out a library of admiring volumes, adorned with obscure allusions and learned references.” Leonard Peikoff
http://www.peikoff.com/lr/chapter1.htm
“O’Brian knew everything…What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself.” George Orwell – 1984
THANK YOU for articulating in this forum a concept I’ve been pushing for DECADES in my role as gifted & talented (g/t) advocate and educator.
This is more or less how I usually phrase it for confused g/t teens and young adults:
“Your life is a car. IQ is the engine. The more high-performance your IQ, the faster you can get to where you want to go. Morality is the GPS [or the road atlas] and the steering wheel. Without GPS [or road atlas], you have no idea where you want to go, and even if you pick an arbitrary destination YOU CAN’T GET THERE without a steering wheel! Thus high IQ without [in your terms] high MQ will just more quickly run you off into a ditch, or into oncoming traffic.”
Point of order: These people were not in the least bit crazy; they were as sane as you and I. No brain lesions, no schizophrenia, nothing like that.
The problem was what they wanted: Total control of society so that they could play God with it. They did a damned good job, too, having exterminated 12 million “undesirables” in Germany (half of them Joooos) other tens of millions in the USSR, and convincing the rest of the populace that the warm yellow liquid streaming down their faces was lemonade.
Or that they’d better say it was lemonade.
That’s why we should never underestimate people who find the acquisition of power For The Purpose Of Doing Good to be the most dangerous people on the planet, and why we should never let them anywhere near the levers of power.
It’s about time that an Ivy-League or equivalent education should be a sure sign that a candidate has drunk the wrong Kool-Aid and should never be elected to any kind of office.
And I say that as a former Cornellian: Don’t give me power, either. I won’t use it wisely, because I don’t know how.
This sounds terrible. Have you ever read any Alinsky? He at least had some writing skills. Bill Ayers is also a talented author. I want more Zombie book reports!
Remember that it was Zombie who dug up and exposed Bill Ayers’s nearly-suppressed communist-revolutionary masterpiece ‘Prairie Fire’, back when the MSM was pretending it didn’t exist. Just in time for the 2008 election, though not read by nearly enough Americans.
Synopsis. The facts of life are conservative but wishful thinking may yet win the day!
Because everybody knows that the best way to convince undecided and conservative voters is to dazzle them with compliments you got from Van Jones and George Soros.
Two of the slimiest individuals who ever slithered around the planet.
…one of the most important contemporary philosophers of progressive thought.
“progressive thought” is an oxymoron.
A good foot soldier in the Left’s army of useful idiots need only be indoctrinated into the highly detailed body of dogma and cant, so when any topic under the sun comes up, he simply trots out the “correct” knee jerk, lockstep response.
(Abortion ? The automaton tells you “It’s safe, legal and rare”. Those exact words.)
Listen to the talking points of the Obama media on any specific criticism of their guy. Their response is completely consistent across the board. (of course Soros money may even be keeping some of their newsrooms afloat so obeisance to The Master is de rigueur)
George Lakoff, Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at U.C. Berkeley
Every time I read “Berzerkley study”, I know it is, necessarily, monumentally biased.
Mao had Little Red. Khomeini had Little Green. Lakoff has Little Blue.
I’m going to write Little Puce, a study of history’s micromanaging morons.
Actually, no. In 2009, the Democratic Party (at the request of one Barack Obama) rewrote their platform. The official line on abortion is that it is to be safe, legal, and “available to all regardless of the ability to pay.” They actively want abortions to be common. In fact, they’re so eager for more women to have abortions that they don’t really care about the “safe” part, either.
Rewrite: “George Lakoff, Professor of Cognitive Dissonance and Linguistic Sophistry at U.C.Bezerkeley” and that would be THREE new “conceptual metaphors” in one short half-sentence? — What a gas! Great post, great comment!
I find it remarkably self serving that a ‘language and messaging expert’ posit the thesis that ‘language and messaging’ is the problem that needs solving for the Dems.
How could the Dems ever solve this problem? Hey, I know! They need more services from ‘language and messaging experts’!!! How nakedly transparent of him.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m inspired to write my own book titled: “The only reason your organization hasn’t achieved it’s goals is because you haven’t hired me or people like me.”
““The only reason your organization hasn’t achieved it’s goals is because you haven’t hired me or people like me.””
The Consultant’s creed.
I must agree with Zombie that Dr. Weisshaupt is clear and concise. Tre bon touche’!
To read Ayn Rand is not enough. It must be understood to have impact upon the reader. I really wish she had made the time to write a reader’s guide to her novels. Maybe instead of a 60 page speech… Oh well, it is of no matter now. We shall have to stay on the train and see it to the end.
Where o’ where are the Truman Democrats?
Rand DID write such a book. It’s called “The Anti-Industrial Revolution.” It’s a collection of her essays. Worth looking up in the library, even more worth buying a copy to go over and over again.
Rand was a far better essayist than a novelist.
gvi
The book was re-released under another title. I’m away from home, so must rely on recall, but I think it is titled, “The Return of the Primitive.”
CORRECT! Yes, that is the correct title. The Anti-Industrial Revolution is the title of an essay that was published in the book in question.
The book itself is dynamite, and while I regard Rand as a fine novelist, i agree she was a better essayist. I REALLY wish I had enough money to buy 300 million copies of The Return of the Primitive, or better yet Philosophy: Who Needs It, to distribute to the populace at large.
“Progressivism” or statist is often a pose. Lakoff’s book is a 2012 fashion guide.
Maybe there is something to it. Progressives see the world as mutable and self-referrential. Everything can be as I think it should be. Words mean what I say they mean.
Perhaps overly indulging, permissive parenting can do that. There are no real rules. There is no reason to think I can’t get what I want just by demanding it. Lakoff is teaching them how to use words to achieve power.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – - that’s all.”
Great reporting, Zombie.
At least the title of the book is apt, given that the Little Red Book was full of propaganda.
Question: why do commies and socialists complain when people call them commies or socialists?
According to Lakoff, Americans wouldn’t hate lawyers as much as they do if Democrats would refer to them as “public protection attorneys.” Accordingly, the American Trial Lawyers Association changed their name to the “American Association for Justice” in 2006. There is no evidence at all that replacing “lawyers” with “justice” in their association name has made lawyers–wait, make that “public protection attorneys”–any more popular than they were six years ago. But, as Dr. Sowell has pointed out, to a determinedly liberal academic evidence is irrelevant.
Lakoff…thinks he is immune to [being perceived as a political partisan] due to his overused “scientist” persona, but he…misperceives himself.
This is an insightful observation by Zombie, but I don’t think it goes far enough in describing Lakoff’s misperception of himself, or explaining why his message will fail with independent voters.
In particular, based on the book passages quoted by Zombie, it appears not only that Prof. George Lakoff is a political hack, but that he is also profoundly mentally ill. Literally every thing he believes is a delusion. Independent voters blessed with common sense will dismiss Lakoff as a lunatic.
Sadly there are far too few Independent Voters who pay attention to what matters. Rather they choose what is popular so as to be seen as bright. It is popularity masquerading as intellectual acumen.
Giving conservatives a soapbox is dangerous, even if (as Lakoff presumes) conservative arguments are nothing but a pack of lies and psychological disorders; if lies and lunacies are repeated often enough and cleverly enough, then they can successfully win the hearts and minds of the general public.
Lakoff inadvertently (and ironically) describes The Big Lie, a favorite progressive tactic.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
That is the conceptual frame Lakoff embeds in The Little Blue Book: We’re better than you.
The assumption of élitists for the duration. Not much new under the sun.
I can’t imagine having to read such crap as Little Blue or having to sit in a classroom (and pay for the privilege) where such indoctrination passes as teaching.
” Lakoff inadvertently (and ironically) describes The Big Lie, a favorite progressive tactic.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” ”
All true. Also, this clearly outs his crappy little pamphlet as what it is really: a propaganda manual. In principle, it could have been copied from Dr. Joe Goebbels’ diaries. That is how propaganda works.
Now for the big questions: 1) Why does it work (in this way) and, 2) How might it be defeated?
To 1), I think I have a simple answer: The annoyance factor of constant repetition grabbing one’s attention. To wit, we become tired of everybody repeating this likely B.S., which puts pressure on us to come to terms with it so that we can get back to business as usual. To reduce the dissonance, we start actively looking for some kernel of truth. But, we don’t usually take the time for a deep analysis, so the kernel we latch to gets filed away as pars pro toto, a part which we have come to accept as likely more true than false, representing all. Bingo! The deed is done. Subliminally, the whole thing has become accepted. That kernel, btw, doesn’t have to be identical for every listener. After all, the objective is not the truth of the kernel, but the acceptance of the whole false premise via this narrow mental bridge. So it is quite allright for everybody to build his own little bridge from his own minimally sized kernel of “perceived truth”. It is even all right, even quite desirable, that this bridge collapse behind our passage. So we forget how we came to believe the “big lie”. I think that’s how it actually works. — Somebody’s PhD thesis?
2) Now the tough part, its defeat: I think that begins with “concretization”. To wit, Lackoff’s “conceptual metaphor” is the key to its self-defeat, to defeating its big lie. Epistemologically, a concept is an abstraction, a symbol for some entity of any number of concrete attributes related to one another in some very specific way. The metaphor is the image of but some of the concretes subsumed in the concept while not being identical to it. Thus, in Lakoff’s devilish little construct, it may be used to twist the concept’s meaning. How it does this in any individual’s perception, depends on that individual’s ability, and willingness, and also effort, to clearly distinguish the principal features of the concept from the metaphor’s glossy image of merely some of its parts.
So, positing the given example of abortion as “a safe reproductive right”, it is appropriate to ask: Safe in what way? Physically? Psychologically? Safe for whom? Also a right to murder? As in late-term live births left on a side table to die, judged unworthy of human assistance, let alone protection of law, because of somebody’s choice? WHO has such a RIGHT ?!? Who is burdened? By what right?
The concept of abortion is simple: A termination of pregnancy by some external intervention in its biological process. The metaphor that it is a “woman’s reproductive right” and “quite safe” contains the quite incongruent wider concepts of safety and rights, namely safety of or from what, and whose rights besides the woman’s would be affected. Concretized, these parts of the metaphorical image are contradictible and dissolve that image. The image’s subsumed “standpoint epistemology” becomes invalidated.
Now the bad news: All of this LibtardProgMyth-debunking is hard work, not accomplished overnight. Our culture has become so drowned in the Lackoff paradigm of Goebbels-type “big lie” propaganda that it will take an equally rambunctious and persistent “big truth” propaganda effort to clear it all out.
Their method is an easy one, as it need not be concerned with facts, only innuendo and smears controlled by the “big liars”. — We have the harder task of presenting inconvenient truths. On the other hand, again, truths may be verified, while lies require more lies. We should not be worried, however, if we convert no DemProgs. They’re probably immune to facts. What we must concentrate on is preventing the spread of their lies. That can be done. Not easy, but doable!
Thanks, Zombie, for pointing out one of the Left’s prominent and most influential voices. I’ve seen this guy quoted as an authority all over the place.
His main schtick is teaching activists to say that ‘up is down, black is white, good is bad and bad is good.’
Just listen to what the Left says. I do, every day- I know it’s uncomfortable.
They take ‘conservative’ arguments and just flip them; their arguments are often just a dark mirror of whatever the other side is saying.
To me, both sides sound almost exactly alike in many of their claims and demands. Copycatting, or an instinctive social mechanism?
“Sloganeering had replaced introspection.”
Sheesh… for the Left, that happened about the time that Engels died.
There’s another reason why the Left’s framing doesn’t work: It’s not effective when those doing the framing openly admit what they’re doing.
If today’s Left were as disciplined as the Communist Party USA used to be in the 1940s and 1950s, they wouldn’t have open blogs and Twitter accounts. They would have closed mailing lists with public-key encrypted messages and hard-to-guess passwords. Only certified leftists would have access. And that way, keep everyone else guessing as to their true intentions.
It’s real easy for anyone to log onto those left-wing websites and read what they’re really advocating when they haven’t yet bothered to invent the proper “framing.” (I wish conservatives would do this more.)
Today, for example: E.J. Dionne offered yet another attempt at framing: Frame the auto bailouts in terms of appeals to national pride: Obama saved the AMERICAN automobile industry, to save AMERICAN jobs for AMERICA!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/07/09/an_economics_of_national_pride_114721.html
(cue the Washington Post March music by Sousa)
The problem with that, is that it’s easy to surf the left-wing blogs and see what America’s leftists really think of national pride before they’ve “framed” it.
Here’s what Katha Pollitt wrote about national pride, in the days after the 9-11 terrorist attack:
http://www.thenation.com/article/put-out-no-flags
“It’s real easy for anyone to log onto those left-wing websites and read what they’re really advocating when they haven’t yet bothered to invent the proper “framing.”” it’s real easy to log onto conservative sites aswell.
While it’s true that Conservatives are sometimes guilty of attempting “framing”, it’s also true that they tend to be more forthright about their positions in general. It’s kindof hard to complain that conservatives are “framing” something when they’ve stood their ground on a given topic for the whole time…
It isn’t a problem if undecided people look at most of the ‘Right side of the web’ because we are up front about what we believe. No so for their team. If the average undecided voter actually bothered to go wallow in the filth that is the lefty blogs they would be so repulsed they would never vote D again. But they don’t, the people posting there know the undecided/uninformed won’t go there and that the legacy media won’t cover what goes on there.
Set paranoia bit to ON.
How do you know they don’t have such close forums?
There are many such “Journolists” on the internets. We are trying to weed the garden without tools and understanding. Our job has been made much much harder due to the history of anti-communist actions in America. We allowed them cover and concealment back when they were young and tender and vulnerable. We did this out of misplaced altruism. Altruism is the infection vector into the American psyche.
There will be a reckoning. For no man fights as viciously as a free man.
P.S. Readers, the main fount of Leftist economic positions is radio host Tom Hartmann. Very clever, well educated.
And thanks for mentioning that fraud, Dobson. Just another minor talent selling books- he HAS done plenty of damage selling to a niche market, same as radio voices such as Randi Rhodes, Tom Hartmann, Ed Schultz, or Keith Olberman… or Al Gore, or Van Jones. Why are dimwits celebrated as authority?
Damm, forgot to mention ‘conservatives’ Bauer and Rose.
Those parrots are so stupid and un-examined I don’t know how they can talk and breathe at the same time. Former government employees, go figure.
Paid echo boxes.
What I really, really want is both sides debating.
No more mindless parroting of cliches- and no more 4 against 1: big money behind that format. Who’s payin’?
Debates, when one side is given endless license to lie, leads to a wrong result.
Advocating debates of that type are not very useful.
In the last century, leftist murdered over 100 million people. You really think they would scruple to tell a few lies?
Of course they’ll lie; in fact, we’re counting on it. By catching them in lies, we reveal them to be pathological liars, and then frame the moral issue: to be a liberal is to be a son of Satan- a liar, a thief and a murderer.
Dammit! Well, sorry, and thanks-
but I hate content-free shreiking housewife Mark Levin and Republican cheerleader Sean Hannity as well. Gods, can’t we get somebody- like Quinn of Quinn and Rose- who can THINK?
…content-free shreiking housewife Mark Levin
A highly articulate defender of the Republic who doesn’t mince words.
A true Constitutional scholar, unlike all the prétendeurs out there, like Barry.
Alzaebo- You sure missed the mark on Mark Levin. He may shriek, but to call him content-free, proves you never listened to him. He has no problem providing deep fact-driven arguments. In addition, I highly recommend you spend some time listening to the deepest thinkers and best debaters on radio, Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Prager.
So, according to this guy, if you don’t vote Democrat it’s because you’re stupid and you’ve been tricked by those eeeeevil Republicans.
Gotcha. Gee, what a novel theory…
I hope the next edition has a chapter on “Democrat Messaging and Font Selection: Why It Matters”.
This is why conservatives and liberals can’t seem to have the simplest conversation: liberals intentionally refuse to address or even acknowledge what conservatives say.
Leftists (that includes ‘liberals’ these days) won’t have those discussions, largely because they don’t want their own assumptions challenged, and don’t want to exert the effort to defend them. Possibly this is because since their peer-pressure school days, their principles are all received wisdom, much like that stuffed into this Little Blue Book by an authoritative Politburo member. They can’t make a defense of prepackaged Commandments, because they don’t understand any reason for following them, other than to gain political power.
The solution, My Dear Watson, is in the framing.
The Left defines a problem when it throws language at it. Their high falutin’ language of choice defines “it”, whatever it is at the moment.
That’s how terrorism becomes some nice, soft cuddly exercise that will be blissfully absolved using kid gloves and lots of invitations to the White House.
Endlessly yakking and writing, progressives assume that talking about something is tantamount to solving it.
Problems (e.g. “poverty”) are, literally, endless.
Progressives like problems to be endless. Solutions would remove their raisin deeter, aka raison d’être
Kudos for “raisin deeter”!
My beloved late father — doctorate in and professor of English Literature, and lifelong lover of wordplay — salutes you from his grave with an invitation to “horse’s ovaries” (hors d’oeuvres)
We call them whores’ doovers. (sounds better than it reads)
One problem that conservatives have, is that while they have the tactical advantage (facts) they surrender the strategic advantage to the Left. We need to go on the attack on their strategic weaknesses.
For instance, for a Leftie, it is imperative that things be “moral.” Morality, as noted above trumps all else. But if you show that they are anything but moral, you destroy their self delusion. For examples I would suggest the howls of outrage that came from the Left when Bush was President but which are suddenly muted when Obama does the exact same thing or worse. Another would be the idea that only the government can give sustenance to the poor. If you point out that the amount of spending on poor equals giving a family of three $62,500 per year but they only see a fraction of that, the rest being siphoned off by the government, it makes it hard to justify further expansions of programs. And don’t forget about taxes. “Making the rich pay their fair share” has to be a call for rate cuts, or at least for simplification of the tax code, neither of which they are willing to do. Again more instances of immorality masquerading as “social justice.” We need to emphasize the hypocrisy that seeks power for power’s sake, not to help anyone.
There’s no arguing with a diehard progressive.
Wearing yourself out with logic and common sense, pointing out gross inconsistencies (like Obama getting a free pass on much of the same stuff for which GWB was condemned to hell) won’t make a dent.
As Lakoff argues about conservatism, progressivism is actually the mental disorder
Only utter defeat and sequestration will work
“Japanese and foreign artists including iconic German group Kraftwerk performed at a mass weekend protest concert against nuclear energy inspired by Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.
The “No nukes 2012″ event was held in the vast Makuhari Messe exhibition centre close to Tokyo.
Thousands came to support the initiative of Sakamoto, a pioneer of electronic music whose own techo-pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra performed, along with Japanese rock band Asian Kung-Fu Generation and Kraftwerk.
The concerts held on Saturday and Sunday were also broadcast on the Internet, accompanied by anti-nuclear messages.”
—
Victims protesting against the means that allows their expression. It’s the way of the left.
A small thing– the term “This Country” instead of America. Even the most conservative radio hosts substitute the left’s sneering term “This Country” where America used to fit. They’ve successfully changed the language there.
Also Ad Council ads. This proliferating propaganda is badly done, always skews left and we pay for it!
Heh, now I understand why Rush always refers to him as “Lakoff (Rhymes With)”.
Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced “Lake-off,” not “Lack-off.”
That would be using factual-approach pronunciation rather than conceptual-construct-approach pronunciation. Seems that we should do the dear professor the favor of keeping him within his own context, him being so comfortable with the mother-like accommodation and all.
Zombie, you are a little behind the times on the abortion debate. The cutting edge of abortion advocacy is now post-birth abortion, a term with over 19 million hits on Google. This makes Lakoff’s determination never to discuss murder in connection with abortion even less tenable. Neurological development at birth is a variable. Personhood, according to pro-choice advocates, cannot be determined at an arbitrary stage of neurological development which is why arbitrary date cutoffs are unjust. So what makes birth so special? It’s not, if you adopt the pro-choice neurological development frame.
If your philosophy can’t easily handle keeping infanticide illegal, you should not be a major political party in the USA. Lakoff’s approach can’t do it.
Wait, did I just feel an earthquake?
No, it was just George Lakoff stomping his feet in anger and fury at Zombie’s devastating review. It’s well known that Lakoff can’t take criticism, especially criticism of his books:
Having read that, the notion just occurred to me: Maybe Zombie is Stephen Pinker’s alter ego? I see a lot of similarities.
Wait, no, Pinker lives in Canada, doesn’t he? Well, it was a thought.
I don’t claim to be up-to-date on Pinker’s life story but it is my understanding that he is Canadian-born but has been tenured at Harvard for many years. As far as I know, he’s been resident in the United States for a long time.
Pinker is a scholar who I hate to love, but also hate to hate. His expositions are BRILLIANT — I’m thinking here especially of _The Blank Slate_ (2002, Viking) — but the “progressive” policy positions he derives from them are baffling.
I’m glad to hear he tore into Lakoff, and I’m outta here now to search & read that criticism as a whole, but I’ll be approaching that piece with my BS Detector turned up to STUN.
p.s. Pretty funny: I just tried to post this and got the error return: “You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.” For three comments in 30 minutes? REALLY????? (I’ll leave this window open and try again in another 10 min. or so)
I got the message about posting too fast on my FIRST post of the day! But I just pressed the Submit button again without waiting more than a minute or so (just long enough to copy my post into the buffer in case it got lost) and it worked fine.
PJM moved to a new server last night, and I think they’re still working out a few glitches.
“…a deeper understanding of rationality that discards the modal logic conceptualization of rational thought in favor of the better supported frame interpretation.”
I’d be grateful for some help. It sounds like the flibbertygibbet I just quoted above means “…a deeper understanding that talking about nutrition doesn’t sell the steak as well as talking about the sizzle.”
More bluntly put, “I wish to pull the wool over people’s eyes. You just said so, which makes me less effective at doing so, and I resent it.”
Someone help me out here. My degree is in engineering. Flibbertygibbet was an elective I sadly declined to take or even audit.
gvi
What “…a deeper understanding of rationality that discards the modal logic conceptualization of rational thought in favor of the better supported frame interpretation” means is this:
I want to prove that there is no such thing as “right” and “wrong,” so I have gone to the very root of human thought and attempted to prove that symbolic logic (i.e. mathematics) is not actually “logic” at all but is instead just something we humans made up, and it has no more reality-based validity that any other cultural construction.
This was Lakoff’s attempt to give a solid “scientific” foundation to moral relativism. He and his fellow progressives were endlessly frustrated by the arguments of absolutists who could draw out the chain of logic from human thought to physical reality to symbolic representation of that reality. Lakoff realized that for progressivism to triumph, it is necessary to forever disprove that there is such a thing as “good” and “bad” and by extension “right” and “wrong”, even in theory. So he and his co-author set out to undermine logic itself, in the form of symbolic logic, better known as mathematics.
His attempt was a cataclysmic failure, of course, but the book was so dense and unreadable that few people even knew what he was trying to do, so his career went undamaged, and he continued on his merry way.
Was with GVI on this one, ready to scream for help, until an answer -to Lackoff’s illogic- dawned that should settle the matter once and for all.
(BTW, I am also an engineer, believe in the KISS principle, and therefore feel enormous sympathy with someone also trying to fathom that pompous fool’s verbiage.)
Here’s the (simple) deal: Lackoff would attempt to prove that the old saw, “out of sight is out of mind” may be safely extrapolated to “out of sight is out of mind is out of existence”. IOW, what you don’t think about does not exist and cannot be real, unless you think about it in a certain way of which he approves. — This would in fact invalidate any “modal logic” (by this I assume he meant Aristotelian logic based on its two principal axioms of identity -AisAandBisBthusAisnotBandBisnotA- and, of non-contradiction -AisnotNotA in the same sense of time and place- together they constitute the art of non-contradictory identification of entities). L would instead prefer the shape-shifting “reality” of a small child, aka “frame interpretation”, which is to me merely an fancy new term for “standpoint epistemology”. IOW, “reality depends on your point of view”. Obviously, if you can prove that, you can “prove” anything, including that the Sun sets in the East, by merely standing on your head and looking the other way! LOL
Unhappily for Mr.L, reality intervened in the form of the human mind’s post-natal development, as discovered by the (non-shape-shifted) mind of one Swiss Dr. Jean Piaget who, among other scientific “tools”, used the ancient art of non-contradictory identification to discover that what he then termed “object permanence” is a basic, developmental, stage of a healthy human infant’s mental progress between roughly the ages of 2 – 3 years. Literally, before that stage, a child has no idea that an object covered up before its very eyes continues to exist despite now being out of sight, and -presumably also- “out of mind”. Afterward, it does, and will remove the covering to search for the “lost” object. Voilà! The beginnings of non-condradictory ID, ie Aristotelian formal logic, are innate. No magic there. The reality of an object, even when smashed (the child cries), can no longer be extinguished by cover-up.
Barring divine intercession, reality wins, always! Without that win/win, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Makes one wonder how Mr.L escaped autoconversion to a fundamentalist deistic belief system. That would be required to support his hypothesis of “frame interpretation”, but at the expense of his LibtardProg status. /Sarc Off/ Somebody needs to tell that idiot that he can’t have his cake and eat it, too. -LOL-
I’m more sympathetic to the nuts and bolts of Lakoff’s theories, but the real problems are that the theory is not really complete or coherent, so what he’s done is to leave off the real work of understanding the human mind, and gone off to dazzle the rubes with his half-completed technology.
It’s very Doctor Robert Stadler (Atlas Shrugged).
You serve a bad cause, the quality of your theory is hardly the issue.
Leftists always start with lies, move on if they can to theft, to enslavement, to torture, to murder. Then the next generation, raised on the idea that lies, theft, enslavement, torture and murder are different expressions of virtue, seeks perversion.
“The thief cometh but to kill, to steal, and to destroy.” – God –
He also said He hates liars…
Stellar as ever, Zombie. I know it’s gonna be a good day when I see a new article from the undead with the extra brains.
The “stern father” schtick really boggled me. People actually believe that? For a conservative father, then, my dad must really fall down on the job; the most aggressive thing he does is garden.
Zombie, if you ever spend any time at Judith Curry’s climate blog, you see this in action. She has posted academic paper after paper from social scientists always focusing on the question: why doesn’t the public buy climate alarmism? And the comments are very predictable; the liberals/alarmists say “hear, hear”, and the conservative/libertarians point out that the papers always beg the question; that the never acknowledge that there’s a controversy. And nothing is ever resolved.
Some people bitch about Dr. Curry posting another thread of this sort, but I think she’s subtly making the exact same point that you’re making; that this isn’t an academic quest, it’s a modus operandi. When you’ve read the umpteenth academic paper on why alarmists aren’t getting their message out, and never dealing with the fact that there’s a controversy, you start to get the picture.
It’s pretty clear to me that this isn’t ignorance, it’s malice.
You cite a good, concrete example of the Lakoff strategy in action.
A similar thing happens in discussion of tax hikes: liberals always “wonder” why conservatives want to increase the deficit by lowering taxes — never once admitting that lower taxes spur economic activity and thereby usually end up increasing federal revenues. In other words, liberals never concede that there is a valid conservative point or a controversy — they just wonder why conservatives refuse to see “the truth,” just as in the climate debate.
I’ve noticed that for ages. They build the presumptions into the question. I don’t think that’s an accident, either.
Definately a liberal feature and not a bug.
Here’s a perfect example, from Rick Moran’s Tattler on why conservatives are happier, quoting the NYT:
Note how they run circumstance and oppression together as if they are comparable phenomena. One is the natural way of the universe, the other is a deliberate conspiracy. To a liberal, they’re the same species. To a liberal “shit happens” is the same thing as “racist”. This kind of rhetorical sleight-of-hand often goes unnoticed. As Dennis Praeger once noted, even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being tripped over. But dogs have more sense than progs.
Not much escapes your keen eye! “Circumstance and oppression” is another great example.
A bland-seeming but key sentence in the review actually summarizes my entire reading experience: “Every page, every paragraph, every sentence in the entire book could be unpacked in a similar way…” Basically every single sentence Lakoff writes includes some kind of “rhetorical sleight-of-hand”. To fully analyze the bias in the book would take an entirely separate book five times as long as the original. It was so overwhelming that I just gave up even trying to list them. And — as you point out — the same holds true for the daily avalanche of liberal media writings. The attempt to sneak their frames into phrases literally every second.
This is why I always “frame” such discussions in terms of raising/lowering tax RATES. Never, ever, ever talk about “reducing taxes”. Always say you want to reduce the tax RATES, at least to the Laffer Peak where such rate reductions actually generate more revenue. In doing so, in a very real sense you’re “raising taxes”. In fact, when a Leftist says he wants to “raise taxes”, you should say “Then you should advocate reducing the top combined marginal rate of taxation from Fed/State/Local taxes below ___%, since that will raise tax revenues.”
Leftist static analysis always preteds that raising rates and raising revenues are the same thing. But that’s because Leftism privileges the intent of The Annointed over the actual effects of their policies. Since they intend to get more money from the eeeeevil rich bastards, that’s all that really matters.
If you went to a casino with a friend who threw hundreds of dollars into a slot machine, on each bet INTENDING to win a big jackpot, and you tried to point out the folly of that behavior, would the friend snap at you and say “oh, you just don’t want me to win a jackpot you rich bastard!”? Because that’s basically how the Left treats us in debate. To them, it’s always about how they INTEND for good and wonderful things to happen, and we WANT bad things to happen. They never ever acknowledge the disconnect between their Good Intentions and Disastrous Outcomes.
Conservative:
* Traditional natural parenting with authority derived from heritage and
experience
Liberal:
* Let the kids do what they want
Conservative:
* Traditional natural morality
Liberal:
* If it feels good; do it
Conservative:
* Each man keeps the fruit of his labor – that is not greed
Liberal:
* Greedy Big Brother government takes the fruit of your labor
Conservative:
* Desire for each man to do as he pleases within limits drawn around him by
the equal rights of others
Liberal:
* Desire for government (a small group of other people) to do as they please
within limits draws around them by the inferior rights of others
Overt Conservative Message:
* Life, liberty, and the creative pursuit of happiness
Hidden Liberal Message:
* Abortion & Obamacare death panels, tyranny, and the destruction of
happiness
The premise of a book like this is that adherents must be trained to package an inferior, flawed message to make it acceptable. The book, in other words, is a logical fallacy.
“Never repeat ideas that you don’t believe in, even if you are arguing against them.” George Lakoff
In other words: Close your minds. Don’t think about conservative ideas because, trust me, they are always untrue.
“You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident… I tell you Winston that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else; not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth.” George Orwell – 1984
Postmodernism in a nutshell.
But in the end, the Party falls. Winston does not live to see the end of it, but the Party falls. Why? Because reality does exist independent of the tyrant’s will, and the tyrant eventually breaks himself by trying to deny reality. It takes decades, nay, generations, but the Party always falls under its own weight. It is a refrain that echos through the ages, “Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the Great!” At some point, those convinced of their own divinity begin demanding at gunpoint things that do not exist, while they shake their fists at heaven declaring themselves lords over creation, yet they are but dust that cannot save themselves. Soon comes a crisis that no amount of power, no amount of oppression can shield them from, and they join the starving masses in the destruction.
Winston Smith: “The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind; surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false… There was truth and there was untruth; and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
You are close to it. The big idea to grasp is that this method of non-debate isn’t for winning. It is all about ensuring the troops remain in the Party. To program THEM to never allow a badthink idea to occur to them, which is tricky if it is also required to engage the enemy. Remember, the point of 1984′s NewSpeak was to make crimethink impossible, not forbidden. To forbid something implies an admission that it exists. For now they just relegate our ideas to crazytown, later they will totally wipe them from memory.
And if they retain functional control of the media and the culture they can win with this insane notion. If they can eliminate our ideas from the debate to the point where they can avoid ever even allowing a critical mass to be exposed to them it is game over. We have the Internet now though so they will have a much harder time of it, but even a decade ago their notion of simply ignoring us was very viable and was working. It is currently very hard to have a debate on pretty much anything, even within the right side of the web, without a conscious effort to avoid using their framing.
First, thanks for the coverage zombie, I think this goes up high with your fauxtography of a few years back.
Second, I need me a copy of this book! Perhaps I’ll steal one.
I can’t even take the time to read your entire post right now, I’ll try to come back later, but one thing jumped out at me:
So while liberals studiously avoid analyzing anything conservatives say, conservatives meanwhile are avidly dissecting every single thing liberals say.
STOP! THAT’S A TRAP! And it’s a trap just for the reason that Lakoff says it is. I recommend instead that you TAKE LAKOFF’S ADVICE and do not use DEMOCRATIC language. Don’t say the devil’s name.
I posted elsewhere on PJM the other day, that the Democratic rhetorical strategy is obviously to dump gibberish on you faster than you can refute or even deconstruct it. This is a time-honored strategy: you both get covered with mud, and the pig loves it. Don’t fall for it, or into it.
Just one other point, it so happens I’ve been reading Lakoff for decades, and while I don’t agree with a lot of his psychology, he seems to have shifted to rhetoric, which is a different thing, and he seems rather better at it. I don’t know Mr. Lakoff personally but I know his type. He may be a leftist of sorts, but my guess is that as a good academic he doesn’t particularly have to believe anything that he says, other than if he starts getting sucked into his work and believing his own hype, and we all should know where that gets you.
Many things in Zombie’s review made my eyebrows lift involuntarily but none more than the description of the progressive family. It struck me that if this is the sort of family life that actually creates progressives, then the progressive leaders who have actually lived would surely come from such families.
I don’t know a lot about the personal lives of most progressives but I have read quite a lot about Stalin, including many details of his personal life. I contrasted Lakoff’s portrayal of progressive families with what is actually known about the life of one of the most indisputably progressive leaders in history.
Stalin grew up dirt poor in Georgia (the one in Europe of course), the only surviving child of a cobbler, his siblings all having died in infancy. By most accounts, Stalin’s father, Vissarion, was not only a drunk but a brute who frequently beat his son. Most accounts have Vissarion dying while Stalin was still a boy but one account had Vissarion becoming estranged from his family and living in a gutter in the city for many years. In either case, the father’s influence was short-lived. Stalin’s mother was a devoutly religious woman who wanted nothing more than for her only child to become an Orthodox priest. She made ends meet by taking in washing and somehow finagled her son’s way into an Orthodox seminary where he studied for the priesthood. Having fallen in with Marxists, Stalin eventually got kicked out of the seminary a year before completing his training and soon took on the life of a professional revolutionary. For many years thereafter, he had almost no contact with his mother but, once he had become a Bolshevik leader, had money sent to her and arranged for Bolshevik colleagues to look after her.
Finally, in the last years of her life, he arranged for her to come visit him in Moscow. On one occasion during her visit, he asked why she’d hit him so much when he was growing up – she was apparently at least as abusive as her husband had been – and she explained that she felt it necessary to make him a man.
Try as I might, I can’t see Lakoff’s progressive family in the upbringing that Stalin actually had. So just how DID Stalin become progressive? By Lakoff’s reasoning, Stalin should have become a conservative/reactionary if anything.
I wish I knew more about the family lives of other top progressive leaders like Marx, Lenin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, etc. It would be fascinating to see if ANY of these people actually grew up in the type of family Lakoff describes as the one that creates and nurtures progressives….
The reason I make this point is that if Lakoff means us to believe that he actually IS a scientist and takes it seriously, he should be able to produce proof that his theories work as he predicts. That proof would buttress his claims. However, if the real world actually contradicts what Lakoff predicts, his theories are greatly weakened if not fatally wounded.
And if he can’t or won’t try to prove his theory, then he is not a genuine scientist but a poseur and should be dismissed as such.
By Lakoff’s reasoning, Stalin should have become a conservative/reactionary if anything.
Oh, I meant to mention that also – Lakoff’s descriptions of familys are purely propagandistic, not only am I certain he has no evidence and never tried to find any, but also that he does not believe it for a second, and his own family life in no way follows the guidelines, either.
To a large degree I think he has them reversed, I think a domineering mother who abuses her children, is the archetypical “liberal” family, she’d simply wack the poor kids if they questioned her dogmatic teachings.
It’s possible that Lakoff’s prototypical progressive family reflects more recent progressives than Stalin. For example, wasn’t Bill Ayers the son of a well-to-do business executive? Yes, Wikipedia says his father became chairman of Consolidated Edison after Bill had already committed several of his most radical acts. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ayers#Early_life). I don’t know what the father’s politics were – although it’s hard to picture him being a Leftist – or what his family life was but Lakoff’s progressive family MAY be closer to what someone like Ayers experienced.
Dr. Lakoff has not come up with anything that hasn’t been used and said by bolsheviks and then Soviets. There are reasons why, in Soviet Russian, “to state and argue your point” the word is “to agitate”, why Stalin started his 1950′s wave of purges by attacking in print an obscure theory of Marxist linguistics (genetics and cybernetics followed).
It’s a big con, and a cult, and a war.
And yes Marc, we have lost a lot of ground. But people fought from the darkest Soviet places and times — going on that “all is lost” at this point here is weak.
The ground we lost is exactly where Lakoff attacks, the moral ground. It is important for us to reclaim it, to show that socialism hurts the most poor first. San Francisco already shows it; the street-dwelling mentally ill are moving to suburbs.
Compassion and empathy belong to us (that’s who gets marked for a con trick). I am sure Lakoff would have no problem to send you, Zombie, for some re-education in Lubyanka, if he could.
Oh and Zomb if you need someone to cover your back at an Occupy outing or some such, drop me a line, I am more silent with secrets than the grave.
I read down to this line which says it all for me.
“if lies and lunacies are repeated often enough and cleverly enough, then they can successfully win the hearts and minds of the general public.”
This is the democrat/liberal/progressive/socialist/communist modus operandi as clearly and concisely as it needs to be said. Do they not see it in themselves? That’s laughable. These people are smuggly convinced of their overwhelming intellect and superiority compared to the sheep they’re so eager to “save from themselves” including those irritating, neanderthal slugs that call themselves conservatives. If we’d just listen to “the message.” None realize just how irritatingly and incredibly indoctrinated they’ve allowed themselves to become by an ideology so bereft of common sense.
Boy, talk about effective propaganda. I’d resist carping at Lakoff’s effectiveness. The author seems to accept a political system that runs from ‘Left’ to ‘Conservative’. Leftists aim to destroy whatvever society they find themselves in. ‘Moderates’ are stealth Leftists, who vote Left whenever it counts, but pretend to be centrists otherwise. Conservatives adopted the National Review manifesto (standing athwart history yelling “Stop!”), which identifies them as a party of the status quo. Missing from this author’s radar is the ‘Right’, which evidently is too horrible even to address (per Lakoff?). It’s Rightists would would actually repeal O’bwana-Care (I’ve said since this Spring that Prez Romney will not repeal the ACA, ever). Rightists would fence the USA/Mex border and, yep, deport all 20 million illegal aliens. Affirmative Action? Gone. It’s not that hard to see how the Left can win elections. The Dems are openly the party of gays, felons, illegal aliens, blacks, Hispanics, and tax-takers in general. But try to describe the GOP as the party of tax-paying, law-abiding, hard-working, white people, and call 911. That being said, who can wonder why Dems get 95% of black votes and 2/3 of Hispanic votes, while the GOP gets 50-60% of whites? Minorities are aiming to become dominant in the US (to do this, they have to throw off white rule, such as it still is). The only people resisting this usurpation (As all animal societies are dominance hierarchies, there can be no ‘ties’. It’s the textbook example of a zero-sum game) are Rightists, and the author of this article doesn’t even recognize their existence — it’s just too awful!!!!!
Lakoff’s description of the idealized conservative “strict-father” family is a re-hash of the discredited ideas of the Marxist Theodore Adorno. In his 1950 book, The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno propagandized the idea that classical-liberal types who opposed communism were “pre-Fascist” personalities — even when their anti-communism was merely one facet of a general anti-totalitarianism and anti-authoritarianism (including opposition to Fascism and National Socialism).
As for his search for euphemistic “conceptual frames” to win over the American people to his way of thinking, perhaps he could replace the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence with the single word “crimethink.”
Good catch!
The leftist mind is essentially fragmented; a series of rationalizations held together by the glue of emotion. When exposed to rational arguments there is cognitive dissonance, so repeating the conservative arguments in any manner is dangerous and must be avoided. Leftist politics then becomes a game of keeping the emotions running strong enough to protect the fragile mental construct, while avoiding any sort of introspective analysis of one’s positions or exposure to any other. If exposure to an alternative viewpoint is inevitable, the leftist must ensure that such exposure is accompanied by an emotional trigger that ensures at least a short-term protection for the mental construct.
The use of narratives and euphemisms is more about protecting the mental construct than it is about creating a dialogue. The best analogy of leftist thought can be seen in the person that has done something contrary to their conscience, but feels the desire to constantly justify their action through different reframings of the situation. They believe that by reframing something perfectly, they can make that guilt disappear. They do believe they can turn beans into cherries if they can just frame it right.
I, Liberal
I’m sure that there could never be
A man as virtuous as me.
I’ve honed my precious self-esteem
In ways no common man could dream!
To feed my moral vanity,
I preen for all the world to see;
I thrust in everybody’s face
The noble causes I embrace.
And lest there be the slightest doubt
That I’m no bitter, clinging lout,
The bumper stickers on my Volt
Affirm that I’m no right-wing dolt.
As these credentials will attest,
I am the brightest and the best –
And true to my enlightened soul,
Utopia shall be my goal!
The planet should be mine to run;
I know what’s best for everyone.
My Nanny Squad will nag and scold,
Until the plebes do as they’re told.
My Social Justice Ministry
Will outlaw inequality –
With good intent unwavering,
I’ll redistribute everything!
I’ll be obscenely generous
With subsidy and stimulus;
To fund my drunken spending sprees,
The fat cats’ profits I will seize!
For those who fail, my heart will bleed,
But woe to those who dare succeed.
I vow to vanquish human greed –
To each according to his need!
There’ll be no want, there’ll be no war,
My Welfare Corps will feed the poor.
There’ll be no limit to my grace,
When I control the human race!
I’ll heal the Earth, I’ll low’r the Seas,
My Healthcare Force will smite disease –
And all will rightly worship me,
The Savior of Humanity!
A++++++
Brilliant! Even the scansion was practically perfect! You should set this to music.
Megauptwinkles.
Thanks Winslow.
Fantastically put.
The only problem with this brilliant poem is the the progressive will read this and not see the sacrasm. They will just nod their heads and think what an amazing person they are.
Nah, that third stanza gives the game away. “Nanny Squad” is not a phrase you’d hear out of a leftist. That’s a mustache-twirling line.
(I’d suggest an alternative, but I can’t think of anything that scans nearly so well.)
Great article – it explains a lot. I guess I would join those responders who would not share your optimistic tone. The problem is that their messaging *works*. As one commenter pointed out, based on the arguments (as we understand them) the leftists should not be winning *any* elections. But they *are*, so this messaging seems to be working.
Add to this the problem that they control the educational system and the next generation of American youth are largely being programmed to *think* in this messaging. Other than some bastions of conservatism and the emergence of the new media, we find a largely unreceptive audience in large swaths of the American landscape. Kids are being raised with the assumption that there is no other point of view, and that conservatives are evil people whose arguments are beneath contempt.
We would do well not to assume that this messaging is failing. It’s NOT (unfortunately)
A commenter on another blog (forget which one) which linked to this article made a similar, and equally depressing point:
Yes, as adults, we can’t be tricked into thinking beans are cherries simply by changing the label on a can. But what about kids who were raised on a diet of nothing but mislabeled cans for their entire lives? To them, when they open a can that contains beans, whose bean-ly nature is a biological fact, but which is not only labeled “cherries” but every can they’ve ever eaten was also labeled “cherries,” then those kind of young people can be convinced that a bean is a cherry, because they think the word “cherry” refers to the small brown savory protein-y nuggets in this here can.
One is reminded of the primitive tribe (I believe in the Philippines) which was unable to learn even basic arithmetic, because their counting system went “1, 2, 3, many.” And that was it. So to them, 6 = 7, and 13 = 5,000, because all numbers over three were essentially equal. The missionaries/educators had no luck teaching arithmetic to adults and late teenagers, because their minds had been ossified. But if they caught a child young enough, it was possible to overcome the numerical deficiency in the native language.
But kids raised in the brainwash-factory known as the urban pubic school system may have no chance, because they think that beans are cherries, and have never even seen or tasted a real cherry.
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted… Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.” Vladimir Lenin
Youch. That *is* depressing. That’s why we home-schooled our kids – to teach them to think for themselves.
That’s also why progressives hate traditional religions. They don’t control the narrative and there is someone pointing to an actual standard to say “you guys are wrong”. I love the way that the Catholic church has gone on the warpath as they realize the danger they are in with this administration.
On a side note – isn’t it interesting that so many progressives describe themselves with “I’m a free-thinker – I don’t follow any one philosophy.” As soon as someone feels the need to show he’s superior because he doesn’t believe anything, I know what his dogma is, and how useless a discussion will be. I would rather talk to a liberal who admits it and wants to compare arguments. In my experience, someone who describes himself first as a “free thinker” (I think I am, too, but I am also conservative in my conclusions) is usually saying “you can’t assail my morally superior fortress because you are so far beneath me. Nyah nyah.” It’s a nice, safe position because you don’t have to listen to any ‘facts’ that don’t fit your perspective.
And this is exactly why the left HATES and derides home-schooling.
My wife grew up in in the Young Pioneers and later the Komsomol and is a rabid capitalist. I grew up as the son of an FDR liberal college professor and am a conservative. The “Jedi master of language”? Really? “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for you evil idiot”!
I am not surprised. Living under *real* communism would break most of the OWS crowd from their delusions in about five minutes (except for the real brain-dead ones). It’s the blind ones living in freedom who are comfortable who are seemingly susceptible to this drivel.
Yes there are many more communists in San Francisco than in Russia. And all of the people spouting Marxist crap here see themselves as leaders, not the peasant working in the tractor factory.
As Douglas Adams said in HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy: They would be “the first against the wall when the revolution comes.”
Everything is always and everywhere about religion.
As a liberal (blue collar/FDR) I want to thank you for addressing one of my pet peeves. Too many liberals are obsessed about the messaging and ignore the message. Between that and the “Shut-up is why” school of debate it is annoying to watch them blow opportunity after opportunity.
Lakoff’s theory has a lot to do with the failure of OWS – it was all messaging, no message.
A sensible liberal. Glad to have you here.
This is where Lakoff’s theories lead:
DailyKos: Representative Democracy is Anti-Progressive
And this is on the one blog that most strongly supports the “Democratic” Party. Hard to be “Democratic” when you openly call for the end of democracy.
You think the Ray LaHood’s “envy” of Chinese totalitarianism was a gaffe or a slip o the tongue? think again. They’re paving the way to normalize discussion of eliminating elections.
“Representative democracy empowers capitalism, and capitalism is fundamentally incommensurable with progressivism. Therefore, representative democracy is anti-progressive.”
Capitalism (as opposed to Fascist Crony Capitalism) is simply Free Enterprise. Under Free Enterprise the people who perform the manual or intellectual labor get to keep the fruit of their labor – they own the property created by labor – where each man gets to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor. “Progressivism” is where the State – a small group of other people after all – takes by force the fruit of the “little people’s” labor – where some men do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Therefore, “Progressivism” is indeed fundamentally incompatible with free enterprise and therefore incompatible with freedom its self; the term is Orwellian Newspeak for tyranny. Likewise, “Progressive Morality” is Orwellian Newspeak for immorality.
“With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor [Free Enterprise - Real Capitalism]; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor [Progressivism - Orwellian Newspeak for Marxist Socialism]. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name – liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names – liberty and tyranny.” Abraham Lincoln
Malthus would be proud of the last “harms to the earth bit”
“We don’t need to rethink our ideas — we just need to express ourselves more clearly.”
Obama has obviously sucked at the Lakoff teat- and taken it one step further. Didn’t he tell us it was OUR fault for “misunderstanding” his brilliant communications? – yup he didn’t fail to deliver the Blue Book strat, we failed to ‘get it”.
um, make up stuff and repeat repeat repeat- sounds rather Goebellian eh??
this was great zomb- always enjoy your pieces.
The left only cares about the acquistion of power, always power.
The old Alinsky Left origionally sought to leverage the grievances of the “working class” in order to attain power.
That did not work so they looked for who had the biggest beef against society and sought to organizing black people.
They then expanded their coalition to include latinos, gays, “womyn”,…
I imagine this book will sell quite well. Lakoff should make a pretty penny.
Please STFU!!! Why would you want to tip off the Dems who try to follow Lakoff about how insane and wrong he is! They think he knows what he’s talking about because he’s a big UCB professor even though he never ran for anything, let alone won. That’s the way they think. They should keep following his advice, into the ditch.
Not to worry, Marty — since Dr. Lakoff’s advice to his fellow-travelers is to ignore anything conservatives do or say, the lefties won’t pay the slightest attention to anything anyone says on this site.
Your observation made me flash to the idea that a lot of liberals are walking around with the rhetorical equivalent of a “kick me” sign
“But Lakoff seems to be saying, throughout The Little Blue Book, that when you slap a new label — or euphemism, or “conceptual metaphor” or “moral frame” or whatever you want to call it — on an idea, that this somehow transforms the idea itself and people’s opinions about it.”
He seems to be saying that words are innately creative (as in, “God *said*, let there be light and there was light) which is a very religious concept. This is a belief carried to the extreme by the Christian “confess and possess” crowd. While it is true words possess power, their ability to create something out of nothing is a role we typically reserve to God alone. I find Lakoff’s position on the creative power of words quite interesting. Thank you, Zombie, for this insightful critique.
Lakoff probably doesn’t see himself as a god, but rather as a priest. I suppose he realizes that he can’t create mass or energy using words, but that is not what he wishes to create. Lakoff is using words to create false ideas in the mind.
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others… We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we’re doing… Power is not a means, it is an end… The object of power is power… Always there will be the intoxication of power… We are the priests of power… Power is power over human beings, over the body; but above all over the mind.” George Orwell – 1984
Liberals fail because a shit sandwich, even one prepared by a 5-star chef, is still a shit sandwich, and people are smart enough to recognize that.
So, how does Lakoff’s conclusion about conservative versus “progressive” families account for me? I am conservative down to my bones, and yet both of my parents were very liberal activist democrats and professors of the humanities at one of the finest universities in the nation (also in California). I maintain that it is because I had to leave the shelter of academia to find out how the world really works. Anyone who is in touch with the real world is quite naturally a conservative….or possibly a libertarian….but CERTAINLY not a liberal. In order for liberalism to work and produce the utopia that liberals seek, one very large detail must be ignored: Human Nature.
George Lakoff, on the other hand, exists within the cocoon of academia, Cal Berkeley no less, and yet he presumes to guide the democrat party in how to reach people whose daily existence is so far removed from his own that he comes out sounding more like a Scientology Auditor than someone who actually understands the real world. At the risk of violating Godwin’s law, it is creepily similar to another university professor of some reputation during the first half of the 20th century in Europe: Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels.
In the words of the immortal Bugs Bunny, “What a maroon!”
The whole “strict father vs nanny state” theory falls apart when you actually look at the real world, but that is why someone like Lakoff can still spout it since he’s not trying to actually argue it as a serious theory. Its not based on any conclusive longitudanal scientific or sociological studies comparing how people were raised and what type of political belifs they end up with. The belief has been around for decades so there have been plenty of chances to prove the theory if some acdemic wanted to do it, but as far as I know no one has succeeded or Lakoff would probably have cited them.
Pure anecdotal evidence with people like me who has good caring liberal parents, but I ended up being very conservative, mostly I think because of reading a lot of different political philophy and history books and other life experiences. And vice versa for plenty of liberals. Plenty of siblings end up having very different political views so its obvious that there are often more important factors than what types of parents you had.
More perversely, it’s just a snotty way of separating a fool and his $11.
Great review, Zombie. Thanks!
Hypnosis and self-hypnosis haven’t really changed much. I’m struck by the similarity of Lakoff’s instruction to his fellow communalists to tune out conservative arguments to L. Ron Hubbard’s similar edicts to Scientologists (now enshrined as “religious” dogma) NOT to read newspapers, watch TV news, or watch movies such as “A Clockwork Orange.”
Yeah, my two hobbies are aligning again today, with Nicole Winfield’s article about the LC cult’s formation of young women. Weird.
But what I noticed from the article here, is that Lakoff says when liberals lose, it’s because they don’t state their message effectively, but that’s in fact what he’s in charge of, and they do what he says-we know this because we all read liberalspeak in the news. So what he’s saying is that he sucks at what he does so they should all buy his book and keep doing what he says which he doesn’t do very well.
I need a beer, and maybe some bacon; my head hurts now.
“LC”
A little help for the acronymically challenged, please?
(Oh, and if you have a link to the article you mentioned, I’d like to read it. I just searched for “Nicole Winfield” and got plenty of hits re: Vatican politics, but nothing specifically about women. My Google-fu must be weak today. Thanks much!)
Sorry! Background noise (aka “pesky real life”) has been distracting this week: LC is Legion of Christ, here is Ms Winfield’s article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/10327655
Prof.Lakoff (rhymes w/–hahaha)can write a little blue or a big 2700pp. Redbook and it still will be true, that the basic family (dad, mom and kids)is the fundamental unit of society, from the Arctic Circle to New Zealand, et al. My paternal grndparents discussed farm matters and family issues together, my other grandparents were a partnership, too. It was true in my household, too, and is definitely true in my son’s home; he and his wife are college graduates.
I firmly believe and posit that limited and local government is best. Having every part of life governed by bureaucrats of indeterminate abilities in Washington, D.C. is not, to me, an attractive future life situation, even though there are apparently a lot of bureaucrats and their bosses who have exactly that in mind.
The estimable Prof. Lakoff is apparently one of those.
BTW, Zombie. Our old friend Johnny “A Physicist” is over at Curry’s right now with this bit of wisdom:
From the mouths of progs…
Extremely well-written critique, Zombie, as always. Reading those samples of Lakoff’s writing in your review makes me miss Saul Alinsky, of all people. Say what you want about Alinsky, that wretched dead radical, but at least he was straight-up about where he stood and what he thought. Understanding Lakoff and his disciples, on the other hand, is like cutting soup with a knife.
It makes perfect sense that many progressives blame their messaging when they lose and ignore policy debate – in both cases, it’s a tacit admission that their policy arguments are weak. This would seem to make the counter-strategy obvious, but I don’t think it’s so simple. Telling people the views they hold are wrong and explaining why comes off as arrogant and usually causes people to become defensive, if not hostile. To win people over, you need to guide them through the change of perspective a bit. Not many people have the patience for that.
Heh. The harsh parenting style is much more common in some of the minority groups that tend to support the Democrats then it is with Republicans. My left wing hispanic in laws think I’m an overly permissive parent.
But that’s the #1 leftist debating tactic: always accuse your opponents of whatever your weak spot is first. Then they can’t accuse you of the same thing. Preemption and projection. The best way to stay immune from criticism.
If you want to see what Obama and the left are planning to do next (or are already doing in secret) then just look at the headlines to see what conservatives are being accused of today.
One of my sisters is a squishy lib, not completely into the Kool-Aid, but she doesn’t want to argue with her husband who is all-in-for-O. However, she sees nothing repressive about refusing to have meat in her house, much less cooking it. She’s ejected leather from the house (What kind of riding saddle can she use—plastic? And is it even consistent to ‘exploit’ animals in this way?) Choice in what to eat is only for her, apparently not for her husband or kids. The dearest wish of her son is to be a Boy Scout, with his friends, in their small town: but his mother despises the BSA for its current ban on gay Scoutmasters, and said no. When it’s suggested that she is being every bit as oppressive as our parents were for forbidding short skirts, makeup, etc., she doesn’t understand what you’re getting at. She’s perfectly certain that she is morally better than you. But it keeps family gatherings lively!
The only instructions greedy Democrat pigs need, is to how to redefine taxation as charity, so the filthy little thieves can rob taxpayers blind, while pretending to be philanthropists.
The left has been attempting to frame the debate for a long time. Notice how they siezed the term “progressive” back in the late 1800s, and the term “liberal” after that (sometime prior to the late ’40s). When the term “liberal” gained a bad rep, they switched back to “progressive” (in an era where they would more accuratly call themselves “regressives”). You can call a toilet a “bathroom” or whatever else you want, it doesn’t improve the smell or change it’s nature, same with leftists.
Also, conservatives haven’t just recently come to the side of freedom. Look at the ’30s and FDR and the conservative rearguard of that era; conservatives were losing the fight then, but they were on the side of freedom. It was the New Dealers who were telling farmers how many acres of tomatos they could grow.
When someone manages to achieve the kind of international cooperation and worldwide community of man that liberals say they support, they start yelling “exploitation” and “outsourcing”.
Herr Lakoff suffers from what I call the “Arrogance of the Professions.” There is nothing inheritly wrong with what most people do for a living. In this case, I mean those at the top of the professional classes.
Too often those educated specialists develop a misguided and misshapen notion of their value to society. While they may contribute to it to some degree, no one profession is indispensible. Not among them, anyway.
We see it often without noting it. The attitude that if “they would only let us [blank] run the country we could fix everything.” We hear it from scientists, lawyers, college professors and even actors. They believe in their value to the point that they think they know better how you should live your life than you do.
Lakoff approaches politics thinking all problems stem not from WHAT is being said but HOW it is being said. He uses his strength, linguistics, to prove himself right and uses it again to declare himself the winner. In his own arrogance we see the beginning of his downfall. And he is taking the Democratic Party with him.
The moral underpinnings of liberalism vs those of conservatives is explored in a great book by Jonathon Haidt – “The Righteous Mind.”
This was one of the most intellectually illuminating books on human nature I’ve read in a decade at least.
Liberals have a much more limited and narrow moral vision compared to conservatives. Hence they are much less prepared for dealing with reality (and arithmatic!) Conservatives have twice the set of moral concerns according to Haidt’s reseach.
Lakoff’s book reads like a typical liberal rationalization.
FYI Lakoff published a book several years ago called “Don’t Think of an Elephant” that sounds exactly like “The Little Blue Book” — the “Blue Book” must be a re-issue. Thanks for the review, Zombie.
Lakoff has been coasting for decades on his “brilliant” “insight” that conservatives are psychological infants who crave a “strict father” social system to emulate the sadistic and loveless upbringing they experienced at the hands of their own strict conservative fathers. Liberals, conversely, strive to create a “nurturing mother” society as a cultural expression of the way they were lovingly raised by their altruistic and forgiving leftist moms.
Oh, dear God. You have GOT to be joking. Freud is barfing in his grave.
P.S. Zombie, please post more often!!!
Great work, Lakoff! Keep it coming — all the way to November and beyond! HA HA HA!
This talk about “Narratives” reminds me of what Bill Ayers has said on the topic:
“The hallmark of writing in the first person is intimacy. . . . But in narrative the universal is revealed through the specific, the general through the particular, the essence through the unique, and necessity is revealed through contingency.”
“Narrative begins with something to say—content precedes form.”
“Narrative writers strive for a personal signature, but must be aware that the struggle for honesty is constant.”
Surely the purpose of a Lakoff book is to make Lakoff money. He’s the PT. Barnum of Berkley.
My harshest criticism of your essay, Zombie, is right here:
There’s a typo: “thrity years ago”
I’ve now fixed the typo, so you have nothing left to criticize!
Thanks.
However vapid this sloganeering is it seems to be working. It’s goal is not to convince, it is to use peer pressure to make people claim to take a particular view, and then to act in accordance with it. And the result has been a completely cowardly Republican Party establishment that consistently caves in to this nonsense and compromises when the Democrats never compromise. Thus: a “conservative” president gives us No Child Left Behind (What?! You WANT to leave some children behind?! Well then, pass the bill!), four trillion in new debt that the Left can disparage conservatives for so that they can give us five trillion in less than half the time, and (ultra-right-wing-conservative-originalist) John Roberts. If it’s so damn stupid (and I agree that it is) then why do “conservatives” keep falling for it? Has it ever occurred to anyone that there ARE no conservatives in the leadership of the Republican Party anymore and there haven’t been for years?
Be suckers again. Vote for Romney: the first to impose ObamaCare. Listen to the Republican establishment use the same kind of sloganeering to bully you into it. And then be “shocked! shocked!” when it all happens again. I won’t.
So, you’ll stay home or vote third party and help re-elect the communist? IDIOT!
More book reviews, please.
Narrative is a word that comes up frequently in political discussions these days, but I think that by and large conservatives are playing catch-up and that they need to understand and explain how the concept is being misused if they want to win the battle of ideas. Narratives are essentially stories. Stories are written by storytellers and the art of narrative consists of the storyteller imposing a structure on a series of events. The art of the narrative is the art of the storyteller imposing a structure that in some way resonates with the intended audience. Therefore, narratives properly belong in the realm of avowed fiction, since in avowed fiction (as opposed to stories “inspired by real events”), the author is upfront about the fact that we are being presented with a reality of his making and we can judge the merit of his work on its artistic value. Reality is too messy to fit into a narrative that can be neatly constructed by a human author. Whether or not there is a narrative to reality imposed by a Divine Author is a larger question for another day. At the risk of oversimplification, outside the realm of avowed fiction, narratives are lies.
Once we understand this point, the nature of the political debate (or what passes for debate) between the Left and the Right comes into focus. The Left is busy selling stories that it thinks will appeal to the largest audience. The Right tries to show that it’s policies will lead to better results in the real world. The Left generally wins this debate (even if it does not win every election) because the fantasy world it invokes is more appealing than the reality invoked by the Right. In the Left’s fantasy world everyone can lead the good life without the difficulty of working hard or making tough decisions, all it takes is cracking down on some small greedy group (at various times in history referred to as the bourgeoisie, the capitalists, the rich, the 1%).
So what can the Right do to win the debate? Coming up with counter-narratives is pointless; the Left’s fictions will always sound better. The only answer, as I see it, is for the Right to try to educate those who have not completely drunk the Left’s Kool-Aid as to the fundamental mendacity and irrelevance of the Left’s message. The one strong point that that the Right has is that on a gut level most people understand that there is an objective reality and that like it or not, one has to work within it in order to survive. If humans did not have this instinct, we would have disappeared shortly after coming into existence. The Right needs to demonstrate with clear examples that are relevant to people’s lives why it’s ideas by and large work and why the Left’s do not. I know that this is easier said than done, particularly since a substantial portion of two generations has been educated in the orthodoxies of the Left and, as a result, has been left with a deficient knowledge and understanding of history. I would encourage the writers at PJM and similar websites to work on developing the arguments needed to convey this message.
Excellent review, zombie, my old friend and fellow recovered “minion”. I’d love to see this posted at Amazon, btw, and watch the Proggs lose their ever-lovin’ minds.
They’ve been so successful in putting up a hundred-foot-tall firewall against perceiving anything that might puncture their sanctimonious armor, I doubt it will ever get posted at Amazon or anywhere else a “progressive” might accidentally see it.
I bought it at Amazon for my Kindle. I hate giving the commies money and I generally stopped reading their crap at Alinsky, but on your review, I decided to read this one. I have a lot of reviews at Amazon and they’ve never suppressed one, so I’ll review it and we’ll see what happens. Ain’t like I never been in a pi**ing contest with a lefty before.
If you saw Lakoff’s salary at Cal, you’d have a coronary. Don’t worry about throwing him a few pennies. Whatever money he makes from this will be perhaps enough to cover a week’s worth of cappuccinos.
Sometimes the following comes up ” video unavailable ” however if you keep trying you will hear it. It is the Little Blue Book come to life-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppgg_vF3Z-0
Nice. Thanks.
Lakoff, aka Ellsworth Monkton Toohey “La Cough”, New Global Savior — whose time is now up. By decree of We The People.
Not sure if it’s been said, but the whole idea behind refusing to use conservative terms in arguments is to ensure that both sides use liberal terms and only one side uses conservative terms.
It’s a measure to control the terminology and to limit the debate to only terms liberals use and define.
Just to clarify a couple points. I’m not saying it’s particularly effective to attempt this. As Zombie noted, the terms themselves can be dragged out into public square and the “liberal meaning” can be beaten out of them.
Just look at the term, “liberal.” What do they want it to mean? How is it perceived? “Affirmative Action” “Pro Choice” “Progressive” All terms the left has tried to use to frame debates and to get the argument played out on their terms. Of course, they have been successful with other terms.
It’s a matter of “Win the crowd, win the argument” vs “Win the argument, win the crowd.” They sneer at conservatives as knuckledraggers. They look down on the average voter. They don’t think either are worth convincing or even capable of “thought,” so they skip the argument and go right to winning the crowd by parlor tricks.
One of the tricks, sometimes successful and sometimes not, is to only use approved euphemisms, to never use conservative terms, and to hope that if the conservative uses the approved euphemism enough times, it sinks into permanent lexicon and liberal cna attempt to control the definition.
Islam is the religion of peace.
Islam is the religion of peace.
Islam is the religion of peace.
Islam is the religion of peace.
Islam is the religion of peace.
Islam is the religion of peace.
If we all say it enough times, it will be so.
Islam is the religion of peace.
Islam is the religion of peace.
Islam is the religion of peace.
Islam is the religion of peace.
Hayak’s “The Road to Serfdom” has a chapter entitled “The End of Truth” which speaks of this. “If all the sources of current information are effectively under one single control, it is no longer a question of merely persuading the people of this or that. The skillful propagandist then has power to mold their minds in any direction he chooses, and even the most intelligent and independent people cannot entirely escape that influence if they are long isolated from all other sources of information.” He warns of how these people seek to change the meaning of words. “The worst sufferer in this respect is of course, the word ‘liberty’.” Watch as this word has already been put in play by the left a la some of Van Jones recent speeches. Don’t let them steal this word! Call them on it.Shine the light on their games. We can respond now that we have their play book(sick as they are).
Thanks for a very well written article – but why do you call yourself Zombie? I bought a used copy of Lakoff’s “Moral Politics” 2nd Edition (2002) a couple of months ago, thinking it was a peculiar and erroneous way of thinking, read a little and put it aside as quirky & inconsequential. Hard to believe this guy thinks he’s a contender enough to publish more. I think he’s a decoy, even if he doesn’t think so. Gustav Mahler said something about the normal human ability to digest whatever comes to a person in life, keeping what is useful and discarding the toxic. All-you-can-eat book buffet if your digestion can tolerate and sort it out!
It’s just the online user name I’ve been using since the beginning of the Internet — actually, since before the beginning of the World Wide Web (I began using it it in BBSes a zillion years ago, when I was in diapers). It has no real significance — I basically chose it at random one day when I logged on to my first BBS, and I’ve stuck with it ever since.
I was raised in a liberal household, and had liberal beliefs when I was young, but over time, I realized that they were wrong, and that conservatives made more sense. I have been a conservative for a number of years. I am not unique; there are many other people like me, including the editor-in-chief of this website. I don’t know of many former conservatives who are now liberals. I think there’s one guy who wrote a book about his conversion, and there are some conservatives who have liberalized some opinions, particularly on social issues, but people like me are far more numerous. If Lakoff’s theories were correct, then there shouldn’t be people like me because our upbringing would make us permanently liberal.
“that this somehow transforms the idea itself and people’s opinions about it.”
Because Democrats ARE MiniTru…
“‘Lakoff endlessly argues that liberals need to come up with better ‘narratives’ and ‘frames,’ but then simultaneously acts like those new narratives and frames are factually true, that the new way of describing something somehow changed its nature.’”
That may be partly the progressive may believe it. But more likely he knows that he must keep this Goebbels-esque guidebook simple for the drones that are members of the Leftist cult. They have been trained to think this way, and he knows not to interfere. They can’t tell them their ideology depends on lies, as only the learned elite can be trusted with that knowledge.
Read this review and comment, on 7/9. Thought about it, off and on, ’till right fricken NOW. Now I gotta go get another Progressive Pile of Pus, just to keep up. {got ‘Rules’ early last year}
Taken in total since I linked this site 3 months ago or so, Zombie is realistically speaking : “The Tits.”
Always informative, and makes me think. I am at a loss to give him/her a higher compliment, so I’ll just leave it there.
“Drink well, my friend…”
Now I can finally throw out this Nobel Prize: I am The Tits!
My mission on this planet is complete. To the stars!
The first thing we need to do is never never refer to the term of the current occupant of the Oval Office as his “first” term.
The power to define is the power to control.
Oustanding article!
But I have one minor quibble: It should have never been written.
As long as Lackoff and his fellow Lack-offs continue their folly you so eruditely pointed out, we should not be so quick to point out their mistakes. Let them continue with their journey down the path to irrelevance!
“Never inturrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake.”
– N. Bonaparte
For Lakoff and the liberals to take my advice, they’d have to embrace a “conservative frame.” They’d rather throw themselves in a pit of bamboo spikes than do that.
Besides, the libs are spending their time in the media constantly telling our candidates what they are doing wrong and what they need to do to get elected…
Trying to return the favor, Rush gives them advice all the time and they never take it. I would not worry about that.
After all, if they start thinking logically, they’ll change sides anyway.
And it’s also a concept that every woman on some gut-instinct level knows is at a minimum somewhat true, if not entirely true.
Even the Reds implicitly acknowledge this by citing the need for psychological counseling. Who needs counseling after removal of a wart?
But Lakoff seems to be saying, throughout The Little Blue Book, that when you slap a new label — or euphemism, or “conceptual metaphor” or “moral frame” or whatever you want to call it — on an idea, that this somehow transforms the idea itself and people’s opinions about it.
How did that renaming work out for relief …er… welfare … AFDC … er … EBT? Lakoff ignores the fact that a new name quickly gains the stink of the odious concept to which it was applied.
How many examples of this can one think of? “Ecology” turned into “the environment” which turned into “sustainability.” “Pro-abortion” became “pro-choice” which turned into “reproductive services”, which really means pro-abortion and anti-reproductive services. Government spending became “investment”, which really means government spending. Sometimes, they even go round-trip. “Queer” was a slur, so people substituted “gay”; so why are there college “Queer Studies” departments? You can get a degree in Queer Studies at a dozen American colleges, none of which offers degrees in Nigger Studies, Faggot Studies, or Spic Studies.
Oh man, Zombie – on the mark. I actually tried to point this out long ago in a post called “All Conservatives Are Actually Pro-Choice” (Shameless plug: http://appealtoheaven.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/all-conservatives-are-actually-pro-choice/), but my point was the very one you made: why doesn’t anyone on the other side even address this argument?
I guess I can thank Lakoff for that…
Zombie, great review. But I have to respectfully disagree with one point.
When Lakoff says that liberals should never state the argument from a conservative frame, he doesn’t care one whit about winning arguments. This is a classic brainwashing technique designed to keep the “useful idiots” firmly esconced in the fold. If they were to state the conservtive argument realistically, it might plant a seed of truth in their mind. If that seed takes root, the blunders might come off, and the world gains not only a new conservative thinker, but one who can speak with authority of someone who has heard all the rhetoric and come through it alive.
Wow, I loved this article and the discussion that followed it. Here’s what struck me though: “Yet people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz don’t have that option, so that when she speaks, every single listener already knows that she is a partisan spewing partisan spin. She doesn’t have an “authority hat” to put on which might give her statements the veneer of impartial truth. And the same holds true for every other progressive or Democrat who doesn’t hold a professorship at U.C. Berkeley.”
Here’s the thing though — there is one group of progressives who specialize in wearing different hats — actors and comedians. Think of John Stewart and his “Clown nose on, clown nose off” shtick. He’s able to spew liberal dogma all day long but as soon as he’s confronted with an opposing point of view, he slips into “I’m just a comedian” and laughs off counter-arguments with a joke. That’s what allows him to simply ignore ideological opponents’ arguments. A conversation with Stewart isn’t a debate, it’s setting you and your ideas to become exactly what Lakoff recommends you be treated as, a joke not even worth taking seriously in a debate.
Actors and artists are an even better example. Since liberal dogma collapses on contact with reality, we now have an entire industry of people who specialize in creating alternate realities. Aaron Sorkin is a wonderful example of this. Sorkin is a talented writer, but when you watch “The West Wing,” or “The Newsroom,” you get a glimpse into a parallel universe where Republicans and conservatives simply do not exist. Those who claim those names are simply “evil,” the bad guys our heroic liberals must conquer in order to put the universe back on the right track. In this world liberal ideas always work, liberal programs never have bad side effects, and liberals win all the arguments because the very fabric of the universe consistently sides with them to prove them right. They are literally “Utopians” in that they’re able to show us the beautiful places that liberals always promise us but could never actually exist.
Given that, it becomes easier to understand why actors and actresses who become political so often become buffoons. They spend much of their time adopting the personas, mannerisms, and gravitas of fictional people. Like Lakoff and his “scientist” hat, it’s easy to take Martin Sheen seriously as President Jed Bartlett because he mouths eloquent words and arguments put into his mouth by very talented writers and directors who arrange the events on The West Wing to prove again and again that Bartlett is right.
Get Sheen in the real world though and you realize that he, like so many actors and actresses, is not very bright and is even less equipped to debate any opposition than your run-of-the-mill liberal. They spend their lives in a pretend world where they’re always right and someone else writes the words. It comes as an incredible shock to them when someone dismisses them for the buffoons that they are.
The irony here is that these actors and actresses could actually perform a greater service to liberalism just by keeping their mouths shut. Culture and art are powerful forces in our lives and if folks like Martin Sheen really wanted to help the liberal cause, he’d allow Jed Bartlett to do the arguing.
Nothing to add to the fine discussion; only that I would ask, to the assembled, that they let a little bell sound whenever they hear or see a liberal recite the word “narrative.”
Narrative uber alles! It’s always about “the Narrative.” Don’t believe? Google “daily kos narrative.” Just for shoots and giggles. As Z mentioned, the importance of the Narrative surpasses that of the facts on the ground; the facts must be made to fit the Narrative, not the other way around.
What is a narrative? A story. What is a story? A fiction. You’d think this basic point wouldn’t escape them. “Reality-based community” indeed. Been to Berkeley lately?
We deal in facts, facts and common sense are ours. Press them! and never be afraid to.
Yet another “why don’t the stupid morons we despise as inferiors not like us? Must be our PR!” book from a liberal. Ah well.
Leftists (er, now “progressives”, next year what?) lie to themselves, they lie to others and their worldview is such a lie that to them reality itself is plastic and malleable.
If anyone this is an absurd claim, recall the legion of prominent Leftist drones on national television who strongly argued that ObamaCare was not a tax even though the Roberts opinion pivoted on that exact issue.
You know, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had mean daddies.
Wow… That Zombie can write.
Very skillful essay.
“If only they could see my genius, they’ll appreciate what is front of them.”
This brings us to the fundamental difference between “progressivism” and “conservatism”: Progressives and their various ideological brethren have a deep belief that human nature and human culture are “constructed,” that there is no biological determinism, that mankind is a blank slate, and that human nature and human culture can be molded at will whichever way we want, if we just put our minds to it and manipulate the language cleverly enough; by contrast, conservatives and their various ideological brethren believe (correctly) that human nature is “innate,” not fabricated, not random, and arises from genetic realities that willpower cannot dissolve, no matter how hard we try. Furthermore, much of the misery we’ve experienced in the last century comes from futile attempts to create utopian societies by denying the immutability of human nature and attempting to change it by force.
This is precisely why no peace can ever be made with those who view humankind as things, animals or machines, some fungible “asset” that can be molded and shaped according to someone’s will. The rise of the will to power in modern times and the eliminationist mindset that invariably accompanies it presents, outside of the cancer that is Islam, the greatest existential threat to Western Civilization.
Sounds like a counterpoint to Dr Frank Luntz. All Lakoff has to do is dial test his ideas to give them some validity (or not).
Thomas Sowell talks about liberal intelligentsia in his last book, and I think it applies well to Lakoff. He notes that often, Democrats will believe, wrongly, that because they are an expert in one field, that they can be relied upon for many fields.
Thus we have Alec Baldwin desperately trying to explain economics on twitter. In Lakoff’s case, he believes that because he’s good at memorizing the thesaurus, he’s also a fabulous psychologist, policy maker, and debater.
Unfortunately for him, he is incapable of seeing the reality of this.
Calling Lackoff a “scientist” in any capacity debases the whole concept of science. As far as I am concerned, so-called political and social sciences are not science. They are subjective disciplines which have adopted the trappings of science without the substance. If a hypothesis isn’t predictably reproducible (testable, falsifiable), it isn’t fact, and in fact it isn’t science.
So just because Lackoff takes off his ermine Obama smoking jacket, and puts on his white lab coat, and speaks in a deep, authoritative voice doesn’t alter the fact that what he’s saying might be pure B.S.
I agree with Karl on this point. Hard science is like math, 2+2=4, to use an example from the review. He certainly is not a scientist. Even in science, the observer must be open to all possible outcomes and ideas. I studied science and math specifically because I found that social studies and ‘social science’ was full of politics and expediency, not truth, and any contrary view or thought I had usually resulted in a poor grade.
This review really put into words what I have intrinsically known for some time. I have gone from being a diehard Democrat to Republican to darn near full on Libertarian. Now I see why the divide between us seems to be so wide and getting worse.
The best Zombie piece in a long time, and that’s saying a lot.
For those who find this topic interesting, George Lakoff and his wife, linguist Robin Lakoff, often blog at the UC Berkeley website ( http://blogs.berkeley.edu/ ). I’m sure they would appreciate some feedback from the PJ Media’s audience.
Not having read all the comments so this may be redundant but here are my thoughts. Linguistic narrative has been the methodology of the Left forever. It reached into American academia with the theories of Jacques Derrida and pedophile Michel Foucault (though Chomsky’s politics mirror the two Frenchmen his linguistic theory went in a more traditional direction). Zombie is spot on as to the Right’s successful pinning of the nanny State tag on the Left, but Lakoff’s atatck on self made achievement and how it was picked up by Obama and Warren have left another opening for the Right to turn the tables.
Far back in the dawn of the modern conservative movement, after the 60 election, one of the true principles of conservatism was the butressing of the authrity of state and local govts against federal encroachment. They were closer to the People and could better represent the wishes of the People. This of course was almost killed by the segregationists’ use of “states rights” in the 60s. Reagan did not resurrect that notion of local govt,instead moving to the idea of economic liberty of the private sector from the power and taxation of the federal govt. With Obama’s Roanoke screed it might be time to return to the notion of elevating the role of local govt. Warren, Obama, and Laskoff imply that the infrastructure et.al. done by govt means federal govt. it does not. Those infrastuctures and services like fire, police, santiation, education are the domain of the state and local govt. Conservatives could voice their support for and recognition of the importance of these very useful govt efforts by emphasizing their local nature.Policies can be developed to foster local govt. Removal of federal regs like the education controls such as Title 1-9 which would rcognize that local school districts better understand how to use their resources. There would even be a conservative recognition that liberal NY or Calif are perfectly free to continue their progressive policies and take the appropriate credit or blame from their voters. Obama has opened the door to a conservative resurrection of the value of local govt. Consedrvatives must not let that door close.