Just stumbled across this interesting piece in the New York Times by George Lakoff, the guy who advised Democrats they could simply "frame" (which I read as "spin") their way to victory.
I was tremendously amused by his opening gambit:
Whose Freedom?
Ideas matter. Perhaps no idea has mattered more in American history than the idea of freedom. The central thesis of this book is simple. There are two very different views of freedom in America today, arising from two very different moral and political worldviews dividing the country. The traditional idea of freedom is progressive.
The traditional idea of freedom is progressive.
What's wrong with modern liberalism? This demonstrates it in a nutshell. Quick, anyone: what was the Founders' greatest fear? Answer: tyranny, by which they meant the constant encroachment of government power.
The exact opposite of what Lakoff tells his audience.
Lakoff, the man who advised the Democrats in their campaign to run our country, is ignorant of this simple political fact. He knows less about our nation's history than a fifth grader, and goes to complain, among other things, that conservatives are cutting back the rats-nest of byzantine regulations and government programs liberals cherish.
Republicans cutting spending? How I wish: but it's simply another bit of fantasy. Only a Democrat could observe Bush's near-doubling of federal education funding and scream, as Lakoff does "Public education is being gutted"! We spend more money per pupil than ever before -- and more than anyone on the planet -- but to Lakoff, that's a starvation diet and a decrease.
One can see traditional values most clearly in the direction of change that has been demanded and applauded over two centuries.
Re-read the above excerpt again: "One can see traditional values most clearly in the direction of change." Orwellian double-think and double-speak galore: Change is tradition. The original value is the move away from it. It has nothing to do with those original set of documents and structures put into place at the start.
What makes them "conservatives" is not that they want to conserve the achievements of those who fought to deepen American democracy. It's the reverse: They want to go back to before these progressive freedoms were established. What they want to conserve is, in most cases, the situation prior to the expansion of traditional American ideas of freedom...
Read carefully: Lakoff says they want to back to "before these progressive freedoms" were established. Before the "expansion" of freedom. Conservatives want to go back to the time before Democracy was "deepened."
... before the great expansion of voting rights, before unions and worker protections and pensions, before civil rights legislation, before public health and environmental protections, before Social Security and Medicare...
Several of these things were ideas the founders already had at the start, such as ending slavery and universal voting rights. These things clearly show up in the founders' writings and speeches, so to pretend conservatives oppose them by favoring the original principles is just dishonest.
But these are just thrown in to give cover to Lakoff's real thrust: The "progressive freedoms" Lakoff cites -- unions, "worker protections", "pensions", and excessive "environmental protections", "Social Security", "Medicare" -- again, are inventions of the twentieth century.
If you oppose these, Lakoff implies, you are opposing the "traditional" idea of American freedom.
(As if the Founding Fathers' fondest wish was to see the establishment of Nixon's EPA, our waste-ridden Medicare program, and socialist-style wealth redistribution? He seems to be confusing Madison and Marx.)
Freedom defines what America is-and it is now up for grabs. The radical right is in the process of redefining the very idea. To lose freedom is a terrible thing; to lose the idea of freedom is even worse.
Freedom is "now" up for grabs? I thought he just admitted the idea had been "expanding" all along. And, after admitting it was his kind of people who have been changing the definition all along -- and saying that was a good thing -- he now scares his reader with the spectre of the "radical right" (is there any other kind for Lakoff?) is trying to doing the exact same thing. Except that's bad now.
Baaahd! agreed the sheep.
The constant repetition of the words "liberty" and "freedom" by the right-wing message machine is one of the mechanisms of the idea theft in progress. When the words are used by the right, their meaning shifts-gradually, almost imperceptibly, but it shifts.
Projection. The definition shifts gradually, of course -- but as far as I can see it has shifted to the point where Democrats think "freedom" means socialism:
.... [Many Democrats ask:] How can Bush mean anything by "freedom" when he works against Franklin Delano Roosevelt's four freedoms: freedom of speech and religion and freedom from want and fear?
I don't know: How could anyone in America "mean anything" by "freedom" if they used the word before FDR redefined it? What about the 150 years of US history before that point?
Were the founding fathers using FDR's socialist redefinition of freedom back in 1776? Was their complaint that they were suffering from "want" and "fear" under British rule? (To the contrary, they were wealthy, and there was more fear and risk involved in breaking away than staying put.)
And even today, precisely which programs would guarantee all Americans this alleged basic right to be free from "want" and "fear"? I dread to think.
Yes, Bush's acts do contradict the progressive idea of freedom -- my idea of freedom. But progressives are engaging in fantasy when they assume that their idea of freedom is the only possible one and thereby deny that the radical right has any idea at all of freedom. This form of denial results in the view that Bush is saying nothing when he speaks of "freedom," that he is just degrading the language, that he is no more than a cynical and opportunistic propagandist who doesn't mean what he says.
In thinking this way, progressives are blinding themselves to the real and constant progress by the radical right toward cultural and political domination. It is tempting to dismiss Bush and members of the radical right as liars and hypocrites-but this is too easy. It is much scarier to think of Bush and others on the right as meaning what they say-as having a concept of "freedom" so alien to progressives that many progressives cannot even understand it, much less defend against it.
According Lakoff (who should know, being one himself) many progressives can't even understand the traditional liberal idea of freedom: that government might be harmful, and that that "freedom" largely means life and liberty -- not the broken promises of zillions of ineffective and harmful socialist-style programs, and a snarl of tangled regulations restricting every move.
But this is, in my experience, a fairly common "progressive" response: "We on the left don't even understand what you people on the right are saying." Of course not: because you've never been exposed to our ideas, or, when you are, you stop up your ears and go: "La-la-la-la-la! I can't heeeeear you!" (Mileage may vary: again, I'm just speaking from my own experiences here.)
After this bit of triteness, Lakoff delves into "science". Buckle up kiddies -- it's gonna be a bumpy ride:
Cognitive science has produced a number of dramatic and important results-results that bear centrally on contemporary politics, though in a way that is not immediately obvious.
We think with our brains.
Wow. "We think with our brains?" That's almost as stunning as his constant assurance, to fellow 'progressives', that conservatives actually have ideas.
The concepts we think with are physically instantiated in the synapses and neural circuitry of our brains. Thought is physical. And neural circuits, once established, do not change quickly or easily.
Repetition of language has the power to change brains.
Which is why he spent the last two pages repeating the standard canon of trite, easily-discredited liberal maxims.
.... For example, the word "freedom," if repeatedly associated with radical conservative themes, may be learned not with its traditional progressive meaning, but with a radical conservative meaning.
("Traditional progressive"; I love it! That's almost as good as "radical conservative." Oxymorons galore. But sadly, this isn't marked as humor...)
"Freedom" is being redefined brain by brain.
Of course, if repeated often enough, people can also be taught that "freedom" had no meaning until FDR redefined it to mean the freedom to participate in the nation's longest sustained depression in the name of being free from "fear". ("All we have to fear is fear itself," FDR assured his captive audience. Never mind the massive starvation my policies will inflict on you.)
Though Lakoff assures his audience: yes, conservatives actually mean something by "freedom" which is different than what liberals (excuse me: "progressives") mean -- Lakoff never lets the cat out of the bag.
Perhaps Lakoff will clue his readers in in future chapters; but this New York Times excerpt clearly doesn't do so, thus contributing to the very phenomenon that Lakoff complains about: that 'progressives' appear never to have been exposed to conservative ideas, so they come away with the impression conservatives are either insane or vapid.
Of course, there's probably a good reason this is so: evidence tends to undermine liberal ideas. Ideas which restrict the endless expansion of government are thus a bit too "radical" to allow people to hear. So it was at the founding, and so it is even now.