Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate–The Essential Guide for Progressives
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Product Description
Don’t Reflect of An Elephant! is the antidote to the last forty years of conservative strategizing and the right wing’s stranglehold on political dialogue in the United States.
Leader George Lakoff clarifies how conservatives reflect, and how to counter their opinion. He outlines in detail the traditional American values that progressives hold, but are regularly unable to articulate. Lakoff also breaks down the ways in which conservatives have framed the issues, and provides examples of how progressives can reframe the debate.
Lakoff’s years of research and work with environmental and political leaders have been distilled into this essential guide, which shows progressives how to reflect in terms of values as a replacement for of programs, and why people vote their values and identities, regularly against their best interests.
Don’t Reflect of an Elephant! is the definitive handbook for understanding and communicating effectively about key issues in the 2004 election, and beyond.
Read it, take action—and help take America back.
About the Leader George Lakoff is the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a founding senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute. He is one of the world’s best-known linguists.
Since the mid-1980s he has been applying cognitive linguistics to the study of politics, especially the framing of public political debate. He is the leader of the influential book, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Reflect, (2nd edition, 2002). His additional books include Women, Fire, and Treacherous Things: What Categories Reveal About The Mind (1987), Descriptions We Live By (1980; 2003) [with Mark Johnson], More Than Cool Reason (1989) [with Mark Turner], Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge To The Western Tradition (1999) [with Mark Johnson], and Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being (2000) [with Rafael Núñez].Amazon.com Review
In the first of his three debates with George W. Bush, 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry argued against the war in Iraq not by directly condemning it but by citing the various ways in which airport and commercial shipping security had been jeopardized due to the war’s sizable fee tag. In so doing, he re-framed the war issue to his advantage while avoiding discussing it in the global terrorism terms privileged by President Bush. One possible reason for this tactic could have been that Kerry familiarized himself with the influential linguist George Lakoff, who argues in Don’t Reflect of an Elephant that much of the success the Republican Party can be attributed to a persistent ability to control the language of key issues and thus position themselves in favorable terms to voters. While Democrats may have valid opinion, Lakoff points out they are destined to lose when they and the news media accept such nomenclature as “pro-life,” “tax relief,” and “family tree values,” since to argue against such inherently positive terminology automatically casts the arguer in a negative light. Lakoff offers recommendations for how the progressive movement can regain semantic equity by repositioning their opinion, such as countering the conservative call for “Strong Defense” with a call for “A Stronger America” (curiously, one of the key slogans of the Kerry camp). Since the book was published during the height of the presidential battle, Lakoff was unable to provide an analytical perspective on that race. He does, but, apply the notion of rhetorical framing devices to the 2003 California recall election in an insightful analysis of the Schwarzenegger victory. Don’t Reflect of an Elephant is a bit rambling, overexplaining some concepts while leaving others underexplored, but it provides a compelling linguistic analysis of political campaigning. –John Moe
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and you never will….this book is so poor in its approach to understanding the majority of conservatives that it is laughable and near useless. Really, it just doesn’t sum up the thought process or logic of the right. Save the money and the time and just talk to a couple of Republicans.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Predictable Lefty — lost in the ozone of his own hot air
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
George Lakoff writes for the uncompromising progressive wing of the Democratic Party, in challenger to the Democratic Leadership Council’s metaphor of campaigning as marketing – i.e., identifying issues that a majority of people support, and if necessary “go to the right” – adopt some right-wing values in hope of getting centrist voters. (p. 43)
From Lakoff’s perspective, “radical right-wing” values include: (pp. 8, 83-86)
- “the empowerment of individuals to change their lives and their society by pursuing their individual interests;”
- raising a child to “do what is right and not do what is incorrect, and to pursue her self-interest to prosper and become self-reliant;”
- “There are right and incorrect answers, and they should be tested for” in schools; and
- “Competition is excellent; it produces optimal use of resources and disciplined people.”
Embracing these right-wing values would be hard enough. A further difficulty is that, according to Lakoff, “more than half of the electorate” judge: (pp. 7, 9, 42, 82-85)
- “the only way to teach kids obedience – that is, right from incorrect – is through punishment, painful punishment, when they do incorrect. This includes arresting them….”
- “The poor…deserve to be poor and serve the wealthy.”
- “Promoting social programs is immoral….They are against programs that take care of people.”
- Unmarried teenagers and career women who want an abortion “should be punished by impact the child.”
Despite these difficulties, Lakoff argues that progressive Democrats can frame issues in a way that will appeal to voters’ better scenery. For example, he questions readers to imagine versions of an ad “running over and over, for years” with the message, “Our parents invested in the future, ours as well as theirs through their taxes.” Eventually, he says, “the frame would be customary: Taxes are a wise investment in the future.” (p. 25)
Progressives can take courage from the knowledge that voters don’t know their self-interest as well as progressives do. (p. 18) In fact, “progressive/liberal morality starts with empathy, the ability to know others and how they feel” (p. 62) – as is evident in Lakoff’s description of voter beliefs.
Nevertheless, progressives will have to make funds in learning how to frame the issues. “Sorry to say,” he says, “many progressives reflect this can be done through ad agencies and through pollsters. That’s a mistake. You really do need linguists and cognitive scientists.” (p. 106) Like George Lakoff.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Really, I’ll give it 1 star because it is vital to try to know how the radical left (who get passes in the media everyday) really reflect. This book is nothing but propaganda, BUT is surprisingly honest about the secular left’s intentions, tactics, techniques, and procedures for undermining American culture and economy. If you’re not concerned about creeping Socialism or secular pressure from the left, then read this book. It will be eye opening to finally see how the Michael Moore, Al Franken, Ward Churchill, Nancy Pelosi crowd REALLY reflect. Go to a library and check this one out. Then get out and fight these guys to the death (metaphorically, of course). If you follow the pack mentality of the aforementioned clowns, then by all means buy this and feed your misguided preconceptions that the America that championed the world in battles vs communism, fascism, Nazism, slavery (you heard me right… Frederick Douglas, John Brown, the Quakers et al came from America (and England), NOT South Asia, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Africa or Arabia- where eunuchs were still acceptable at the turn of the 20th Century BC) is an dreadful, immoral country. Oh that’s right… Lakoff says us Americans are the terrorists. Or is it small Eichmanns?
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
George Lakoff’s advice and efforts to help John Kerry in the election really worked out well. It’s obvious Lakoff is dispensing the same wonderful advice to the DNC Chair Howard Dean. As an Independent conservative I am tickled with George Lakoff’s work. Thanks, Georgie
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5