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Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea

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Lakoff has been taking a lot of unfair pops lately as the guy who thinks a simple word fix will cure what ails progressives. Unfair and he defends himself in his latest. As he explains, it is not about words but about pre-exiting belief frames that all of us are wired with. People have already made up their minds about certain things---they have a frame---and the key is to find the words that activiate it. it's about finding the right frames,which are already out there, not the right words.He also pounds away on those who insist that more facts will carry the day, and firmly lets the reader know that a good frame will beat an oustanding, fly me to the moon fact any day. The last chapter disects president bush's last inagural address and show how it skillfully uses frames to advance the conservative idea of freedom. A must read for anyone interested in how public debate is framed or even for those interested in persuasion. The book is a little denser and more academic than his previous one, Don't Think of Elephants.

George Lakoff's work on language and politics has already transformed the progressive movement. Simply by creating a new awareness of how language works -- from the perspective of a politically savvy cognitive scientist -- Lakoff has demystified the power of words and political media. At the grassroots, activists are much more aware that the manner in which we structure our arguments, the frames we use, make a difference, an ultimate difference. Lakoff's "Moral Politics" and "Don't Think of an Elephant" -- and his ongoing work at the Rockridge Institute -- do much more than create awareness. A new political language is getting written.

Lakoff is now pulling the cognitive curtain back on the nation's most important idea: the idea of freedom. "Whose Freedom" describes in clear detail how the nation's radical conservatives are redefining political freedom as something much smaller and meaner than the freedom embodied in our American tradition. To many of us, it seems paradoxical that greatly increased domestic surveillance by the government, loss of voting rights, and government intrusion into private life are seen by the radical right as paving stones to freedom.

How can this be? Lakoff tells us how. And he tells us how to redeploy a language of freedom that is open and dynamic, that speaks of opportunity to achieve, of freedom from want, and of freedom from fear.

The progressive concept of freedom is creative and forward looking. The form of the U.S. Constitution describes freedom even better than that great document's words. The Constituion is written so that it's real meaning must be continually discovered. It is written so that our commitment to justice will evolve.

We don't obey the Constitution. We live through it. When it was written, its authors did not know how we would be living more than 200 years later. They hoped we would live freely. This book will help us rededicate ourselves to that cause.

Several years ago, I read "Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus" with my then-girlfriend-now-wife (stick with me here, this does relate to Lakoff's book). This was a fascinating look into how the "other side" thinks, and perceives the world differently. I had numerous "aha!" moments, when a passage would explain something about women, and my wife would nod her head and say, "yup, that's right". And vice versa--she would say "Really?!", and I would reassure her that that was really the way men think. "Mars and Venus" was written by a male-female partnership, so both genders were reflected accurately, and the book is therefore a learning experience for both. And a bestseller.

Lakoff's book is like "Men are From Mars". Period. He actually does a pretty good job of explaining why/how conservatives and liberals/progressives think differently. As a conservative, I had a number of "Aha!" moments reading it. I much better understand why my lib/prog friends and relations think the way they do (not saying I agree with them, but at least I understand better where they are coming from).

On the other hand, Lakoff should have found a conservative neuro-linguist to co-author with him, because he badly misrepresents conservative ideas on a regular basis in this book. He almost falls all they way to setting up a "straw man" to knock down. Any liberal trying to better understand where conservatives are coming from, will be wasting their time with this book--you'll just be the choir he's preaching to.

So, interestingly, here is a conservative, recommending that only conservatives will get something out of this progressive polemic.

George Lakoff's work, in linguistics and cognitive science, is of utmost importance for anyone concerned about the current direction of political discourse in this country. Following up on some of his earlier books that tackled the expert and self-serving use of language and framing by neoconservatives, here Lakoff examines all of the inherent nuances and meanings in America's most important and overused tradition. Here we learn that freedom is an intensely complex concept with a core meaning that everyone can agree on, but for which the details can be abused by anyone to further their political agenda while easily deflecting criticism. Lakoff provides plenty of evidence that America's long tradition of progressive freedom has been hijacked and distorted by ideologues who can't stop using that word to justify their very same misuse of it. One of Lakoff's most winning insights is that the current administration uses the word "freedom" so thickly because they know that what they're promoting wouldn't be called freedom if one looked at longstanding American tradition.

Another strong insight, which also runs through many of Lakoff's other books, is that progressives have failed miserably in framing their interests as well as the Far Right has, and are forced to play catch-up with disingenuous neocon doublespeak like "tax relief" or "family values." Even "liberty," "democracy," and "patriotism" have been hijacked, with progressives falling flat in attempts to discuss obvious facts, when what they really need to do is frame concepts that will work with an electorate possessing a fleeting attention span. But while this book offers some stunning high-level wisdom for the freethinking American, in a quite strange way it's also built upon a pretty simplistic view of real world ideologies. Lakoff constructs not just progressivism and conservatism, but also everything from environmentalism to libertarianism, with series of reductive stereotypes. In short, a flimsy analysis somehow still leads to groundbreaking conclusions. Also, Lakoff's writing style is excessively repetitive. But in the end, the true value of this book is that it will help you decode whether power players really have your best interests at heart when they force the word "freedom" down your throat fifty times in every speech, or if they're just talking about the freedom to sustain their own economic and political power. [~doomsdayer520~]

Back in 1996, cognitive scientist George Lakoff wrote "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think", one of the most enlightening treatises on the motivating factors that polarize the political spectrum of thinking. A professor of linguistics, Lakoff is a senior fellow of the Rockridge Institute, the renowned liberal think tank that concentrates in part on helping Democratic candidates and politicians with re-framing political metaphors. His latest book focuses on just one word - freedom - and how the concept has been interpreted by the two parties in exclusive, intractable ways.

Having been absorbed by "Moral Politics" and the slim follow-up published in the 2004 election year, "Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives", I have to admit I am a bit disappointed with the self-inflicted limitations of his new tome and how Lakoff basically recycles much of the groundbreaking material he introduced in the first book. He again argues that conservatives believe in a "strict father" morality in which the male parent has complete authority over dependent children. Liberals, on the other hand, believe in the "nurturant parent" model, in which a less hierarchical parental authority allows for greater empathy and less intimidation. Given this foundation, Lakoff, asserts, these two philosophies lead their adherents toward very different conclusions on what freedom means.

The father figure is the only source of freedom for conservatives, and the concept rests completely on morality and order, so much so that any hint of chaos and libertine behavior forces freedom to collapse. Consequently, it is a given that abortion and gay marriage are threatening forces to the accepted father figure. Freedom from the progressive perspective translated into an expansion of rights and opportunities. According to the author, it is a positive life force, but given his nebulous definition, his suggestions about how liberals can reclaim freedom lack an actionable sense to supersede the conservative domination. Lakoff wants individual progressives to aspire to a higher rationality than facts and figures and ultimately replicate the conservative mindset in pushing their agenda, but I was hoping for something more substantive than a "if you can't fight them..." response. He really doesn't provide any guidance on how to help progressives win the 2008 election with the realization of his action steps. Instead, the author encourages liberals to use more values-based arguments to tackle the populist values and elitist policies of the conservatives.

Lakoff's familiar views on framing come to play when he writes of progressives bringing greater prominence to their values in their speeches by using language that resonates with swing voters. He is at his best when he discusses framing, for example, when he dissects Bush's second inaugural address in 2004 and shows how the President's frequent and loquacious use of the term "freedom" actually pointed to the conservative conception of religion-based principles. The author falls a bit short when he becomes prescriptive with his thinking. He ultimately dilutes the concept of freedom by applying it to so many dimensions from democracy to heath to privacy. As he proves with "Moral Politics", Lakoff has the credentials to produce a treatise on the power of words and the resulting images that stay within the mind, but this may be a case where one concept, no matter how pervasive, may have been almost too limiting for him.

A lot of times the meaning of "land of the free" comes under question. Conservatives have a very nasty habit of misusing social issues like abortion, guns, war, patriotism, etc ... to promote fake "freedom" when in fact their real goal is to pay their corporate devils their dues any way they can. Lakoff has warned us in the past in "Moral Politics", "Don't Think of an Elephant!", and on his Rockridge Insitute website that more than following their own conservative rules, conservatives will stoop to the worst forms of faking nicety to window-dress their real intents just like the way the Taliban in Afganistan mixed in with the poor village folks and conned them into giving up their freedoms. For the past 26 years, conservatives and even some liberals continue to play the phone culture wars on the very same voters who vote them in only to see their genuine freedoms and securities robbed all the while being extra nurturent on the wealthy elite. No wonder people like Ken Lay of Enron get unlimited freedoms no matter how much atrocities they commit against the working class while the same working class folks end up getting the shaft no matter what.

If there's two books that must be read on the Fourth of July, make it this book and David Sirota's "Hostile Takeover : How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--and How We Take It Back".

Much of Lakoff's reasoning, and most of his observations, came as no surprise to me. They merely corroborated observations and conclusion's I'd arrived at independently over the past five years. But there were a few surprises. For as far back as I can remember, I've always subscribed to what I call the "next man's nose" principle: one man's freedom to swing his arm must end where the next man's nose begins. And for many years, ever since volunteering as a camera operator for various public access cable shows, including one produced by a local Libertarian Party organization, I've known that hardcore Libertarian notions of freedom imply a complete and utter disregard for that principle. But I had never realized the extent to which the Far Right notions of essential freedom disregard all but the most direct and literal applications of that principle. Nor did I fully understand the one underlying characteristic that sets the psychology and morality of the Far Right apart from that of the Far Left, Near Left, Center, and even the Near Right.

The only flaws I see in this opus are (1) a tendency to over-argue points after they've been made, and (2) a tendency to refer to those on the Far Right as being merely "conservative," when the more techincally correct adjective is "reactionary," or in some cases, perhaps even "counter-revolutionary." This tendency simply validates the Far Right's efforts to make their most extreme viewpoints seem as if they were mainstream, and works against Lakoff's own arguments.

Years ago there was a memorable TV commercial featuring an American Indian on a hill observing as a driver tossed a bag of garbage out his car window. The camera panned up to the Indians face to show a single tear in his eye. In my youthful naivety I assumed that the Indian was the victim of a careless polluter. Now I've discovered that the Indian was a radical environmentalist working to control and restrain business and tear down Capitalism. Greed is good, might makes right and civil liberties threaten our safety. Diversity is wrong and unity is weak.

In his latest book George Lakoff tries to make the point that the word Freedom and its meaning can be as subjective as an appreciation of art. The common knowledge understanding of what constitutes real freedom can be remolded by influential figures in society. When conservatives like George W. Bush invoke the words freedom and liberty they use it in the context of Conservative freedom which is a freedom that is generally at odds with traditional progressive freedom. Freedom and liberty are powerful words that work well in speeches because they tap into positive frames regarding justice and morality. However, to Conservatives, freedom means eliminating Social Security, it means the freedom to pollute on private property and the freedom to hire employees at far less than living wages. Conservative freedom is the freedom for the powerful to exploit the weak except you will never hear a Conservative say those words. When politicians invoke "freedom" it is important to ask what kind of freedom they stand for.

Conservatives are attempting to fashion a Darwinian survival of the fittest, winner takes all society. When Bush speaks about an ownership society and about personal responsibility he's talking about each person taking on all the rewards and risks of life. At first blush this may sound like a fine idea but as the author writes our economy is structured to have a certain percentage of workers doing low paying labor. Some people do not have entrepreneurial skills. Some people need to work on roads and wait tables and work assembly lines. The liberal view is that hard work should be rewarded with a decent living salary but instead wages have stagnated for three decades, the percentage of American's living in poverty is increasing and Conservatives have continually snipped away at the safety nets protecting our fellow citizens. The winner take all mentality is producing less and less winners but when they win they win huge.

Democratic liberals owe it to themselves to listen to Mr. Lakoff because many of his points are brilliant. He encourages Democrats to stop shying away from morality. Liberal issues ARE moral issues and the sooner Democrats start to think of themselves as the moral party the better. Another stroke of genius is his suggestion that Democrats need to stop following the polls and start changing them. Of all the ideas of heard in the past few years for improving the Democratic Party that one may be the best. I would also add that Democrats should stop being afraid to stake out firm positions on things like universal healthcare, torture and gay marriage. The Republican's have been winning elections fearlessly with legislation that attacks the very foundation of America's system of government. Surely the Democratic Party can show the same fearlessness in defending the institutions of freedom and equality.

As much as Lakoff's critics would love to bash this book, it's hard for them to disprove the hard cold fact that there is indeed a real difference between losing freedom and losing the definition of freedom to anti-freedom, much like what happened in George Orwell's "1984" whereby slavey is somehow "freedom" even when it ain't really so. History has shown that in a nation where people are aware that they have lost their freedoms, they'll fight their leaders to death to get it back. Yet in a dictatorship whereby a person or a group of people subvert the idea of freedom to the point that everything that used to be against freedom is somehow part of the definition of "freedom" where as everything that really stood for freedom is now defined as "anti-freedom" even when it ain't so. This is what Lakoff warns the readers about when he perfectly explains how the "conservatives" define "freedom". Just recently, our Congress and the White House have agreed to do away with Habeas Corpus as another assault against civil liberties goes unreported by most of the media that are Bush/Limbaugh puppets. We may not loose the Constitution but there's no stopping the traitors in Washington from subverting it to the point that it is there but it is not there just like they do with freedom. It's time for progressives to get their heads off the media cameras and learn from Lakoff and UNITE if they care to save America from losing its status as "Land of the Free".

In his latest book, George Lakoff, cognitive scientist and linguist at UC Berkeley, attempts to reestabish the idea of freedom as a progressive idea more in tune with America's traditonal notion of freedom than that of the conservatives. Lakoff's understanding of America's traditional idea of freedom includes: the expansion of voting rights, unions, worker's pensions, civil rights legislation, environmental protections, Social Security and Medicare. This is freedom in the traditon of the Roosevelts, Kennedy, and Johnson: freedom from want, so to speak. For a conservative, on the other hand, this is nothing but a list of big-government programs that create dependency rather than freedom.

But why, one may ask, have the conservatives been winning this debate? Using insights from cognitive science, Lakoff argues that they have been better at framing the debate; indeed conservatives seemed to have grasped the tenets of cognitive science better than the progressives. Conservatives, for example, present taxes and regulation as a contraint on a person's economic freedom, as oppossed to an investment in the common good. Over the past two decades conservatives have applied this technique in the media very successfully. Frames or metaphors define the range within which we think and make decisions, and are planted in our brains by repetition in the media. As a famous example, Lakoff cites the speech by President Bush at the 2004 Republican National Convention where the president uses the terms "freedom," "free," and "liberty" 49 times in a 20 minute speech. Apparently the president is a practioner of cognitive science.

The thrust of this book is not only to show that conservatives and progressives have distinctly different ideas of freedom, but to show that the progressive ideal is the better one. He calls on progressives to start thinking more about the ideology behind the conservatives use of language and to start making innovations of their own. They have to start showing that government programs are a necessary investment in the public good and increase freedoms rather than self-perpetuating bureaucracies that restrict freedom.

Lakoff's argument goes to the core of what the Democratic Party needs to do to win elections. How they go about it will determine whether they gain voters or lose them.