Quotes from George Lakoff

It is a serious mistake to assume that people are simply always voting in their self-interest.

The demon-of-all-demons for conservatives is, not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton! She's an uppity woman (Category 5, opposing the moral order), a former antiwar activist who is pro-choice (Category 4), a protector of the "public good" (Category 3), someone who gained her influence not on her own but through her husband (Category 2), and a supporter of multiculturalism (Category 1). It would be hard for the conservatives to invent a better demon-of-all-demons. These

Framing the truth at the deepest moral level matters.

Reich's attempt to turn the conservatives' model citizens into conservative demons was doomed to failure, and it fell flat immediately. The reason is clear. The status of successful corporations and the ultrarich as model citizens has become conventionalized—fixed in the conservative mind.

that "meaning" in these traditions has very little to do with what people find meaningful in their lives.

The entire Strict Father model is based on the further assumption that the exercise of authority is itself moral; that is, it is moral to reward obedience and punish disobedience. I will refer to this most basic assumption as the Morality of Reward and Punishment. Reward

The conservative moral system centers on the well-being system—on personal responsibility alone, on serving your own interests without depending on the empathy of others to take care of you and without having empathy and responsibility for others. There are nuances, but this gets at the heart of the difference.

It is basic truth. Workers are profit creators

Thus, it is natural for liberals to see it as the function of the government to help people in need and hence to support social programs, while it is equally natural for conservatives to see the function of the government as requiring citizens to be self-disciplined and self-reliant and, therefore, to help themselves. This

Empathy is the basis of a major conception of morality. • Morality Is Empathy. The logic of empathy is this: If you really feel what another person feels, and if you want to feel a sense of well-being, then you will want that person to experience a sense of well-being.

don't just negate the other person's claims; reframe. The facts unframed will not set you free. You cannot win just by stating the true facts and showing that they contradict your opponent's claims. Frames trump facts.

The utilitarian person, for whom rationality is economic rationality (i.e. the maximization of utility), does not exist. Real human beings are not, for the most part, in conscious control of, or even consciously aware of, their reasoning. Most of their reason, besides, is based on various kinds of prototypes, framings, and metaphors. People seldom engage in a form of economic reason that could maximize utility.

a pension is a delayed payment for work already done. This is the most fundamental truth about pensions, and it is almost never said.

a pension comes with it, that pension is part of your pay, part of your conditions of employment.

Social programs are also seen by liberals as ways for the government to simultaneously help people (Category 2) and strengthen itself (Category 5).

pension is anything but a gift to an employee. It is earned. And it is set up to profit the employer as well as the employee.

Once your frame is accepted into the discourse, everything you say is just common sense. Why? Because that's what common sense is: reasoning within a commonplace, accepted frame.

Success is a just reward for acting within this moral system. This makes success moral. Competition

Liberals also see many social programs as functioning to promote fairness (Category 1). They see certain people and groups of people as "disadvantaged.

when a company (say, General Motors) or a city or state says to its employees that it cannot "afford" to pay pensions, they are engaging in theft and the thieves should be prosecuted

Never answer a question framed from your opponent's point of view. Always reframe the question to fit your values and your frames. This may make you uncomfortable, since normal discourse styles require you to directly answer questions posed. That is a trap. Practice changing frames.

In debates over the death penalty, liberals rank Absolute Goodness over Retribution, and conservatives tend to prefer Retribution: a life for a life. Suppose

To them, social programs amount to coddling people—spoiling them.

values. Remember, conservatives did not become successful by "moving to the left." They became successful by activating the conservative worldview—speaking the language of the base and inhibiting the liberal worldview by sneeringly attacking liberals. The