Quotes from George Lakoff

There are progressives primarily concerned with children and family issues, but such issues are child care, children's health, prenatal care for mothers, child poverty, education, the problems of minority children, child abuse, and so on. These very real concerns reflect the interests of the major groupings, but, to my knowledge, such groups are not principally concerned with the promotion of Nurturant Parenting itself. All

Framing 102 is about how reflexivity can be used for the good, at least for the good of most people, most living things, and for the beauty and bounty of the physical world that supports all life.

I think the issue to bring progressives together should be this most central of all issues—raising children to become responsible, empathetic adults.

Therefore, we all start out morally weak, that is, with an overwhelming tendency to do immoral things. Unless our parents intervene to discipline us, we will naturally become immoral. This

Privatization and deregulation constitute the outsourcing of democratically elected government with a moral mission to corporations that have a profit-making mission. The effect is to turn democracy into corporatocracy. PROFIT

The phenomenon of reflexivity is a form of systemic causation.

On issue after issue, the counterpoints to the conservative principle of the free market are the progressive principles of human dignity and the common good. We are interested in a market that serves human values, not humans who serve a market. Take

Truth must be framed effectively to be seen at all.

Progressives need a collection of proactive policies and communication techniques to get our own values out on our own terms. "War rooms" and "truth squads" must change frames, not reinforce conservative frames.

This contrasts sharply with the progressive view that markets must respect human dignity and serve the common good while pursuing profit.

Finally, there is the conservative view of the moral hierarchy. As we have seen, the rich and those who can take care of themselves are considered more moral than the poor and those who need help. But moral superiority on a wider scope is central to conservative thought.

It's fashionable among progressives to wonder why so many red state voters don't vote in their own economic interests. This is simply another symptom of 18th-century rationalism, which assumes that everyone is rational and rationality means seeking self-interest. [...] People are not 18th-century reason machines. Real reason works differently. Reason matters, and we have to understand how it really works.

Finally, Obama's remarks are carefully constructed to undermine the arguments of conservatives, who frame the social programs funded by taxation as government handouts to the undeserving. Obama flips the taxes-as-handouts frame on its head, to yield a frame in which tax breaks are handouts to the rich, and the estate tax is a transfer of wealth from ordinary taxpayers to wealthy individuals—a frame that tells a vital truth. It

Instead, progressives should speak in terms of the common concerns of voters—for instance, how a policy will let you send your daughter to college, or how it will let you launch your own business. 12.

The brain is not neutral; it is not a general-purpose device. It comes with a structure, and our understanding of the world is limited to what our brains can make sense of. Some of our thought is literal- framing our experience directly. But much of it is metaphoric and symbolic, structuring our experience indirectly but no less powerfully. Some of our mechanisms of understanding are the same around the world. But many are not, not even in our own country and culture.

We will begin with three analytic failures by liberals: 1. Conservatism is "the ethos of selfishness." 2. Conservatives just believe in less government. 3. Conservatism is no more than a conspiracy of the ultrarich to protect their money and power and to make themselves even richer and more powerful. T

In short, the moral hierarchy is an implicit part of the culture wars.

Conservatives don't merely want less government. They want to raise spending for the military—even bring back Star Wars—not reduce it. They want to build more prisons. There is no move to eliminate the drug enforcement agency.

In the strict father model, the "free market" plays a significant, implicit role. The market is a competitive system where the disciplined are rewarded through profit, and the undisciplined (and hence immoral) are punished through poverty. The market is an instrument of morality.

The main concern of the frame is that money be kept in the common wealth (or the hands of the government) in order to be used for the common good. HOW

Trust, honesty, and open communication are fundamental progressive values—in a community as in a family.

Epictetus, for example, asks us to think of the deity as the playwright who assigns us roles. Our business in life is to play admirably the role assigned to us.

From the point of view of a cognitive scientist, who looks at modes of thought, there are six basic types of progressives, each with a distinct mode of thought.

Bad apple frame. Consider the saying "A bad apple spoils the barrel." The implication is that if you remove the bad apple or some small number of bad apples, the others will be fine. The rot is localized and will not spread. Rot here is a metaphor for immorality. In a case where there is immoral behavior, it points blame at one person or a few people—and not to any broader systemic immorality, an immoral policy, or an immoral culture. This