Cheers for “Thinking Points”

I really enjoyed George Lakoff’s Don’t think of an Elephant, so I was quite happy to get my hand’s on his new book Thinking Points: Communicating our American Values and Vision.

While my overall take is “don’t waste you’re money,” (more on that here), there are a few very good points in the book:

Deep Framing: Lakoff argues that for long-term change, we need to get people into the habit of thinking about issues in a fundamentally progressive manner. It’s not enough to just put spin on the surface, we need approaches that shift the fundamental way people look at an issue.

My personal example of this is how we talk about the war in Iraq. It’s easy to quote the generals that oppose the war, but then we are supporting the ideas to listen to the generals and trust them about matters of war. We aren’t fundamentally addressing the core attitude that accepts violence as an acceptable way to solve problems. For long-term change, we need to go deeper. Hence, deep framing.

Bi-Conceptuals: Can Progressives reach out to swing voters by moving right? Lakoff says no. Lakoff argues (though he doesn’t cite evidence) that there’s no such thing as a “moderate,” but rather some people are bi-conceptual. That is, they operate using both progressive and conservative frames.

How does a progressive reach a bi-conceptual? By talking to them like a progressive so that they turn to their progressive frames. Bi-conceptuals can operate as a liberal and as a conservative: you won’t get them to operate as a liberal by dressing up like a conservative.

Values are important: Progressives are progressives because of what we care about. We have empathy, we care about the fate of our children, of the poor, and of the earth. These values provide the “why” that lies behind our policies.
They are important, we should be wiling to talk about them.