The ALL NEW Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate

by George Lakoff

  •Freedom, opportunity, prosperity. There is no fulfillment without freedom, no freedom without opportunity, and no opportunity without prosperity.

  •Community, service, cooperation. Children are shaped by their communities. Responsibility requires serving and helping to shape your community. That requires cooperation.

  •Trust, honesty, open communication. There is no cooperation without trust, no trust without honesty, and no cooperation without open communication.

  Just as these values follow from caring and responsibility, so every other progressive value follows from these. Equality follows from fairness, empathy is part of caring, diversity comes from empathy and equality.

  Progressive Principles

  Progressives not only share these values but also share political principles that arise from these values.

  Equity. What citizens and the nation owe each other. If you work hard, play by the rules, and serve your family, community, and nation, then the nation should provide a decent standard of living as well as freedom, security, and opportunity.

  Equality. Do everything possible to guarantee political and social equality and avoid imbalances of political power.

  Democracy. Maximize citizen participation; minimize concentrations of political, corporate, and media power. Maximize journalistic standards. Establish publicly financed elections. Invest in public education. Bring corporations under stakeholder control, not just stockholder control.

  Government for a better future. Government does what America’s future requires and what the private sector cannot do—or is not doing—effectively, ethically, or at all. It is the job of government to promote and, if possible, provide sufficient protection, greater democracy, more freedom, a better environment, broader prosperity, better health, greater fulfillment in life, less violence, and the building and maintaining of public infrastructure.

  Ethical business. Our values apply to business. In the course of making money by providing products and services, businesses should not adversely affect the public good, as defined by the above values. They should refuse to impose wage slavery and corporate servitude and so should work with unions, not against them. They should pay the true costs of doing business—not externalize, or offload, those costs onto the public (for instance, they should clean up their pollution). They should make sure their products do no harm to the public. And rather than treat their employees as mere “resources,” they should see them as community members and assets to the business.

  Values-based foreign policy. The same values governing domestic policy should apply to foreign policy whenever possible.

  Here are a few examples where progressive domestic policy translates into foreign policy:

  •Protection translates into an effective military for defense and peacekeeping.

  •Building and maintaining a strong community translates into building and maintaining strong alliances and engaging in effective diplomacy.

  •Caring and responsibility translate into caring about and acting responsibly for the world’s people; helping to deal with problems of health, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation; population control (and the best method, women’s education); and rights for women, children, prisoners, refugees, and ethnic minorities.

  All of these are concerns of a values-based foreign policy.

  Policy Directions

  Given progressive values and principles, progressives can agree on basic policy directions, if not on the details. Policy directions are at a higher level than specific policies. Progressives usually divide on specific policy details while agreeing on directions. Here are some of the many policy directions they agree on.

  The economy. Investing in an economy centered on innovation that creates millions of good-paying jobs and provides every American a fair opportunity to prosper. The economy should be sustainable and not contribute to climate change, environmental degradation, and so on.

  Security. Through military strength, strong diplomatic alliances, and wise foreign and domestic policy, every American should be safeguarded at home, and America’s role in the world should be strengthened by helping people around the world live better lives.

  Health. Every American should have access to a state-of-the-art, affordable health care system.

  Education. A vibrant, well-funded, and expanding public education system, with the highest standards for every child and school, where teachers nurture children’s minds and often the children themselves, and where children are taught the truth about their nation—its wonders and its blemishes.

  Early childhood. Every child’s brain is shaped crucially by early experiences. We support high-quality early childhood education.

  Environment. A clean, healthy, and safe environment for ourselves and our children: water you can drink, air you can breathe, and food that is healthy and safe. Polluters pay for the damage they cause.

  Nature. The natural wonders of our country are to be preserved for future generations, and enhanced where they have been degraded.

  Energy. We need to make a major investment in renewable energy, for the sake of millions of jobs that pay well, improvements in public health, preservation of our environment, and the effort to halt global warming.

  Openness. An open, efficient, and fair government that tells the truth to our citizens and earns the trust of every American.

  Equal rights. We support equal rights in every area involving race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation.

  Protections. We support keeping and extending protections for consumers, workers, retirees, and investors.

  A stronger America is not just about defense, but about every dimension of strength: our effectiveness in the world, our economy, our educational system, our health care system, our families, our communities, our environment, and so forth.

  Broad prosperity is the effect that markets are supposed to bring about. But all markets are constructed for someone’s benefit; no markets are completely free. Markets should be constructed for the broadest possible prosperity, as opposed to the exponential accumulation of wealth by the wealthy coupled with the corresponding loss of wealth by most citizens—and with it the loss of freedom and fulfillment in life.

  Americans want and deserve a better future—economically, educationally, environmentally, and in all other areas of life—for themselves and their children. Lowering taxes, primarily for the super-rich elite, has had the effect of defunding programs that would make a better future possible in all these areas. The proper goal is a better future for all Americans. This includes bringing global warming under control.

  Smaller government is, in conservative propaganda, supposed to eliminate waste. It is really about eliminating social programs. Effective government is what we need our government to accomplish to create a better future.

  We should be governed not by corporations, but by a government of, by, and for the people.

  Conservative family values are those of a strict father family—authoritarian, hierarchical, every man for himself, based around discipline and punishment. Progressives live by the best values of both families and communities: mutual responsibility, which is authoritative, equal, and based around caring, responsibility (both individual and social), and commitment.

  The remarkable thing is just how much progressives do agree on. These are just the things that voters tend to care about most: our values, our principles, and the direction in which we want to take the nation.

  I believe that progressive values are traditional American values, that progressive principles are fundamental American principles, and that progressive policy directions point the way to where most Americans really want our country to go. The job of unifying progressives is really the job of bringing our country together around its finest traditional values.

  But having those shared values, largely unconscious and unspoken, is not good enough. They have to be out in the open, named, said, discussed, publicized, and made part of everyday public discourse. If they
go unspoken, while conservative values dominate public discourse, then those values can be lost—swept out of our brains by the conservative communication juggernaut.

  Don’t just read about these values here and nod. Get out and say them out loud. Discuss them wherever you can. Volunteer for campaigns that give you a chance to discuss these values loud and clear and out in public.

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  Frequently Asked Questions

  Any brief discussion of framing and moral politics will leave many questions unanswered. Here are some of the most common questions I’ve been asked.

  There is an asymmetry between strict father and nurturant parent. Why is the first masculine and the second gender-neutral?

  In the strict father model, the masculine and feminine roles are very different, and the father is the central figure. The strict father is the moral authority of the family, the person in charge of the family, while mothers are seen as being “mommies”—they may be loving, but they are unable to protect and support the family and aren’t strict enough to punish their children when they do wrong. Think of the expression “Wait till Daddy gets home,” which refers to a strict daddy.

  In this strict father model, “mommies” are supposed to uphold the authority of the strict father, but they are not able to do the job themselves. In the nurturant parent model, there just isn’t a gender distinction of this sort. Both parents are there to nurture their children and to raise them to be nurturers. That doesn’t mean there won’t be gender-based divisions of labor around the house in real life, but they are not within the nurturant parent model.

  These models are, of course, stereotypes—idealized, incomplete, oversimplified mental models. Mental models of this sort necessarily differ from real-world cases: strict mothers, single-parent households, gay parents, and so on.

  Conservative commentators like David Brooks have referred to the Republicans as the “daddy party” and the Democrats as the “mommy party.” Would you agree?

  Brooks and others have acknowledged the Nation as Family metaphor, and have acknowledged that the strict father model is behind conservative Republican politics. However, their characterization of a “mommy party” is based on “mommy” in their own conservative, strict father model. What they mean by “mommy party” is that although Democrats may care and be loving people, they just aren’t tough and realistic enough to do the job.

  This is, of course, completely inaccurate from the Democrats’ own progressive perspective. In a nurturant family, both parents are not just caring but also responsible and strong enough to carry out those responsibilities. This is far from mommy in the way the conservatives scornfully use the term. Democrats have been able to successfully provide both protection for and prosperity to the nation.

  Conservatives seem not to understand what nurturant morality is about, both in the family and in the nation. They find any view that is not strict to be “permissive.” Nurturant parenting is, of course, anything but permissive, with its stress on teaching children to be responsible for themselves and empathetic and responsible toward others, and raising them to be strong and well-educated enough to carry out their responsibilities. The conservatives parody liberals as permissive, as supporting a feel-good morality—doing whatever feels good. The conservatives just don’t get it. They seem ignorant of the vast difference between responsibility and permissiveness.

  How old are the ideas of strictness and nurturance?

  They seem to go back very, very far in history. We know, for example, that in England before the British came over to colonize America there were religious groups like the Quakers, who had a nurturant view of God, and groups like the Puritans, who had a strict father view of God. The New England colonies were mainly Puritan, though John Winthrop had a nurturant view of the colony he was establishing, and the nurturant view of God has existed side by side with the strict one in this country ever since. In the nineteenth century, Horace Bushnell wrote about “Christian nurture.” From the period of the abolitionists through the 1920s there was a lively discussion of the nurturant view of God. Moreover, students of religion have shown that there are strict and nurturant views of religion that go back as far as biblical and prebiblical times. These distinctions have been there for a very, very long time.

  Does the strict father model imply that conservatives don’t love their kids, and does the nurturant parent model imply that progressives don’t believe in discipline?

  Not at all. In the strict father model, physically disciplining a child who has done wrong, by inflicting sufficient pain, is a form of love—“tough love.” Given the duty to impose “loving discipline,” lots of hugging and other loving behavior are permissible, and often recommended, afterward. It’s just a matter of first things first.

  In the nurturant parent model, discipline arises not through painful physical punishment but through the promotion of responsible behavior via empathetic connection, the example of responsible behavior set by the parents, the open discussion of what the parents expect (and why), and, in the case of noncooperation, the removal of some of the good things that go with cooperation. A child raised through nurturance is a child who has achieved positive internal discipline without painful physical punishment. It is achieved through praise for cooperation, understanding the privileges that go with cooperation, clear guidelines, open discussion, and the example of parents who live by their nurturant values.

  What are the complexities of the models?

  The models (discussed in detail in chapter 17 of Moral Politics), have built-in complexities.

  First, just about everybody in American culture has both models, either actively or passively. For example, to understand a John Wayne movie, you must have a strict father model in your brain, at least passively. You may not live by the model, but you can use it to understand the strict father narratives that permeate our culture. Nurturant narratives permeate our culture as well.

  Second, many people use both models, but in different parts of their lives. For example, a lawyer might be strict in the courtroom but nurturant at home.

  Third, you may have been brought up badly with one model, and may have rejected it. Many liberals had miserable strict father upbringings.

  Fourth, there are three natural dimensions of variation for applying a given model: an ideological/pragmatic dimension, a radical/moderate dimension, and a means/ends dimension.

  Both a progressive and a conservative can be unyielding ideologues, or they may be pragmatic—willing to compromise on a proposal either for reasons of real-world workability or political viability.

  In addition, both progressives and conservatives can vary on the two radical/moderate scales: the amount of change and the speed of change. Thus radical conservative ideologues are unwilling to compromise, and insist on the most rapid and complete change possible.

  Incidentally, the word conservative is not necessarily about conserving anything. It is about strict father morality. There is no contradiction in talking about “radical conservatives.” Indeed, Robert Reich, in his book Reason, uses the term radcon to talk about radical conservatives. From this perspective a “moderate” can be either a progressive or a conservative who is pragmatic or wants slow change, a bit at a time. It is sometimes said that there is a third moderate model, very different from the other two, but I have not yet seen such a model proposed explicitly.

  Another common variation occurs in distinguishing ends and means. There are people with progressive politics (nurturant ends) who have strict father means. These are the militant progressives. The most extreme case is the authoritarian antiauthoritarians: those with antiauthoritarian progressive ends but authoritarian strict father organizations.

  Last, there are the types—the special cases—of progressives and conservatives that we discussed in chapter 1: the socioeconomic, identity politics, environmentalist, civil libertarian, antiauthoritarian, and spiritual progressives; and the financial, social, libertarian, neocon (see chapter 13), and r
eligious conservatives. They are all instances of the nurturant and strict models, but each restricts the form of reasoning used.

  The notion of reframing sounds manipulative. How is framing different from spin or propaganda?

  Framing is normal. Every sentence we say is framed in some way. When we say what we believe, we are using frames that we think are relatively accurate. When a conservative uses the “tax relief” frame, chances are that he or she really believes that taxation is an affliction. However, frames can also be used manipulatively. The use, for example, of “Clear Skies Act” to name an act that increases air pollution is a manipulative frame. And it’s used to cover up a weakness that conservatives have, namely that the public doesn’t like legislation that increases air pollution, and so they give it a name that conveys the opposite frame. That’s pure manipulation.

  Spin is the manipulative use of a frame. Spin is used when something embarrassing has happened or has been said, and it’s an attempt to put an innocent frame on it—that is, to make the embarrassing occurrence sound normal or good.

  Propaganda is another manipulative use of framing. Propaganda is an attempt to get the public to adopt a frame that is not true and is known not to be true, for the purpose of gaining or maintaining political control.

  The reframing I am suggesting is neither spin nor propaganda. Progressives need to learn to communicate using frames that they really believe, frames that express what their moral views really are. I strongly recommend against any deceptive framing. I think it is not just morally reprehensible, but also impractical, because deceptive framing usually backfires sooner or later.