Professor Lakoff talks about the challenges and problems Democrats and the left face-- from the congress, governing, think tanks to foundations. And maybe, we come up with the reason the left has failed to take on the right effectively, in spite of the hundreds of millions in funding from left leaning foundations.

::::::::

flickr image by Pop!Tech

George Lakoff is the author of The Political Mind, Moral Politics, Don't Think of an Elephant!, Whose Freedom?, and Thinking Points (with the Rockridge Institute staff). He is Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley.

Notes from the interview
It's not just about words-- also about values
govt takover talk about freedom

talk about life-- death panels, pro-life

We need to talk about life and freedom regarding health. Last is security-- what are people most afraid of-- losing health care, being denied care.

Which is scarier-- the underwear bomber or anthem blue cross.

Details all have to do with thing... are your life and security taken care of here?

The name-- is also terrible-- public option was an awful choice. Conservatives here public= government and option is from bureaucracy

They could have called it the American Plan.

leaders of Dem party have a hard time using language and values ala lakoff

Republicans majored in business-- marketing- metaphors, frames, images, values

If you went to college and became a democratic policy maker you studied
learned enlightenment reason-- proven to be false in almost every regard-- that it is conscious, logical...

The way brains really work is through empathy, through social connection.

Facebook passed google-- about social connectin

Democrats in congress don't understand that and think it's about getting politics out-- think it's about "what's in it for you.
No. It's what the moral issue is.

we want to govern, they want to impede.

Lakoff-- they are wrong

Conservatives have "strict father morality" that individual freedom is more important. They have a totally different morality.
(Book Moral Politics) Conservative's Highest value is preserving, defending and extending the moral system itself

Further thing republicans are good at is creating conservative populism-- Dems don't understand, LEe Atwater and Roger Ailes understood it back in sixties.

Working strict father people threatened by radical feminism and civil rights.
Invented idea of liberal elite-- liberal media, latte liberals, limo liberals... tea party movement grew out of that-- it's been carefully brought along since the late sixties.

Libs and dems don't understand what communication is about-- works by using language over and over again, repeating it that evoke the conservative world view. Have think tanks, experts like Luntz, training institutes with people ready to go on TV, booking agents-- getting their message out over and over every day....

The republicans have a system that fits how brains work.

How brains work-- every word is defined in terms of a frame-- a frame is a system of circuits
Politics is a moral system, how people think is right. All politics is moral.

They use language that will evoke their moral system. When it is repeated it strengthens synapses in the brain, creates permanent circuits.
Certain circuits are mutually inhibitory in the brain-- two moral systems-- where one is turned off and one is turned on.

Bi-conceptuals.

The way people change is by activating your world view, through language. Cons have system of communication that does that all the time.

The Dems have truth squads-- will tell you the truth. refute conservatives. They activate the words they are trying to argue against. They end up helping conservative.

Most people don't know what their moral values are. Most people's thoughts are unconscious.  When asked, they give programs, not morals.

We have plenty of billionaires on the left who could set up such a system. But they are educated as enlightenment reason, so they think it's propaganda-- but it's not propaganda.

Repub think tank starts with conservative values, then applies values to every issues.
progressive think tank starts with issues, -- all of these things are linked by common progressive values.

progressive foundations aim at issues and projects.  Don't build infrastructure.

Went to Ford Foundation-- told them problem. Are evaluated based on a "good portfolio"

What they're doing is designing "silos"

Book: Thinking points-- gave book to Obama--

In governing... same. Have to learn how people think--

Single payer-- doctor-patient care--  get care you need-- american plan- americans take care of americans...
Who's going to pay for it-- don't have to pay for profits and administrative costs... and denying care.

Climate change was introduced by Frank Luntz

Cap and trade and carbon credits--

Back in 2003, 2004, I wrote a series of articles on my thoughts on the need for policy promotion. They're not in the current database system of the site because the pre-date our use of the database, but they're still on the site, here:
How To Take Back the Moral Turf from the Right by ROB KALL The Echo Chamber as a Political Weapon by Rob Kall 31 Ways to Take on the Neocon Think Tanks: A Progressive Policy  and Position Promotion Think Tank Prospectus by Rob Kall OpEdNews.Com Understanding the Difference Between a Think Tank (TT)  and a Right Wing Policy Promotion "Think Tank": Why the left desperately needs to "get it" and create about five of them. Chaunce's Garden; Progressives Must Stop Tilling The Field with Spoons Rob Kall Starting a Progressive Counterpart to the Neocon's Most Powerful Weapon-- the Policy Creation and Advocacy Think Tank; Join the Grassroots Effort to Build One Rob Kall Where are the Real Patriots While Bush Rapes and Trashes America? If Wealthy Liberals and Liberal Foundations Don't Fund Think Tanks to Take on the Right, then We Might as Well Throw in the Towel. Envisioning a Progessive Counterpart to NeoConservative Think Tanks like Project for a New American Century Progressive Bows and Arrows against Neocon Cruise Missiles; Time for Friends of Democracy to Help

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.

His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

Join the conversation:

On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution

and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation