This book by George Lakoff is now something of a manual for many progressives. The import of the book to most is that progressives need to learn how to frame their arguments better to communicate to others. Lakoff claims this is he trick conservatives used to gain the success they currently enjoy. Some argue that we have moved beyond framing and should not be utilizing this enemy camp approach.

Whether or not this is true, I find the usual discussion of this book misses what I consider the most important part of Lakoff’s message. That is that prior to setting your frames you must first ‘KNOW YOUR VALUES.’ What Lakoff has done for me is to explain the primary source of the differences between my values and conservative values in a way that makes absolute sense. You may not choose to use framing, but I believe understanding the values which underlie the reasons for supporting the issues on both sides is critical.

Lakoff asked himself what the linkage was between the issues conservatives’ support. Why do poor conservatives support ‘tax-relief’ for the wealthy and a decrease in entitlements? On the other hand, he asked what the linkage was between the issues progressives support which are generally opposite.

His answer was that it had to do with our divergent concepts of family values. We commonly use metaphors equating the nation to families. Remember we were established by our founding fathers. Lakoff asked, “If there are two different understandings of the nation, do they come from two different understandings of family?”(pg 5) He determined this was the case and that the two divergent family models were a strict father family and a nurturing parent family. Guess which is which.

Conservative friends of his basically confirmed it, and referred him to James Dobson who has written extensively about raising kids using the strict father model and how that is connected to conservative politics. This man, whom I had never heard of before, is evidently very powerful behind the scenes in the conservative movement. Note that Karl Rove recently turned to Dobson when conservatives first began to react badly to Bush’s selection of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court.

A quick summary of Dobson’s views is that children are born bad and must be taught good through painful punishment in order to create internal discipline which leads to prosperity. Therefore good people are prosperous people and thus deserve rewards. Bad people end up poor and it is their own fault and do not deserve rewards or to be rescued.

Lakoff stresses that people do not use the same family model for all aspects of their lives. Strict parents could well be progressives and visa versa. Many families are a mix of both models. The progressive model is nurturing, though, and when we set our arguments or our frames we need to appeal to that core inside most which adamantly denies all children are born bad.

I strongly recommend reading this very short book to better understand the relationship between politics and our individual sense of family values.