Thinking Points Discussion of Chapter 3 - Part 3: Expressing Our Values

One way to get a message across is to wait for the right opportunity to launch it. I am forever trying to bring these framing issues down to a grassroots level so this is how I would envision putting the above principles to good use - using what we have.

#1 On Rockridge and other venues, many have expressed the wish for a correctly framed glossary of terms and issues and perhaps the above is a beginning for some of the arguments for reoccurring issues. Some dedicated Progressives need to become well versed or prepped for...

#2 a hot button issue to come along and dominate coverage and become the topic of every talkshow so that they can...

#3 blanket call/write-in to every possible tv, radio and opinion page picking on the frames used discussing that particular hot button issue. Resist to argue too much of the detailed content (unless you relate it to the frame) but really focus on the importance of the frame/the words/the terms assumed/ the deep frame.

The important thing would be training for the callers/writers to make the arguments from the right values and to maintain authenticity and confidence.

Why I think this would work is that one or two random people with framing ideas are sort of seen as academic fussbudgets, when several plainspoken people keep repeating the same ideas in their own words, maybe the pundits and hosts will start getting it that it isn't just about catchphrases and political posturing, framing is about real values and ideas with real life results.

Let's be honest. Weren't we intimidated out of using certain key words--liberal, equality, affirmative action--after Carter's administration, portrayed as puny and ineffectual, and during the rise of Reagan? The "L" word was equated with obscenity and regularly depicted in the media with images designed to make progressives look wasteful, weak, and unpatriotic. Politicians scurried and Democratic leadership, desperate to retain a dignified public image, recast themselves in response and buried the progressive value system as a result, which is why we are here re-learning/reclaiming our arguments. We suffered a trauma as severe as any suffered by a stroke patient or head injury victim, and the damage is forcing us to relearn these basic skills using new approaches.

I welcome these framing lessons that can help me cast my argument in a way that does not validate the conservative viewpoint. But how do we fit "image/visuals" in? Conservatives are skillful at commandeering images to enhance their frames. (Although John McCain failed when he tried to construct a rosy visual of Baghdad.) Picture frames in this age of YouTube (the rogue Hillary commercial) comes to mind) can be powerful snapshots of progressive ideas, reaching more people and redirecting the flow of ideas.

One of the problems progressives have is expressing the essence of our values in the proverbial "sound bite". When you ask a conservative, you get "less government and lower taxes." While the experiences of the last six years have shown us that this is demonstrably not true, it still does not solve our problem.

I have been thinking about this for a while, and have not come up with a satisfactory "sound bite" for what progressives stand for. Anybody else want to give it a shot?

Progressives believe we are the government. We embrace a participatory democracy in which citizens are fully involved in many ways, on many levels. Voting, running for office, sharing ideas, and shaping resourceful communities that thrive for the many, not for the few, represent the kind of democracy originally envisioned—a working democracy on the clock 24/7 with its citizens punching the clock every hour on the hour.


(I was trying to belittle the idea of less government, lower taxes--which suggests that people don't want to get involved, that government is passive and separate from its people, and that taxes is the only priority citizens care about. Progressives love government and want all citizens involved, all the time.)

Marry the idea of participatory governance to the tech revolution (especially in the sense of "long tail" markets and the participatory dynamic of the blog-o-sphere), and you might get "wiki-governance".

Granted, we're a long way from genuine dynamics of government behaving like wikipedia, but it seems like a goal worth aiming for in the long term and the emergence of MoveOn-type political dynamics is definitely a first step.

It encompasses the idea of a broad constituency (We The People, commoners, etc.), actively participatory accountability (watchdogs on our representatives between elections), free speech, checks and balances, and so forth. Granted, it may be a bit edgy for constituencies other than the Net Generation, but for the MySpace/YouTube crowd I think it could fly.

For the rest it might be "effective government accountable to All The People".

I think it's not so much that progressives "love" government - there's lots not to love about the real-life sausage-factory process of policy making - but rather it's that progressives understand that the thing to do about bad government is to fix it, not discard it. Because it can't be discarded - it will simply leave a power vacuum for something else to step into.

If you get rid of "public government" that will not remove governance. It will simply shift it to private powers/authorities with narrower accountability (stockholders). Private gangs, private militia, "private monarchies" - all authoritarian forms of power concentration (i.e., the power to impose physical force on others) without elective representation. Gosh, that's what we fought our Revolution to get out from under in the first place. What is monopoly pricing in a market of essential goods (without alternative providers available outside an oligopoly) if not "taxation without representation"?

Do conservatives think that corporations (which still generally have militaristic hierarchical organizational structures, even as the more progressive ones may be beginning to flatten out in some ways) can't be "authoritarian monarchs", or impose their own private "taxation" on a captive market? Why not, they're legal persons already. If they have the power to do something practically equivalent to a government, then it's fair enough to call it by that name.

If you get rid of Big Government, Big Business will be happy to step into its place. So instead of gutting it, we need to make it work better for the real common interest.

Liberals think people are basically good (empathy); Conservatives think people are essentially bad (punishment and reward). Framing soundbites or other forms of debate/communication around that concept makes sense to me.

That's another way to describe the difference between progressives and conservatives. Conservatives believe people are born bad and need to be made good. Progressives believe people are born good and are made bad.

It occurs to me the root of the word progressive is simply progress.

Everyone agrees that the world is imperfect, perhaps even massively screwed up. And, if we are to change anything, it takes either dominant individual power or the collective power of numbers.

Progressives believe that we can collectively improve things, while conservatives believe that anything we try to do collectively will make things worse. (Liberals believe that we can liberate ourselves from the oppression of the status quo through collective public action, especially if we have an accountable dynamic in democratic governance.)

So, the collective vs. individual approach to societal benefit is important, because collective action is often the only avenue toward progress.

For example, this plays into the market philosophies of the two camps. (Sorry the rest of this is a bit rambling in length. There is some significant detail here. Read at your discretion.)

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Conservatives (and libertarians) believe that only individual action can allow the emergence of collective economic good, as guided by the Invisible Hand of the unregulated market. Progressives understand that this vision is fatally oversimplified and that markets do not reach all societal benefits (public goods and market externalities are systematically under-provisioned without external intervention), and that the Invisible Hand is itself a creature of the regulation that forms its very skin (rule of law, standard currency, etc.), and so "free" does not necessarily need to mean "unregulated"

to me it means "structurally competitive" and "fluid" and especially "fair" with low barriers to entry, many buyers/sellers, and reliable market information.

In short, to me the only truly "free" markets are "fair" and "competitive" markets. They are not "unregulated" markets, which are likely to be uncompetitive and unfair. (Note that the world has never seen a pure competitive market in the classic economics sense. The best we ever get to is a hybrid called "monopolistic competition". Market fundamentalists might blame this on government, but other blame it on the imperfection of an ideal description of markets. Physicists might also point out that pure Newtonian dynamics don't exist anywhere either, due to the presence of friction. "Market friction" is also a good metaphor in describing the absence of pure market competition in the real world.)

I like to call market fundamentalists "wild deregulationists" or "wild market fundamentalists" because the word "wild" connotes irresponsible, chaotic and dangerous (and I find dogmatic, ideological deregulation to be all of those things).

This does get tricky because there is a long history of "industry capture" in regulatory dynamics, which provides deregulationists an excuse to argue for smaller government (providing less opportunity for corruption to take root). The problem with this thinking is that the whole point of industry capture is so industry can have what it wants without government interference, as if there were no regulation in the first place. So, smaller government would often yield precisely the same result as industry capture. The real solution to industry capture is to improve the processes of broad accountability in government, not to shrink government.

To be accurate, there are some contexts in which monopoly powers were granted to private companies in order to codify an emerging market in an area that would be characterized as a public utility (railroad and telephone markets were early examples - some instances of "hyper-competition" were obstructing development of these markets, and an initial monopoly made a certain sort of sense as a stopgap). These "natural monopolies" (or as Milton Friedman called them: "technical monopolies") are a special case for "free-marketers" because it is understood that there is no pure free-market solution to the problem of monopoly power in those markets (inevitably high barriers to entry and high fixed costs, duplication of infrastructure, constant economies of scale). The three options available to deal with them are:
 (1) Leave it alone, and let the private monopolist or oligopolists charge excessive prices.
 (2) Deliver the good directly by the government public monopoly.
 (3) Have the government regulate the competitive terms of market behavior and allow private firms to operate in that "government market" space on a competitive basis.

Market fundamentalists often set this up as a dichotomy between (1) and (2) and argue that (1) is the lesser evil. Progressives used to argue for (2), but that approach can be very inefficient. (3) seems to be a better progressive approach these days, as long as we can continue to improve accountability of the regulatory process to avoid industry capture (this includes both statutory legislation and agency regulation).

In both cases, conservatives want to let individual firms have their way (and they often try to argue that there is "fierce competition" even in very non-competitive markets -- they confuse competitive business tactics with structural competitiveness of a market, but aggressive business tactics among an elite oligopoly are precisely the sort of things dominant firms use to crush competition, like predatory pricing and exclusive or otherwise confining contracts). In both cases, progressives want to use the collective public representation of government to right a wrong.

(A specific example of this is the Net Neutrality fight. The Internet has fast become important enough to our economy to be considered the equivalent of a public utility, and as a primary transporter of information in the increasingly digitized information economy, it deserves to be designed and regulated as a common carrier, as it was from the beginning until 2005. This is a form of (3), where the government does not provide the service directly but rather ensures that the information transport market will not be skewed by private gatekeepers, so that the information market itself will be as competitive as possible, which is critical to free speech. And, information/communication technology is providing one of the best opportunities we have to systematically improve accountability in processes of democratic governance by expanding the opportunity for free speech, though most of that potential is still only barely actualized in the present day. Blogs such as this allow us to exercise free speech in a collective manner in a way that was unprecedented before the Internet became popular, and there is a potential for a great deal more, if we can protect the platform itself from co-optation by private gatekeepers. It is far too important to the general public and the economy at large to allow private firms to own the information highways without general constraints to protect competition of speech.)

My impression is that authoritarian oppression can come from a variety of sources. It can come from an overly centralized and unaccountable government, but it can also come from centralized and unaccountable private firms. Orwell's dystopia in fact comes in both flavors, public and private, and it is this potential for private collective oppression that I think is the chief blind spot of conservatives in the discussion of market philosophy. They are so afraid of the slippery slope to authoritarian government that they are blind to the slippery slope of corporate authoritarianism on the other side (their faith in the Invisible Hand is reckless in this case -- or else hypocritically self-serving and known not to have the generally socially beneficial effects claimed), and have brought us dangerously close to that other slope.

One constituency where I think progressives have a great opportunity is small business leaders, because they know what it's like to be stomped on by a giant, even if they have dreams of becoming giant themselves. But, many small businesspeople have the conservative frame ruling much of their thinking, and they will probably not respond well to the nurturing frame. That said, there are probably a lot of bi-conceptuals among small businesspeople, and we need to speak to them as clearly as we can, especially in ways that can help them to differentiate themselves from the interests of big business, and to embrace the collective dynamic. (We also have to simultaneously bolster that message with an acknowledgment that government regulation can often be badly implemented or designed, and that counter-productive regulation needs to be fixed. Not all regulation is necessarily good in practice -- the process of regulation is often a "sausage factory" where compromise leads to strange beasts indeed, and many in business have encountered these imperfections directly and powerfully -- and we have to be thoughtful and honest enough to distinguish the two.)

When there are large differences in power between the top and the bottom of the market, to the extent that people view themselves as elite they will concentrate on individual interests, whereas if only the rising tide will lift their boats along with the rest then collective interests will be preferable.

We progressives think of ourselves as "commoners" in terms of political power (thus the need for well-conceived collective action to protect our interests), and I think that is key to flipping the "elite" label as defined by conservatives back into their faces.

We need to reclaim our rightful place at the bottom of the ladder. :-)

I think Progressives force corporations to be good neighbors and citizens. Corporations by design have only one agenda = dividends. Corporations don't consider employee welfare, environmental consequences, or allegiance to home in making decisions unless it impacts the dividends. Corporations can metamorphosis itself shedding it's troublesome skin into a new corporation when it gets into trouble. Only through Government oversight can corporations be forced into being good citizens and neighbors.

Which reminds me of the California power deregulation debacle and Enron's theft. When Grey Davis asked W for help W refused. A perfect example of conservative values. I wonder what 'W's' profit was for that and many of his other actions for they don't seem to be for the good of the nation.

You raise a key point. Progressives generally put more thought into their positions than conservatives. This makes them harder to explain in a sound bite. The problem often gets compounded with the long-windedness progressives sometimes have (as several posts here will attest).

Peace, prosperity, equality, and sustainability are major goals of the left but are unfortunately controversial. I believe we can use short terms to frame our views issue by issue. Some examples:

Taxation: patriotism, duty to country, putting your money where your mouth is.

Iraq: An occupation - not a war (as noted here)

Regulation (and universal health care): The Culture of Life

A lot has been written about concise progressive framing, the key challenge now is getting progressive leaders to use it.

How about "Progressives stand for equal opportunity and responsible government."

I don't think Democrats defend equality enough. Equality is the founding principal of this country. It is only after equality, that we get liberty

or, the way I think about it -- liberty is best understood within the context of equality. In an enlightened democracy, you can't really have one without the other. Now the conservatives are very big on "liberty" which they call "freedom" -- but notice that they never, ever use the words "equality or "equal opportunity." I think that in shying away from the words "equality," "egalitarian," "equal opportunity," Democrats are missing a big opportunity to frame our core values in a way that most Americans would relate to.

Of course that raises the issue that the word "equality" makes the Big Lie that is of capitalism really stand out in stark relief, doesn't it? Maybe that is why Democrats and Republicans alike hate the word. Given our current campaign financing system, nobody -- not even Progressives -- dare to discuss the inherent weaknesses of capitalism, including the fact that it is endangering democracy.

Anyway, it strikes me that the founding fathers thought this stuff out very coherently: 1. "All are created equal. 2. Endowed by their CREATOR (NOT Jesus, NOT even a generic God! ) with the right to life, liberty the pursuit of happiness etc..

I'm just starting on a documentary project on What are Progressive Values?, so this is great that you are starting a conversation here.
Here's a list of links about Progressive Values.
http://humanityquest.com/Projects/ProgressiveValues

A YouTube group for videos about Progressive Values.
http://youtube.com/group/ProgressiveValues
I just placed 10 short interviews there. I'd be interested in hearing what you think of the comments people made about what they think Progressive Values are? Also, grab your video camera and start asking Progressives what their values are and post it to the site. Every comment gives another jumping off point for further discussions.

Some thoughts on your question, "Why do Progressives have trouble expressing their values?"

1. Most people have difficulty talking about values.. It is not generally done in conversation so people haven't learned to do it. There's also a general muddlement about the difference in meanings between values, morals, principles, attitudes, etc. However, if the question is pressed, people will generally come up with something. Sometimes the way the question is asked helps. A couple of weeks ago, I was at the Barack Obama event in Oakland. I asked a woman I was sitting next to what she thought Progressive Values were.

 "I don't know, my husband can talk about those kind of things."

 "Well, what do they feel like" I then asked.

"Oh, they feel like Freedom and Caring....."

 I then asked her how she developed those values and she talked about growing up in a strict catholic environment and rebelling against it.

One thing I'd like to look at is how to ask the question of What are Progressive Values?
I notice in another post on your site someone asked "what approaches to use to discover values." No answers so far after a week!
http://www.rockridgenation.org/questions/getting-to-values/view

There needs to be a dedicated space.. perhaps email list to only focus on Progressive Values. Even thougth the topic of values is discussed, the conversations on Rockridge Nation tend towards framing.
I have been interested in values for some time and am glad to see how you've brought them to the fore. It's helped inspire me.

2. Many people see "Values" as right wing talk and a code word for an authoritarian type of morality. Turns people off to talking about values. I've toyed with the word "spirits" instead of values. It gets more to the essence, the feeling that values are. (kind of like the German word Geist (mind, spirit, ghost). People usually value freedom or caring, not because of the concept it is, but the way it makes them feel.... brings up the question of, What are Values? I came up with a list of 500 values. http://www.humanityquest.com

3. Organizations have "Value Statements". The method of how these values are arrived at is generally a mystery. They tend to be idealized values (honesty, integrity,, diversity, etc) and not necessarily tied to a reality. The company values statements don't say, "Control, Hierarchy, Self-Interest, etc.". I've seen a skepticism and cynicism directed at these Values Statements, it rubs off on the term Values as well.

I'll post more later..

edwin

"Age" is a value?

greg..
According to the Union Of International Associations and their study of Human Values, Yes..
http://www.diversitas.org/db/x.php?dbcode=va&;go=b&b=name&sbmt=1&ltr=a&line=81

Do you live in the American culture? look at TV.. young beautiful models are preferred over older people. think of all the situations where one age is preferred to another.

83. Affliction
84. Affluence
85. Affrontery
86. Age (see the details)
   http://www.diversitas.org/db/x.php?dbcode=va&;go=e&id=11401490
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageism
87. Aggrandizement
88. Aggrandizement
89. Aggravation
90. Aggression
91. Agility
92. Agitation
93. Agony
94. Agreeableness
95. Agreement

I feel very strongly that one available means of effective deep framing for progressives to offer it to the public in the form of public forums, symposiums, town meetings, letters to the editor and other printed public opinion forums, call in shows, use of low power FM radio, college radio programs, local cable access TV programs, blogs, podcasts and any other grassroots means of communication. The catch here is while many of these venues are presently being utilized, the messages being forwarded are adversarial. Progressives seem to feel that it is of primary importance to debate and argue with conservatives. They think that refutation of conservative language is effective reframing. I do not believe arguing with arch-conservatives is worthwhile as a means of framing or reframing. While it may feel good to "win" such an argument it rarely changes any minds or hearts.

Progressives can easily get caught in gotcha dialogues and begin to concentrate on finding fault with conservative logic, losing track of the real issues and sounding like the whiny nutjobs and hippie elitists conservatives say they are. They also fall into the trap of disparaging and putting down those who epouse conservative messages as people, using personal attacks such as calling them stupid. If one wishes to sound reasonable to resonable people I don't feel that argumentative words ever work as well as we imagine they do in the heat of the moment.

Rather, I feel that we need to make a strong effort to establish our very own progressive experts. One of the great tricks of conservative media is the cadre of so called, mostly self made and highly suspect "experts" that they drag out every time there is an issue raised that is in their "expert" wheelhouse. There are "experts" of this sort on any and every subject. Regardless of topic the conservative media outlets drag out their corresponding "expert" and are assured that whatever the topic is at hand it is being addressed using good, Luntz and Rove approved, conservative framing concepts. So even if the topic is a multi-car highway crash the discussion is directed from and constantly moved toward a conservatively framed point of view.

Since they self create and self promote their experts, we can do the same. Any time there is an issues conference or panel discussion we work our little butts off getting our experts on the panels. We have them call talk shows, write essays and most importantly continually refer to them ourselves so as to increase their legitimacy in the approprite media marketplace, be it local regional or national. A good source of "experts" is retired academics, ex (read recently defeated) politicians, business owners, non-profit executives and particularly retired military men with combat survivors and national heroes at the very top of the food chain (ex-prisoners of war and ex-astronauts being the ultimate). It is helpful that they are not lawyers, unless the topic is strictly legal, because people inherently do not trust lawyers.

These folks would be given extensive training in framing techniques and the basics of cognitive science so that they could withstand the heat of intense cross-examination. Suddenly they would start showing up in the grassroots media as numerous blogs and letter writers mention their expertise and how much their own lives have been influenced by them. As a buzz is created even the conservative media will seek them out, meaning to co-opt them. As they square off and hold their own with the best the conservative media can offer they will begin to reach deeply into the fabric of mainstream America because America loves experts who are glib, witty and confident, regardless of what they are saying.

One thing to avoid in this promotion of experts is the use of authors. Progressives value verbal expressions of a high level of accomplishment. They tend to defer to writers who can express things they are feeling better than they themselves can. There are 2 things that make the use of well known authors problematic as progressive framers. First, they tend to be academic and verbose and appeal to a very small group of people, relatively speaking. For example, selling 600,000 units of a book is pretty good from a publisher's standpoint but represents less than .2 % (thats two-tenths of a percent) of the American public. Authors have great value introducing us to new facts and ways of perceiving things but they have little value as mass framers.

Go back to the first paragraph of this post and re-read the litany of possible media outlets for a progressively framed and reframed message. Now imagine those outlets filled with expressions of progressive framing that have absolutely nothing to do with partisanship. No mention of partisan politics whatsoever. No party names, no mention of specific bills or laws or legislators at all. Just honest, common sense talk by respectable, reasonable Americans about their philosophies of life and society. I feel deeply that in order to change the hearts and minds of mainstream America enough to activate their progressive natures as the politically dominant part of their lives we must constantly express, through as many avenues as possible, as much as possible, our honest feelings about how we can best live together and work together to make life better for everyone.

This is the American way. It is simple and profound and most Americans already have it deeply framed in their unconscious minds. Without the interference of the constant static of competing political concepts bombarding Americans they will respond very positively to common sense expressions of a progressive vision for America. Virtually all Americans love their families and want to see them succeed. Virtually all of them have been taught, as children, the rules of fair play and equality. If we can create the possibility that the ideology of our childhood does not have to suffer at the hands of "reality" and can be realised in the form of a better world, we will all gain, not just politically but as a species.

So, basically, I think progressives should use the media methods mentioned above, and others I'm sure I overlooked, to talk about conciliatory things, about working together, about embracing what we have in common instead of accentuating what we disagree on. These are the words people want and need to hear. Then, when they are accompanied by thoughtful, reasonable, common sense expressions of progressive values and vision they will be heard, deep in the unconscious minds of Americans, who actually want to be good but have had little in the way of sensible inspiration to do so in the recent past.

So read "Thinking Points" and participate in discussing how framing can work for you in a positive way for something else besides arming you to cream your conservative friends in a debate over cocktails. Although there is a place for confrontation, the selling of ideas is not that place, and like it or not, framing is sales, not in the "I'm going to get you to buy soomething you don't need" context but in the "you can't afford not to take a long, close look at this" sense. As I have mentioned before nearly everything we do as humans involves some level of persuasion and the most effective way to persuade is to believe in what you are selling to the degree that you cannot imagine the other person could ever pass it up. There is no shame in selling something that will actually help or truly serve someone. Using persuasive techniques is not trickery or cheating but the application of science to promote what we feel in our hearts is right. Remember we are selling the feeling of love, not cheap plastic blow-up dolls.

If you're looking for a good opening to progressive values, start with those three words: "We the People." They say so much that is so often forgotten.

"We the People" decided that rule-by-divine-right violated the fundamental rights of human beings to choose their leaders, that government is properly legitimized ONLY by the consent of those governed.

"We the People" includes all of us: black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, men, women, religious, secular, gay, straight, rich, poor. We are all passengers on this ship of state, and we all have a stake in where it goes and whether it sinks.

"We the People" are the parents in our nation-as-family. Lord Acton's maxim is as true today as ever: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Our chosen leaders, regardless of party or ideology, are frail humans exposed to the temptations of power, and "We the People" have an eternal duty to babysit them, to ensure that they do not succumb to those temptations, and to chasten those who do.

"We the People" are morally responsible for our government. Our government acts on our behalf. When our government commits immoral acts, we are ALL responsible, no matter whether the specific actors came from our party or received our votes. The blood our government sheds is on our hands, the evil it does on our souls.

Thus, we have a moral duty to ensure that our government's moral compass corresponds to our individual moral compasses: that it respects all life, is not selfish, does not waste, does no intentional harm, empowers the powerless, and honors the dignity of the human spirit.

"We the People" are enshrined in our Constitution and our voices are not to be dismissed as "political winds" or "blips in public opinion polls." We are the sovreign. Our government's voice must be our voice, or our democracy is no more than a politically palatable veneer. Our Constitution is the expression of our most sacred civic ideals, and we surrender that at the cost of our nation itself.

"We the People" are the essence of liberalism. Everything we progressives stand for emerges from those three words: "We the People."

Crissie

While I REALLY support reframing and I'm an avid Lakoffian and Rockridgite, there are several problems that I don't think you've fully addressed here. One that I've encountered A LOT with my fellow Liberals is that they resist Lakoffian reframing in its totality. They'll treat it like it's propaganda, double-speak or something. Of course, it's not. In some ways it's MORE truthful than what they say. If they say, "I hate the Republican's tax reform plan" that's actually less honest than reframing it as, "The Republicans are trying to keep our government from investing in us, from investing in our schools, and from spending the small amount of money needed to keep equal opportunity equal." Because, as Lakoff has so rightly pointed out, without the reframing, it implies that they think taxes need to be reformed.

But, getting this accross to them is like pulling teeth. But, I have a theory about this. This article seems to suggest that Liberals don't frame because they don't know how. But, I think that one of our values is that propaganda, double-speak, and dishonest or manipulative rhetoric are all unethical. And, I certainly agree that they are. The problem is that I think a lot of our fellow Liberals misunderstand what reframing is. So, I suggest that we need to reframe reframing itself. But, I'm not sure what language we'd use.

For example, I'm a Wiccan and I was telling a fellow Wiccan about meeting a very nice Evangelical. I explained to her (my Wiccan friend) that he's trying to heal the wounds between our two groups, not by coming to a theological / cosmological compromise (since the Evangelicals won't compromise on those issues) but by understanding that our two groups have overlapping ethics. He's strongly opposed to the politization of Conservative Christianity, to treating Bush like the second coming and all that. In fact, he thinks it's killing Conservative Christianity since it's making them look bad and going to create a backlash. He takes "Judge not, lest you yourself be judged" to heart and says he disagrees with us theologically and cosmologically, but he won't judge us because he thinks that's un-Christian. He also pointed out, though, that many Wiccans put their religion very strongly in terms of "witchcraft" and that this really scared a lot of Conservative Christians, because they thought that meant that we might do such things as attempt to put curses or love spells on our neighbors. They also didn't realize that we had a different theology or cosmology from their own. Because they fixated on us being "witches", they thought (a) that it was just a magical system as opposed to a full religion and (b) many of them assumed that we consciously worshipped Satan or demons as means to gaining magical powers that they thought we thought we possessed.

Now, as weird as this Conservative Christian worldview may seem to you and me, this Evangelical has a point, I think, and I expressed this to my Wiccan friend. Many if not most Wiccans call themselves "witches", call their congregations "covens" and call their religious and mystical ceremonies "magic". My friend snapped at me that there are good reasons why we use these terms. "Witches", she expressed, are just a term that was used by the Christian establishment to mean powerful women. Women who just wanted to heal people with herbs, or gain mystical insights were condemned, and often killed and even tortured, she reminded me. She went on to say that anybody who didn't understand that was just a sexist.

That's all true, except that what this means is that Wiccans and Conservative Christians have two EXTREMELY different conceptions of the term "witchcraft". Hers, as with many Wiccans, comes out of the women's spirituality movement. (Actually, the history of the use of these terms is more complicated than that, as Gerald Gardner, arguably the founder of Wicca, really thought that he had been initiated into one of the last surviving witch's covens in England and that witchcraft was actually a good religion with its own ethics, theology, holidays, etc., but be that as it may....) I strived vainly to point out to her (my friend) that Conservative Christians really don't get her concepts. "You're playing a game of telephone with these people," I said. They just hear the word "witch" without any of the content of what you think it means. I suggested that, when talking with certain people, like Conservative Christians, we speak not of our religion as "Wicca" rather than "Witchcraft", our clergy as priests and priestesses rather than "witches", our gatherings as "congregations" rather than "covens". This reframes Wicca as a religion, as opposed to a magical system. Religions have theologies, cosmologies, ethics, tenets, spiritual practices and holidays. This will communicate all that to Conservative Christians with a single word. Moreover, it invokes the freedom of religion frame. If Wicca is a religion, it's protected by the Constitution. Now, I realize full well that there are plenty of Christian Extremist Crazies out there who don't care, but there are many Conservative Christians, like this nice Evangelical man, who DO and it's THEM we want to reach.

But, my friend retorted that that jetissons RECLAIMING the word "witch" as a religion and as women's power (or at least power that can be had equally by both genders, as there are plenty of male Wiccans, but Wicca is not male-dominated). She said she'd rather die than give up "witch". Well, I disagree. We wouldn't BE giving up the term. We can always explain to people later on about our conception of where Wicca fits together with "Witchcraft" and what we mean by that, but it just shouldn't be the first and often only thing Conservative Christians hear about us if our two groups are going to get along (and this nice Evangelical I met is proof that at least one Conservative Christian CAN get along with us in a respect-respect relationship of mutual ethicality).

Now, I've probably offended many Wiccans on here. But, that's not my intent. In fact, I'm not intending to open up Wicca as a discussion topic. It's merely an example for illustrative purposes.

There's a difference between reclaiming and reframing. Reclaiming means taking a word that has recently had negative connotations but that used to have positive ones and trying to change society such that the word is given back its once positive association. In order for this to be effective, it one has to associate it with other language. So, my friend was, in my opinion, arguing for ineffectual reclaiming, reclaiming done only with one word as opposed to a cogent strategy of associating it with other language that still DOES have positive connotations. Reclaiming won't survive the game of telephone unless the other language is so well connected to the word being reclaimed that that other language survives as well.

The beauty of REFRAMING, is that by changing the word or phrase used, an entire set of values is encapsulated within a single word. So, it survives the game of telephone.

This story illustrates, however, a major problem with convincing fellow Liberals to adopt reframing. It (a) seems dishonest because it uses a different word for something than their used to using and (b) it SEEMS to undo reclaiming by, potentially, providing a new word for the one trying to be reclaimed. I don't know what to do about this problem? Any suggestions?

I posted the links to the conversations on the science sites. They are having the same misunderstandings as the political world. It is fascinating and frustrating! Here is my post: http://www.rockridgenation.org/nominations/framing-science

I would like to see in the faq section the distinctions between the meaning of framing in different disciplines. Giving a short run down on how the term is used slightly differently in communication theory as opposed to psychology as opposed to cognitive science. Eskimos have many words for snow, yet we have one word to mean as many things.

I think the surface levels involved in reframing and media framing are at least a start, and there are good resources available for people to learn that. I think it would be helpful to understand deeper "cognitive" framing if the more surface levels are explained too.

The main problem I see with the approach on the science blogs are they are only getting up to issue framing (if even getting that), not the big picture idea of framing the deeper values that are the foundation of Science itself. Just as progressives and liberals must align together with the common moral vision of liberalism, scientists must defend and promote science as a whole.

I'd like to comment on both of your comments. In response to irichmond, framing is taking the totality of a set of values, beliefs, etc, and expressing the meaning of it all in a sentence or two. For example, take the example of Wicca. I have only a superficial knowledge of it, and to gain a knowledge like yours I'd have to spend hours, days, years studying it. So how do you explain it if, say, you only have 5 minutes? You might start by saying, "Allright, it's basically about . . ." A conservative might say that It's basically all about witchcraft, which in our culture generally means black magic. You might say that it's basically about honoring nature and the whole web of life, or something like that. You or your friend could still describe yourselves as witches, because that term is positive or negative depending on the frame you're using. If you spent your five minutes just stating random ideas about Wicca, it wouldn't make much of an impact. I would still want to know what it was all about. But if you started with a frame, then you could plug in the facts that supported that frame so that all the facts would fit together into a coherent whole.

Our minds are always looking for meaning. If you just spew out a lot of facts without telling me why they have meaning, they will soon be forgotten. I may or may not agree with your meaning, and that's where judgement comes in. "The lesson of Katrina is that communities should not rely on the federal government in case of disaster." That boils down all the facts into a simple concept I can understand. The truth or falsehood of that particular statement depends on your values, whether you believe that the government is responsible for helping people in this situation or whether you believe they should rely on their local communities. Even conservatives would say you should help your neighbor, but they just don't think the government should be involved.

I hope these ideas give you some help in talking to your skeptical friends, because there is nothing dishonest about framing.

In Australia we don’t use the word ‘liberal’ to describe ‘progressive’ views or organisations. Though not excluded from discourse it is uncommon. This is because the major conservative political party, which currently holds government, is called… the Liberal Party! In a spectacular act of framing and claiming (and you will appreciate, irony) the then leader Robert Menzies appropriated the word for the party he founded after the Second World War (my high school history teacher claimed he was drunk at the time).

Since then the Liberal Party has tended to occupy a right of centre ideological space, which has shifted even more strongly to the right under the current leadership of John Howard.

The left-of-centre or ‘progressive’ party here is the Australian Labor Party, which grew out of the union movement in the late 1800’s. Some would say it too has shifted to the right over the years. Of course we could debate the framing implications of a party called ‘labour’.

In some ways the ‘liberal’ tag fits with the conservative party. As I understand it liberalism as a philosophy elaborates notions of individualism and rationalism (hence ‘neo-liberalism’ which in Australia we call ‘economic rationalism’). The individualist and rationalist tenets may partially explain why liberals (the progressive kind) may tend to be adverse to the proposal that framing is effective communication and judge it as immoral. The automaticity of our thinking and behaviour is counter to the rationalist mindset where ‘the facts will set you free’ and counter to the individualist/ free-thinking mindset where the faculty of reason is paramount.

I was travelling in Oz just last February and had discussions with my friends about politics, though all the details about Australian politics went over my head. At least we could all agree that Bush is a disaster. I think the term liberal should be left to die out, if conservatives will allow it. To me it connotes massive government programs for social engineering. Maybe in the 60's it made more sense, when the US economy was still strong and our knowledge of the impact of social programs was still naive, when we thought that throwing money at a problem would solve it. The term has a lot of baggage. I think the times call for a leaner approach, as people are still turned off by the idea of big government. On the other hand, if you could get conservatives here to praise the LIBERAL party, we could really confuse them.

Hi Joe,

One point not mentioned in THINKING POINTS, nor thus far in the dialogue, is that successful frames are "failure-inclusive." Successful frames include a menu of explanations for failure WHICH DO NOT CHALLENGE THE FRAME ITSELF. This is essential for successful framing, because otherwise we'd reject customary frames every time we encounter failure in life.

Frames are essentially habitualized patterns of analysis that become "hardwired" as stable neural networks within our brain. When we encounter an issue or problem, we almost immediately (and pre-cognitively!) do a "best-fit" analysis and select from our pre-wired frames the one(s) that seem most relevant. By the time we're aware of "thinking about" the issue or problem, we've already selected the frame - the pattern of analysis - and our "thinking" from that point forward is conditioned by the pattern we've superimposed on the issue or problem.

Indeed, when the "shape" of the issue or problem at hand fits closely enough to the pre-wired pattern, by the time we're aware of "thinking about" the issue, we've already reached a conclusion. We call that "intuition." And that "intuition" is often correct, precisely because it only kicks in when the "shape" of the issue or problem fits (or appears to fit) perfectly with a pre-wired pattern of analysis. As we gain life experience, and specific experience in a given field, our "intuition" becomes more and more reliable, because we're more often encountering problems for which we precision-fit frames prewired in our brains.

This mode of thinking has obvious evolutionary advantages. By NOT having to visibly think through each problem "de novo" - as if we had never encountered that shape of problem before - we save a lot of time and effort, because our brains don't have to fish around for new neural connections. What's more, to the extent that our frames lead us to reliable decisions, we're less error-prone. Consider the difference between a new driver and an experienced driver. The new driver is more likely to hesitate, or to overlook one danger in focusing on another, while the experienced driver has hard-wired most of the analysis connected with driving and does it pre-cognitively ... by "intuition."

But, in order for frames to work this way, they must be "failure inclusive." That is, the frame must include WITHIN ITS STRUCTURE a menu of explanations for when we reach a "wrong" decision, or when our decision leads to a "wrong" outcome. Having adopted Frame F leading to Strategy S, and having failed in attempting Strategy S, we must be able to find reasons for that failure THAT DO NOT CHALLENGE THE CHOICE OF FRAME F. Otherwise, we marginalize Frame F - it may work sometimes, but not often enough to be in our "standard frames" list - and we're less likely to select it in the future ... even though it might be the best fit for a given problem.

A truly comprehensive, "failure inclusive" frame is not necessarily more reliable; that pattern of analysis does not necessarily lead to the best decisions. But it is extremely STABLE, because it contains within its structure a menu of explanations for failure that don't ask us to challenge the frame itself. We failed because: (a) we didn't work hard enough; (b) we didn't know enough; (c) we lacked experience; (d) our adversary out-maneuvered us; (e) our adversary cheated; (f) "The System" was stacked against us ...

... anything BUT (g) we chose the wrong frame and were thus using the wrong pattern of analysis from the outset.

This makes the frame itself - or more precisely, the pre-cognitive CHOICE of frames - immune from critical analysis. It prevents us from asking ourselves why we applied that pattern of analysis, that narrative. Because the selection of a frame limits the decision menu, often to a single option, a "failure inclusive" frame can block critical analysis of the dispositive step of the decision-making process, focusing our attention instead on the (often irrelevant) steps that followed.

This gives us the illusion of critical thinking - we look at consequences and ask ourselves why things went wrong - without challenging the most basic step in that process: why we chose to see the situation in that light, applied that pattern of analysis ... fit the experience into that frame.

The most "failure inclusive" frames include what might be called "noble failure narratives." That is, the frame includes the possibility that the Hero might fail in the quest, and that the failure ITSELF might then be ennobled, even celebrated.

Consider the "Fighting Tyranny" Frame. This frame is not so much about "defeating" tyranny as it is about CHALLENGING tyranny. It matters less whether we "win" than that we "fought the good fight." Those who challenge tyranny - even if they fail - are more noble than those who do not. Failure is very definitely an option within that frame, and can even be celebrated as a noble outcome. Thus, the "Fighting Tyranny" Frame achieves the goal of "failure inclusion." If applying that frame leads to Strategy S, and Strategy S is a complete failure, that failure DOES NOT challenge the validity of the "Fighting Tyranny" Frame in general, nor does it challenge the application of that frame in that context. "At least we tried...."

In assessing different framing options, then, we have to consider whether the frames we propose are "failure inclusive." If they're not, they will be rejected when the decisions they spawn run aground in actual experience, and people will go back to the more comfortable, "failure inclusive" frames ... even if those frames are LESS likely to produce good outcomes.

Crissie