Book Review: Thinking Points

Lakoff, George. (2006) Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

176 pp.
$10 (paperback) ISBN 0-3745-3090-4

In Thinking Points: communicating our American Values and Vision, the author George Lakoff opens with an explicit expression of intention for this book– the book is to call on grassroots Americans to act for re-leading the United States to the way based on its inherently “progressive” values such as common wealth for common good, diversity, and tolerance. In the introduction “why we write,” Lakoff points out that the radial, authoritarian right wing that refers to itself as “conservative” has been dominated the United States for decades. Conservatives act as if they are the ones who are devoted to preserving and promoting American values. However, their values are contradictory to the “traditional” American values which made the United States a respectful and just nation. In this book, Lakoff attributes conservatives’ success of leading the United States to their being good at communicating with the public. By illustrating how language and moral framing can be effectively used to communicate with the public, Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute call upon grassroots progressives to trumpet their values by using good strategies so that they can give progressive politician strong backings to reverse the trend led by conservatives.

As a book aiming to speak to the public, Thinking Points is an easily read handbook. Lakoff uses concrete examples to illustrate his points, and he provides “frames” for readers to have an insight into what progressive and conservative worldviews are. Lakoff also provides “frames” for reformers, strategists and advocators to learn how to frame their issues and use strategies to initiate progressive changes. The contents in this book are well-organized into eight chapters. The author doesn’t group those chapters into different sections. Yet according to its content and structure, it can be viewed as having three main parts.

In the first part – from chapter one to chapter three – Lakoff provides a discussion for the phenomenon of why conservatives keep winning and why progressives keep losing campaigns and failing in leading political discourses. Chapter one, “Winning and Losing,” compares and contrasts the different ways progressives and conservatives communicate to people. Borrowing Richard Wirthlin, chief strategist for former president Ronald Reagan’s discovery, Lakoff concludes that people will vote for the person who tries to communicate them with value (as conservative Reagan did) rather than issues or a laundry of programs and policies (as most progressives do). Lakoff further proposes twelve traps progressives hole which make them lose votes.

In chapter two, “Biconceptualism,” Lakoff argues there is no so-called “center.” By “no center,” Lakoff means that there is no absolutely conservative or progressive voter. Everyone having conservative beliefs in some aspects would hold progressive values in other aspects. The common strategy progressives use to attract voters is shifting from left to a little bit right, or being moderates. By doing so, unfortunately, progressives lose their votes from the left due to lack of authenticity and they won’t get extra votes they expect from the imaginary “center” eventually. Conservatives never shift their positions – they stick to their values so voters can identify them and feel they are trustworthy. Lakoff argues that the only way to win more votes for progressives is to activate those common progressive values hold by both of progressives and conservatives without the sacrifice of moral authenticity.

After emphasizing the necessity of communicating values authentically to the public, in chapter three, “Frames and Brains,” Lafoff further draws on research discoveries regarding how the brain operates to explain how important the use of frames is. He suggests that human beings use frames to facilitate our understanding of this world. Such use of frames is usually implicit so we are not even aware of this. However, the activation of some specific frames rather than others would dominate our understanding and thinking toward one thing. Lakoff points out that “over the past thirty-five years, conservatives have spent more than $4 billion constructing a system of dozens of think thanks and training institutes, staffed by right-wing intellectuals. They have managed to dominate the framing of issues and have profoundly changed American politics in the process.” For example, using “the war on terror,” conservatives successively invoke people’s implicit frame regarding war. Such an implicit activated frame makes people naturally rationalize what happens and serve politicians as a foundation to justify their actions no matter whether it’s adequate to declare war to the terrorists and whether the war can lead to satisfying solutions for protecting the United States.

However, most progressives don’t know the necessity and power of using frames and have no sense of conservatives’ use of frames. Progressives are usually rationalists who believe human beings always be able to judge things by logical reasoning. As a result, Progressives seldom consider framing when communicating their arguments with people, and they don’t know how to re-frame what conservatives articulate. In chapter four, Lakoff explicitly discusses several kinds of frames and gives examples to illustrate how progressives can break conservatives’ frames by replacing the frame embodying progressive values.

In the second part, Lakoff starts to focus on addressing the different moral and political philosophies hold by progressives and conservatives. Chapter four, “the Nation as Family,” presents how Americans’ political beliefs are structured by their idealizations of the family. Conservative morality, like the strict father model, centers on authority and control; progressive morality, like the nurturant model, emphasizes empathy and responsibility. Such differences lead progressives and conservatives to different principles and arguments for all kinds of political issues such as poverty, terrorism, and also the market, which is especially discussed in chapter five, “Morality and the Market.” It’s impressive to see how relevant the personal idealized family model and moral and political philosophies would be. And the amazing thing is that holding so different moral systems, conservatives and progressives would have totally different definitions for the very common terms we use today which might be view as “universal values” – freedom, equality, responsibility, integrity and security. Lakoff calls those concepts above “contested concepts” in the chapter six, “fundamental values.” He gives a discussion of why people can mean different things when they use the same words. Finally, in the last part, Lakoff gives examples of how progressives should use strategic initiatives to lead long-term changes in chapter seven, “Strategic Initiatives” and make their arguments in chapter eight, “the Art of Arguments.”

Although this book is written to speak to Americans, it’s worth reading for anyone who is interested in learning how to act for your faiths and values because Lakoff gives not only the contextual examples regarding American political environment but also the general principles of making good arguments and use of strategies. Besides, the progressive Americans values Layoff discusses are not particularly belonged to the United States. Anyone who has such progressive values can use Thinking Points as a reference to examine her/his underlying value systems and to examine whether her/his actions are consistent with beliefs and intentional goals. Finally, the United States now is an aggressive nation in the world which has power to intervene in international affairs and even enact and call on a war. By reading such a book, “foreigners” who would like to cooperate or negotiate with the conservative-dominant American government would have a better understanding of how those politicians believe and think. Also, as the American “dominant culture” has been constructed in other nations intentionally by the United States or spread more naturally to different places all over the world, Think Points provides people outside the United States who want to “learn” from American a chance to examine what implicit values underlying concepts and policies they would bring into their society, and what consequences their actions might have.