PRESTOPUNDIT -- "An intense brain-buzz, guaranteed" (2blowhards)

By reducing American politics to language, Lakoff ignores the context that gives meaning to those words. Language only motivates people if the ideas and policies it's connected [are] consistent with the realities of American history and the American national character. Throughout his book, Lakoff ignores this context ..

Take the debate over �tax relief.� Lakoff notes that this is an archetypal example of how Republicans have framed an issue successfully: Taxes are a burden on a society, and the GOP will relieve you of this burden. It's a simple and powerful argument. Progressives, in response, have to offer a different frame that allows people to see taxes as the necessary investments to fund our society, and repeat this frame �until they take their rightful place in our synapses.� This is hopeful but ignorant of the long history of American politics and political thought. America is a nation born out of a tax revolt, with an anti-statist strain that extends from Shays's Rebellion to Proposition 13. This is one important thing that distinguishes America from Canada or Western Europe .. In fact, there is a whole sub-genre in the political science literature about the roots of �American exceptionalism.� Lakoff may wish that Americans will embrace higher taxes .. but to suggest that simply modifying the language will accomplish this ignores the ideas that animate our politics.

It's a shame that Lakoff is too preoccupied with justifying his own political biases to get the facts right .. Democrats looking for answers won't find them in the recycled New Left ideas printed [in] Don't Think of an Elephant.