George Lakoff provides a nice explanation for how the faux-conservatives (commonly called the “neo-cons” but there is nothing conservative about those folks) have managed to talk the public into affirming self-damaging legislation, policies and actions. Lakoff, then, provides some analysis of the process, the product of which I call WSpeak

WSpeak is a way of naming that creates interpretive frames that accommodate the faux-cons’ agenda while deflecting the arguments of the opposition. Once reality is named in ways that fit our mythologies of “America” no amount of information alone will cause a cognitive shift or change of mind. Lakoff uses the example of the word “taxes” and how the concept is framed. When asked by Michele Norris how it has come to be that taxes are seen as burdensome and unfair. Lakoff states that the term has been “worked on” for the last thirty years. I disagree. Recall the issue that ignited the real fire of the colonies revolution against Britain—“taxation without representation.” The Boston Tea Party was spurred by an increase in the tea tax. But the antipathy to our citizens sharing the burdens of community needs by paying taxes continued after the revolution. The Whiskey Rebellion is case in point. The self-interested and independent minded citizens of the frontier had no interest in paying taxes to a government that they perceived to be far away in Washington and irrelevant to their concerns. (Never mind that the citizens of the US in the eastern states paid taxes to fund an army of “Indian fighters” to protect frontier settlements.) We have a deeply embedded anti-government value of self-interest that has worked against such logical notions as universal health-care, child-care, and even security (about 1% of the population drawn almost exclusively from the lowest socio-economic levels bear the burden of service in the armed forces.) We fail to exercise the power of community even when it has great potential benefit to us. Bush’s Medicare “reforms” for example prohibit the government as representative of all the people from negotiating lower prices for medicine! That is senseless, but makes the case, as did Lakoff, that we don’t operate on logic, but emotional responses to images and values we’ve absorbed from birth.

Listen to Lakoff’s interview here: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1667389

If the link goes dead, search NPR’s audio archives for “Lakoff” heard on “All Things Considered” on February 9, 2004.