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2006-10-20 Home Front: Culture Wars

Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea

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Posted by tipper 2006-10-20 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11131 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 The response posted by Lakoff:

"Unfortunately, what passes for a review of my book, Whose Freedom?, is actually a vituperative and underhanded attack...." George Lakoff

George, if you can take vituperation, don't write books. In fact, say nothing in public.

Posted by Snuns Thromp1484 2006-10-20 00:29|| 2006-10-20 00:29|| Front Page Top

#2 Some of the corkers:

The left and the right are also divided by another cognitive style: conservatives think in terms of direct causation, where a person's actions have an immediate billiard-ball effect (people get fat because they lack self-control), while progressives think in terms of systemic causation, in which effects fall out of complex social, ecological, and economic systems (people are fat because of an economic system that allows the food industry to lobby against government regulation).

This is richer than fettucine Alfredo. As if government regulation can solve America's obesity crisis. Another sterling example of liberal hIpocrasy that shouts "stay out of my womb" but demands intrusive regulatory control of food production and individual diets. From later comments, food purity is clearly one of the author's pet peeves.

The implication that frames, by being "physically fixed" in the brain, are especially insidious or hard to change, is gratuitous. Also, cognitive psychology has not shown that people absorb frames through sheer repetition. On the contrary, information is retained when it fits into a person's greater understanding of the subject matter. Nor is the claim that people are locked into a single frame anywhere to be found in cognitive linguistics, which emphasizes that people can nimbly switch among the many framings made available by their language.

For proof of just how flexible the human ability to switch frames is, look no further than the massive cognitive dissonance known to us as Islam; As it shouts, "Jews bombed the WTC towers and Osama is our hero for giving America such a lesson!"

All this belies Lakoff's cognitive relativism, in which mathematics, science, and philosophy are beauty contests between rival frames rather than attempts to characterize the nature of reality.

I swear, this is one of the biggest warning flags, namely, liberals who attempt to construe science to be some sort of religion. Any time you hear this, know that you are talking to a mental defective.

Lakoff tells progressives not to engage conservatives on their own terms, not to present facts or appeal to the truth, and not to pay attention to polls. Instead they should try to pound new frames and metaphors into voters' brains. Don't worry that this is just spin or propaganda, he writes: it is part of the "higher rationality" that cognitive science is substituting for the old-fashioned kind based on universal disembodied reason.

This is the "touchy-feely" crap that should have been thrown out with the bathwater back in the 1960s. Instead, liberals of all stripes continue to cling fast unto this irrational and unsubstantiated mode of decision-making.

In defending his voters-are-idiots theory,

BINGO! The fulminating stench of contempt for fellow humanity. Open wide the charnel house doors, oh liberals.

Lakoff has written that people do not realize that they are really better off with higher taxes, because any savings from a federal tax cut would be offset by increases in local taxes and private services. But if that is a fact, it would have to be demonstrated to a bureaucracy-jaded populace the old-fashioned way, as an argument backed with numbers. And that is the kind of wonkish analysis that Lakoff dismisses.

"Don't confuse me with facts!"

And his freedom not to be harmed by "hurtful language" is merely another name for the unlimited censorship of political speech.

I wonder where he stands on the Cartoonifada? Need we spend much time guessing? This asshole is just another socialist parading around under the false colors of democratic partisanship.

An old joke about linguists (no, not that joke!):

LINGUISTICS IS FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE UNABLE TO CONSTRUCT COMPLETE SENTENCES.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2006-10-20 02:55|| 2006-10-20 02:55|| Front Page Top

#3 Freedom of Muslim belief, threatens general freedom. Our security is more important than their liberty. Ergo: occupy them, oppress them; take away their face-rags; make them eat pork (and like it); 1 wife per male; stand up prayer only; allow Jewish tourism in Mecca; pornography on Saudi TV; shock jock radio; ban camel jockey racing; rum ration for every Arab; turn mosques into Poker rooms; outlaw Arabic (English only, to make their occupiers feel at home); a no cleaning after being touched by a dog; etc

Those are my rules, Abdullah. If you don't like them, dial 1-800=EAT-PORK

Posted by Snease Shaiting3550 2006-10-20 03:34|| 2006-10-20 03:34|| Front Page Top

#4 I swear, this is one of the biggest warning flags, namely, liberals who attempt to construe science to be some sort of religion. Any time you hear this, know that you are talking to a mental defective.

Um, to be fair, libs aren't the only ones who speak of science as if it were a religion.

Posted by Rob Crawford">Rob Crawford 2006-10-20 07:40|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2006-10-20 07:40|| Front Page Top

#5 Republicans win because their policies MAKE SENSE.

The republicans are losing support because they are NOT enacting their own policies and applying their stated principles to their own party.

Posted by Bright Pebbles in Blairistan 2006-10-20 08:20|| 2006-10-20 08:20|| Front Page Top

#6 LINGUISTICS IS FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE UNABLE TO CONSTRUCT ~~COMPLETE SENTENCES~~ Coherent Thoughts.

Posted by Oldspook 2006-10-20 10:03|| 2006-10-20 10:03|| Front Page Top

#7 people get fat because they lack self-control

Or because they have big bones, like I do.

Posted by anonymous5089 2006-10-20 10:16|| 2006-10-20 10:16|| Front Page Top

#8 I'm not sure I disagree with you, Bright Pebbles, but I do notice you're making that pronouncement from outside the US.

Posted by lotp 2006-10-20 10:26|| 2006-10-20 10:26|| Front Page Top

#9 Well if your thinking of emigrating, it pays to mkae sure you jump out of the fryingpan and miss the fire.

Posted by Bright Pebbles in Blairistan 2006-10-20 11:05|| 2006-10-20 11:05|| Front Page Top

#10 because they have big bones, like I do

A5089, I laughed so hard at that I think I'm gonna get fired.

Posted by Seafarious">Seafarious 2006-10-20 11:06|| 2006-10-20 11:06|| Front Page Top

#11 Absolutely, Bright Pebbles.

One thing to consider: Bush has been willing to spend like a drunken fishwife in the GWOT. I consider that a temporary move. Obviously it needs to be monitored and pushback is called for -- and has begun to occur, just about on schedule.

I don't criticize him too heavily for it, as it was one of the few tools he had that the Dems didn't automatically try to stymie.

Posted by lotp 2006-10-20 12:11|| 2006-10-20 12:11|| Front Page Top

#12 Um, to be fair, libs aren't the only ones who speak of science as if it were a religion.

Too true, RC. However, liberals more typically have no other concrete belief structure to point to as an alternative. Quite often, all I hear is; "I just don't feel that's right." or some such other nebulous and unsubstantiated drivel.

LINGUISTICS IS FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE UNABLE TO CONSTRUCT ~~COMPLETE SENTENCES~~ Coherent Thoughts.

Reading some BF Skinner lately, Oldspook?

Or because they have big bones, like I do.

First you're whingeing about neotony and now your bragging about your big bone structure. Which is it, A5089?

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2006-10-20 21:09|| 2006-10-20 21:09|| Front Page Top

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