The Little Blue Book supercedes the Little Red Book for American comrades.
“I’ve always learned a lot from Lakoff, and you will too.” — George Soros.
I spotted this booklet (a paperback only 141 pp. including the notes) entitled "THE LITTLE BLUE BOOK: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic" the other day at a Barnes and Noble and immediately recognized its dangerous potential. As I am too old and slow to shoplift anymore, I reluctantly scraped the $11.00 and tax together to buy it and am now reading it in my insomnia periods. It is the modern equivalent of Mao's Little Red Book, casting collectivism with a "moral" cloak and telling all the little American socialist comrades how to sell it. As Van Jones is quoted as saying:
“The Little Blue Book tells us how to say WHAT WE NEED TO SAY to bring about the policy changes Americans need.” (Emphasis supplied, MBV.)
"What we need to say." Exactly. Language for collectivists has always been just one more tool "in the class war". Lakoff and Wehling have updated it for what they perceive as the current American gestalt.
Here is a snippet article that will give you a taste of what sweetened shit Lakoff and Wehling are shoveling.
I will have a more complete analysis of this book when I'm done.
The Little Red Book
16 comments:
This is absolutely stunning. This is a book that every conservative needs to own.
Mr. Lakoff is to be thanked profusely for laying it all out.
I just ordered from Kindle.
He writes, "All politics is moral." The conservative who is most making the moral arguments for free enterprise is Arthur Brooks at the American Enterprise Institute. I highly recommend his work.
That stuff is so confused and convoluted that it makes no sense. No wonder they sound like freaks when they spout off this crap.
I'm not certain of the origin of "blue state/red state" denoting democrat/republican states on a map at election time but, I would be willing to risk $5 on a bet that it was a democrat who wisely steered away from the red state association for the democrat party and placed it squarely on the shoulders of republicans.
Geee....
I wonder if there's some kinda communist plot or something....?
West said that there are 80 of them in the house alone.
Excuse me , stewardess ... I speak Liberish .
Hmm, Lakoff was a professor of cognitive linguistics at UC Berkeley and a founder of the now defunct Rockridge Institute. His writings or at least some of them appear online at http://www.cognitivepolicyworks.com/resource-center/rockridge-institute/
For reference, the book would be nice to have. For the flavor of what these people believe visit the website. Lakoff is still around and still writing for progressives. He had a Huffpo piece on reframing the Romney/Obama debate on June 18, 2012.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/obama-romney-slogan_b_1605212.html
I hope I didn't steal your thunder, Mike. Didn't mean to as I'm sure you will post a good review of the book once you have read it.
(part 1 of 2)
"The liberal market economy maximizes overall freedom by serving public needs: providing needed products at reasonable prices for reasonable profits, paying workers fairly and treating them well, and serving the communities to which they belong."
Left unsaid here is the definition of "reasonable" and (more importantly) who decides what constitutes "reasonable". I have my own definition, and if you leave it up to me, you may be quite uncomfortable with the result. Lucky for you, I don't get to make that decision. Lucky for me, you don't get to make it either. Here's why:
When making economic decisions, these decisions cannot be made in a vacuum. Every decision affects every other facet of the economy to a geater or lesser extent. The problem is best illustrated by a water balloon: squeeze it here; it bulges someplace else. Where? Nobody knows. It might bulge where the effect is beneficial but it might (and Murphy says it probably will) bulge where the effect would be catastrophic. That is: making a good change here might cause a much worse change elsewhere. You can't get past this. There is no one and no group with adequate knowledge or wisdom or skill to guide the economy in a constantly positive direction. Even if they succeed temporarily, eventually this chicken will come home to roost.
It gets worse. "[B]y ... providing needed products at reasonable prices" has a built-in self-destruct mechanism: the one who sets the reasonable price is, in the liberal economy, not the one who produces. If the producer judges that the reasonable price is unreasonably low (and, really, what other scenario is there?) production doesn't happen. There's an old joke my mother used to tell me:
"How much are these bananas?"
"$1.69 per pound."
"That's outrageous! The market down the street sells bananas for 79 cents per pound!"
"Okay, go buy them from the market down the street."
"They're out of bananas."
"Oh, when I'm out of bananas, the price is 59 cents per pound."
When the price is unreasonably low (in the producer's estimation) you're out of bananas. If the selling price is unreasonably high in the buyer's estimation, you're left with lots of unsold bananas. Commerce happens when buyers and sellers agree... unless (as in The Affordable Care Act) government steps in to force commerce to happen. Again, this can only go on for so long. Eventually production stops, companies leave the insurance biz, cost-effective alternatives are found and the system is thwarted. Only in a thorough-going police state can this scheme be run on a relatively-long-term basis, and we have some good examples of how that works in the not-so-relatively-long-term: In 1989, after driving The Great Socialist Experiment in near-laboratory conditions for 71 years, the USSR collapsed economically. A country with everything going for it simply could not overcome the effect of the economy doing what it damned-well pleased in violation of the Commissars' orders.
(part 2 of 2)
The only solution that works consistently and corrects itself rapidly is an unfettered free market, and by 'unfettered', I mean unfettered: give the government authority to license entry into the market to keep the unscrupulous out and it fails; let corporations shield their assets via the scam of 'limited liability' and it fails; let the government issue letters of patent and it fails; let companies rig the market by having trade secrets whose secrecy they may enforce in court and it fails. And when it fails, who gets hurt? Corporate officers? Probably not. Government officials? Never. Joe Sixpack? Joe takes it in the shorts every time. It's Joe who ends up on a soup line while the well-connected escape to Barbados.
Yet, who is it that constantly whines about government not doing enough to manage the economy? Why... isn't that our old friend Joe holding a placard over there and chanting something about 'the 99%'? Yes, I think it is...
Until we solve the problem of people ordering poison for others and drinking it themselves, we will never have an economy that doesn't prove "it's not what you know, it's who you know".
Frederick H Watkins,
As I recall, when I was young the democrats were always red and the republicans were blue. At some point between the late '80s and mid '90s a "journalist" democratic operative began espousing the reverse for obvious reasons. --Part of the "lets call communism progressivism and they won't know what that means" movement. Other "journalists" happily jumped on board and now the GOP is the traditional color of the Marxists.
Frederick H Watkins -- it used to be the GOP was blue and the Donkey-asses were red.
They swapped it during Bush v. Gore, probably for the exact reasons you cite.
Sickening in its cleverness, that traditionalists would be the new Reds in their propaganda war.
Time then for us to be Little Red Riding Hood, be game and refuse to be their chumps.
Good find Mike, and good observations.
AP
I`d get one of those and leave in the can in case the roll ran out , but I can`t stand the idea of voluntarily giving them 11 buck`s.
The material in the book obviously is an important find. Thankfully, we've nearly passed the time for talking, so it's potential to do harm is limited.
I don't think I could stomach reading all of it. I couldn't get past the forward to Rules for Radicals without wanting to burn it and everyone who touts it to the ground.
Demon spirits,spirit of the anti-Christ,Satan,behind evil.Now days as prophesied,wrong is being deemed as right & visa versa.Lets see,how do we pull this off.
Doctrines of demons.
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