Say Anything Blog

Left-wing political guru George Lakoff (Rhymes with) [per Rush - ed] seems to believe there’s nothing wrong with the American electorate that a little mass “re-education” couldn’t fix:

“Since voters’ opinions are neither logical nor self-made, they should be altered, not obeyed. Politicians should “not follow polls but use them to see how they can change public opinion to their moral worldview.” And since persuasion is mechanical, progressives should rely less on facts and more on images and drama, “casting progressives as heroes, and by implication, conservatives as villains.” The key is to “say things not once, but over and over. Brains change when ideas are repeatedly activated.”

I don’t know whether Lakoff’s wrong in a technical sense. “Mass brainwashing” techniques seem to work pretty effectively for the world’s authoritarians (Kim Jong Il, the Soviets, modern Islamists). Not a particularly good argument, IMHO, for letting Lakoff or any of his left-wing acolytes anywhere near the levers of power.