Posted on 12/28/2004 8:04:49 PM PST by lowbridge
You should be able to recognize the basic frames that conservatives use, and you should prepare frames to shift to. Example: Your opponent says, We should get rid of taxes. People know how to spend their money better than the government. Reframe: “The government has made very wise investments with taxpayer money. Our interstate highway system, for example. You couldn’t build a highway with your tax refund. The government built them. Or the Internet, paid for by taxpayer investment. You could not make your own Internet. Most of our scientific advances have been made through funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health — great government investments of taxpayer money. No matter how wisely you spent your own money, you’d never get those scientific and medical breakthroughs. And how far would you get hiring your own army with your tax refund?
Use wedge issues, cases where your opponent will violate some belief he holds no matter what he says. Example: Suppose he brings up abortion. Raise the issue of military rape treatment. Women soldiers who are raped (by our own soldiers, in Iraq, or on military bases) and who subsequently get pregnant presently cannot end their pregnancies in a military hospital, because abortions are not permitted there. A Military Rape Treatment Act would allow our raped women soldiers to be treated in military hospitals to end their rapeinduced pregnancies. The wedge: If he agrees, he sanctions abortion, in government-supported facilities no less, where doctors would have to be trained and facilities provided for terminating pregnancies. If he disagrees, he dishonors our women soldiers who are putting their lives on the line for him. To the women it is like being raped twice — once by a criminal soldier and once by a self-righteous conservative.
(Excerpt) Read more at rockridgeinstitute.org ...
total reframe: yes the government does have it's place and it's the duty of the people to keep it in it.
Or by a godless liberal using her just to make a stupid point.
The Goldwater Doctrine ....
I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible.
And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.
- Barry Goldwater, “The Conscience of a Conservative”
BS. The government (DARPA) developed the technology up to a point, but the vast development into what the public knows as "the internet" was paid for by private industry.
Self-righteous liberals are a hoot.
I couldn't even finish this article, it was so repulsive. People like that are so convinced they hold the moral high ground and are so much smarter than anyone else that they cannot be reasoned with.
State roads are not maintained or built with federal income tax money.
I have yet to find a conservative who believes that we should pay no taxes.
You'd be right about that. Common sense dictates that if we have a government, they need money to do the business it's charged with...you know, providing for the common defense and whatnot. :) I'd prefer paying some taxes to a government run business. Those kind of endeavors seem to be even more rife with corruption than misspent tax dollars.
You should also be able to recognize who is among the funders of this cuckoo outfit. None other than George Soros.
See the "about us" page. I could swear that the page used to list moveon.org but it now says Open Society Institute which is of course run by Soros.
Thanks for the post and the link.
Reading through the Lakoff article, and viewing the Rockridge web site articles on the Nurturing Parent Model and the Strict Father Model, they sure try hard to make Progressives look good and Conservatives look bad.
We need to Know Our Enemy...
Another fallacy. Private research discovered much more, much faster, and at less expense re the human genome project than did the NSF.
I'm willing to pay taxes (as if I had a choice!) for the legitimate functions of government, such as defense, courts, prisons, police, etc. My beef with the Left is that these are things they oppose, fighting tooth and nail to divert the revenue to the illegitimate wastes, fraud, and abuse which my paltry 60 gigs couldn't even begin to catalog. Reframe? I've been reading their reframing every day for 20 years. Their frame is broken.
"I have yet to find a conservative who believes that we should pay no taxes."
Then you haven't been browsing the right threads. Drop in on some of the Walmart/FreeTrade bashing threads. You'll find 'conservatives' who want to replace our tax system with tariffs (to protect jobs of course). Also, those who claim to be the 'only true conservatives', the libertarians want to abolish almost all, if not all, taxes since they claim any taxation is a form of 'slavery'.
I am totally sick of Libs using an unwitting victim of rape as their excuse for murder. What the heck did the baby do to warrant extermination.
I gave birth to three beautiful, wonderful, smart, grown-up, conservative members of society; who were born to me through impregnation from a vile, abusive, bomb-nut wacko who coerced a stupid 16 year old (me) into becoming pregnant in the first place. As much as I hate that ba$t@rd I love my children and can't imagine ever killing them for my own selfish reasons or because of hatred toward that villan.
>We should get rid of taxes
What lame crap!! I'm for LESS taxes, we all know there must be SOME taxes. But not as much as the democrats want.
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