Strategic Framing

Conservatives have realized that individual issues need to be linked to an overall moral and ethical perspective. They have seen how issues fit together.

The Strategic Framing Overview

Strategic Framing is an effort to revitalize progressive discourse by reframing progressive policies in ways that speak to shared American values.

Take Back America presentation

A presentation on the importance of political framing, given by George Lakoff at the Take Back America conference on 6/4/04.

Moral Politics - The Nation as a Family

A three-part series examining the use of metaphor in applying what we know about families -- small, close-knit groups of people that we deal with often -- to nations -- large, complicated groups of people that we never interact with directly. Parts two and three discuss two different idealized models of the family that lead to the two main political ideologies in our society today.

George Lakoff explains the need for Rockridge

This thorough and popular U.C. Berkeley interview with Rockridge Senior Fellow George Lakoff chronicles the motivations for starting the Rockridge Institute.

Conceptual Levels: Bringing It Home to Values

Why is it so easy for the radical right to label progressives as wishy-washy flip-floppers? Why is it so hard for progressives to shake these labels? The answer lies in some old habits.

Simple Framing

An introduction to framing and its uses in politics.

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Report from the 2005 Spiritual Progressives online conference

Faith has long played a role in influencing public opinion of government across the political spectrum. Currently, however, the religious Right is far more effective in setting the policy agenda than the religious Left. From May 10th through May 19th, 2005, participants across denominations joined agnostics and atheists in the Spiritual Progressives online conference to discuss the interplay between religion and progressive politics, between belief and civic activism. <p>The communicative power of shared values is the main tool for uniting the progressive movement and reaching out to moderates unaware of how the progressive platform follows logically from their spiritual beliefs. Agreement fostered through the dialogue of this conference confirms the power and possibility of describing these shared values. The very difficult task of analyzing modes of reasoning and understanding discourse in order to know the existing elements of our shared “progressive theology” remains before us. This report summarizes the main discussions that took place during the conferece, as well as the conclusions reached.