Reading Group Guide
About this Guide
The questions and discussion topics that follow are designed to enhance your reading of George Lakoff's Whose Freedom? We hope they will enrich your experience as you explore Lakoff's provocative exposé of the rhetoric that empowers America's conservatives.
Introduction
Hailed by Howard Dean as "one of the most influential political thinkers of the progressive movement," George Lakoff is a revered adviser within the Democratic Party, a bestselling author, and a renowned scholar in the field of cognitive linguistics. Whose Freedom? combines all three perspectives for an engaging, authoritative, passionately argued survey of America's war over the word "freedom."
Since 9/11, the Bush administration has relentlessly invoked the word "freedom," using it to justify everything from preemptive strikes on Iraq to the privatization of Social Security. Yet many Democrats see President Bush's use of the word as meaningless and opportunistic—and ultimately leading to the curtailment of the very freedoms he claims to support. Whose Freedom? reveals the ways in which language and repetition in the media have been used to enact a devastating, calculated redefinition of freedom. Surveying a broad swath of the American political and cultural landscape—including religion, the economy, foreign policy, and science—Lakoff explains the mechanisms that have been used by the right to hijack our most cherished political idea. In the high-stakes duel over the beliefs most central to American life, Whose Freedom? offers a rousing strategy to restore the traditional American idea of freedom, while strengthening the very foundation of our democracy.
1. How did you define freedom before reading Whose Freedom? Did you consider your definition to be progressive? Were you surprised to discover that the progressive definition is also the more traditional one, as George Lakoff maintains in the book's opening pages?
2. What "frames" or cultural influences have shaped your political opinions throughout your life? In an enlightened society marked by considerable scientific discovery, why do frames still trump facts in shaping opinions?
3. In what way can the contested nature of language be an advantage for progressives?
4. Using Chapter 2 as a reference point, identify the folk theories that prevail in your community. Which folk theories have been the most difficult for you to reject?
5. Applying the author's logic of simple freedom, which cornerstones of freedom seem to be most in jeopardy today? How would you counter an argument that said equality and fairness are not inextricably linked to the definition of freedom?
6. Which aspects of freedom are currently not being contested in America?
7. Lakoff argues that the nation is understood metaphorically as a family, and that there are two very different models of parenting that reflect two opposing worldviews. Which model shapes your political views? Why has the authoritarian, paternalistic strict father model been allowed to flourish in so many cultures throughout history?
8. Which of the subgroups described in Chapters 5 and 6 (socioeconomic progressives, identity-politics progressives, environmental progressives, civil liberties progressives, spiritual progressives, antiauthoritarian progressives, idealists, pragmatists, militants, financial conservatives, libertarians, social conservatives, fundamentalists, and neoconservatives) do you predict will prevail in future American political structures?
9. In Chapter 7, "Causation and Freedom," Lakoff begins with the observation that "the progressives argue on the basis of systemic causation (within a social, ecological, or economic system) and the conservatives argue on the basis of direct causation (by a single individual)." He goes on to explain the ways in which our understanding of causation can have profound effects on public policy. In what way does it empower us to be aware of the two models of causation?
10. How should "free" be defined in the notion of free markets? Do free markets undermine democratic freedom? Were the premises of the economic liberty myth, outlined in Chapter 9, readily believed by the American public?
11. In your opinion, is it right that American corporations in many ways act like governments, as discussed in Chapter 9? Should corporations be entitled to the same freedoms and liberties as an individual citizen?
12. How has religious rhetoric shaped American perceptions of freedom in recent years? How does the rhetoric of progressive Christianity differ from that of fundamentalist Christianity? What would the American political landscape look like without the influence of religion?
13. Based on what you read in Chapter 11, what seems to be the ultimate goal of George W. Bush's foreign policy? How did framing help him persuade Congress (and a substantial number of voters) to back many of these policies? Who has been liberated by his initiatives? Have Bush's policies been effective at spreading freedom abroad? What kind of freedom?
14. What fallacies can you identify in the radical conservative definition of freedom and liberty? To whom are those arguments appealing? How are these groups able to downplay FDR's goals of freedom from want and fear?
15. What would it take to enact the calls to action that form the closing paragraphs of Chapter 11?
16. How was 9/11 framed in terms of freedom? What were the consequences, in domestic and foreign policy, of this framing?
17. Is it possible to create a truly inclusive freedom—one in which the answer to "Whose freedom?" is "Everyone's"?
18. What does the author's closing anecdote (regarding the use of MRIs in examining partisan thinking) say about the future of political rhetoric? Where does the greatest hope for reframing freedom lie? In the media? Universities? Popular culture?
