Paul Wilczynski's Observations

Rockridge Institute comes to an end

The Rockridge Institute, a small California organization with which George Lakoff (author of a number of books on framing language from a progressive perspective) is associated, is closing up as of April 30, 2008.

It's really too bad. They took on a massive task and did what they could given their limited resources.

The Rockridge Institute was formed to address a set of challenges: The right-wing think tanks, after spending 35 years and 4 billion dollars, had come to dominate public debate. They had done this by framing Big Ideas their way: the nature of government, the market, taxation, security, morality, responsibility, accountability, character, nature, even life. This allowed them to then frame lower-level issues, special cases like terrorism, Iraq, education, health care, retirement, stem-cell research, the death penalty, affirmative action, and on and on. Our challenge was to figure out exactly how they had achieved such dominance over the minds of Americans and what progressives could do--not just how to respond case by special case, but how to do the Big Job: to reframe the Big Ideas governing our politics.

I look forward to seeing what Lakoff and the others do in the future.

posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 9:08 AM