Editing George Lakoff (section)

==Political significance and involvement==
Lakoff has publicly expressed some of his political views and his ideas about the conceptual structures that he views as central to understanding the political process. He almost always discusses the former in terms of the latter. ''[[Moral Politics]]'' (1996, revisited in 2002) gives book-length consideration to the conceptual metaphors that Lakoff sees as present in the minds of American "[[American liberalism|liberals]]" and "[[American conservatism|conservatives]]". The book is a blend of cognitive science and political analysis. Lakoff makes an attempt to keep his personal views confined to the last third of the book, where he explicitly argues for the superiority of the liberal vision.<ref name="Moral Politics" />

Lakoff argues that the differences in opinions between liberals and conservatives follow from the fact that they subscribe with different strength to two different central metaphors about the relationship of the state to its citizens. Both, he claims, see governance through metaphors of the [[family]]. Conservatives would subscribe more strongly and more often to a model that he calls the "[[strict father model]]" and has a family structured around a strong, dominant "father" (government), and assumes that the "children" (citizens) need to be disciplined to be made into responsible "adults" (morality, self-financing). Once the "children" are "adults", though, the "father" should not interfere with their lives: the government should stay out of the business of those in society who have proved their responsibility. In contrast, Lakoff argues that liberals place more support in a model of the family, which he calls the "[[nurturant parent model]]", based on "nurturant values", where both "mothers" and "fathers" work to keep the essentially good "children" away from "corrupting influences" (pollution, social injustice, poverty, etc.). Lakoff says that most people have a blend of both metaphors applied at different times, and that political speech works primarily by invoking these metaphors and urging the subscription of one over the other.<ref>{{cite book| last = Lakoff| first = George| title = [[Moral Politics (book)|Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think]]| publisher = The University of Chicago Press| year = 2002| location = Chicago| pages = [https://archive.org/details/moralpoliticswha00lako_0/page/143 143–176]| isbn = 0-226-46771-6}}</ref>

Lakoff further argues that one of the reasons liberals have had difficulty since the 1980s is that they have not been as aware of their own guiding metaphors, and have too often accepted conservative terminology framed in a way to promote the strict father metaphor. Lakoff insists that liberals must cease using terms like ''partial birth abortion'' and ''tax relief'' because they are manufactured specifically to allow the possibilities of only certain types of opinions. ''Tax relief'' for example, implies explicitly that [[taxes]] are an affliction, something someone would want "relief" from. To use the terms of another metaphoric worldview, Lakoff insists, is to unconsciously support it. Liberals must support linguistic [[think tank]]s in the same way that conservatives do if they are going to succeed in appealing to those in the country who share their metaphors.<ref>{{cite book| last = Lakoff| first = George| title = Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think| publisher = The University of Chicago Press| year = 2002| location = Chicago| pages = [https://archive.org/details/moralpoliticswha00lako_0/page/415 415–418]| isbn = 0-226-46771-6| url = https://archive.org/details/moralpoliticswha00lako_0/page/415}}</ref>

Lakoff offers advice about how to counteract politicians' lies. He maintains that the act of stating that a lie is false reinforces the lie because it repeats the way the lie is framed. Instead, he recommends what he calls a "[[truth sandwich]]":

"1.	Start with the truth. The first frame gets the advantage.<br />
2.	Indicate the lie. Avoid amplifying the specific language if possible.<br />
3.	Return to the truth. Always repeat truths more than lies."<ref>{{cite web|first=George|last=Lakoff|url=https://twitter.com/georgelakoff/status/1068891959882846208?lang=en| website=Twitter| date=December 1, 2018| title=Truth Sandwich}}</ref>

Lakoff calls this a "truth sandwich" even though the baloney is in the middle. The position of the lie avoids both primacy and recency effects.<ref>{{cite web| url=https://www.pbs.org/standards/blogs/standards-articles/what-is-a-truth-sandwich/| website=PBS | title=Consider Using a 'Truth Sandwich' to Counter Misinformation| first=Marcia| last=Apperson| date= April 22, 2020}}</ref>

Between 2003 and 2008, Lakoff was involved with a [[Progressivism in the United States|progressive]] [[think tank]], the [[Rockridge Institute]], an involvement that follows in part from his recommendations in ''Moral Politics''. Among his activities with the institute, which concentrates in part on helping liberal candidates and politicians with re-framing political metaphors, Lakoff has given numerous public lectures and written accounts of his message from ''Moral Politics.'' In 2008, Lakoff joined [[Fenton Communications]], the nation's largest [[public interest]] communications firm, as a Senior Consultant. One of his political works, ''Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate'', self-labeled as "the Essential Guide for Progressives", was published in September 2004 and features a foreword by former [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic]] presidential candidate [[Howard Dean]].