Two Day Magazine

One of the tactics of the Right, is to always use combined words together to make their points. Consider it like a drummer sounding a beat that all the lemmings march in tune along with. They also contrast words to make their points.

For example, deconstructing the above advertisement, notice how Perry contrasts “gays” and “our kids”, implying that gays pose a threat to our kids’ rights and safety. Just that he uses the questionable term “gays” instead of calling them “the Homosexual Community” is another tell-tale sign of bigotry.

Conservatives, like the Nazis before them, use public PR like the above ad to victimize themselves, and also to popularize their movement as “normal”. Their political message makes an understood point that they speak for a silent majority that the other side attacks.

The above ad is highly irresponsible. What evidence does Perry have that the Obama Administration have been waging a “war on religion”? This misleading ad implies that a separation between church & state began with President Obama’s administration in 2009. In actuality, school prayer has been abolished in the United States since 1963. In all the time since, no president of either party has seriously threatened to overturn that Supreme Court ruling making school prayer illegal.

Another case of conservative word-attachments is “our religious heritage”. The key word in that statement is “our”. Perry is aligning himself automatically and without challenge, taking the Christian religion as his own. This disregards the contradiction of denominations within the various Christian churches. Does Perry speak for Catholics, for Protestants, for Evangelicals, for Jehovah’s Witnesses, or for Mormons, because all worship Jesus, but not all have a “heritage” in American history equally.

Another ploy by the Right is to always attack government to the public, creating an atmosphere of anti-government sentiment. Note Perry’s use of the term “...there’s something wrong with this country when…”: most individuals probably have something about current politics that they aren’t entirely pleased with. That’s the compromise that comes from democracy. Any one particular group or individuals can’t always have their way all the time. If Perry feels there’s something wrong with this country, he’s entirely free to leave. No one’s stopping him from moving to another nation, least of all me.

What a fantastic comment, Erik! I agree, he is very welcome to leave!

Thank you, Natalie.

In the never-ending battle of Public Relations in America, conservative think tanks such as the Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation have used language effectively to trap their opponents and capture the hearts & minds of the unsuspecting public who tend to believe everything they read & hear without skepticism unawares.

For anyone interested in this topic, I suggest they check out this web-article: “UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics”: http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml

The article is dated from 2003 but is still very relevant today and a worthy read to see how the Right propagate effectively through the media today.

One of the best books I have read on framing arguments is called: Don’t Think of An Elephant…I think the GOP use this method of framing incredibly well and progressives need to start utilizing this book to their advantage more often!

Exactly, Natalie! You nailed it: framing arguments is the methodology the Right have mastered over the years. Most people cannot discern when an argument’s been framed. Most people fall for it hook, line and sinker. Beware the party that frames its arguments!

I will most certainly have to look into the book you mentioned. A good tip, thank you.

Being aware of the obvious framing going on in the above ad, let us deconstruct the ad and see if we cannot identify the “straw man” that Rick Perry is arguing against.

Perry is creating the opponent he wishes to argue against, rather than give an honest debate to a true one. “Gays serving in the military” has nothing to do with the debate of school prayer. Those are two completely different debates. Perry is creating a straw man argument where an imagined anti-religious/gay-friendly liberal agenda is shoving it’s minority views upon a sincere and vulnerable majority. But is that true?

Polls have shown that the majority of Americans support homosexuals serving in the US military today. In fact a recent Gallup poll shows 67% of Americans in favor of gays serving in the US military. That doesn’t appear to be the straw man that Rick Perry seems to be “defending” faith-based persons against, does it?

On the other hand, school prayer has been abolished in the United States since 1963, by a Supreme Court ruling. No US president since Kennedy has tried to challenge this ruling, including Ronald Reagan. The Evangelical George W Bush did not even dare try to overrule this Supreme Court ruling and indeed never mentioned it during his eight years in office.

Another straw man tactic used by Perry in the above ad is his phrase “Obama’s war on religion”. Perry is attacking President Obama for a policy that the administration never claimed. In fact, President Obama supported the building of Park51 mosque in NYC. Hardly the action of someone who’s waging a war on religion. Barack Obama belonged to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago led by Reverand Wright.

Whereas Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy rarely attended church services in the eight years of his presidency and Nancy was often accused of “witchcraft” for her devotion to astrology and tarot readings. When Reagan’s Treasury Secretary, Donald Reagan resigned in 1988, he retorted in his memoirs, “Virtu­ally every major move and decis­ion the Reagans made during my time as White House Chief of Staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up horoscopes to make certain that the planets were in a favourable alignment for the enterprise”. That hardly sounds like a president who’s aligned with the kind of unabashed Christian heritage that Rick Perry seems to be championing in the above ad.

Excellent point!