[WS:] Lakoff claims a third possibility - it is biological but not innate. Instead it is a product of what neuroscientist call "neuroplasticity" or changes in the neuron connections as a result of experience. Someone who has been repeatedly exposed to the right wing framing of issues, develops neural connections that evoke that frame (and its associations) more easily than those who have not. That would explain why Americans tend to be more conservative than their European ancestors.
It is my understanding that the claims linking ideological prefrences to different functioning of our brains are pretty firmly grounded in neuroscience, which has been rapidly advancing during the past decade or so thanks to modern brain imaging technology (fMRA.) One consequence of that is the realization that people are not rational after all, at least in the "Cartesian" sense of the word, but think mainly in terms of emotions. Even smart and educated people, save those affected by Asperger Syndrome. The problem is that most lefties (inlcuding this writer) were taught that it is the reason alone that counts, and emotions are irrelevant or altogether bad, and thus should be controlled. This firm belief is perhaps one of the key reasons why the left has been failing to make popular appear for some time - it got stuck in the rut of making rational arguments, thus ceding the realm of emotional appeals to the right. And the right
played on those emotions quite skillfully.
Lakoff sugests to reverse that trend by using frames that are based in left wing emotions (nurturance, fairness, compassion, etc.) - but that is easier said than done while facing a relentless blitz of the Repug hate machine. However, framing "progressive" issues in the right wing frames (flag, duty, etc.) is precisely something to be avoided, because it only strengthens the conservative grip on public discourse. Bill Clinton tried that approach and succeeded for a while, but this was a short lived gain that only strengthen Repug positions in the long run.
Wojtek
--------------------------------------------------------------- "When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost. [...] All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men." - HL Mencken ----------------------------------------------------------------