A call to arms: Framing the Issue
I truly believe that Republicans are on the right side of almost every issue. The problem is HOW the party and how we as conservatives can communicate the important issues to the public at large. After time, some issues grow stale and when they do, people stop paying attention or even worse, the other side will reframe and capture the idea as their own.
To frame an issue: "a way of structuring or presenting a problem or an issue. Framing involves explaining and describing the context of the problem to gain the most support from your audience."
A great historical example of framing is of the pro-life and pro-choice movements. Both sides changed the name of their respective cause in order to make the other look unreasonable. Who wants to be considered "anti-life"?
Over the next two weeks, I will be suggesting some new frames for some of the more controversial issues out there, but to accomplish this undertaking, I will need your help!
I need the advice of the blogosphere. Before I post on something, leave a comment (include your blog if you have one) or e-mail me (rgthelen-at-gmail-dot-com) with some ideas that you may have. I will try to incorporate it (if I do, I will be sure to give your site credit) into the frame then write about your perspective in more detail and we can grow the issue; we can grow a new frame.
Here is a tentative schedule:
Tuesday: "young conservative" reframe
Here is a tentative schedule:
Tuesday: "young conservative" reframe
Thursday: "intelligent design" reframeWinston Churchill once said: "Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains. Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains. " We need to prove why this statement is just plain wrong. For instance, today, the young conservatives of America need to fight more passionately and have more heart than today's liberals. Send me some of your ideas as to how we fight harder than liberals, where we fight with more heart than liberals and WHY we fight with more heart than liberals.
intelligent Design (ID) is constantly coming under attack from the left as violating Church and State. Conservative politicians that back the equal teachings of Darwinism and ID are framed as being out of touch and unscientific. We have to fight back!
Sunday: Recap
Following Tuesday/Wednesday: "anti-war" reframe
More to come
Following Thursday/Friday: "Bush's tax cuts and deficit spending" (Must recapture the idea before Democrats take it as their own!!)
More to come
Sunday: Recap the project as well as a total "Republican" reframe
Your audience is key to framing. The way a problem is posed, or framed, should reflect the attitudes and beliefs of your audience. Our audience: College students and young adults (18-35)
Send in your ideas. Be it renaming a movement or a thesis...Your help may change the course of the conservative movement! Lets change the world, one idea at a time.
posted by Rob at 02:15
11 Comments:
One of the biggest thing that needs reframing is the tax cut theory and reality of the last 4 years.
The left has been allowed to say that the tax cuts all went to the rich, while the truth is millions of low income folks came off the tax rolls because of them, and the average tax, as percentage of income, dropped by about 25% for the bottom fifty percent of tax payers.
Sun Oct 16, 08:34:00 AM CDT
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?id=4424
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4443
Sun Oct 16, 12:40:00 PM CDT
Get off of it padre. Tax cuts by definition benefit the jillionaires. Those who rely on public services (not the jillionaires) benefit when taxes are paid and finance things like health-care which are shamefully neglected in this great country.
Sun Oct 16, 11:24:00 PM CDT
Hm. Good luck on the deficit spending re-frame. If Dems are "tax and spend" bastards, the current administration is composed of "tax-cut and spend" bastards. It's a poor choice
Sun Oct 16, 11:31:00 PM CDT
Why can't we just have an administration and legislature that want to cut most government programs? Don't most citizens hate the federal government as much as I do? Right now we can't reframe the debate in terms of economic policy b/c we don't have a number of Republicans on board. We should have every Republican who is running for office swear on Club for Growth's principles (ie lower taxes, free trade, soc. security privatization, etc) and then we will start to get somewhere.
Sun Oct 16, 11:44:00 PM CDT
I agree with Tim and Steve. They have a realistic view of what the administration is doing. Bob, it appears that you have been hoodwinked into supporting everything Mr. Bush does. Instead of holding the president to a standard of conservatism, you hold conservatism to the standard of Mr. Bush.
Intelligent Design (ID) is the manifestation of the religious right’s view that humans are far too inadequate to understand the mysteries of the universe. Science is the objective, verifiable pursuit of truth. As such, ID has absolutely no place in the classroom. It is, by definition, out of the realm of science.
Considering the sordid state of public education in this country, I find it amazing that this battle is even being fought. We need to teach our kids titrations, sequential logic, and multivariable calculus. Keep the ID where it belongs – in Sunday school.
Mon Oct 17, 01:37:00 AM CDT
On Thursday, you should re-reframe intelligent design back to the creationsim that it is.
Mon Oct 17, 01:55:00 AM CDT
In the marketplace of ideas, I don't understand Mark why you would have a major problem with schools bringing up the intelligent design viewpoint. All that would need to be said is "Many people believe that God might have had some way fashioned the world in a distinct time period or shaped it through evolutionary forces. They believe this because the current state of being on this earth is highly unlikely due to chance through the bigbang theory and macroevolution alone." There would be no need to go into traditional Christianity thought (Genesis) or any other religion's creation stories. All that would need to be presented is a few simple points of how many people do no think we came to being by science alone. I think this is fair but you possibly may not. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this proposition.
Mon Oct 17, 02:48:00 AM CDT
To issue that disclaimer sends the message that science is out of the realm of reason. That is not what we need to teach our kids. We need to present them with a coherent, knowable universe - not an incoherent, supernatural universe. Also, evolution has nearly unanimous support in the scientific community. Accordingly, that is what should be taught. The general population, on the other hand, is largely uneducated. They should not be allowed to determine the science curriculum of our public schools.
If there really is concern about conveying the idea that evolution is sometimes disputed, schools should merely make clear the distinctions between hypothesis, theory, and fact. End of story.
Mon Oct 17, 08:08:00 PM CDT
Mark,
I've always thought of intelligent design as being linked with evolution: intelligent design being the creator's plan, evolution being the tool with which the creator carried out his plan. If I were a parent, I wouldn't want my child to misconstrue the school's teaching of evolution as sicence proving there is no God, especially since my tax dollars would have paid for that lesson. Since I'm sure I'm not the only one who believes that, wouldn't it be reasonable for a teacher to produce a disclaimer saying that evolution is a theory and a tool to explain much of biology's phenomenon and doesn't necessarily prove that there is or isn't a God, if that's what the taxpayers of the school district wish. Of course, I would take the role of teaching my child my particular beliefs outside of the classroom, but I see no harm with a school admitting that there are different viewpoints and that the school's biology lesson is not meant to replace the students' beliefs.
Tue Oct 18, 05:15:00 PM CDT
I agree with Ryan. It is okay to believe that science alone produced life as we know it today with humans but the chances are very very slim. To believe that a deity had some hand in creating life through science is not defeating or lessening science but rather putting our historical existence within a different lense. I believe that this view is clearly objective and I'm willing to stand by it.
Tue Oct 18, 11:33:00 PM CDT
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