Once again liberals have squandered an opportunity to change the world.
Yesterday the Rockridge Institute announced it is closing its doors. A victim of lack of funding, lack of support and a general lack of understanding of its vital role. Rockridge itself shares some of the blame, but we'll get to that in a moment.
For those of you who don't know what the Rockridge Institute is, then it's time you met George Lakoff, author of "Don't Think of an Elephant." What Lakoff brought to the table was a way of understanding how differently liberals and conservatives see the world. He defined the "strict parent" model of conservative thinking and the "nurturing parent" view of the world held by liberals. In subsequent writings and through the Institute, he sought to teach liberals how to frame their ideas in ways that reached the nurturing parent in each of us.
While Lakoff isn't the last word in this thinking (read Thom Hartmann, Cracking the Code), he provided critical insight at a time when liberals were struggling to understand why they couldn't get their message across.
An important part of Lakoff's work was his advocacy that liberals need to create the same kind of powerhouse think tanks that conservatives have used for years to justify their world view. Rockridge was intended to be one of those institutions and its job was to help liberals communicate more effectively.
Indeed liberals did stream to Rockridge asking for help in crafting their messages on local issues and candidates. Where Rockridge failed was in teaching enough of us how to get those ideas across in the work we do daily. The ideas were easy to understand, but it often seemed that Lakoff and the rest of the staff struggled with how to make their concepts practical.
Time and money might have helped, but that's where liberals blew it. We let something valuable get away. We understood the fight and what we must do to win and simply chose to lay down on the battlefield.
We've seen the same thing here at Democracy for Tennessee. People join us because they share our belief that it's important to elect Progressive candidates to office -- but when it comes time to work for that cause, they refuse to be pried from their chairs. We're not called "latte liberals" for nothing.
Soon the Rockridge Institute will become just an entry in Wikipedia and an online archive. Liberals will bemoan how conservatives control the debate and public policy. As the current crop of conservatives retire, a new, younger crowd will emerge and build on what Karl Rove and others created. The new neocons will be comforted in the knowledge that Progressives have no stomach for a fight and they'll be able to rebuild. We've been given their play book and will create no defense.
It's difficult to predict what it will take to spur liberals to action. Elections have been stolen, presidential lies exposed, freedoms neutralized and government has been corrupted by business. We've marched a generation off to an unnecessary war, enriched a few while shrinking the middle class and denied the poor decent wages. We've let health care costs skyrocket while seeing our overall quality of health decline. We've stood passively by waiting for an easy fix for Social Security, presumably waiting for a crisis before we consider action.
We've watched while most of a great city was washed away and failed to act. We've given victims of tragedy polluted housing in which to live. We've watched while the beliefs of a few became law for us all. We stand by while people are persecuted for their beliefs, their religion or the color of their skin and do nothing. We have allowed our government -- a government of the people -- to torture others.
There is no lack of reasons for us to be outraged, no lack of problems crying for reform. And with the closing of Rockridge, it seems that we have even lost the will to speak clearly about what we believe.
-- Jim Grinstead
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