I had the pleasure of being invited to hear Dr. Tim Daughtry speak about the book he authored, ‘Waking The Sleeping Giant: How Mainstream Americans Can Beat Liberals At Their Own Game’. His presentation focused on how the Left uses and manipulates language and the meaning of words to control the dialogue. Most people are not interested in politics. The Left is aware of this and has developed a keen way of speaking to the uninformed/misinformed that captures their attention and speaks to their hearts. These uninformed/misinformed go to the polls and vote with their hearts, not with their cognitive reasoning.
This short video clip summarizes well how the Left has been so successful at controlling the narrative. With their success they have been able to influence culture and education more effectively than we as Conservative Christians. We spend our time focused on our family, our faith and our careers. We prefer to be left alone and in return we mind our own business. We answer to God and only look to government for basic security and infrastructure. For the Left, government is their god and therefore they focus their attention on serving and growing it. Andrew Breitbart said that politics is downstream from culture. If you control the culture (as the Left has done), you control the politics (also where the Left has had much success).
We need to turn this around, we need to learn how to beat them at their game, we need to put them on defense and call out how their message is leading to the cultural rot we are witnessing. Dr. Daughtry does an excellent job of covering this in his book. But for an introduction to his work, he also has written this piece to shed some light on how we can get in and play this game:
Political communication is ultimately a fight for the moral high ground in an argument. And the emerging picture in the field of cognitive science reveals that much of the argument is won or lost, not at the level of conscious reflection, but at the level of unconscious reaction to the language we use and the ideas associated with that language.
Hard as it may be for conservatives to accept, conscious reasoning and weighing of evidence are only part of political communication. Of course, you have to win the mind, but you cannot win the mind if you lose the heart. Touchy-feely though that might sound to conservatives schooled in the efficiency of free enterprise or the finer points of what the Constitution permits, scientific advances in understanding of how the mind processes political communication lend strong support to the power of emotional reactions, especially when moral concerns are involved. And the emerging scientific picture makes it clear that most of our mental processes are of the rapid, automatic type that bypass conscious thought, and the implications for political communication are profound.
The Left understands this fundamental principle, and they have applied it masterfully. Mountains of historical and economic evidence stand in testimony against socialism, yet socialism is growing in acceptance, especially among younger people. Socialism might not work well, but it sounds good, especially if its proponents can get people to see socialism as grounded in caring and free enterprise as grounded in greed.
Those who control the culture shape the political future, and while conservatives focused on winning the next election, the Left focused on winning the cultural institutions that shape the worldview and the moral values of the next generation. In the long term, it will do little good for conservatives to win elections if the people who lost the election teach our children, report the news, entertain the public, preach our sermons, and run our businesses the next day.
I added emphasis to the final paragraph because I think this is the most important element we need to understand. Even if we homeschool or have our children in private schools where we can control what they are taught, we need to get involved outside of our churches to start influencing culture. I am still in the learning process of how we take back control, we all are! Public education seems to be a good start and parents are starting to take a stand against the nonsense being taught to their children from Critical Race Theory to the neutralization of gender.
It has taken the Left decades to infiltrate their power over our culture and education. Think of our efforts as an ultra-marathon, not a sprint. Look at the small picture, what is happening locally and try not to be overwhelmed by the big picture. This is a bottom-up grassroots movement to influence culture, not a top-down takeover.
Keep praying, keep reading and stay involved!
The left that is murdering the world with hacksxxxines has never been my team
They wouldn't have folks who speak freely and tell Truth like me, they put me in jail
Thanks ScKamala
The left that cares only about killing and fascism has no time left .
liberty of Freedom is our destination
We who care about life and love ain't part of team fascism...
Whether it be left right or middle upside down sideways
Killing folks is wrong
By needle or stone
To kill is wrong
Depopulation agenda ain't no true left...
This is so true--Leftists know that emotion sells and most people think simply, emotionally. Those of us that are based in math & logic struggle to understand how others allow their emotions to rule their decisions, but that's how it is. We have to find a way to "emotionalize" the logical choice. We need to do a better job of telling stories and creating sympathetic characters who embody the positives of Capitalism and the negatives of Socialism, so that the "emos" can see which is actually the more caring ideology.