Liberals assume their own values are universal values, and then further assume that all they need to do is present the facts and offer policies that support these universal values. But values are not universal. Conservatives have a very different sense from liberals of what is moral, and a difference in fundamental morality is a deep difference.

To sum up: Use your own language; never use your opponent’s language. Be aware of what you believe and repeat it out loud over and over; never repeat ideas that you don’t believe in, even if you are arguing against them. Be positive. Be authentic. Bring it home. Say it simply.

Democrats need to be talking nonstop about the Public as the necessary foundation of the Private. Undermining, weakening, or eliminating the Public would be a disaster for the Private as well, destroying the sanctity and safety of American private life and the basis of most businesses. Conservatives never mention this fundamental truth of American

The brain is structured in terms of what are called cascades. A cascade is a network of neurons that links many brain circuits. All of the linked circuits must be active at once to produce a given understanding. Simply put, the brain does not handle single ideas as separate entities: a bigger context, a logical construct within which the idea is de

Moral values are primary. They define what the issue areas are and place limits on possible policies. What about abstract ideals such as freedom, justice, fairness, equality, loyalty, accountability, authority, sanctity, and even caring? These are what linguists call contested concepts. They are ideas that appear to have a very simple, generally ag

Basic-level words activate imagery in our mind; for example, the basic-level word chair evokes an image of a chair; the more general, or superordinate-level, word furniture does not evoke a specific image. Basic-level words activate motor programs in our brain as part of our speech comprehension; the word cat, for example, evokes motor programs tha

What we are trying to achieve with this book is a neural alternative that is open to important truths: the central role of the Public in American life, the overwhelming power of corporations in our public life, the predatory nature of privatization, the disastrous reality of humanly caused global warming, and the powerfully negative effect of extre

By 2010 Obamacare had become a dirty word, and the most radical Republicans won their elections and took over the House with a promise to repeal it. What the Obama administration missed was the opportunity to argue on the basis of the same moral ideals of freedom and life. Serious illness without health care takes away your liberty and threatens yo

Some commentators point out that conservatives vote against their economic interests. What they miss is that those conservatives are voting their moral interests, and they will continue to do so. Therefore liberals need to understand the difference between policy and morality and that morality beats policy.