George Lakoff, a UC Berkley Professor, - To win elections liberals need to control your mind

or at least control them better than conservatives already are. That's the claim in "The Politicl Mind" a book reviewed this week in the NY Times

This guy is a tool that even Noam Chomsky can't stand but somehow he still manges to get books published.

Apparently the reviewer can't stand him anymore than me or Chomsky so the review is worth reading:

To dismiss his politics as a brain defect would do him no more justice than he’s done voters. His proposal to re-engineer our heads is neither democratic nor scientifically warranted. It defies public accountability, the very principle he purports to serve. It also underestimates our intelligence. The fact that brain formation materializes mind formation doesn’t simplify their relationship. To the extent that the brain is the mind’s recorder, physical laws constrain the writing process. But maybe the power of rationality isn’t in the writing. Maybe it’s in the editing. The mind, through the brain, revises itself.

We’re capable of changing our minds. Just give us a good reason.

That's the closing paragraph there are a couple other gems also, such as:

What should progressives say? That conservatism is “fundamentally antidemocratic.” It “tells us to save your own skin and not to care about your neighbor,” so “conservatives don’t pay that much attention to injured veterans.” As an exemplar of conservatism, Lakoff cites the CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.

It’s hard to take all this seriously if you know any conservatives, just as it’s hard to take Lakoff’s neurodeterminism seriously if you know any science. As he acknowledges, current brain-imaging technology is far too crude to see specific neural activity. Cores? Narrative structures? Issue-to-worldview binding? It’s all speculation.

The takedowns of Lakoff's historical claims are pretty good too. This is definitely one case where I am sure the review is more worthwhile than the book.