The political mind : why you can't understand 21st-century politics with an 18th-century brain
This volume attempts to harness cognitive science to rally progressive politicians and voters by contending that conservatives have framed the debate on vital issues more effectively than liberals. According to this book, conservatives comprehend that most brain functioning is grounded not in logical reasoning but in emotionalism, and as a result, huge portions of the citizenry accept the Republican framing of the war in Iraq and supporting the troops rather than liberal appeals and phrasing of the occupation in Iraq and squandering tax money. The author feels that if citizens and policy-makers better understand brain functioning, hope exists to lessen the effects of global warming and other societal disasters in the making
Book
x, 292 pages ; 24 cm
9780670019274, 0670019275
213466226
Introduction : brain change and social change
How the brain shapes the political mind
Anna Nicole on the brain
The political unconscious
The brain's role in family values
The brain's role in political ideologies
Political challenges for the twenty-first-century mind
A new consciousness
Traumatic ideas : the War on Terror
Framing reality : privateering
Fear of framing
Confronting stereotypes : sons of the welfare queen
Aim above the bad apples
Cognitive policy
Contested concepts everywhere
The technical is the political
Exploring the political brain
The problem of self-interest
The metaphors defining rational action
Why hawks win
The brain's language
Language in the new enlightenment
Afterword : what if it works?
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index