Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

I came across this article advertising a new book, Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality. From what I can tell, this book seems to be very similar to don’t think of an elephant. The very idea of “Unspeak” seems to be similar to “Framing”.

The basic idea is that you need to phrase your argument in a way that it sounds really good: for example, “The Patriot Act”. Regardless of its actual content, it seems like if you don’t support it, you hate your country.

But it can go a lot deeper than this. Consider Kennedy’s famous line:

“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

This is Milton Friedman’s response to it:

Neither half of that statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. “What your country can do for you” implies that the government is the patron, the citizen the ward. “What you can do for your country” assumes that the government is the master, the citizen the servant.

This didn’t make much sense to me. After all, how can two seemingly opposite statements have the same nuance (of the individual being subservient to the government)?

Since it was Milton Friedman, and not a stupid crackpot commentator, I spend sometime looking at this. At first glance, we have the following two statements, with Friedman’s analysis:

1) “Ask what your country can do for you” (Government is the patron, Person is the ward)
2) “Ask what you can do for your country” (Government is the master, Person is the servant)

Once I wrote it this way, I saw there is hidden variable here: the person doing the asking (i.e. the actor). In this case either “you” or the “government” can be doing the asking.

So there are two more options that need to be added to the above list, making the full list something like this (with what Friedman’s opinion likely would be):

1) Person asks, “What can my government do for me?” (Government is the patron, Person is the ward)
2) Person asks, “What can I do for my government?” (Government is the master, Person is the servant)
3) Government asks, “What can you do for us?” (Person is the patron, Government is the ward)
4) Government asks, “What can we do for you?” (Person is the master, Government is the servant)

[At first I thought there would be 8 options, since the sentence "X asks, 'What can Y do for Z?'" has three variables and each variable has two choices (i.e. 2x2x2 = 8). But, in this case, if Y is "the person", then Z must be "the government" and vice versa. So effectively Y = not Z, so there are only two variables with two choices each (i.e. 2x2=4).]

Kennedy presents only two of the four possible options: a false dilemma. (A good example of a false dilemma is, “You’re either with us or against us.”)

I think the subtlety here is that the person asking is the one that needs something. Thus, generalized a bit, it seems that the one being asked is the the provider — the patron or the master.

A free-market advocate like Friedman would have probably preferred option (4), where the government works for the people.

I don’t know if the speech was intentionally written with in mind. My guess is that the speech-writer’s cognitive frame didn’t include options (3) and (4).

Maybe it’s over-analysis. But it’s really scary to think about all these tools of persuasion, how often they are used, and how they affect how we think.