Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has relentlessly invoked the w
ord "freedom." Al-Qaeda attacked us because "they hate our freedom." The U.S. ca
n strike preemptively because "freedom is on the march." Social security should
be privatized in order to protect individual freedoms. The 2005 presidential ina
ugural speech was a kind of crescendo: the words "freedom," "free," and "liberty
," were used forty-nine times in President Bush's twenty-minute speech.
In "Who
se Freedom?, " Lakoff surveys the political landscape and offers an essential ma
p of the Republican battle plan that has captured the hearts and minds of Americ
ans--and shows how progressives can fight to reinvigorate this most beloved of A
merican political ideas.
