in a world of public opinion and politics. In that world persuasion matters.
In fact, in the real world persuasion and framing matters.
Let’s try this, I’ll try to explain by example what I mean about the importance of language and framing:
Which is better:
“Get off your lazy asses and do something for your country.”
Or:
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
How about this:
“ 87 years ago some old guys founded this great nation. Now they are all dead. But, anyways, we were fighting like cats and dogs, and a shit load of soldiers crumped in this old corn field and well, here we are, today. Honoring these dead guys.
In case you are worried, we will dedicate this worthless farm, at little or not cost to you the tax payer, to the dead guys that were, until recently, laying around here drawing flies. Now this is scared ground. I guess.
Just remember, that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth, and you all know what that means? Yupper. Vote for Honest Abe. Thanks for being here. Laters. I’m off to lunch with Mary Todd and that hunk in union blue, James, my man and bed warmer for the last few years. Cause when I say civil union..I mean civil UNION! Ta!”
Or:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Sit bluedawg sit!
![](http://209.68.0.59/images/icon_cat.jpg)