Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Framing

For every Democrat in Congress, here's a little help, because I know you're not all that great with words:

"I'm all for spying on terrorists, but if you're going to spy on Americans, you have to abide by the law. We can be both safe and free."

Repeat 1,000 times and call me in November. (And give up the proposed, crappy new party slogan, "We Can Do Better." Truth is, we couldn't do worse.)
"BACK TO VICHYDEMS HOME

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A reader commented in a different thread about this post: One thing though,what's a terrorist? Generic term.

I answered her there, but am reposting the meat of that response here as well:

I agree with you: in my book, the violent "militia" movement is terrorist and eco-saboteurs aren't, while the Bushies see it exactly the opposite. But my use of the word was designed as a "wildcard": whatever the LISTENER (who is afraid of "the terrorists") means by the term, we support spying on them. Simplistic? Sure. But reassuring and rhetorically powerful.

I also agree that we shouldn't buy in to the Republicans' misuse of the word, which the preceding paragraph sounds like we're doing. We need safeguards against misuse of the term, and we need to include some indication of our opposition to misuse of the word in our position statement. But I think that's implicit in the second part of the quote: if you want to spy on Americans -- ANY Americans, whether you call them terrorists or not -- you have to abide by the law. To me, that covers it.

Agree? Disagree?