We had a fun show last week withGeoff Nunburg关于政治语言。一会儿，我将再思考一些关于政治语言的问题。

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但回到政治语言。

On the air, we didn't talk much about competing ways of "framing" the same issue. George Lakoff has recently been arguing that the main reason that Democrats lose elections is that Republicans have been masters at framing the issues, while Democrats have not been. We didn't get very deeply into this idea on the air. Too bad, because Nunberg has some pretty interesting things to say both about Lakoff's claims about framing in general and about Lakoff's particular suggestions about how certain issues might best be framed by the democrats.

In one way, it seems to me right, maybe even trivially so, that politics is bound to involve a lot of competition over ways of "framing" a set of policy choices. There are two reasons for this -- one having to do with the nature of politics and the other having to do with just what we're doing when we're "framing" a set of issues. Politics is about distributing benefits and burdens. Somebody gets a benefit and somebody, possibly a distinct somebody, has to bear a burden. That doesn't mean that politics is necessarily a zero-sum game. Sometimes we all win and sometimes we all lose.

People tend to want to see their benefits maximized and their burdens diminished. Lawrence Mitchell, who was our guest awhile back on ourepisode about corporations, described corporations as great "externalizing" engines. I think he meant by that that corporations are expert at pushing the social costs of what they do onto third parties. Though corporations may be the most efficient and ruthless externalizers of all, I don't think they're alone. Indeed, we all want to push as much social costs as we can onto somebody else, while receiving as much social benefit as we possibly can. Kant once held that who "wills the end" necessarily "wills the means." He seemed to think that willing the end without willing the means involves some kind of incoherence. There may be something to Kant's thought, if we restrict ourselves just to ends that I must bring about tr

但这和画面大战有什么关系呢?The answer, I think, is that "framing" is really a matter ofrepresenting, especially of representingin normatively laden terms. When we frame the issues in competing ways we are, in effect, offering competing narratives about whodeservesto enjoy what benefits and bear what burdens.

我还认为，我们告诉自己的许多故事都是完全自私的。他们把我们和我们的人代表为应得的利益和应得的负担，而把“他人”代表为应得的利益和应得的负担。我认为，很多政治都涉及到一种对承载规范的识解的竞争。我怀疑，在规范解释之战中获胜的人往往已经在赢得胜利的道路上走了很长一段路。

你可能会想，在识解之争中，是否存在客观的对与错。这是一个棘手的问题。当然，一个人可以误解和歪曲各种各样的事情，一个人可以为某些政治议程服务。就拿所谓的自然选择与智能设计之争来说吧。每一个稍微懂点科学的人都知道，或者应该知道，智能设计不是一个严肃的科学假设，不值得在任何地方的任何科学课堂上教授。但是，智能设计论的支持者为了宣扬某种反科学的、受到宗教启发的政治议程，“聪明地”试图将智能设计论“框定”为一种与自然选择和其他自然主义进化机制相抗衡的科学假说，值得与自然选择和其他自然主义进化机制一起教授。在这种情况下，我们有一个明确的例子，试图建立一个框架，人们可能期望，或至少可能被揭穿，只要坚定地吸引公众注意的问题的真正科学事实。但即使在这里，这种想法也可能过于乐观。黑暗的力量是如此有组织、坚定，并且在我们的政治文化中根深蒂固，以至于他们可能会赢得对识解的战斗，尽管事实是，他们试图强加的框架是一个虚假陈述和无知的框架，而不是真理和知识。令人恐惧的是，本应了解更多的人——比如医学博士比尔•弗里斯特(Bill Frist)——现在却在胡言乱语。

如果在政治上很难打击建立在这种明显的、有害的谎言和不实陈述基础上的企图，那么在事情的客观真相(如果有的话)更难辨别的情况下，还有什么希望呢?事实上，我不得不承认，我倾向于怀疑谁应该缴纳什么税，胎儿何时成为一个值得法律保护的人，甚至谁有权和谁“结婚”的问题是否存在客观事实。取而代之的是相互竞争的规范性框架它们用不同的术语来解释这些问题，没有外部权威来判断哪一个规范性框架能更好地理解问题的真相。可以肯定的是，我们相互竞争的框架有时确实会让位于更广泛的规范性共识。这是在许多伟大的社会进步和启蒙时刻发生的事情。但要实现这一点，没有简单的方法。当然，没有任何先决条件能保证它在每种情况下都能发生。

So what does that mean about the language of politics? Perhaps it means that political discourse will always suffer from a certain fragmentation and division. Perhaps politics will always involve a battle of competing construals and frames. We may be destined to often talk past and at each other, rather than to each other. One can hope for a more deliberative politics in which we reason together about how to live our shared lives. But that is really only a hope and one far from being realized at this particular moment in history.