Whose Freedom?: The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea

Freedom is one of the most contested words in our deeply polarized nation. This eye-opening work reveals how this has happened and how it will continue on all fronts - economic, education, healthcare, religion, science, civil justice, and security - unless we reframe the debate with traditional progressive ideas of empathy, integrity, and responsibility. Engaged citizens can regain their power. Our government can function honestly. In this critical time for our country, Lakoff argues that it is possible for progressives to reclaim freedom and communicate effectively about its real meaning.

Freedom is one of the most contested words in our deeply polarized nation. This eye-opening work reveals how this has happened and how it will continue on all fronts - economic, education, healthcare, religion, science, civil justice, and security - unless we reframe the debate with traditional progressive ideas of empathy, integrity, and responsibility. Engaged citizens can regain their power. Our government can function honestly. In this critical time for our country, Lakoff argues that it is possible for progressives to reclaim freedom and communicate effectively about its real meaning.

Salon.com - Laura Miller

"The strength of WHOSE FREEDOM? is that it attributes the left's current foundering not just to a failure of strategy but to a failure of self-knowledge...this makes a lot of sense, and it's easy to start imagining ways that pressing issues could be recast according to Lakoff's formula."

George Lakoff, recently featured in The New York Times Magazine, is Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a founding senior fellow of the Rockridge Institute, a center for research devoted to promoting progressive ideas. He is the author of the influential Don’t Think of an Elephant! and Moral Politics, as well as seminal books on linguistics, including Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things and Metaphors We Live By (with Mark Johnson). He lives in Berkeley, California.