ABSTRACT
Politicians have not only catered to but also nurtured narrow individual and group interest, along with sentiment and false senses of desert, in public attitudes toward government and public policy. Many politicians have persisted in appealing to a presumed group-frame mentality among their constituents, thereby fostering the dynamics of group politics. The chapter explores the possibilities, and the practical political strategies that would need to be developed, for moving from the current network of social policies more toward the vision of a liberal society based on the life-affirmation frame. A politics of life affirmation must first point out how myriad social policies aimed at desert actually violate desert for many people through their group orientation. Second, it must expose narrow reasoning wherever it occurs. Third, it must point out the functional desirability of the policy implications of the life-affirmation frame as contrasted with the desert- and group-frame policies.
