Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear

by Frank Luntz

When he left the White House in 1989, Ronald Reagan used his farewell address to the nation to warn Americans about the dangers of forgetting our history and heritage: Those of us who are over thirty-five or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn’t get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. . . . We’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important.