[Townhall] A term that became popular in the last decade or two is the Overton Window Principle. It was a theory conceived in the 1990s by a brilliant young engineer-turned-lawyer, Joseph Overton, who was a libertarian and executive in a libertarian think tank, the Mackinac Center, in Michigan
While working in fundraising for the Mackinac Center, Overton developed his Window principle, while explaining to audiences the purpose of think tanks. The essential idea is that there is in every society a “window”, or range, of thoughts and policies that are generally acceptable to the wider population. The purpose of think tanks, he would say, was to push that window further open by making once unacceptable ideas acceptable. |