My Liberal Identity:
You are a Working Class Warrior, also known as a blue-collar Democrat. You believe that the little guy is getting screwed by conservative greed-mongers and corporate criminals, and you’re not going to take it anymore.
Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com
(thanks to Michael at Discourse.net)
Some recommended reading – do your homework.
Saving the World By Stopping the Pentagon’s Programs
By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet
All that work against nuclear proliferation – gone, gone, gone. Another way we make the world a more dangerous place.
Then there is “Complex 2030,” a proposal to consolidate and update the entire nuclear complex, including the opening of a new plutonium “pit” facility capable of producing 125 new bombs a year. Estimated price tag: $150 billion over 25 years. The Bush administration and the Department of Energy argue that the overhaul is necessary to maintain the country’s deterrence and close aged plants, but arms control experts who have read the fine print say otherwise.
“The current nuclear stockpile is not in need of replacement, all of the existing nuclear weapons sites would still be in operation under the new plan, and the fundamental environmental problems of weapons production would not be solved,” states a joint report issued by more than a dozen nuclear watchdog groups, including Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Furthermore, the increased design, production and testing capabilities of Complex 2030 could spark a new nuclear arms race.”
…The major nuclear powers cannot continue to simultaneously refine their arsenals while keeping the rest of the world in 1944 by threat of force; only a madman thinks threats and preemptive strikes constitute a coherent or sustainable nonproliferation strategy. Nor can we continue to allow the production of fissile material and expect it to remain forever out of dangerous hands. We cannot have our yellow cake and eat it, too.
If we don’t come to grips with the dead-end of the nuclear double-standard, and begin soon the brave and historic grapple with the nuclear genie, we race toward a climax as awful as it is certain.
Take a look at Payson’s blog entry (Think Progress)on Chuck Hagel’s claim that the White House originally wanted the 2002 Iraq War Resolution to cover the entire Middle East. No-one else picked this up from the men style column at GQ? It ought to be on the front page.
Scooter Libby and Me
By Nick Bromell, The American Scholar, posted at AlterNet
Childhood friend of Scooter Libby’s shares questions he wants to ask him, and comments on the differences between liberalism and fundamentalism as they affect current US policy. This is worth a read just for the clear explanation of the difference between truth and the Truth (How did I miss Lynne Cheney’s article “The Roots of Today’s Lying Epidemic: The English Department Virus”? ). Oh, on lying?
Keep an eye out for fact checking updates on the State of the Union Address. The discussion on Charlie Rose was pretty good, and ABC has collected some citizen comments. To my ears, all Bush is saying…. is give war a chance.
John Gray of Cincinnati, Ohio, highlighted liberals’ contributions to the U.S. this way: “Joe gets up at 6 a.m. to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure they are safe and work as advertised.
“All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it, too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
“Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; his bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside, and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree-hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
“Joe walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
“Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation days because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
“It’s noon time, Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposits are federally insured by the FSLIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Depression.
“Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.
“Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to Dad’s; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards.
“Joe arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electricity until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republicans would still be sitting in the dark).
“Joe is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After his visit with Dad, he gets back in his car for the ride home.
“Joe turns on a radio talk show, the hosts keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn’t tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.) Joe agrees, “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”
–thanks to Jackson Thoreau at OpEd News.
If you don’t already know who said this, comment with your best guess.
The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. Today, Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press – in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during recent years.
Check out the Progressive Faith Bloggers Carnival today or tomorrow at Jesus Was a Liberal.
I was happy that I stayed awake last night to watch Bill Moyer’s Now on PBS. The linguist George Lakoff was on. He did an absolutely marvelous piece on the framing of language in politics, which he has been publishing quite a bit about recently.
He argues that Republicans understand framing better than the Democrats. The Democrats, a bit ironically, are still in thrall to a notion of rationality in which you simply speak truth to power and reasonable people are persuaded. The Republicans know better.
An example that Lakoff uses is the mental frame evoked by the oft-repeated phrase “tax relief.”
“The relief frame is an instance of a more general rescue scenario in which there is a hero (the reliever), a victim (the afflicted), a crime (the affliction), a villain (the cause of affliction) and a rescue (the relief). The hero is inherently good, the villain is evil and the victim after the rescue owes gratitude to the hero. The term tax relief evokes all of this and more. It presupposes a conceptual metaphor: Taxes are an affliction, proponents of taxes are the causes of affliction (the villains), the taxpayer is the afflicted (the victim) and the proponents of tax relief are the heroes who deserve the taxpayers’ gratitude. Those who oppose tax relief are bad guys who want to keep relief from the victim of the affliction, the taxpayer. Every time the phrase tax relief is used, and heard or read by millions of people, this view of taxation as an affliction and conservatives as heroes gets reinforced.” – from “Framing the Dems : How conservatives control political debate and how progressives can take it back”
How should progressive democrats REFRAME? As an issue of membership and patriotism, says Lakoff. “Taxes are what you pay to be an American, to live in a civilized society that is democratic and offers opportunity, and where there’s an infrastructure that has been paid for by previous taxpayers. Wealthy Americans use that infrastructure more than anyone else, and they use parts of it that other people don’t. Are you paying your dues, or are you trying to get something for free at the expense of your country?”
Republicans spent millions every year on thinktanks to strategize on such issues. Frank Luntz puts out “a 500-page manual every year that goes issue by issue on what the logic of the position is from the Republican side, what the other guys’ logic is, how to attack it, and what language to use.” (link deleted because of malware at the site)
Last night Lakoff pointed out that the common sense Healthy Forest act was framed as a conscious opposite. It is “common sense” so experts (ecologists, environmentalists, biologists, etc) are not needed. It will make forests “healthy” – a conscious and Orwellian obliteration of the reality. Lakoff says the strategy is not simply to negate and to say that it is NOT a healthy forest initative. That has about as much power as Nixon saying “I’m not a crook.” Rather, it needs to be reframed – perhaps as The Forest Destruction Act, The Razing Act, The Slash and Burn Act.
I think he’s right. Progressives (he says we won’t be able to use the word “liberal” again for years) have to learn this strategy of reframing and repetition. It may be sad, but this is in fact the way people think.
Lakoff is part of the Rockridge Institute (as well as being a professor), where you can read more about reframing and political discourse.
