Papers

1. -Editorial: Congressional Progressive Caucus Gains Focus (TheNation.com)
   "In this special issue of The Nation, twenty members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus take on the daunting foreign and domestic policy challenges facing the United States in year six of the Bush/Cheney Administration. They offer road maps to renewal that are both principled and pragmatic. In the words of the senior member of the caucus, Representative John Conyers, these House members are expressing 'a clear vision for America. Ours is not the Bush agenda of the radical right nor the flaccid flounderings of Democrats. We have a fresh, vigorous alternative, and we're going to present a plan for an activist government dedicated to serving all Americans.' " 01-06
   
   
2. -Editorial: Conservative and Liberal Views of Morality Collide (Lakoff)
   "Conservatives understand that morality and the family are at the heart of their politics, as they are at the heart of most politics. What is sad is that liberals have not yet reached a similar level of political sophistication."
   
   "While conservatives understand that all of their policies have a single unified origin, liberals understand their own political conceptual universe so badly that they still think of it in terms of coalitions of interest groups. Where conservatives have organized for an overall, unified onslaught on liberal culture, liberals are fragmented into isolated interest groups, based on superficial localized issues: labor, the rights of ethnic groups, feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, abortion rights, homelessness, health care, education, the arts, and so on. This failure to see a unified picture of liberal politics has led to a divided consciousness and has allowed conservatives to employ a divide-and-conquer strategy."
   
   "The family-based morality that structures liberal thought is diametrically opposed to Strict Father morality. It centers around the Nurturant Parent model of the family."
   
   "Not only is there no unified liberal political structure, but there is no overall effective liberal rhetoric to counter the carefully constructed conservative rhetoric. Where conservatives have carefully coined terms and images and repeated them until they have entered the popular lexicon, liberals have not done the same. Liberals need to go beyond coalitions of interest groups to consciously construct a unified language and imagery to convey their worldview. This will not be easy, and they are 30 years behind." 9-05
   
   
3. -Editorial: Five Reasons Why the Fiscal Crisis in the U.S. Remains (Truth-Out.org)
   "This crisis is not going away. Officially begun late in 2007, nearly five years later, no end is in sight. Trillions in government-funded bailouts and interventions failed to do the trick. The private sector's hyped resilience disappeared. 'Recoveries' proved weak, uneven and short-lived." 08-12
   
   
4. -Editorial: Harry Potter and Social Change (Truth-Out.org)
   "As social justice organizers and leaders, the responsibility rests on us to help more and more activists understand the world of power around them and its historical roots, to realize the way socialization and position in society impact our consciousness, and to understand our own personal decolonization from systems of oppression as part of collective struggles for social justice and structural equality. We must help one another become conscious of the ways Voldemort gets in our heads and, together, work to get free." 12-13
   
   
5. -Editorial: Obama Advocates for Freedom of Religion (Truth-Out.org)
   "The president allows each woman to decide for herself whether or not to ask her insurance company to cover contraception. If this violates a woman's religious principles, she would never ask. A woman would make such a request only if contraception fit her principles. In short, the president has guaranteed that each woman can act according to her religious principles. He has made a strong defense of freedom of religion." 08-12
   
   
6. -Editorial: Speaker for the Dead--Analysis of Scalia's Impact (Truth-Out.org)
   "First, the good: Justice Scalia dedicated his life to public service and scholarship in the law. He met his wife, Maureen McCarthy, on a blind date in 1960 and died with his wedding ring still on his finger. The couple raised five sons and four daughters together. Among his boon companions was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who knew him from their shared days on the DC Circuit. The two made a long-standing ritual of sharing family dinner every New Year's Eve. If Justice Scalia was not loved by most, he was surely loved by many."
   
   "The bad and the ugly, unfortunately, require more time in the telling."
   
   "Whatever Justice Scalia may have been to his family and friends, he was to the nation a wrecking ball." 02-16
   
   
7. Editorial - Analysis of Defeat (AlterNet.org - Arianna Huffington)
   "This election was not stolen. It was lost by the Kerry campaign. The reason it's so important to make this crystal clear – even as Kerry's concession speech is still ringing in our ears – is that to the victors go not only the spoils but the explanations. And the Republicans are framing their victory as the triumph of conservative moral values and the wedge cultural issues they exploited throughout the campaign."
   
   "But it wasn't gay marriage that did the Democrats in; it was the fatal decision to make the pursuit of undecided voters the overarching strategy of the Kerry campaign."
   
   "This meant that at every turn the campaign chose caution over boldness so as not to offend the undecideds who, as a group, long to be soothed and reassured rather than challenged and inspired." 10-04
   
   
8. Framing the Issue of Judicial Nominees for Democrats (FrameShop - Feldman)
   "The idea is for Reid to give a speech that reframes the very idea of voting through the metaphor of 'voting is standing with the people,' as opposed to this 'up or down' frame being pushed by the GOP."
   
   "No matter how angry Dems get, the GOP will continue to hold the debate so long as they are allowed to frame the very idea of what the Senate is about."
   
   "The purpose of a Senator is not to simply stand with the President. Senators stand with the people. It says so in the Seventeenth Amendment and it is time to remind Americans of this idea in a clear, loud, and unified voice." 6-05
   
   
9. Interview with Frank Luntz: Using Persuasive Words (PBS.org - Frontline)
   "This is not about politics; this is not about selling soap. This is taking very traditional, simple, clear-cut words of the English language and figuring out which words, which phrases to apply at which opportunities, which times." 05-07
   
   
10. Metaphors We Live By (TheLiteraryLink.com - Lakoff and Johnson)
    "Research inspired by self-categorization theory, then, suggests that inducing group members to replace cross-cutting demographic or functional categories with the inclusive workgroup boundary as the basis for social categorization will reduce the detrimental effects of intergroup biases (Kramer and Brewer, 1984; Gaertner et al., 1989; Polzer, Stewart, and Simmons, 1999). Such a recategorization should cause workgroup members to replace their personalized self-conception with a cognitive representation of themselves (and other group members) as embodiments of a workgroup prototype (Hogg and Terry, 2000). Such depersonalization heightens group members' perceived similarities and attenuates their perceived differences (Turner, 1985), reducing the detrimental effects of categorical diversity." 11-04
    
    

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