It's getting harder and harder to find books written by democrats, liberals or progressives. The bookstore I love just reeks with the GOP hate books; I'm constantly grabbing a Dreams of my Father, an Al Franken book - whatever liberal books I can find and putting them in front of the GOP nonsense (hahaha!) Anyway, this excellent book is called "Don't Think of an Elephant" by George Lakoff. I found this interesting...

"Back in the 1950's conservatives hated each other. The financial conservatives hated the social conservatives. The libertarians did not get along with the social conservatives or the religious conservatives. Andy many social conservatives were not religious. A group of conservative leaders got together around William F. Buckley Jr. and others and started asking what the different groups of conservatives had in common and; whether they could agree to disagree in order to promote a general conservative cause. They started magazines and think tanks, and invested billions of dollars. The first thing they did, their first victory, was getting Barry Goldwater nominated in 1964. He lost, but when he lost they went back to the drawing board and put more money into organizing...."

It goes on, educating and enlightening. This book shows how this GOP group brought their different perspectives together and found their message. And even though their message goes against just about every thing that is good for humanity and the planet, they are able to convince people to vote against their best interest to fund the greed of the rich!

This book talks about the different types of democrats (he states six different types), who I am seeing more and more of on DU and what he says about that...

The six types: Socioeconomic progressives, Identity politics progressives, Environmentalists, Civil liberties progressives, Spiritual progressives, Anti authoritarian progressives

Lakoff says "All six types are examples of nurturant parent morality. The problem is that many of the people who have one of these modes of thought do not recognize that theirs is just one special case of something more general, and do not see the unity in all the types of progressives. They often think that theres is the only way to be a true progressive. That is sad. It keeps people who share progressive values from coming together. We have to get past that harmful idea. The other side did."....

The book helps us to learn how to frame our conversation and how to counter the repeated chatter of the right.

I think it is must have reading for all Progressives, Democrats, and Liberals. I found my copy at Amazon.com and highly recommend the book. As a matter of fact, I wish we could run a thread where we could just work through the book with people here that are interested in sharing their ideas as he teaches so as to bring our ideals into a more solid, cohesive unit.

Would anyone be interested in having a discussion group about the teachings of this book? If so, please PM me and maybe we can make this happen!

Shine on,
Annette