Houston Democrats: Reading Club Archives

August 06, 2005

The Message Thing by Jim Wallis

This review from Leif Hatlen on Jim Wallis' Thursday Op-ed in the New York Times.

If you haven't seen it yet, head over to the New York Times and read Jim Wallis' latest Op-ed.

Jim Wallis has many ideas that Democrats and the Democratic Party need to consider.

What could be more necessary than to speak out and to 'draw a line in the sand when it comes to ...slashing of programs for low-income families....' and to fight for a change in our governments priorities in regard to environmental issues.

However when he gets to the subject of abortion and writes 'Democrats need to think past catchphrases, like "a woman's right to chose,"...' I become concerned. Certainly we need to work on programs that reduce abortions and provide that all women and children receive adequate health care. However to characterize a 'woman's right to chose' as a mere catchphrase or something to be disregarded in the next advertising campaign goes too far.

Perhaps we need to develop new phrases and words to explain our position; but I do not believe that our position can ever be anything else than a woman's right to have full control over her body. After all she has full responsibility after the child is born so she should have full responsibility before the child is born.

Maybe I do read too much into his words, but I become very concerned when anyone suggests that we put aside the principals of dignity and equality for all that I believe are center to the Democratic Party.

What are your thoughts?

Posted by Lyn Wall at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 22, 2005

What Should We Stuff in Our Beach-Bound Book Bags, Dem Bookworms?

Come on, Dem bookworms, confess. You might stuff your beach-bound book bag with a murder mystery or a legal thriller, but surreptitiously you also slip in that latest Bush-basher or even a serious political tome. (As the lady at the lunch deli said when she saw my bulky copy of Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, "A little light reading, eh?" When I informed her that it actually was really interesting, in view of the fact that old Hamilton made Bill Clinton seem chaste, she did not look fully convinced.) Anyway, 'tis the season when many political bestsellers come out in paperback, and below the fold is a list of some of these newly inexpensive volumes. Please take a peek and suggest the next selection for our Democrats.com Reading Club!

New Paperback Editions for Dem Bookworms

Author	Title of Paperback Book
Brock, David	Blinded by the Right
Brenner, Lenni	Jefferson and Madison on the Separation of Church and State
Clinton, Bill	My Life
Dean, John	Worse Than Watergate
Dicker, John	The United States of Wal-Mart
Ehrenreich, Barbara	Nickled and Dimed
Frank, Thomas	What's the Matter With Kansas?
Greenberg, Stanley B.	The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock...
Hazen, Don and Chaudhry, Lakshmi	Start Making Sense...Lessons of Election 2004...
Johnston, David Cay	Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System...
Lappe, Anthony and Marshall, Stephen	True Lies: Guerilla News Network
McLean, Bethany and Elkind, Peter	The Smartest Guys in the Room ... Fall of Enron
Ramos, Jorge	Latino Wars: How Hispanics Are Transforming Politics...
Soros, George	The Bubble of American Supremacy
Soros, George	On Globalization

All of these were on the shelves at Barnes and Noble. (Buy Blue!) Please post a comment below if you think that one of these titles would be good food for Democratic thought ... or suggest another book that you have been wanting to read.

BTW, the last Democrats.com Reading Club selection, What Would Jefferson Do? by Thom Hartmann, was also the choice of Democracy for Houston's (traditional, not blog-based) book club. The DFH-ers are holding that one over through August because the paperback edition will be coming out then. Watch for it in bookstores soon.

Posted by at 01:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack

July 21, 2005

Prescient Progressives Predicted Pro-Bush Propaganda Perils ... 60 Years Ago!

In compiling the list of Books That Made Me a Progressive recently posted here, I received online input and also spoke with real, live Democrats at various gatherings. Two titles kept popping up: Language in Thought and Action by S. I. Hayakawa and The True Believer by Eric Hoffer.

Both books were originally published in the 1940s-50s and re-issued in several revised editions. People who had read them recalled them and talked about the influential ideas contained therein. Ashamed of never having read (or even heard of) these two classics, I ordered them from Amazon.

Ironically, I found that these time-worn titles form perfect precursors to two of the most popular progressive titles of our day, George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant and Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?.

Here are some nuggets of wisdom from the two books that are applicable to the Bush era's unprecedentedly successful propaganda machine. First, Hayakawa on language, foreshadowing Lakoff:

Hayakawa on Language	Resonance in the Bush Era
Language is the most highly developed form of symbolism, but we must remember that "the word is not the thing." It is easy to prize the symbols of patriotism above actual patriotism.	Bush and his many "Mission Accomplished"-type moments; the Republicans in Congress and their recently reprised obsession with flag-burning, etc.
With the "language of social control," we try to influence the actions of others in roundabout ways. For example, we might get people to help in the prosecution of a war by claiming that it is God's war.	Bush's and his religious fundamentalist supporters' intimations of a direct line to God on the Iraq War and related issues
The penchant to divide the world into two opposing forces and to ignore the existence of any middle ground is called "the two-valued orientation." It results in language such as "good and evil," and it sustains itself by creating fear.	Bush and "You are with us or against us"; DeLay and his orders to lobbying firms to fire Democrats and hire only Republicans, etc.
The two-valued orientation becomes dangerous when the political party in control decides that it is best for the country, and it can therefore silence any dissent.	Bush's screening of town hall meeting participants; Karl Rove's speech branding liberals as wimps and traitors; Bush's and Rove's attempts to silence critics of the war, from Richard Clarke to Joe Wilson, etc.
A multi-valued orientation and a willingness to learn are necessary for democratic discussion and human cooperation.	Democrats are furthering the democratic discussion by learning about the needs of all the people, with grassroots working groups, real town hall meetings, political blogs, and more.

Eric Hoffer, on the hand, explains how dissatisfaction with oneself leads to credulity and readiness to accept propaganda. He might have been describing the zealotry of the nonwealthy right-wingers in What's the Matter with Kansas:

Hoffer on True Believers	Resonance in the Bush Era
People who see their lives as irremediably spoiled seek new elements of pride and purpose by identification with a cause or popular movement.	Those who have been bumped out of the middle class due to loss of manufacturing jobs and then become fervent believers in right-wing causes....
The true believers have an ability to "shut their eyes and close their ears to facts."	Despite many official reports to the contrary, Bush's followers continued to believe that WMDs had been found in Iraq and that there were ties between Saddam and the 9/11 terrorists, etc.
True believers' animosity to others springs from self-contempt. Their leaders can easily concentrate their hatred on a single foe, even on someone unrelated to the perceived wrong.	Bush and Cheney et al were able to distract many Americans from the real threat of Osama Bin Laden and the perpetrators of 9/11 with propaganda about the threat of Saddam Hussein.

Has anyone out there in the houstondemocrats.com blogosphere read either of these books? If so, what say you?

Posted by at 12:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 22, 2005

Meme'd Too

PDiddie Meme'd me. So here goes...

1. How many books do you own?

I couldn't begin to count them, they're all over the place. I have about 75 less than I used to because I sold a bunch to Half Price Books for the grand sum of $2.

2. Last book read.

The Queen's Fool, Phillipa Gregory. I'm a sucker for historical novels.

3. Last book purchased.

For myself, What Would Jefferson Do? by Thom Hartmann. Today I bought Bouquets from Beads for my daughter.

4. Name five books that mean a lot to you.

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Women's Room

1984

Worse Than Watergate

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

5. Five people to tag.

Now this is the tough part, but being moderator has it's priveleges.

Posted by Lyn Wall at 09:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 08, 2005

Tick Off a Republican ... Read a Good Book!

Our crybaby Republican friends have put their tear ducts in high gear over Howard Dean's telling it like it is. (After all, did the Shrub ever do an honest day's work before becoming President of the United States?) Yet they think it perfectly acceptable to publish an official list of the "Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries" in which they categorize several progressive classics right alongside the writings of Hitler, Lenin, and Chairman Mao!

Yes, in the narrow conservative mind, there is not much difference between Mein Kampf and The Feminine Mystique, both of which appear in the top ten of Human Events Magazine's list. As we might expect from Ronald Reagan's favorite periodical, the magazine also places such "harmful" tomes as John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, Ralph Nader's Unsafe At Any Speed, and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring very near the top ten. See a C-SPAN interview with one of the perpetrators of this list:

Ten Most Harmful Books

Conservatives are probably asking to have these dangerous books removed from libraries everywhere. This is all the more reason for us progressives to find some nice used copies and throw them into our tote bags for summer reading!

Posted by at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

May 29, 2005

What Books Made You a Progressive?

Unlike our nation's current president, we progressives love to read. In fact, for many of us, reading was our pathway to a progressive outlook on life. Below the fold you will find a list of books that have influenced the political worldviews of many people. These are titles that we want to introduce to our children, share with our friends, and ensure their placement in school and public libraries.

After all, what child sits on a nurturant parent's lap listening to Dr. Seuss's Butter Battle Book (folly of war), The Sneetches (inanity of discrimination), and The Lorax (consequences of environmental destruction), and then grows up to espouse the "dark side" of these issues? What reader becomes a hard-hearted Republican after immersing himself in the story of Atticus Finch, a courageous lawyer fighting against racial injustice in his small, Depression-era town? Please take a look at the list. Did we miss any of your favorite formative books? Add a comment to share the reading experiences that set YOU on the right (but not right-wing) road.

Books That Inspire a Progressive Outlook

What Titles Would YOU Add?

Author	Title of Influential Book/s
Atwood, Margaret	The Handmaid's Tale
Baldwin, James	The Fire Next Time
Bradbury, Ray	Farenheit 451
Brown, Dee	Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Camus, Albert	The Stranger; The Fall
Carson, Rachel	Silent Spring
Diamond, Jared	Guns, Germs, and Steel
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor	Crime and Punishment; The Idiot
Douglass, Frederick	Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dr. Seuss	Sneetches; Lorax; Butter Battle Book
Ellison, Ralph	Invisible Man
Freidel, Frank	Franklin D. Roosevelt: Rendezvous With Destiny
Golding, William	Lord of the Flies
Gunther, John J.	Death Be Not Proud
Hayakawa, S. I.	Language in Thought and Action
Heller, Joseph	Catch 22
Hoffer, Edward	True Believer
Hugo, Victor	Les Miserables
Kennedy, John	Profiles in Courage
King, Martin Luther, Jr.	A Testament of Hope (essential writings)
King, Stephen	Hearts in Atlantis; Dead Zone
Lakoff, George	Don't Think of an Elephant
Lee, Harper	To Kill a Mockingbird
Madison, James, et al	The Constitutuion of the U.S. and the Bill of Rights
Malcolm X	The Autobiography of Malcolm X
McCullough, David	Truman
Miller, Arthur	The Crucible
Miller, Nathan	FDR
Morgan, Ted	FDR
Oates, Stephen	Let the Trumpet Sound: Life of MLK, Jr.
Orwell, George	Animal Farm; 1984
Paine, Thomas	Common Sense; Rights of Man; The Crisis
Remarque, Erich Maria	All Quiet on the Western Front
Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr.	Robert Kennedy and His Times
Steinbeck, John	The Grapes of Wrath
Thoreau, Henry David	Walden; Civil Disobedience
Tolkein, J.R.R.	Lord of the Rings
Twain, Mark	Huckleberry Finn
Vann, John Paul	A Bright, Shining Lie
Wallis, Jim	God's Politics
Ward, Geoffrey C.	A First Class Temperament (FDR)
White, T.H.	The Once and Future King
Whitman, Walt	Leaves of Grass
Woodward, Bob, and Bernstein, Carl	All the President's Men
Zinn, Howard	A People's History of the United States

Posted by at 01:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

May 10, 2005

Welcome to the HCDP Reading Club

Democratic bookworms of the world, unite ... right here in our very own HCDP Reading Club! This is just a get-acquainted post, and we will be expanding our club to include more features in the very near future.

Before we begin discussing our first monthly book selection, I would like to introduce you to my sister-in-law. I would like for you to meet her because she is a prime example of why books like this month's selection, What Would Jefferson Do?, by talk show host Thom Hartmann, are so important.

My sister-in-law is an attractive, thirty-something mother of two small children. My brother has been laid off from his job, and she is the main breadwinner right now. She is also a college student. She has been a recipient of college grants and health insurance for her children, both of which have been cut by the Bush Administration. She has other close relatives who are members of labor unions that have been decimated by Bush's policies. Yet she voted for Bush in 2004. It is enough to make one run from the room while doing a prolonged Dean scream!

Democratic bookworm that I am, I looked to literature to find both explanations and courses of action. For understanding the phenomenon of those who vote against their own self-interest, there is no better book than the classic What's the Matter With Kansas? by Thomas Frank, and my sister-in-law certainly seems to fit in that category. For understanding how to frame the debate with her from a respectful, progressive perspective, there is no better book than George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant. However, for understanding the substance of the issues that underlie our important political choices, and for arming ourselves with well-reasoned arguments for people like my sister-in-law, there is no better book than Thom Hartmann's What Would Jefferson Do?

In What Would Jefferson Do?, Hartmann maintains that democracy is in fact the natural political state for human beings, who are fully capable of creating an effective government for themselves, employing a sense of mutual responsibility and a concern for the future. Yet Hartmann cautions us that democracy has been built up and then destroyed many times in the past. He sees the robber barons and corporate cronyists of the current Administration as a dire threat to our Constitution and our once-inspirational form of government. As we observe Tom DeLay and other Congressional Republicans happily mounting a daily assault on working Americans with their bankruptcy, tort reform, and energy bills, not to mention their immoral, deficit-laden budget and their efforts to dismantle the New Deal, all in the service of corporate welfare, we realize that Hartmann could not be more on target. Moreover, Hartmann underscores Jefferson's passionate views about the importance of the separation of church and state. The author cites an example in which Jefferson discourages a powerful movement to make the Ten Commandments the sole basis of American law. (Some things never change!)

In addition to debunking numerous conservative myths about our government with well-documented research, Hartmann also offers enjoyable history lessons about Thomas Jefferson and our other esteemed Founders, who were much more progressive than many modern conservatives claim. Even more important, the author provides a call to action, with detailed suggestions for grassroots involvement. These are exactly the types of lessons that we need to convey to folks like my sister-in-law. As Hartmann so aptly quotes from Jefferson: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Yes, I will be giving my sister-in-law a copy of What Would Jefferson Do? for her birthday!

Rating = 5 donkeys = Superior Reading for Democrats

Hartmann's book is now available from Amazon and other booksellers in paperback as well as hardback form. I hope that my fellow Democratic bookworms will obtain a copy, read it, and post comments here. Happy reading!

Posted by at 08:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 23, 2005

Get a Jump Start on the Reading Club!

We will launch the Houston Democrats Reading Club in a couple of weeks. We hope to bring you publications that may have escaped your attention. Marguerite Reed has agreed to lead the Reading Club. We'll be hearing more from her soon.

You may want to get started reading the first selection - an excellent book by Thom Hartmann: What Would Jefferson Do? In addition to his many books, Thom has written may excellent articles for Common Dreams. He is a Project Censored-award-winning, best-selling author, and the host of a nationally syndicated progressive daily radio talk show.

The book has a five star rating on Amazon. Here is one of the customer reviews:

Yes, this is a book about government, about history. Yet over and over again, I felt my heart touched, and on a few occassions, tears welling in my eyes. Thom Hartmann has, by a strange accident of fate, become an extraordinary Jefferson scholar. When you combine the visionary mind of Rennaisance man Thom Hartmann with the revolutionary genius of an earlier Tom-- Thomas Jefferson, you get a book that wakes you up and gets you thinking about what you can do, what the nation and the world need to do to stop the founders of America from turning in their graves and stop the nation's turn toward decreased rights, liberties and freedom.

If you read political books, this is one you don't want to miss. Hartmann may not be as recognizable a name as some, but his ideas stand at least as tall, with the added strength of a unique vision that spans the centuries past and the centuries to come. This is a book that will become a classic people will read 50, even 100 years from now.

Hartmann is also one of the smartest, most informed talk show hosts in America today. He's been ranked among the top 100 in the business. His show can be called liberal, progressive, yet it is civil without nastiness. He says it is aimed at the radical middle.

I listen to his show online every day from 11- 2 (CDT). His knowledge of history is phenomenal and he has an unmatched abiltiy to explain it and relate it to current events. Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont who is expected to run for Jim Jeffords' Senate seat when he retires is a regular guest.You can find out more about Thom and links to listen to his show online at www.thomhartmann.com.

I hope you'll join us for the discussion of this important book. If you wish to purchase the book through Amazon, HCDP will receive a small commission if you purchase through a link from this page.

Posted by Lyn Wall at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

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