How Republicans Trick Us With Language

A great blogger named Kelly Gorski introduced me to an absolutely incredible piece of writing called "Don't Think of an Elephant" by George Lakoff.

Give yourself some time to read it...its 36 pages in pdf. It concerns Republican strategies, social theory and framing language (much like this book recommendation I posted previously.

Here is the link: Don't Think Like An Elephant.

(I probably haven't made it sound all that exciting...but if you are a person who continually wonders why people vote for Republicans NO MATTER what they do, you need to read this article!

A Prayer for Owen Meany

This book is on my recommended list. I got to thinking about it due to the column I just linked to by Fred Reed. In it, Fred said this:


So many of the Jewish crimes popular on the email circuit don’t stand up to examination. For instance, I hear repeatedly that during Vietnam America won in the field but that Jews stabbed Our Boys in the back by means of the anti-war movement, thus seeking to promote godless atheistic communism.

Not quite. The leadership of the anti-war movement was heavily Jewish. The movement itself was overwhelmingly Christian. At the conservative Southern college I attended, the studentry to a boy wanted no part of the war. It wasn’t because of Jewish anything. It was because they didn’t want to get shot. Their girlfriends didn’t want them to get shot, nor did their parents.




This made me think of the title character of John Irving's classic.

Owen Meany, who ended up volunteering for service in Vietnam, said that anti-war protesters were wrong about one thing: The Draft. He said the draft was the only chance the US had of getting out of Vietnam.


Why? His quote is something like, "Unless Americans are affected with their health or their wallet, they don't care enough about anything to rise up against it."

In other words, without the draft there would have BEEN NO anti-war movement.

How relevant this is for today. Don't you know that college campuses everywhere would be in a MUCH larger uproar over the constantly changing "reasons" for the Iraq war if THEY thought they might have to go?

So would parents of teenagers....middle America across this country. They would be doing more than answering polls negatively about Bush and Congress. They would be in the streets if their sons were being drafted, or about to reach draft age.

I'm convinced this is the reason there hasn't BEEN a draft. Dick Cheney knows this simple fact. Even if the volunteer army is too small to ever win, he can't afford a draft, because then his war would be stopped dead in its tracks.

Every man should read "A Prayer for Owen Meany". And every woman I know who has read it also loved it. At the Episcopal school my parish is associated with, every senior boy is required to read it.


This article was chosen to be a part of the Decline of Democracy, a service of Ken Goldstein and Blog Carnival. Check it out.

Book Recommendation 1

How Postmodernism Saved My Faith by Crystal L. Downing

I have a crush on the author, and I don't even know how old she is.

This professor of English at Messiah College on the west coast has taken the difficult philosophy of Derrida and others and made it palatable.

If you hear "Postmodernism" tossed about as the scourge of our day, this is the book you should read. Not that it will change your mind, but it will, I think, show you how a questioning, cognizant individual can still be a committed Christian as Dr. Downing most certainly is.

(She doesn't say she is Episcopalian, but I'm betting on it.)

Speaking of the crush, does anyone else do this? I never get a crush on someone I SEE as a normal human being might. Instead I notice those women who are well spoken, well read, and well credentialed.

There was a story yesterday in the Atlanta Journal Constitution (I think) about how traditional thought said that high achieving women turned men off, but the research says the opposite. I can't link the story, cause I can't find it.

Is this news to anyone? Who WOULDN'T want a wife with a brain and a million dollar salary?

Dr. Downing, I likes ya, wherever you are.