How the Left Can Win Arguments and Influence People - A Tactical Manual for Pragmatic Progressives

John K Wilson

Summary

If we were to rely on what the pundits and politicians tell us, we would have to conclude that America is a deeply conservative nation. Americans, we hear constantly, detest government, demand lower taxes and the end of welfare, and favor the death penalty, prayer in school, and an absolute faith in the free market. And yet Americans believe deeply in progressive ideas. In fact, progressivism has long been a powerful force in the American psyche. Consider that a mere generation ago the struggle for environmentally sound policies, for women's rights, and for racial equality were fringe movements. Today, open opposition to these core ideals would be political suicide. Drawing on this wellspring of American progressivist tradition, John K. Wilson has penned an informal handbook for the pragmatic progressive. Wilson insists that the left must become more savvy in its rhetoric and stop preaching only to the converted. Progressives need to attack the tangible realities of the corporate welfare state, while explicitly acknowledging that "socialism is," as Wilson writes, "deader than Lenin." Rather than attacking a "right-wing conspiracy," Wilson argues that the left needs one, too. Tracing how well-funded conservative pressure groups have wielded their influence and transformed the national agenda, Wilson outlines a similar approach for the left. Along the way, he exposes the faultlines of our poll- and money-driven form of politics, explodes the myth of "the liberal media," and demands that the left explicitly change its image. Irreverent, practical, and urgently argued, How The Left Can Win Arguments and Influence People charts a way to translate progressive ideals into reality and reassert the core principles of the American left on the national stage.

Available since: 11/01/2000.

Print length: 268 pages.

Other books that might interest you

Counselor - A Life at the Edge...

Theodore C. Sorenson

In his memoir Counselor, Theodore C. Sorensen recounts advising John F. Kennedy through the most dramatic moments in American history.

JFK’s closest guide, Sorensen begins his story in January 1953, when he and the freshman senator from Massachusetts began their extraordinary professional and personal relationship. Rising from legislative assistant to speechwriter and advisor, the young lawyer from Nebraska worked closely with JFK on his most important speeches, as well as his book Profiles in Courage. Sorensen encouraged the junior senator's political ambitions—from a failed bid for the vice presidential nomination in 1956 to the successful presidential campaign in 1960, after which he was named Special Counsel to the President.

Sorensen describes in thrilling detail his experience advising JFK during some of the most crucial days of his presidency, from the decision to go to the moon to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when JFK requested that the thirty-four-year-old Sorensen draft the key letter to Khrushchev at the most critical point of the world's first nuclear confrontation. After Kennedy was assassinated, Sorensen stayed with President Johnson for a few months before leaving to write a biography of JFK. In 1968 he returned to Washington to help run Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign.

Through it all, Sorensen never lost sight of the ideals that brought him to Washington and to the White House, working tirelessly to promote and defend free, peaceful societies.

“This book is instantly essential for any student of the period. It fills gaps in the historical record; it vividly conveys life inside the administration; and it generously dishes anecdotes.” —Washington Post

Show book

The Prince

Niccolo machiavelli

This political-science classic still has the power to shock, just as it did when first published almost 500 years ago. Fritz Weaver reads in an appropriately detached manner, for it is this air of objectivity regarding the ruthless pursuit of political power that has made Machiavelli's name synonymous with evil. This quality recording begins and ends with ceremonial music, which sets the right tone for a treatise directed to royalty.

Show book

Dirty Politics Dirty Times

Michael Ashcroft

This is a newly revised and updated paperback edition of the former Conservative Party Treasurer's personal account of his battle over unsubstantiated claims concerning his business affairs which culminated in a libel action against "The Times" newspaper. The book reveals the dirty tricks that were used to destabilise the Conservative Party, including the newspaper's alleged bribery of US government officials, and the abuse of parliamentary privileges by New Labour MPs. This is Lord Ashcroft's compelling account of the attacks on his reputation by New Labour spin-doctors out to slander the Conservative Party and journalists seeking to create a story. This new edition also sheds new light on Michael Ashcroft's private life; his childhood and love of Belize, his business career and his many and varied interests.

Show book

Stakes Is High - Life After the...

Mychal Denzel Smith

Brave, clear-eyed, and passionate, Stakes Is High is the book we need to guide us past crisis mode and through an uncertain future.The events of the past decade have forced us to reckon with who we are and who we want to be. We have been invested in a set of beliefs about our American identity: our exceptionalism, the inevitable rightness of our path, the promise that hard work and determination will carry us to freedom. But in Stakes Is High, Mychal Denzel Smith confronts the shortcomings of these stories -- and with the American Dream itself -- and calls on us to live up to the principles we profess but fail to realize.In a series of incisive essays, Smith exposes the stark contradictions at the heart of American life, holding all of us, individually and as a nation, to account. We've gotten used to looking away, but the fissures and casual violence of institutional oppression are ever-present.There is a future that is not as grim as our past. In this profound work, Smith helps us envision it with care, honesty, and imagination.

Show book

Dark Psychology - The Power of...

Amanda Grapes

This book contains the following 3 titles:
Book 1: People who are manipulative, often make use of secret tactics to get other people to do what they want. They try to exercise control over their victims by using hidden aggression methods. This is different from regular aggression, because it is typically sneaky and subtle.
In the third chapter of this book, self-help scams are addressed. The self-help industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry that feeds on the gullible wishful thinking of the ones who go to seminars, buy books, overpriced courses, etc.
Among other things, we’ll also discuss topics like the power of influence, especially in the world of the internet; and we will go into what peer pressure does to youngsters and adults.
Book 2: In this book, you will learn more about the culture we live in today. Are we being brainwashed by the media? How is social media affecting us?
And with those two questions in mind, does this mean there are more narcissists today than ever before?
Not only are we going to dive into these specific topics, but we will also talk about real cults. Cults have existed for a long time. Some even see the relationship between cults and actual religions. But why are cults so dark and scary?
Book 3: Psychopaths and sociopaths are everywhere in our society. You may not realize it, but they are out there. Chances are that you know someone who is a sociopath and you don’t even know it.
How do they compare?
And are they all dangerous?
Aside from answering these questions, we will also look into other topics that are related to manipulation. For example, we’ll go deeper into how to see if someone is manipulating you, or which sales tactics people use to make you buy something.

Show book

Anarchy - Unabridged

Errico Malatesta

Anarchy (1907) is a political classic written by famous anarchist Errico Malatesta. Excerpt from the book: "ANARCHY is a word which comes from the Greek, and signifies, strictly speaking, without government: the state of a people without any constituted authority. Before such an organization had begun to be considered possible and desirable by a whole class of thinkers, so as to be taken as the aim of a party (which party has now become one of the most important factors in modern social warfare), the word Anarchy was taken universally in the sense of disorder and confusion; and it is still adopted in that sense by the ignorant and by adversaries interested in distorting the truth. We shall not enter into philological discussions; for the question is not philological but historical. The common meaning of the word does not misconceive its true etymological signification, but is derived from this meaning, owing to the prejudice that government must be a necessity of the organization of social life."

Show book