ZZ Packer explores many of the things I've been thinking about and have previously expressed here. That is, how do we talk to a conservative Christian constituency that was mobilized by the Republicans in this past election?
The Protestant Reformation was about splitting reason from faith. Packer talks about how to appeal to the hearts and souls. There's a really thin line, I think, between the kind of writing that touches the heart and opens the head up to new ideas, and propaganda, which is about stirring the emotions and bypassing the intellect altogether. But somewhere in there is wiggle room. We don't need to propagandize to right-wing Christians, but we do need to find a way to reach them so that they are able to see the moral good in what we on the left are offering.
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Our state democratic progressive populist caucus met today, and we spent some time brainstorming in groups about what we want to do. One of the ideas we were talking about was framing issues. She was talking about George Lakoff's books on that. He did a really interesting interview on NOW a few months ago:
http://video.pbs.org:8080/ramgen/media4/now/072304/lakoff-lo.rmBut that's what he have to do to reclaim the debate.
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