Our Moral Values, per George Lakoff
The Humanists of West Suburban Chicagoland will meet on Dec 8th at the DuPage Unitarian Universalist Church at 7:30 pm to participate in a "small group workshop" on "Framing the Political, Religious and Cultural Debate in New Terms". The article below will help set the stage for our discussions.
Published in the December 6, 2004 issue of The Nation.
Our Moral Values
We came together because of our moral values: care and responsibility, fairness and equality, freedom and courage, fulfillment in life, opportunity and community, cooperation and trust, honesty and openness. We united behind political principles: equality, equity (if you work for a living, you should earn a living) and government for the people--all the people.
These are traditional American values and principles, what we are proudest of in this country. The Democrats' failure was a failure to put forth our moral vision, celebrate our values and principles, and shout them out loud.
We must immediately convince our leaders to unite behind these
values, express our common moral vision and hold the line against the
Bush agenda because it is immoral! Bush will call them obstructionists.
They must frame themselves as heading in the right direction, going
forward not backward, defending the greatest of American ideals and
moral principles, working against a radical right agenda that would
lead our country to disaster and speaking for more than 55 million
highly moral, patriotic Americans.
[more at The Nation]