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Obama's Core Principles

• Mar 16, 2009 Posted by Karen Erb
  Recently President Obama made a speech to the joint houses of Congress.  I read an article about that speech by George Lakoff, and I'd like to discuss a little about what he said.  Perhaps you remember Lakoff for his book Don't Think of an Elephant, that we talked about at a program a few years ago.  George talks about how we must FRAME our arguments and thoughts
  
  He says that Obama has three core principles that he was trying to get across in that speech.  We need to learn those three and use them to frame all our arguments.
  They are:
  
  
  "    Empathy
  "    Responsibility
  "    Excellence
  
  Most of those three principles blend together when we talk of the progressive way of government.  If we use empathy, we can stop the argument of Welfare Queen in its tracks.  (The "Welfare Queen in Reagan's speeches never existed and he knew it, but used the story over and over.)  We can point out the stale, golden oldies of the last decade and beyond?the fear of socialism, communism, socialized medicine?.
  
  We can stop Ronald Reagan's fear of big government by pointing out that big government is good, if you have transparency and accountability.  Of course big government can be bad without anyone watching the pot.  Think of those unrestrained officials that can steal all they want because no one knows what they are doing.  How many people would resist the temptation?  But Barack Obama has created a website:  www.recovery.gov where we can see where the money is going.  He has also revamped www.whitehouse.gov with real information that is useful for tracking his progress.
  
  If we are responsible, we get our kids to school every day, we get to work every day, we do our share of paying taxes, we vote!  I don't have to tell YOU, about responsibility.  That's why you are reading this.  I know this is a nice social club, and we all like each other.  But that's not all we do.  We are here to get people elected, to get people to vote, to promote the important progressive/liberal issues that we believe in.  We are all so responsible that we not only pay taxes, we donate to political campaigns.  We also write letters to the editor, knock on doors, and make phone calls.  But we do have fun together too.
  
  We must promote excellence in our schools, in our jobs, in our elected officials, in our government.  Excellent students will be our future leaders, scientists, doctors, and thinkers.
  
  Excellent, responsible, empathetic elected officials and citizens will bring about the CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN!  That is Barack Obama's message.
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