communication technique
Talking Politics with People Unlike Ourselves
The “Talking Politics with People Unlike Ourselves” workshop provides new tools for reaching the uncommitted, the wavering, and people unlike oneself. Workshop participants become more effective in talking with others and are better able to move them to action. They learn how to apply lessons from social psychology and personal experience in discussing politics with family members, neighbors, work colleagues, and/or strangers.
Conservative Sentimentalism
On September 2, as he spoke to reporters about the devastation along the Gulf Coast wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, President Bush deflected criticism of the administration's response to the crisis, and then said: "Now we're going [to the region] to offer comfort to the people." This may or may not have been an offhand comment, or a sincere one, but it hinted at a characteristic impulse of American conservatism: the impulse to sentimentalize in response to pressing civic problems, to practice a politics of the heart rather than of the head. That's not only or always true of conservatives, of course, but there's an interesting history to right-wing sentimentalism that deserves special consideration.
