I still feel a little torn about my current exaltation of George Lakoff. Much of what he says makes sense on a deep level to me. Almost as if he was... (wait for it) using language to manipulate my thoughts! (Didn't see that coming did you?) See my previous post here for my thoughts on this. Yet here I am, excerpting another piece of his. Must... fight... the urge... to... Oh, screw it. More from Lakoff from AlterNet: Election 2004: The Progressive Morality:

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.