Launching a New Campaign– Not for Elective Office, But to Light a Fire in Liberal America

( – promoted by lowkell)

For more than a year, since the 2012 election, I have been working to devise a new strategy to help turn America’s dangerous political dynamic around. Now I’ve come up with a plan.

With the talk described below, I’m launching a new “campaign.” This one is not for elective office, but it is at least as ambitious.

It’s a campaign to have an impact on our national public discourse. More specifically, it is a campaign to bring to the center of our national conversation what I believe to be the central political reality of our times: the rise on the political right of an unprecedentedly destructive and dishonest force, and the weakness of Liberal America in calling out this force for what it is.

America desperately needs an “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment, and I believe this new campaign has a chance of helping to bring it about.

With the talk described below in Harrisonburg this coming Wednesday (February 12), and a similar public event I gave in Berkeley on January 29, and another talk to come in Washington, D.C. on March 24, I am launching this new campaign.

I invite you to come to Harrisonburg, if it is within your reach. And I would welcome the opportunity to speak in other venues.

Here is the flyer for the talk, with all the pertinent information about the time and date and nature of the event.

PUBLIC LECTURE & DISCUSSION

    When “the best lack all conviction/ and   the worst are filled with a passionate intensity*”

   Liberalism’s Role in Our National Crisis

by Dr. Andrew Bard Schmookler

Sponsored by the College Democrats of James Madison University

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

7:30-9:00 pm

ISAT 0236

Doors open and refreshments at 7:00 pm

Parking in JMU Lot D2 (Map)  

Abstract/Bio

A destructive and dishonest force has arisen on the political right, unlike anything ever seen at the center of American politics. The response from liberal America has been woefully inadequate.

This combination of right-wing destructiveness and liberal weakness has caused tremendous damage to our democratic foundations. It’s a dynamic that must be changed.  

That’s the message of Andrew Bard Schmookler, a prize-winning author whose books include The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution. Andy was recently the Democratic nominee for Congress in Virginia’s 6th District.  

Andy will present — and discuss — his understanding of the nature and roots of our national crisis. And he will propose a grassroots strategy to strike a meaningful blow in a battle that must be won — for the future of America and, indeed, the planet.

*from William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming