I consider myself a rabidly USA-loving patriot, but even I have had those moments of doubt (mostly on rare occasions such as watching the previews for "Jesus Camp" or reading swill from the retards at Stormfront) when I wonder how welcome I'll feel in my own country if things keep getting "worse." Fortunately, we have a new self-help manual that's recently been published, and best of all, it costs less than two Guinness!



According to Amanda at pandagon.net, Bill Scher's new book "Wait! Don't Move to Canada!" is "a really great how-to manual for everyday liberals who are feeling helpless to take some control of the situation."

The number one thing that he suggests we start by doing is to lay claim to the identity “liberal” and use the word frequently, which will both make us look more sure of ourselves over time and will take the piss out of right wingers who wield it as an insult. It’s much less of one if you don’t run from it but instead say, “Of course I’m a liberal. My politics are liberal, since I support freedom, equality, peace, etc.”

After taking that important step, the next is to start finding ways to engage and promote the general liberal worldview. Scher’s book is a step-by-step instruction manual on how you can do this effectively. I found most of his advice to be very sound and intend to try to implement as much of it as I can in the future. Because it’s such a good set of ideas, it’s pretty empowering, but I do suspect a lot of people who read it might get disheartened by the fact that Scher won’t bullshit you; the plan to get liberalism back on its feet again is going to require patience. I think that impatience is the number one factor that creates division on the left, as arguments flare up between people promoting an incremental change and people who don’t like it because it doesn’t go far enough fast enough.
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Scher has solid advice on how to actually achieve our goals with patience without feeling like we’re compromising any core values. On the contrary, he’s got excellent advice on how everyday liberals can communicate and promote those values more efficiently.

Maybe we oughta make this one of our Team Awesome canvassing prizes....