Political Literature

Anthem

by Ayn Rand

 Anthem is written as the diary of Equality 7-2521, a young man living in a future in which people have lost all knowledge of individualism, to the point of not even knowing words like ‘I’ or ‘mine.’ Everyone lives and works in collective groups, with all aspects of daily life dictated by councils — the Council of Vocations, the Council of Scholars, etc. When he is assigned to a menial job cleaning the streets, Equality 7-2521 rebels against collectivism by conducting secret scientific research, which eventually leads him to re-create electric light. When he presents his discovery to the Council of Scholars, they condemn him for daring to act as an individual and threaten to destroy his creation. He flees into the Uncharted Forest. He is joined there by his love, a girl called Liberty 5-3000. They come across an ancient house, a relic of the Unmentionable Times before collectivism. There they rediscover the lost language of the self. They rename themselves Prometheus and Gaea (after the ancient Greek myths), and Prometheus vows to use his new knowledge to build a society based on individual freedom (http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/books/rand/anthem/summary.html)

The Political Brain

The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation
by Drew Westen

The Political Brain is a groundbreaking investigation into the role of emotion in determining the political life of the nation. For two decades Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emery University, has explored a theory of the mind that differs substantially from teh more “dispassionate” notions held by many cognitive pscyhologists, political scientists, economists – and Democratic campaign strategists. The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works. When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on the “the issues,” they lose. That’s why only one Democrat has been re-elected to the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt – and only one Republican has failed in that quest.

In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. Elections are decided in teh marketplace of emotions, a martketplace filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory, in which logic plays only a supporting role. Westen shows, through a whistle-stop journey through teh evolution of the passionate brain and a bravura tour through fifty years of american presidential an dnational elections, why campaigns succeed and fail. The evidence is overwhelming that three things determine how people vote, in this order: their feelings toward the parties and their principles, their feelings toward the condidates, and, if they haven’t decided by then, their feelings toward the candidates’ policy positions.

Republican strategists intuitively “get it.” Westen suggests that whether Democrats move to the left of the right, the real quetion they need to address is how to move the electorate. He shows how it can be done through examples of what candidates have said – or could have said- in debates, speeches, and ads. Westen’s discoveries could utterly transform electoral arithmetic, showing how a different view of the mind and brain leads to a different way of talking with voters about issues that have tied the tongues of Democrats for much of the forty years – such as abortion, guns, taxes, and race. You can’t change the structure of the brain. But you can change the way you appeal to it. And here’s how..