Get your head out of your @*&. Snowflake. Stupid liberal. Ignorant conservative. There is much discussion today about the decline in civility in American politics. Couple this phenomenon with the fracturing and hardening of political attitudes, and one might wonder how deliberative democracy, much less political civility, can survive if we can't even talk to people with whom we disagree. Insults are thrown, feelings are hurt, and family and friends, at best, decide to avoid political discussions altogether. At worst, arguments cause social groups to break apart. How can deliberative democracy survive if we can't even speak to people with whom we disagree? As this book argues, we need a new way to discuss politics, one that encourages engagement and room for dissent. One way to approach this challenge is to consider how public opinion changes. By and large, public opinion is sticky and change occurs very slowly; one exception to this is the more recent and significant change in public opinion toward LGBTQ rights and marriage equality. The marriage equality movement is considered one of the great success stories of political advocacy, but why was it so successful? Brian F. Harrison argues that one of the most powerful reasons is that a broad range of marriage equality advocates were willing to engage in contentious and sometimes uncomfortable discussion about their opinions on the matter. They started everyday conversations that got people out of their echo chambers and encouraged them to start listening and thinking. But the question remains, if simple conversation can work in one arena, can it work in others? And how and where does one approach such conversation? Drawing from social psychology, communication studies, and political science, as well as personal narratives and examples, A Change is Gonna Come reflects on the last fifteen years of LGBTQ advocacy to propose practical ways to approach informal political conversation on a variety of contentious issues. This book seeks to answer the seemingly simple question: how can we be politically civil to each other again?
In this, the first of two self-standing volumes bringing The New Oxford History of England up to the present, Brian Harrison begins in 1951 with much of the empire intact and with Britain enjoying high prestige in Europe. The United Kingdom could still then claim to be a great power, whose welfare state exemplified compromise between Soviet planning and the USA’s free market. When the volume ends in 1970, no such claims carried conviction. The empire had gone, central planning was in trouble, and even the British political system had become controversial. In an unusually wide-ranging, yet impressively detailed volume, Harrison approaches the period from unfamiliar directions. He explains how British politicians in the 1950s and 1960s responded to this transition by pursuing successive roles for Britain: worldwide as champion of freedom, and in Europe as exemplar of parliamentary government, the multi-racial society, and economic planning. His main focus, though, rests not on the politicians but on the decisions the British people made largely for themselves: on their environment, social structure and attitudes, race relations, family patterns, economic framework, and cultural opportunities. By 1970 the consumer society had supplanted postwar austerity, the socialist vision was fading, and 'the sixties' (the theme of his penultimate chapter) had introduced new and even exotic themes and values. Having lost an empire, Britain was still resourcefully seeking a role: it had yet to find it.
Since the mid-1990s, there has been a seismic shift in attitudes toward gay and lesbian people, with a majority of Americans now supporting same-sex marriage and relations between same-sex, consenting adults. However, support for transgender individuals lags far behind; a significant majority of Americans do not support the right of transgender people to be free from discrimination in housing, employment, public spaces, health care, legal documents, and other areas. Much of this is due to deeply entrenched ideas about the definition of gender, perceptions that transgender people are not "real" or are suffering from mental illness, and fears that extending rights to transgender people will come at the expense of the rights of others. So how do you get people to rethink their prejudices? In this book, Melissa R. Michelson and Brian F. Harrison examine what tactics are effective in changing public opinion regarding transgender people. The result is a new approach that they call Identity Reassurance Theory. The idea is that individuals need to feel confident in their own identity before they can embrace a stigmatized group like transgender people, and that support of members of an outgroup can be encouraged by affirming the self-esteem of those targeted for attitude change. Michelson and Harrison, through their experiments, show that the most effective messaging on transgender issues meets people where they are, acknowledges their discomfort without judgment or criticism, and helps them to think about transgender people and rights in a way that aligns with their view of themselves as moral human beings.
As the sun sank below the western horizon the new star, the Star of Wonder, appeared in the night sky. The travellers packed up and moved on: three kings, three wise men, their shepherds and servants, and their animals loaded high with colourful packages." ---- This exquisite color illustrated childrens book from award-winning artist Brian Harrison-Lever follows the journey of three young kings Melchior, Balthasar, and Gaspar in pursuit of a dazzling star and the mystery which lies at its end. Conveying a universal message of generosity, tolerance, and hope, this is a timeless book for all ages.
In 1970 the 'cold war' was still cold, Northern Ireland's troubles were escalating, the UK's relations with the EEC were unclear, and corporatist approaches to the economy precariously persisted. By 1990 Communism was crumbling world-wide, Thatcher's economic revolution had occurred, terrorism in Northern Ireland was waning, 'multi-culturalism' was in place, family structures were changing fast, and British political institutions had become controversial. Seven analytic chapters pursue these changes and accumulate rich detail on changes in international relations, landscape and townscape, social framework, family and welfare structures, economic policies and realities, intellect and culture, politics and government. The concluding chapter ranges chronologically even more widely to bring out the interaction of past and present, then asks how far the UK had by 1990 identified its world role. Like Harrison's Seeking a Role: The United Kingdom 1951-1970 (2009) - the immediately preceding volume in this series - Finding a Role? includes a full chronological table and an ample index of names and themes. This, the first thorough, wide-ranging, and synoptic study of the UK so far published on this period, has two overriding aims: to show how British institutions evolved, but also to illuminate changes in the British people: their hopes and fears, values and enjoyments, failures and achievements. It therefore equips its readers to understand events since 1990, and so to decide for themselves where the UK should now be going.
The British feminist movement has often been studied, but so far nobody has written about its opponents. Dr Harrison argues that British feminism cannot be understood without appreciating the strength and even the contemporary plausibility of ‘the Antis’, as the opponents of women’s suffrage were called. In a fully documented approach which combines political with social history, he unravels the complex politics, medical, diplomatic and social components of the anti-suffrage mind, and clarifies the Antis’ central commitment to the idea of separate but complementary spheres for the two sexes. Dr Harrison then analyses the history of organised anti-suffragism between 1908 and 1918, and argues that anti-suffragism is important for shedding light on the Edwardian feminists. The Antis also introduce us to important Victorian and Edwardian attitudes which are often forgotten and which differ markedly from the attitudes to women which are now familiar; on the other hand, his concluding chapter – which surveys the period from 1918 to 1978 – claims that many of these attitudes, though less frequently voiced in public, still influence present-day conduct. His book, published originally in 1978, therefore makes an important contribution towards the history of the British women’s movement and towards understanding Britain in the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries.
There’s the office: President of the United States. And then there’s the man in the office—prone to temptation and looking to unwind after a long day running the country. Celebrating the decidedly less distinguished side of the nation’s leaders, humor writer Brian Abrams offers a compelling, hilarious, and true American history on the rocks—a Washington-to-Obama, vice-by-vice chronicle of how the presidents like to party. From explicit love letters to slurred speeches to nude swims at Bing Crosby’s house, reputations are ruined and secrets bared. George Washington brokered the end of the? American Revolution over glasses of Madeira. Ulysses S. Grant rarely drew a sober breath when he was leading the North to victory. And it wasn’t all liquor. Some presidents preferred their drugs—Nixon was a pill-popper. And others chased women instead—both ?the professorial Woodrow Wilson (who signed his love letters “Tiger”) and the good ol’ boy Bill Clinton, though neither could hold a candle to Kennedy, who also received the infamous Dr. Feelgood’s “vitamin” injections of pure amphetamine. Illustrated throughout with infographics (James Garfield’s attempts at circumnavigating the temperance movement), comic strips (George Bush Sr.’s infamous televised vomiting incident), caricatures, and fake archival documents, the book has the smart, funny feel of Mad magazine meets The Colbert Report. Plus, it includes recipes for 44 cocktails inspired by each chapter’s partier-in-chief.
A dramatised case study of a quadriplegic who requested the hospital authorities to withdraw his life support systems in order that he may die with dignity.
A collection of 26 inspirational and cynical writings of society, love, and religion, along with an afterword from the author and a selection of inspirational quotes and life lessons.
Early on Christmas morning the guns stop firing. A deathly silence creeps over the pitted and ruined landscape. A young soldier peers through a periscope over the top of the trench. Way out in no-man's-land, he sees a small red shape moving on the barbed wire. A brightly coloured robin is trapped. One wing is flapping helplessly. An eloquent counterpoint to the senselessness and inhumanity of war, In Flanders Fieldstells the story of a young homesick World War I soldier, who risks his life to cross the no-man's land and rescue a robin caught in the barbed wire that separates the opposing forces, dug into their trenches. This moving picture book is a plea for compassion.
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