Framing? Yeah, we need to think about it. Branding? Yeah, we need to think about it. "Values"? Yeah, we need to think about them. I agree on all of that.
But wait... maybe someone's saved us some work...
You want framing? Here's some framing for you.
And the funny thing is... those on the following list who were predominantly politicians actually won eleective office... repeatedly!
And add to the list, people, add to the list. Dig around, and you'll find this work's been done for us already. We just need to uncover it, to rediscover and reclaim ourselves.
I do not believe the future will belong to those who are content with the present, I do not believe the future will belong to the cynics, or to those who stand on the sideline. The future will belong to those who have passion, and to those who are willing to make the personal commitment to make our country better. The future will belong to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
--Paul Wellstone
America is not made. It's in the making. It has today to meet an impending crisis as menacing as any in the nation's history. It does not sound a call to arms, but it is nonetheless a call to patriotism and to higher ideals in citizenship--a call for the preservation of the representative character of the government itself... Every man should have faith. Advance ground has been secured which will never be surrendered by the American people. There's work for everyone. The field is large. It is a glorious service, this service for the country. The call comes to every citizen. It is an unending struggle to make and keep government representative. Each one should pocket a patriotic duty to build at least a part of his life into the life of his country, to do his share in the making of America according to the plan of the fathers.
--Robert LaFollette
This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt
A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.
--Martin Luther King
Every human being's life in this world is inevitably mixed with every other life and, no matter what laws we pass, no matter what precautions we take, unless the people we meet are kindly and decent and humane and liberty-loving, then there is no liberty. Freedom comes from human beings, rather than from laws and institutions.
--Clarence Darrow
We Democrats must unite so that the entire nation can...We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems. That the future of the child in Buffalo is our future. The struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive, to live decently, is our struggle. The hunger of a woman in Little Rock, our hunger. The failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure.
--Mario Cuomo
Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor--never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees--not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.
--Elie Weisel
If we don't do this now, if we don't stand up for human rights, civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, who will? Who? Nobody, that's who!
--Paul Tsongas
People have to hear words that not only sound right but feel right. I think it's in part the economic message, but it's also in part a message about community, about who we are as a nation, about how to live a life in which you don't have to separate the life you live from the words you speak, be that in your relationship with your family, your community, your country or your world. I don't want to give an inch on a `family values' agenda..
--Paul Wellstone