The first task in teaching is to bring to consciousness what the students already believe by virtue of their personal experiences about themselves and society.
Paul WellstoneRead
The problem with party politics is that people get involved every two or four years and that is it. In the meantime, the legislature and Minnesota politics are on a separate track.
Interpretation
Political engagement should happen continuously, not just during election cycles.
This quote by Paul Wellstone highlights the issue of limited political engagement among the populace, emphasizing that citizens should be active participants in politics beyond just the moments leading up to elections. He suggests that true democracy requires constant involvement in governance to ensure that legislators remain connected to the needs and concerns of their constituents.
In practice
In a speech about civic responsibility, emphasizing the need for year-round political involvement.
The first task in teaching is to bring to consciousness what the students already believe by virtue of their personal experiences about themselves and society.
A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.
The future will not belong to those who sit on the sidelines. The future will not belong to the cynics. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
I think the future also will not belong to those who are cynical or those who stand on the sidelines
Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives.
What the poor, the weak, and the inarticulate desperately require is power, organization, and a sense of identity and purpose, not rarefied advice of political scientists.
You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.
The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories.
I say statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, most legislation is moral legislations because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres in life.
None of this is fair to you. And should it continue, it will make it more difficult to keep attracting the kind of driven, patriotic, idealist Americans to public service that our citizens deserved and that our system of self-government demands.
What, after all, is the public under present conditions? What are the reasons for its eclipse? What hinders it from finding and identifying itself? By what means shall its inchoate and amorphous estate be organized into effective political action relevant to present social needs and opportunities? What has happened to the public in the century and a half since the theory of political democracy was urged with such assurance and hope?
In politics stupidity is not a handicap.
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