Leid Stories – 10.21.15

Leid Stories Poll: What’s Shaping Your Political Attitudes, Choices?
Seems it’s a poll-driven presidential race. Who’s running, waiting, quitting, leading, lagging, or doesn’t have a prayer—it’s all in the polls. Running the spectrum between unbiased (few in this category) and blatantly partisan (way too many in this category), the intent, more and more, is not merely to ascertain or reflect what people are thinking or doing, but to sway and skew public opinion so as to influence political attitudes and choices.

Leid Stories conducts its own unofficial poll today, asking listeners an open-ended question: “What’s shaping your political attitudes and choices?”

Paul Rosenberg – Secrets Of the Extreme Religious Right: Inside the Frightening World Of Christian Reconstructionism

As an unprecedented shift in public opinion brought about the legalization of gay marriage, a vigorous counter-current has been intensifying under the banner of “religious freedom”—an incredibly slippery term. Perhaps the most radical definition of such freedom comes out of the relatively obscure tradition of Christian Reconstructionism, the subject of a new book by religious studies scholar Julie Ingersoll, Building God’s …

The Other One Percent – Ralph Nader

As a high school student, I came across an observation by Abraham Lincoln who said that “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” Today “public sentiment” would be called “public opinion.” Over the years, I have been astonished at how less than one percent of the citizenry, backed by the “public sentiment,” have changed our country …