Policy Advocacy Quotes

Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lost the courts and wait for a White House scandal. And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics. The accepted wisdom that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists these days goes like this: The Republican Party has been able to consistently win elections not by expanding its base but by vilifying Democrats, driving wedges into the electorate, energizing its right wing, and disciplining those who stray from the party line. If the Democrats ever want to get back into power, then they will have to take up the same approach. ...Ultimately, though, I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we're in. I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country. It's what keeps us locked in "either/or" thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace "socialized medicine". It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics.

But when norms and interests come into tension, most states will side with their own interests. And yet pro-refugee rights advocacy and policy-making is dominated by a dogmatic insistence that reciting international law is the most effective way to influence state behaviour.

What does it mean to be an advocate?
In its broadest sense, advocacy means “any public action to support and recommend a cause, policy or practice.” That covers a lot of public actions, from displaying
 a bumper sticker to sounding off with a bullhorn. But whether the action is slapping something on the back of a car or speaking in front of millions, every act of advocacy involves making some kind of public statement, one that says, “I support this.” Advocacy is a communicative act. Advocacy is also a persuasive act. “I support this” is usually followed by another statement (sometimes only implied): “...and you should, too.” Advocacy not only means endorsing a cause or idea, but recommending, promoting, defending, or arguing for it.

being critical is more than just doing critique, as social change that leads to equity also requires informing policy and practice through advocacy and activism

identified as the premier “consumer advocate.” Yet one of Nader’s first published writings, in The Nation magazine in 1959, revealed the mind-set behind consumer advocacy when he said, “the consumer must be protected at times from his own indiscretion and vanity.”28 Once again, the role of the anointed was to preempt other people’s decisions, for their own good.

The days are long, the weeks are long, the months are long, but the years are short—one day you look up and realize you’re on the precipice of the final year of a presidential term. You see the world in a different way, as if you could open a window and catch a glimpse of anything that is touched by the reach of the United States government. You can be a part of actions that shape these events—your voice in a meeting, your intervention on a budget line item, your role in crafting the words that a president speaks. You are also a bystander to crises that elude intervention, buffeted by the constant and contradictory demands made on an American president—by other American politicians; by the media; by advocacy organizations; by people around the world. You never know what is the one meeting, the one decision, the one word or phrase that will matter.

Google and Apple offer the image of a pseudo-commons to Internet users. That image recalls Nick Dyer-Whiteford's claim that, in light of the structural failures of neoliberal policies, capital could "turn to a 'Plan B', in which limited versions of commons, pollution trading schemes, community development and open-source and file-sharing practices are introduced as subordinate aspects of a capitalist economy, where voluntary cooperation subsidizes profit. One can think here of how Web 2.0 re-appropriates many of the innovations of radical digital activists, and converts them into a source of rent." Indeed, with the rise of the trademarked Digital Commons software platform and with the proliferation of university-based digital and media commons (which are typically limited to fee-paying and/or employed university community members), the very concept of the digital commons appears to be one of these reappropriations. But if, as part of what James Boyle describes as the "Second Closure Movement," this very rhetorical move signals the temporary defeats of the after-globalization and radical hacker movements that claimed the language of the commons, perhaps the advocacy for ownership of digital wares (or at least a form of unalienable, absolute possession, whether individual or communal) would provide a strategic ballast against the proprietary control of large swathes of information by apparently benevolent corporations and institutions. While still dangling in mid-air, the information commodity's consumption might thereby be placed more solidly on common ground.

Issues transcend boundaries but voters do not.

MoveOn.org tried to buy an ad for the 2004 Super Bowl broadcast to express opposition to Bush's economic policy, which was then being debated by Congress. CBS told MoveOn that "issue advocacy" was not permissible. Then, CBS, having refused the MoveOn ad, began running advertisements by the White House in favor of one of the president's controversial policies. So MoveOn complained, and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporarily, I mean it was removed until the White House complained, and CBS immediately put the ad back on, yet still refused to present the MoveOn ad.

We profiled the Drug Policy Foundation, the most thoughtful advocacy group, financed by billionaire George Soros, and the Grateful Dead’s foundation, among others.

Advocate for Progressive Taxation: Support policies that promote progressive taxation, where the wealthy pay their fair share. Engage with advocacy groups and contact your representatives to push for tax reforms that reduce inequality. Support Regulatory Frameworks: Advocate for robust regulatory frameworks that protect consumers, workers, and the environment. Join organizations that work towards strengthening regulations and hold policymakers accountable. Defend Public Services: Stand against the privatization of essential public services. Support initiatives that prioritize the public good over profit and work to ensure that services like healthcare, education, and infrastructure remain accessible to all. Promote Economic Justice: Engage in efforts to reduce economic inequality by supporting policies that increase the minimum wage, expand access to affordable healthcare, and provide opportunities for education and training. Join movements that fight for economic justice and social equity. Educate and Mobilize: Spread awareness about the risks of Project 2025’s economic policies. Host discussions, share information on social media, and participate in grassroots movements to mobilize others in the fight for a fairer economic system.

By the time Citizens United’s case reached the federal court system, however, there were signs that the Supreme Court might be willing to soften its position on direct corporate expenditures. In its 2007 opinion in Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. (551 U.S. 449), the Court carved out some significant exemptions that allowed corporate funding for express advocacy. In that case, Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. (WRTL) had run afoul of the FEC for airing ads that were critical of Democratic Wisconsin Senator Russell Feingold’s voting record on abortion, even though the group did not explicitly tell voters to withhold support from him. The group’s defense was that because its ads were ostensibly informative on a policy dimension, they should not be considered “electioneering” and should be protected speech. The Court agreed, holding that in order to be banned under the BCRA electioneering rules, an ad’s only purpose must be to expressly advocate the election or defeat of a named candidate. In formulating their opinion in the case, Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues in the majority positioned themselves as defenders of speech rights, writing that “the First Amendment requires us to err on the side of protecting political speech rather than suppressing it.

Public policy formulation has gone a metamorphic change during the last three or four decades due to rapidly globalising world. There are at least four ways in which globalization is affecting the policy formulation in each country. Firstly, thanks to social and electronic media, small issues which a decade or so ago could only find place in the back page of a national newspaper become breaking news in major global channels creating advocacy and sympathy movements in different parts of the world. Secondly, with the rapidly globalizing world, global issues like environmental degradation, climate change, GMO, etc., which were only discussed in the corridors of power are being debated in the drawing rooms of countries and creating strong advocacy movements among the population. Thirdly, centers of actual power and decision making are shifting from local to global level with the outreach of domestic interest groups to their sympathizers in international organizations, multinational corporations and those in the governments of global powers. This outreach enables them to force their own government to accede to their demands because of economic and political clout of the global players. Lastly, whether approached by the domestic interests or not, global state and non-state actors are increasingly penetrating those domains which were henceforth exclusively reserved for the domestic state machinery. They not only interfere in the policy formulation but are now acting direct through their proxies in the form of nongovernmental organizations in domestic policy formulation and implementation.

We do science because we want to understand the truth. It is a constant, ongoing pursuit to understand our own biology so that we can make smart choices at an individual and policy level. If the science of breastfeeding is used first and foremost as a tool for breastfeeding promotion, we compromise public trust in science. Biased information about breastfeeding also sets up infant feeding as a debate, which sometimes escalates to mommy war status, and it doesn't need to be either of these.

In an editorial, the journal Nature warned that one of the dangers of winning the Nobel Prize is that people attempt to enlist you for all sorts of causes.' It particularly cited Scientists and Engineers for America and its opposition to Bush science policies, though "there is little doubt that US federal science has suffered under Bush," the editors wrote. By engaging in partisan behavior, the journal warned, scientists risk "seeming to be self-interested, grant-obsessed, and out of touch." Actually, I think the reverse is true. It is remaining at the bench when times call for action that defines researchers as self-obsessed. As Burton Richter, a Stanford physicist, Nobel laureate, and founder and board member of SEA wrote in response to the Nature editorial, the organization's aim "is to make available to society at large the evidence-based science relating to critical issues facing us all." He added, "We hope both to draw attention to underappreciated science issues and provide the advocacy necessary to get things done-not along party-political lines but scientifically."4

Throughout the summer of 1911 correspondence flowed back and forth between Cox and his superiors in Delhi and London about Shakespear’s proposals and the policy Britain should adopt toward Ibn Saud. Officials in London remained fearful not only of antagonising the Ottomans but of the possibility that if Ibn Saud drove the Turks out of Hasa he might himself become a danger to British interests in the region and advance south into Muscat. In the end, despite Cox’s continued advocacy and the support of a few more far-sighted officials in the Indian and London governments, Britain’s concern to maintain good relations with Turkey as a protective buffer between Europe and Asia and against any German, French or Russian designs on Britain’s Indian Empire, together with on-going fears in London and India of taking any step which might be perceived as antagonistic towards Turkey and the Caliphate and so serve to inflame anti-British sentiment among Muslims in India, prevailed. Ibn Saud’s request for some form of alliance or protective agreement with Britain was to be politely rejected. From Britain’s point of view Ibn Saud, despite his successes and growing power, remained no more than the minor ruler of an out of the way, strategically and economically unimportant minor statelet. This was the tenth time in the nine years since his recapture of Riyadh that Ibn Saud’s overtures towards the British had been rejected.

Youth are not just the leaders of tomorrow; they are the catalysts for change today." "True justice lies in creating spaces where every voice, no matter how quiet, can be heard." "Inclusive development begins with acknowledging the power of diversity in every corner of society." "Advocacy is not a profession; it is a responsibility we owe to the generations that come after us." "Empowering young minds is the key to unlocking a future built on innovation, compassion, and resilience." "Laws shape society, but it is the values of fairness and equality that breathe life into them." "A sustainable future is crafted when policy, people, and purpose align." "Strengthening civic engagement is not just about building informed citizens; it’s about nurturing empowered communities." "In every challenge lies an opportunity for growth, and in every voice, a spark for change." "Human rights are not negotiable; they are the foundation upon which we build a just society.

the IPCC doesn’t actually do scientific research. It is primarily a political advocacy group that cloaks itself in the aura of scientific respectability while it cherry-picks the science that best supports its desired policy outcomes, and marginalizes or ignores science that might contradict the party line.

... the reality is that we do not live in a world in which most people are strongly dedicated to the aim of reducing suffering for all sentient beings — at least not in terms of their actual behavior. However, most people probably are willing to support policies that reduce suffering if only the cost is sufficiently low to them personally, which suggests that a promising strategy for those who are most dedicated to reducing suffering is to tap into this vast reservoir of potential support, making marginal pushes in just the right places such that our efforts inspire broad support rather than broad hostility.

Governments, industries, scientists, and the public must collaborate in a concerted effort to develop and implement policies that promote sustainability, protect freshwater habitats, and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Public awareness and advocacy are equally crucial, fostering a collective commitment to safeguarding the diversity of life on our planet.

While such an approach can serve as a pragmatic measuring stick, it cannot be permitted to shape our values, nor determine the boundaries of our advocacy. The imbalance of power between Israel and the Palestinians, a circumstance reinforced by the overwhelming political, economic, and military influence of the United States, can never be ignored or understated as we develop workable analyses and principled solutions. This means that any hope for a future in which all people of the region can live in peace, security, freedom, and hope requires the involvement of other states. It is up to us, as Americans, to ensure that our involvement is based on universal humanistic values that are applied in a consistent manner. Such an approach has not historically been part of U.S. policy. As we enter the Biden era, we must change direction. We must no longer render Palestine exceptional.

There is no single Christian policy or political plan. To act like there is one, or to wish that there was one, would be to make the old mistake of thinking that the kingdom of God is like human kingdoms. The goal is not to have all Christians share the same exact politics but to have all Christians think Christianly about politics. Thinking about politics from a biblical framework doesn’t mean we’ll always agree, but it does exclude some policies and forms of advocacy that are counter to our beliefs.

Mental health is an enormous business; in the United States, more money is spent on mental health conditions than any other medical specialty, with an estimated $201 billion spent in 2013 alone and an estimated increase to $280 billion by 2020 (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2014). More than half of the budget for the American Psychiatric Association is income received directly from pharmaceutical companies, and drug-makers are the most frequent and largest donors of mental health advocacy groups (see, e.g., Harris, 2009). Speaking and consulting gigs for the pharmaceutical industry can earn psychiatrists up to $1 million or more in direct fees per year,4 and at least 70% of the professionals making up the task force for the DSM were tied to pharmaceutical companies (Cosgrove & Krimsky, 2012), raising concerns about corporate interests reflected in practice and policy and accusations of disease mongering (Moynihan, Heath, & Henry, 2002). The incentive for ensuring the medical and biological framework for conceptualizing problems in living is huge.

Employees denounce the advocacy of gender- and race-blind policies as a “microaggression” and the product of “racism” and “misogyny.

What if instead of a feelings advocacy we had an outcome advocacy that put equitable outcomes before our guilt and anguish? What if we focused our human and fiscal resources on changing power and policy to actually make society, not just our feelings, better?

Interdisciplinary discussions that bring multiple perspectives to bear on a given problem have the power to challenge, corroborate, and thereby clarify competing truths. They can help us to see that fostering an ethical relationship with nature, one that respects both the human and the nonhuman members of the biotic com- munity, is not as simple as it seems. By bringing together the perspectives of history, science, advocacy, and the lived experience of those most affected by environmental policies, we can contemplate the paths that brought us here and reimagine the road ahead. That Janus-like approach, it seems, is the essence of public history.

This was one of Kissinger’s first visits to Rand, after a long period of coldness that had begun in the late 1950s because of Rand’s critique of his advocacy of limited nuclear wars as instruments of U.S. policy in his 1957 book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy.

Worse yet, my administration was deporting undocumented workers at an accelerating rate. This wasn’t a result of any directive from me, but rather it stemmed from a 2008 congressional mandate that both expanded ICE’s budget and increased collaboration between ICE and local law enforcement departments in an effort to deport more undocumented immigrants with criminal records. My team and I had made a strategic choice not to immediately try to reverse the policies we’d inherited in large part because we didn’t want to provide ammunition to critics who claimed that Democrats weren’t willing to enforce existing immigration laws—a perception that we thought could torpedo our chances of passing a future reform bill. But by 2010, immigrant-rights and Latino advocacy groups were criticizing our lack of progress, much the same way LGBTQ activists had gone after us on DADT. And although I continued to urge Congress to pass immigration reform, I had no realistic path for delivering a new comprehensive law before the midterms.

Although political representation by racial quota is the effect of government policy, it is not yet respectable to call for it explicitly. When President Bill Clinton tried to appoint Lani Guinier as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights her appointment failed, in part because of Miss Guinier’s advocacy of representation by race. In her view, if blacks were 13 percent of the US population, 13 percent of seats in Congress should be set aside for them. It does not cause much comment, however, when the Democratic Party applies this thinking to its selection of delegates to presidential conventions. Each state party files an affirmative action plan with the national party, and many states set quotas. For the 2008 Democratic Convention, California mandated an over-representation of non-white delegates. Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics were only 4.6, 5.2, and 21.1 percent, respectively, of the Democratic electorate, but had to be 16, 9, and 26 percent of the delegates. Other states had similar quotas. Procedures of this kind do lead to diversity of delegates but suggest that race is more important than policy. Perhaps it is. In Cincinnati, where blacks are 40 to 45 percent of the population, Mayor Charlie Luken complained that the interests of blacks and whites seemed so permanently in conflict that “race gets injected into every discussion as a result.” In other words, any issue can become racial. In 2004, the Georgia legislature passed a bill to stop fraud by requiring voters to show a state-issued ID at the polls. People without drivers’ licenses could apply for an ID for a nominal fee. Black legislators felt so strongly that this was an attempt to limit the black vote that they did not merely vote against the law; practically the entire black delegation stormed out of the Capitol when the measure passed over their objections. In 2009, when Congress voted a stimulus bill to get the economy out of recession, some governors considered refusing some federal funds because there were too many strings attached. Jim Clyburn, a black South Carolina congressman and House Majority Whip, complained that rejecting any funding would be a “slap in the face of African-Americans.” Race divides Cook County, Illinois, which contains Chicago. In 2007, when the black president of the county board, Todd Stroger, could not get his budget passed, his floor leader William Beavers-also black—complained that it was “because he’s black.” He said there was only one real question: 'Who’s gonna control the county—white or black—that’s all this is.

Many domestic activists focus their efforts on top-down changes such as national elections and state policies--and despair when they fail to reach their goals....Bottom-up activism can help address the racial, ethnic, religious, and political issues that divide not just places like Congo or Colombia, but also the societies of non-war countries.

I’d become a committed Young Democrat, at least on paper. Though I spent my days throwing around the language of policy and politics, I practiced agility more than advocacy: in one round, I played the neoconservative defender of American imperial policy in Afghanistan; in the next, I argued for diplomacy with rogue states.

The poets speak only poetry, not program, not policy, not even advocacy, only poetry. But the poetry exists in order to make available what the ideologues are unable to see and what the policy makers are unable to grasp.

To set up the “final phase” of their long-range policy, the communists developed strategies for marginalizing and (in future, criminalizing) conservatives. As Kremlin strategist Georgi Arbatov explained in December 1988, “Our major weapon is to deprive you of an enemy.” The so-called “collapse of communism” ideologically disarmed the West. Once that was done, the left’s advocacy for gay marriage, critical race theory, open borders, and abortion, turned the tables on conservatives.

What good came of all this exploration? It was a question philosophes found irresistable. Progress was their almost irresistable answer. But Diderot, the secular pontiff of the Enlightenment, the editor of the Encyclopédie, did not agree. In 1773 he wrote a denunciation of explorers as agents of a new kind of barbarism. Base motives drove them: 'tyranny, crime, ambition, misery, curiousity, I know not what restlessness of spirit, the desire to know and the desire to see, boredom, the dislike of familiar pleasures' - all the baggage of the restless temperament. Lust for discovery was a new form of fanaticism on the part of men seeking 'islands to ravage, people to despoil, subjugate and massacre.' The explorers discovered people morally superior to themselves, because more natural or more civilized, while they, on their side, grew in savagery, far from the polite restraints that reined them in at home. 'All the long-range expeditions,' Diderot insisted, 'have reared a new generation of nomadic savages ... men who visit so many countries that they end by belonging to none ... amphibians who live on the surface of the waters,' deracinated, and, in the strictest sense of the word, demoralized. Certainly, the excesses explorers committed - of arrogance, of egotism, of exploitation - showed the folly of supposing that travel necessarily broadens the mind or improves the character. But Diderot exaggerated. Even as he wrote, the cases of disinterested exploration - for scientific or altruistic purposes - were multiplying. If the eighteenth century rediscovered the beauties of nature and the wonders of the picturesque, it was in part because explorers alerted domestic publics to the grandeurs of the world they discovered. If the conservation of species and landscape became, for the first time in Western history, an objective of imperial policy, it was because of what the historian Richard Grove has called 'green imperialism' - the awakened sense of stewardship inspired by the discovery of new Edens in remote oceans. If philosophers enlarged their view of human nature, and grappled earnestly and, on the whole, inclusively with questions about the admissability of formerly excluded humans - blacks, 'Hottentots,' Australian Aboriginals, and all other people estranged by their appearance or culture - to full membership of the moral community, it was because exploration made these brethren increasingly familiar. If critics of Western institutions were fortified in their strictures and encouraged in their advocacy of popular sovreignty, 'enlightened despotism,' 'free thinking,' civil liberties, and human 'rights,' it was, in part, because exploration acquainted them with challenging models from around the world of how society could be organized and life lived.

today’s and tomorrow’s healthcare delivery system. To become engaged in advocacy, and to set the agenda for human resources and nursing resources for health care, nurses must be at the forefront of policy engagement, dialogue, and implementation.

Gladstone is remembered for putting the nation’s finances in good order, for establishing the chancellorship of the exchequer as the second post in the government, for his love of liberty and close sympathy for the peoples of subject nations (including the Irish), for his advocacy of international arbitration, and his preference for pursuing a peaceful, non-expansionist foreign policy. He became a hero to many people both inside and outside the Liberal Party, and proved an inspiration to generations of Liberal, and later Labour, politicians. Inevitably, however, with the passage of years his memory has faded, and there are nowadays perhaps only a few veterans of the Liberal Democratic Party who feel any personal affinity with him.

True, the productive forces, practice and the economic base generally play the principal and decisive role; whoever denies this is not a materialist. But it must also be admitted that in certain conditions, such aspects as the relations of production, theory and the superstructure in turn manifest themselves in the principal and decisive role. When it is impossible for the productive forces to develop without a change in the relations of production, then the change in the relations of production plays the principal and decisive role. The creation and advocacy of revolutionary theory plays the principal and decisive role in those times of which Lenin said, "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement." [15] When a task, no matter which, has to be performed, but there is as yet no guiding line, method, plan or policy, the principal and decisive thing is to decide on a guiding line, method, plan or policy. When the superstructure (politics, culture, etc.) obstructs the development of the economic base, political and cultural changes become principal and decisive. Are we going against materialism when we say this? No. The reason is that while we recognize that in the general development of history the material determines the mental and social being determines social consciousness, we also—and indeed must—recognize the reaction of mental on material things, of social consciousness on social being and of the superstructure on the economic base. This does not go against materialism; on the contrary, it avoids mechanical materialism and firmly upholds dialectical materialism.

Adversaries, mutual dependence of: "If there is any possibility of avoiding a mutually damaging war, of conducting warfare in a way that minimizes damage, or of coercing an adversary by threatening war rather than waging it, the possibility of mutual accomodation is as important and dramatic as the element of conflict. Concepts like deterrence, limited war, and disarmament, as well as negotiation, are concerned with the common interest and mutual dependence that can exist between participants in a conflict." — Thomas C. Shelling, 1960 Advocacy, diplomatic: "The task of persuading another government to accept and perhaps actually help promote the policies which it is the ambassador's function to advocate still falls primarily on the ambassador himself and his senior diplomatic staff, even in these days of the communications revolution. The cordiality of his personal relations with key figures in the government (even, in countries where this is necessary, at the expense of cordial relations with opposition groups) and their confidence in him as a man of goodwill, make a great difference. An experienced ambassador will have learnt to cultivate such relations as best as he can, so as to have a fund of confidence to draw on. Outside the government there are likely to be a large number of influential people, in the legislature, in political parties, in key economic or business positions, in the news media, perhaps in religious life, who influence decisions and public opinion. Ideally the ambassador must cultivate and influence all these people as well." — Adam Watson, 1982

Advocacy, policy: "Most people do not mind being surpassed in good fortune, character, or temperament, but no one, especially not a sovereign, likes to be surpassed in intelligence. For this is the king of attributes, and any crime against it is lèse-majesté. Sovereigns want to be so in what is most important. Princes like to be helped, but not surpassed. When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see. It is the stars who teach us this subtlety. They are brilliant sons, but they never dare to outshine the sun." — Baltazar Gracián Advocacy, policy: "Ideas do not sell themselves. Authors of memoranda who are not willing to fight for them are more likely to find their words turn into ex post facto alibis than guides to action." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1994

Your friends and I want you to stay aware of your surroundings, James Ed. These days you cannot anticipate what a disgruntled, former employee might do.

James Ed’s statistics even made me feel guilty,” a businessman said. “Let’s make him a millionaire.

Diplomacy, professional: Like war, diplomacy is too important a subject to be left to blundering amateurism. It marks the phase of policy prior to war; it makes and breaks military alliances; it ends war. There is much lore to it; it is a subtle calling. Diplomacy is too portentous to be entrusted to the politicians but it is too political to be left to the generals. Those who may be fatally affected by diplomacy's failure have every reason to demand that only its most skilled, professional practitioners represent their interests. Diplomacy, public: Advocacy openly directed at foreign publics in support of negotiations or broad policy positions and couched in terms intended to enlist their backing from a particular position or outcome. Distinguish Propaganda Diplomacy, purpose of: The purpose of diplomacy is not to outwit the opposing nation but to engage it in a web of common interests, thereby serving the interests of one's own nation. Diplomacy, rape: Diplomacy is political rape convincingly disguised as seduction. Diplomacy, with women: "Diplomacy lies in remembering to celebrate a woman's birthday while forgetting to note her age." — Proverb Diplomacy, revolutionary regimes and: "Diplomacy is one of the things which change least in the world, for it meets the great secular need of mankind, the need of peoples to make arrangements with each other, so that they can go about their several ways in peace ... It is therefore not surprising that revolutionary Governments, however drastically they break up the old régime of their country, either carry on the inherited diplomatic system or else return to it sooner or later." — R. B. Mowat, 1936

been forgotten. Summary As indicated by this chapter, poverty and inequality are not new phenomena in the United States. The historical debate over how to address the interrelated issues associated with poverty reflects reconciling unequal levels of power and privilege in the United States. Further complicating the task are political values and personal beliefs about the causes of life conditions, which influence the actions we take as a society. If you conclude that the structure of the nation’s economic system results in poverty and inequality, your macro-level advocacy will focus on far-reaching changes in policies relevant to the market and labor systems. If you think that individuals are responsible for their own poverty, your advocacy will emphasize changing people’s behavior. Unfortunately, neither approach has been implemented effectively, and a large number of people are still experiencing poverty.