Liberating Liberals

Liberating Liberals catapults the reader to the outer limits of freethinking in order to promote greater personal happiness and political effectiveness. It definitively answers many age-old controversies such as God vs No God; Capitalism vs Socialsm; Meryl Streep vs Paris Hilton. Most liberals have transcended conservative fundamentalisms, but then we get bogged down in our own new fundamentalisms. LL shows how to avoid these mental lobotomies by thouroughly exploring the spectrums of thought on meaning and meaninglessness, absolute and relative morality, and seriousness and humor. Practical examples abound including seeing work hours, abortion, Obama, etc. as spectrums of possibilities rather than concrete choices.

Treasuring the "Holy Bible" like the last anti-depressant, "Liberating LIberals" descends into the haunting loneliness and bewildering freedoms of modern philosophy. Emerging with a potent synthesis, it sicks the reader on America political limitations like a wolf attacking a Happy Meal. The resulting havoc uncovers vast, surprising horizons of untapped human potential -- and hope. Liberating Liberals hijacks a huge zoo of wise guides from Joni Mitchell to Albert Camus, Ayn Rand to Eckhart Tolle, and Viktor Frankl to james Taylor. From this menagerie the book extracts so many barrier breaking insights that it may be the historic sequel to Thomas Paine's intellectual dynamite: "Common Sense."

Bill Branyon is a free-lance historian who has written three books: Blue Ridge Blues — a respectful, science fiction look at Billy Graham; Asheville NC, circa 2,000 AD — a historical faction about Asheville politics and culture; and now his first nonfiction book, Liberating Liberals: a political synthesis of Nietzsche and Jesus, Vonnegut and Marx (Groucho, not Karl) and Gandhi and Machiavelli. Bill has been a staff reporter for Mountain Xpress, and an op-ed editorialist for them and many other papers for twenty years. He has a Masters degree in history from WCU, and a BA in history from Vanderbilt. He’s run for mayor, walked for peace, and is a hyper-activist — when not taking it easy.