This is about a party trying desperately to stop itself being dragged into the gutter, and to assert values it once thought people took as read.
In explaining why, Mr. Schlossstein argues that Japanese dominance will be dangerous because many Japanese assert values that are diametrically opposed to those of most Americans.
It's a piece of Jewish thinking to celebrate victory over oppression, to assert values of freedom and liberty and, of course, light, because the holiday is in the winter when it is very dark.
Asserting values over the powerful (but delusive) promises of total safety and fear of the future takes courage.
They still talk about gaming's supposed power, make sweeping equivocations about the value of "engagement" and use flaky reasoning to assert the value of such endeavors.
Usually practitioners articulated an intuition that debates about the ancients were meaningless, "to the opinions of the ancients on contagion, we do not think them of much value," and asserted the value of empiric evidence: "we never, indeed, could see the very great importance of referring back to the ancients for evidence of that which passes before our own eyes".
During debates and interviews assert your values, re-assert your values, and describe how your solutions serve your values.
It also allows us to assert the value of the politics that we stand for," she said.
