Is "more beer; less work" real
philosophy or mad dog talk?
St. Sithney, of Saighir, whose feast day is celebrated on August 4, was (according to an ecclesiastical urban legend) asked by God if he wanted to be the patron saint of unmarried women and he said he would rather be the patron saint of mad dogs. The lawyers will be quick to point out that the fine print stipulates that he was to be the saint for curing mad dogs and protecting folks from dogs with hydrophobia (rabies). Based on the consensus opinion of liberal pundits, the Democratic voters would do well to pray to St. Sithney for protection from the avid Republican candidates who seem, during this year's election process, to be as logical and eloquent as mad dogs.
Case in point: Ted
Nugent is advocating the possibility that if some of people in the theater in
Aurora Colorado had been carrying hand guns, and returned fire in the smoke filled
auditorium that was an example of bedlam; one of them might have been a Ninja
marksman with a magical bullet that could have sliced through the body armor
like a hot knife through a cold stick of butter. To which we can only give the Hemingway response: "Isn't it pretty to think so?"
Liberals are still waiting for conservatives to give a coherent response to George Carlin's objection to the birth control issue. Babies have a right to life until they are born and then the "rugged individual" philosophy kicks in and "You're on your own, kid" becomes standard conservative operating dogma. Self determination is fine for middle class and poor kids, but for rich brats, "do you know who you are talking to?" is usually their first full sentence. Learning to talk, for rich kids, means learning to threaten someone with a tsunami of legal paper work for standing in their way.
An anecdote, encountered many years ago, related a story
about a rich woman who was told about the problem of hunger that is a vexation
for homeless. She replied "Why don't
they ring the bell?" In her world, if
she needed food, she would ring a bell and a servant would appear and
immediately attend to that need. She
used the psychological phenomenon known as "projection" to assume that everyone
else's world was just like hers and that all a hungry homeless person had to do
was ring the bell and a servant would stand by to take their order.
Democrats project their belief in voters' rights for all citizens onto the Republicans and they (conversely) project their belief in a Republic where only qualified people (land owning males were specified in the American Constitution) could cast a vote. Naturally some "What we have here is . . . failure to communicate" misunderstandings often sabotage any attempts to reach a compromise. The purging of voters from the rolls in Florida would be a classic example of the consequences of the miscommunication surrounding this issue.
In the United States, the Democrats believe that the minute
a person from a foreign country sets foot on American soil that person is
entitled, by the doctrine of "all men are created equal," to the some rights
and privileges that the citizens (except for a vote) have. The Republicans consider the concept as being
similar to obtaining a driver's license.
It is their contention that getting into the driver's seat isn't
enough. You have to pass a test to get
the driver's license and prove your qualifications for possessing that driver's
license.
Do people with mental illnesses have a right to buy assault weapons? The Republicans seem to want to use the "all gun buyers are created equal" concept to prevent mental patients from being deprived of their rights. The Democrats seem to want to put some restrictions on the purchase of guns. Both parties do seem to be in agreement that people who are incarcerated in jails and prisons (such as Charlie Manson) don't have a right to buy guns over the Internets.
A humorist once said that the law in its wisdom forbids rich
folks as well as the homeless from living under a bridge.
Republicans maintain that extending the tax cuts for the rich will produce jobs. The Democrats reply that if that were true, then this question must be asked: why has the level of employment declined during the almost decade long period when the Bush tax cuts have been in place?
Compassionate, conservative Christians can always sanction
cutting social programs to fund new wars.
Democrats want to implement spending priorities that are the exact
opposite.
The Muslim world has always been divided by two rival factions. It seems like the Sunni and the Shiite groups will never live in peaceful coexistence. The Republicans fully endorsed sending American troops into Iraq and now they seem to be ready to endorse a new military adventure involving Iran. Does simultaneously conducting military operations in both a Sunni and a Shiite nation make any sense? Should people be praying to St. Sithney for protection from such thinking?
Could two groups, who both adhere to the philosophy "the
enemy of my enemy is my friend," temporarily suspend their mutual animosity and
become united for a short time by the common objective of contending with
meddling in their area of the world by some unwelcome interloping foreign
country?
There a classic old back and white movie that shows, in a medium shot, some people struggling for control of a small boat. The camera pulls back in a long tracking shot that shows that the craft is perilously close to the edge of a gigantic water fall. Could that be a metaphor for what is happening with the struggle between the Democrats and the Republicans in Washington D. C.?
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