Politickles

Mass times and readings

Are the “extreme right” running this country? If so, it’s news to me — and probably to them, too. Nevertheless, an old friend declares that the “extreme right” has “manipulated politics so that there is a greater class differential than ever in our history.”

Finding his interpretation diametrically opposed to reality, I respond as follows:

The magnification of class differences and the dwindling of the middle class correlate to the growth in government (i.e., creeping socialism) — which is a leftist phenomenon antithetical to rightwingers, most of whom are middle and lower-middle class.

He insists that the political system is controlled by “the upper class, primarily rightwingers,” and rants on:

Replacing the ridiculously unfair income tax with a sort of unfair flat tax would help but would put tens of thousands of Republican accountants out of work. Tort reform puts quite a few influential attorneys of both parties out of work. When rightwingers can explain how they want spending brought under control and don’t want any change to Medicare or Social Security, that’s when I won’t think they’re morons.

I try again:

I’m not sure what you mean by “rightwing.”

I would agree with you that there’s a self-serving, arrogant elite that runs roughshod over our economy and culture, but they’re not conservative and they’re not advocates for free enterprise. They push for greater government control of the economy, knowing that they in turn can control the government. In essence, they’re monopolists — i.e, socialists. The idea that socialism is a program for the people is a sick charade, perpetrated by the very people intent on protecting their wealth and keeping everyone else down. There is nothing “rightwing” about this.

As for the federal income tax that the Constitution originally prohibited, almost anything would be better. I personally would prefer to see the 16th and 17th Amendments repealed and the federal government obliged to go hat in hand to the states again. Most of the horrors of Big Government in America can be traced to the passage of these two amendments and the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank — all in the same year.

I’m no flack for Republicans, but there are plenty of them who see the need to reinvent or, preferably, privatize “entitlements.” Acknowledging this in public, however, knowing how the leftwing mainstream media will misrepresent their positions, is simply not prudent at this time. In any case, conflating Republicans with rightwingers is laughable, as any rightwinger could tell you.

He counters with the assertion that the definition of rightwing “isn’t worth debating,” but continues to criticize policies he misidentifies as rightwing.

Knowing I’m fighting a losing battle, I make one more attempt to clarify the term:

Having spent three years as the editor of a conservative national news magazine and seven years as a conservative syndicated columnist, I naturally feel a proprietary interest in the term “rightwing.” As I said before, I’m not sure what you mean by it, but what you seem to mean is not even a bad caricature of my viewpoint, much less a faithful representation. I have met a few money-grubbing, selfish conservatives over the years, but for the most part they’re good people. A little square, of course, but squareness is hardly a vice.

By the way, there’s abundant evidence that conservatives — and conservative Christians, in particular — are the most generous segment of the American population. Secular liberals, on the other hand, are at the opposite extreme. This is due, in part, to their belief that the government should take care of everyone, thereby absolving them of personal responsibility. Ironically, however, they also tend to be the most assiduous in minimizing their tax payments. Al Gore is an exemplar, a leftwing multimillionaire who makes almost no donations to charity. (For what it’s worth, Democrats in Congress are far wealthier, on average, than their Republican counterparts.)

These are verifiable facts, not merely my opinion. I would agree that they’re counterintuitive. Part of the problem is that the terms “liberal” and “conservative” have come to mean practically the opposite of what they did originally. The liberal who once promoted limited government to protect the freedom of the individual is now the liberal who restricts the freedom of the individual — for his own good, of course — as he promotes the growth of government. This perversion of terms makes discourse difficult.

I remember the befuddlement I felt years ago — and still do, despite knowing better — trying to understand why so many big businessmen support socialistic programs. I naturally assumed that they were advocates of free enterprise. In fact, they’re not. Their goal is simply to make money; and, if they can use the machinery of government to advantage themselves and disadvantage their competitors (not to mention their customers), they don’t hesitate to do so.

Most small businessmen and entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are staunch believers in, and practitioners of, free enterprise. Not all, of course, but most.

The biggest reason this whole subject is so confusing to so many people is that they’ve been poorly educated, on purpose. Unless someone figures out pretty soon how to teach the majority of Americans the truth about the blessings of free enterprise and limited government, we’re doomed to continue down the road of increasingly larger government until a totalitarian tyranny is imposed on us and the few million resisters are rounded up and imprisoned or executed. (Bill Ayers, Obama’s Weather Underground friend, estimated 30 million Americans would need to be exterminated.)

Something to look forward to.

It provokes more muddled thinking.

My parents must be rolling over in their graves. They were both writers. I made the mistake of following in their footsteps. The oDesk ad reprinted below gives a good idea of what our profession has come to. Plagiarism, plain and simple. No pride of authorship. No authorship at all, really. Something that could be done by a software program or a trained chimpanzee.

Note that the promised pay works out to $2.50 an hour. Who is this Simon Legree who thinks he can hire a writer for such a piddly amount — and demand “excellent English”? What real writer would condescend to do that kind of “work” even for a handsome sum?

Article Writer $50/week – Excellent English
oDesk – St. Louis, MO
See original job posting at oDesk »
I am looking for an article writer to write spun syntax articles. You will need to already be familiar with spin syntax and have your own copy of The Best Spinner.

The job entails writing an article in spun syntax. If you are not familar with spun syntx, please do not apply.

The article format for each article will follow this pattern.

I am looking for 3 deep spun titles. The body will include 6 paragraphs. Total word count 550 words. A paragraph will contain 4 sentences per paragraph. You will look at an article on Ezine Articles and re-write the article in your own words. You will also write an additional sentence per each sentence that has the same meaning, yet uses a different format. In the end, you will have 8 spun sentences per paragraph and when spun will produce 4 sentences.

example:
paragraph 1 =

{sentence 1a|sentence 1b}

{sentence 2a|sentence 2b}

{sentence 3a|sentence 3b}

{sentence 4a|sentence 4b}

after being spun could look like this or any combination of the above:

{sentence 1a}

{sentence 2b}

{sentence 3a}

{sentence 4b}

or, after being spun could look like this or any combination of the above:

{sentence 1b}

{sentence 2a}

{sentence 3a}

{sentence 4b}

1. You will pull down an article from ezine articles and re-write the entire article in your own words, yet carry the same meaning. Again, you will create 2 re-written sentences in your own words per each sentence in the article.

2. Next your will spin each word in the entire article.

3. Next you will upload to Ezine Articles with backlinks I provide and send me the spun syntx file after approved on Ezine. I have you submit to Ezine Articles because they do not accept duplicate content and grammar must be accurate. If you are able to have spun articles approved on Ezine they will be accepted on other article directories I use.

You are expected to complete 2 spun articles a day or 10 articles a week. Each article should take about 1-2 hours.

I will pay in blocks of 10 articles, $5 per article.

Abstract:
In the article, we argue that as a moral reality, marriage is the union of a man and a woman who make a permanent and exclusive commitment to each other of the type that is naturally fulfilled by bearing and rearing children together, and renewed by acts that constitute the behavioral part of the process of reproduction. We further argue that there are decisive principled as well as prudential reasons for the state to enshrine this understanding of marriage in its positive law, and to resist the call to recognize as marriages the sexual unions of same-sex partners.

Besides making this positive argument for our position and raising several objections to the view that same-sex unions should be recognized, we address what we consider the strongest philosophical objections to our view of the nature of marriage, as well as more pragmatic concerns about the point or consequences of implementing it as a policy. – Sherif Girgis, Robert George, and Ryan T. Anderson, “What is Marriage?”

It’s amazing that any of this has to be said. The world’s gone mad.

Tee shirts for the sane

With all the attention being given to the deficit-reducing recommendations of the Grace Commission, the more imaginative suggestions of another advisory body have been completely ignored.

I’m speaking, of course, of the Gracie Commission, a group formed to apply to our unbalanced budget the non-sequiturial problem-solving abilities of George Burns’ late wife.  – F.R. Duplantier, 1985

The article linked above, first published in Investor’s Notebook in 1985, was inspired by the work of the Grace Commission, most of whose many excellent suggestions for cutting waste in government were never implemented. What a surprise! Here it is 26 years later and the problem is still being ignored.

Feel free to publish, post, or pass on Your Weekly Politickle by F.R. Duplantier:

BINGE
“If you cut back on some of your snacks,
You’d have bellies as flat as Barack’s!”
“Well, a budget’s a diet:
Maybe Barry should try it
And resist the temptation to tax!”

From the archive:

BUTT OUT!
We Americans surely are prone
To big bodies with minimal tone:
If Michelle wants to witness
To physical fitness,
She should shed a few pounds of her own!
(2011)

LIGHTWEIGHT
Getting older, you may realize
That your waistline’s a much larger size,
But Obama’s stayed slim,
Having kept himself trim:
Let’s award him the No-Belly Prize!
(2009)

THE END
Though I’m no Clinton fan, I do find,
As support for his wife has declined,
That I’m actually beginning
To wish she were winning,
‘Cause I can’t stand to see her behind.
(2008)

BASKET CASE
My obesity just isn’t funny
And I’m suing for bundles of money:
When a basket of candy
Is too full and too handy,
Who’s to blame but the old Easter Bunny?
(2005)

McPIG
You’ve grown by leaps and bounds;
Your super size astounds;
The fact is that
You’re really fat:
Four-three, three hundred pounds!
(2003)

OLDER & WIDER
As a lad I was long and lean
And drank gallons of Ovaltine,
But I had to rethink
That rich chocolate drink
When I wound up an oval teen.
(2002)

Last week’s limerick:

DO TELL!
“The fatigues we have now are so tacky!
Could we please go with something more wacky –
Something showing more flesh
In black leather or mesh,
With a boa of feathered pink khaki?”

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Mass times and readings

Back in the summer of 1991, I began writing news articles for Phyllis Schlafly’s Education Reporter. As I learned more and more about the preposterous programs and policies to which public school students all across America were being subjected, I realized that the journalistic exposé was insufficient to capture their absurdity and that satire was what was called for. I’d written limericks for years, just for the fun of it, and decided to adapt this light-verse form to my purpose.

In my first “blackboard jingle,” I poked fun at the disingenuity of sex-ed instructors who pretend to offer “balance” by combining prophylactic and abstinence perspectives:

MIXED MESSAGE
When a boy and a girl have a date
And it looks like he’ll get to homeplate,
They must have protection
To ward off infection,
Though it’s better, of course, if they wait.

I devoted a second limerick to drug-education instructors who offer similarly ambiguous advice:

JUST SAY NO?
Today we discovered the thrills
Of powders, potations, and pills.
Our teacher gave plugs
For all sorts of drugs –
To test our assertiveness skills.

As it happened, 1991 was also the year when George Bush, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, and miscellaneous unmemorable others were gearing up for the next presidential election. There was quite a lot of confusion as to why Perot was even in the race, so I took it upon myself to offer an explanation:

PEROTS & CONS
“Perhaps some of you are at a loss
Why I want to be President Ross.
It’s simple, you see:
It’s better for me
If I am the one who is boss!”

Another limerick was inspired by a longstanding pet peeve of mine, the boneheaded practice of television anchormen “explaining” to their viewers what they and the viewers have both just seen together:

INSTANT ANALYSIS
Jennings, Rather, Brokaw
Seem determined to jabber and jaw.
They think we’re too dumb
To discern the outcome
Of the campaign debate we just saw.

The problem with limericks is that they tend to become addictive. Once you start writing them, it’s hard to stop. Over the last 20 years I’ve churned out hundreds of these political limericks (politickles) and have distributed them on a weekly basis to email subscribers (subscribe [at] politickles.com). Politickles, Limericks Lampooning the Lunatic Left, published in 2000, contains only a small sample. The rest can be found in my online archives at politickles.com.

Politickles are the verbal equivalent of editorial cartoons. They make a point quickly, forcefully, humorously. Like editorial cartoons, they’re ideal for energizing allies or demoralizing opponents. So, please, take advantage of them. Feel free to publish, post, or pass on “Your Weekly Politickle,” and encourage your likeminded friends and relatives to subscribe.

For the first time in decades, the left is meeting broad, sustained resistance. Its socialist utopia – so close and yet so far – is slipping away, the victim of economic reality. The entitlement society is unsustainable; it is crumbling under its massive, big-government weight. For progressives, this is why Tea Partyers are “terrorists” – political insurgents who are willing to stand up to the venal, decrepit liberal regime. Yet Tea Partyers are America’s freedom fighters; they are forcing the federal government to begin devolving power back to the people. – Jeffrey Kuhner, Edmund Burke Institute

If this is terror, let’s have more of it!

All 15 episodes of “Tea Time” are contained in this 2.5-minute compilation.