25 Rules For Being A Democrat (Pass It Along)

Hi. Pardon me for barging in, but I just had to register to this site to share something I've just spent the last thirty or so minutes composing. See, if you had to pin my political leanings down, you could accurately consider me good friends with Libertarianism (c.f. my username), but I'm actually quite independent. Though my idealism is rooted in the traditionally conservative theories involving one's independent ability to direct their own destiny. I confess that I was temporarily led to believe that Democratic politicans and their supporters were and could be rational-minded individuals. I have since realized the folly behind that. This is why I reacted the way I did about an "Internet meme" I found on a non-political site. Its decidedly partisan bent, to the point of being delusional, rubbed me completely the wrong way, so I composed a retort to what I had read, partly as a sort of "let's see what the other side would have to say about THAT" response but also partly as a means of exposing just how idiotic the original posting was IMO. I now wish to pass this along to you guys so you can use it as a response Internet meme anytime you're faced with the original. Now down to business.

1. You have huge reserves of sympathy inside yourself for drug addicts, who are suffering from a great illness brought about by life's misfortune, unless the drug addict in question happens to have political opinions different from your own, in which case (s)he's fully to blame and the addiction is a sign of their moral weakness.

2. You don't believe anyone can work themselves up the socioeconomic ladder. The middle class is a false construct, the working class are victims of policies that are only meant to harm them, and that the only thing that can help these people in search of a better life is the federal government.

3. You believe fervently in the power of the U.N. but can't see how its power only extends as far as diplomacy can and that the real power lies in smaller groupings of nations with similar agendas and needs, e.g. NATO.

4. You believe that government has no business legislating anything people do in their private lives, yet you expect the government to be there when anyone wants to hit it up for money or services.

5. You dress up your sneering attitude against activities that stimulate the economy and provide economic rewards for the motivated in society by crying wolf on industrial pollution, not realizing that most pollution can be solved via one very simple remedy that could reap a shrewd and savvy inventor millions (or perhaps billions): finding ways of reducing transportation emissions throughout the world.

6. You believe in teaching any religion in public school so long as that religion isn't Christianity.

7. You had a deep fixation with India in the '60s, but now that American corporations are sending to India the kinds of jobs your parents did in the '60s, you develop a sudden allergy to the country.

8. You have no idea what the meaning of the word "restraint" is, nor do you want to.

9. You believe that Jesus either did not exist or existed as a purely historical figure. Because of this, you don't give a flip what Jesus thinks of you.

10. You have an intense love affair with ACLU only when its agenda fits yours. You do not wish to acknowledge this.

11. You think the best way of improving troop morale is calling them "baby killers" to their faces, stating that their primary purpose is to kill people, treat them as though they're incapable of independent thought, and deny them the opportunities they earn while in the military.

12. You have no problem beating a dead horse with the same tired jokes about Republican politicians, but get angry if someone dare joke about a Democratic politician.

13. You think it's a wise idea to freely hand out condoms and other methods of birth control to teenagers in high school without a single discussion about the responsibilities that come with being sexually active, nor a single peep about how maybe it isn't the wisest idea to engage in sexual conduct while you're still in high school.

14. You think the best way to fight terrorism is to play "blame the victim" and pretend that some of our so-called "allies" really do not have our best interests in mind. Ordinary citizens of most of our "enemy" states are more pro-American than these people are.

15. You actually believe that the federal government, massive in size to the point of being unwieldy, can competently manage something as sensitive as health care without massively screwing up in the process. God knows that community-based initiatives and tightly-run private companies certainly couldn't take care of managing people's health needs.

16. You would rather help out illegals who act as beggars with their arms outstretched than people who have been cruelly subjugated for decades by an evil tyrant and who, contrary to popular belief, are grateful that a powerful foreign presence has helped topple the man who operated their country like a prison.

17. You believe that only Democrats know about well-established carcinogens, choose to believe junk science about the environment from organizations whose main goal is to eliminate economic progress in the U.S., and don't want people to know about the creation story even as just a story.

18. You fully believe in the myth that no exit strategy existed in Vietnam even though Kissinger and Nixon were withdrawing troops slowly starting in 1971. And you certainly didn't support going into Iraq in the first place, so why would you care or be knowledgable about Iraq War policies and strategies?

19. You think that activities designed to retaliate against Iran while at the same time placating a fearsome Stalinist dictator were anything akin to viewing him as a "good guy", that Bush and Reagan held the same opinions about what to do in the Persian Gulf region, that Saddam Hussein even knew Cheney by name, and that Bush's actions in Iraq were just meant as distractions.

20. You believe the Constitution is more flexible than an Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast yet you believe in following the Second Amendment on a strict, face value basis.

21. You follow with malicious glee any misfortunes that befall a politician in the Republican party, yet you are scandalized by any insinuation that a beloved Democratic politician is behaving anything less than a Gandhi-like saint.

22. You are instantly suspicious of any attempt by the Bush Administration to refrain from revealing any little tidbit of information about anything, even if it would mean threatening national security, but you immediately go up in arms about anyone demanding any modicum of transparency by a Democrat in power.

23. You don't believe the states know how to take care of themselves, so you insist on federal government superseding state powers even if it means someone in one part of the country getting to tell someone in the complete opposite part of the country how to run their affairs.

24. You want the world to know about Bush's self-destructive behaviors from more than 15 years ago but don't want anyone to bring up activities by Al Gores Senior and Junior that have been destructive to many, many people throughout the decades. (Three Mile Island and Alcoa, anyone?)

25. You think non-Democrats are so stupid, they can be swayed to hold pro-Cuba sentiments by forcing them to believe that Cuba's repressive, collectivist, Stalinist brand of Communism is the same kind that is in operation in China and Vietnam. You either don't know or don't wish to acknowledge that the regime in China is only nominally Communist, that today's Chinese have more personal freedoms than do many of the so-called "democrat" former SSRs, and that Vietnam's rapidly capitalistic society is also to be viewed as operationally Communist.

Welcome to Free Republic (and I mean that sincerely; often that is posted as an alert to other FReepers that the poster is a newbie). It's generally best form to post a few replies before getting into posting vanities - but your article clearly marks you as FReeper material, and not a hit-and-run "troll" trying to disrupt the editorial policy of the site.
On the substance, I have a single rule for "being a liberal" (note, not a Democrat - even tho the two are now pretty nearly synonymous). That rule is to promote yourself and your own opinions at the expense of the man who is actually in the arena whom conservatives give the credit to. The corrolary of that rule is, "Never question the objectivity of establishment journalism." Those are pretty much the same thing, because Big Journalism does nothing except to criticize "the man in the arena."
Since the "credit" which belongs to "the man in the arena" includes ownership of the businesses he creates, leftism is actually nothing more than second guessing of the man who actually creates things, in order to justify stealing them from him. In the name of "society," of course.
Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate

Each bullet point corresponds to the same-numbered bullet point in the original list.

#11 concerns itself with supposed inequities of “words vs. actions” in re: troop morale, which I felt was pretty rich coming from a political party whose constitutents frequent anti-war rallies where the troops are called all kinds of things, post on Internet message boards messages which essentially state that troops are killing machines incapable of determining situational ethics, and who are in essence anti-war to the core, never seeing the need to fight or any just cause for war. Which is pretty scary when you think about it because they’re advocating a utopian society which not only has no basis in reality but also, if it actually existed, would be an absolute nightmare to live through (c.f. Robert D. Kaplan’s very important essay, “The Dangers Of Peace”).

#14? I thought it’d be pretty neat to bring in the “blame the victim” phraseology often utilized when rape victims are told that they must have “asked for it” because of provocative dress, so-called “flirtatious” behavior, etc. Obv no rape victim deserves or asks for such a crime to be visited upon her, much like no essentially good country such as the U.S. deserves or asks for terrorism to be directed toward themselves. Yet there are those people who obv point the finger at us and say, “Well, we must have done something to provoke this,” forgetting that terrorism is rooted in a deep civilizational divide that is not country-specific but rather only asks that there be a Western ideals vs. Oriental despotism divide. The British were once target #1 under the “Western ideals” column; now we’re the primary targets.

You’re right about #18. It completely slipped my mind that Kissinger helped orchestrate those peace accords, too. You know, Nixon scored many, many points in political strategy with Kissinger’s guidance and assistance, which is why I have a deep admiration for Kissinger and find that Nixon was an underrated president.

#24? We have to acknowledge that GWBush was at one time an addict. That’s pretty much unarguable. But the fact is — so what? This means he’s a terrible person? Bush’s most reprehensible acts apparently involved self-destructive behavior, i.e. SIMPLY DESTROYING THE SELF, and that Bush received treatment for his problem. Al Gore Sr. (and later on Al Gore Jr.) practically went to bed with — okay, looking at my reference points, they went to bed with Armand Hammer’s mining company Occidental Petroleum, the same company that was responsible for ANOTHER yet more famous environmental disaster, Love Canal. And now that I’m looking again at my source information, it turns out that Al Gore Jr. was actually actively engaged in drug use up to 1976. Anyway, I’m not a fan of Gore at all for more reasons than just that and I’m sure one could make a lot out of how he ruined a great channel (CBC’s Newsworld International, which became the terrible Current TV), or the fact that Bush’s Crawford ranch is more ecologically sound than Gore’s energy-guzzling mansion.

#25 — you have to read on-the-ground accounts of economic activity going on in China and Vietnam and how this is helping to bring forth real freedoms for the citizens of those two countries. For the former I have especially relied on accounts by Kaplan, who was the one who pointed out that countries such as Uzbekistan and Kyrzgystan, while being “democratic” in name, actually provide their citizenry with fewer personal and economic freedoms than many so-called “Communist” countries such as China, which preserve the Communist system only as a unifying force. As far as Vietnam goes, well, there have been a lot of business news reports about Vietnam’s growing private economy and about the surprising freedoms being given the Vietnamese. Oh, and I meant to say “that Vietnam’s rapidly capitalistic society is also to be viewed as NOMINALLY Communist ALONE” but didn’t catch that in the quick edit I did before posting.

Thanks for the response.

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