Posted on 01/14/2006 4:45:50 AM PST by Brian Allen
In the old days, along with such colonial powers as France, Spain, Holland and Germany, England indulged in what you might call unenlightened self-interest. The prevailing practice was to gut their colonies in Asia and Africa of all the natural resources they could get their hands on while the folks who mined the coal, picked the crops, and dug for the diamonds, lived in abject squalor.
It may not have been nice, it may have been selfish and even brutal, but it made perfect sense. When some English noble stoked his fire, he probably never gave a second thought to the Welshmen suffering from black lung disease; so long as he was toasty, that’s all that mattered to his lordship. So far as he was concerned, Wales might as well have been on the other side of the moon, and, truth be told, its people were of less concern to him than his hounds.
I’m not condoning such behavior, but it’s reassuring when even bad acts are logical. For instance, it makes sense to rob a rich person, but not a poor one; sense to knock over a bank, but not a fruit stand.
Which brings us to liberals. They perplex me, not merely because I believe they are wrong about virtually everything, but because they don’t even seem to dwell on the same planet as the rest of us. If we were to discover one day when they all took off in a large spaceship that they were merely tourists from another solar system, or perhaps criminals who’d had to serve their sentences on this distant penal colony, I might be as shocked as everybody else, but I wouldn’t be too surprised.
For instance, consider Homeland Security, if you will. Does it make any sense that Americans, in the wake of 9/11, would carry on as if eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or monitoring their library books marked the end of civilization? Are liberals so unaware that there are millions of Muslims who want nothing more or less than to exterminate all of us infidels? Do they regard Islamic fascism as just another offbeat political faction, sort of like the Green Party? All I know is that they seem like lemmings who, not merely satisfied to go off the edge of the cliff themselves, are determined to take the rest of us with them.
Do they honestly believe, as they so often say, that they regard evangelical Christians as a greater threat than Al Qaeda; that they think that the Palestinian suicide bombers and the so-called insurgents in Iraq are very much like this nation’s forefathers? It’s obvious that I didn’t read those portions of the history books that dealt with Washington’s sawing the heads off English civilians and Jefferson’s massacring school children in London.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a liberal, and to have self- righteous blowhards like Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd and Charles Schumer, speaking for me. And then I wake up screaming.
When these two-bit politicians do their best to trash men ten times smarter and a hundred times more decent than they are -- people like Charles Pickering and Samuel Alito -- twisting their words and actions in order to portray them as racists and poltroons, why is it we never hear a single prominent liberal rise up and say, “Finally, senators, have you no shame?”
How is it that a totally undistinguished Pennsylvania congressman named John Murtha can achieve overnight canonization in the liberal media by demanding a deadline for the withdrawal of the American military from Iraq -- a deadline which can serve no other purpose but to demoralize our troops and encourage our enemy? And if you have the effrontery to question the congressman’s judgment, you can count on being reminded in no uncertain terms that Rep. Murtha served in the military. Yes, he did…a very long time ago. However, for the past 30-odd years, he has fed off the public trough just like all those other lay-a-bouts in Washington.
But even if he had only mustered out of the service the day before yesterday, lots of people do a much better job in uniform than in mufti. Ulysses S. Grant, Douglas MacArthur, Curtis LeMay and James Stockdale, all come to mind. Besides, military service hasn’t anything to do with civilian decision-making. In the case of Murtha, who hasn’t been on active duty in 38 years, it’s clearly a case of that was then and this is now. France’s Marshal Henri Petain, let us not forget, went from being a French war hero in 1919 to being head of the Vichy government, and that was just a scant 21 years later.
In making my point that times change, and so do men, I’m not suggesting that Rep. Murtha is a traitor or is any less patriotic in his heart of hearts than he was four decades ago. But I, for one, sure wouldn’t mind seeing him escort Ms. Cindy Sheehan aboard that spaceship.
Burt Prelutsky has been a humor columnist for the L.A. Times and a movie critic for Los Angeles magazine. He is the author of Conservatives are from Mars (Liberals are from San Francisco).
Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com
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Yes. They really ARE that stupid.
And none of us, at least I won't be surprised if their heads start spinning around on their necks, both eyes migrate to one side of their head, like the characters in Picasso's paintings, and their bed levitates while the rest of the world rotates around them.
I’m not suggesting that Rep. Murtha is a traitor...
He really is funny
A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."
The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude."
She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be a Republican."
"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"
"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."
The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Democrat."
"I am," replied the balloonist. "But how did you know?"
"Well," said the man, "You don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You've made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and now you expect ME to solve your problem. You're in EXACTLY the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now, it's MY fault.
Not mine.
Yours, maybe?
Nah.
That couldn't be - nice feller like you.
Must be Ted Kennedy's.
He calls it 'Dingy Harry,' I believe.
<< Modern Day "Liberalism" is a mental disorder. It quite properly should be defined as Hysteric Leftism. >>
That's flattering.
Now my 'coin-ings' are being quoted back to me on FR, too.
And not just in the collected works of Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and assorted editorials.
Thirty years ago when I entered college I think there was still some legitimate debate whether the correct path would be socialism or capitalism. Now however, the results are in and you'd have to be insane not to know who won the ideological battle.
And that is what the Democratic party now is, totally insane. They are so far gone that they now look like clowns, their words risible. I think we are close to the tipping point where they are just laughed out of town.
It seems that there's some question as to whether he actually deserved the two Purple Hearts he received for his 'combat wounds' in Vietnam (Where have we heard that before?). And Murtha himself has given three different accounts of how he received these two wounds and even to where he was wounded.
Like another semi famous Dem pol, Murtha refuses to release his military records. And this is not some new 'right wing attack'. It first arose when Murtha originally ran for Congress - and by a Dem challenger in the primary. And like this other semi famous Dem 'war hero', Murtha's entire political career is based on his 'war hero' status.
'War hero' Murtha was also involved in ABSCAM (though not indicted by the Feds). And during the congressional investigation of ABSCAM, Murtha confessed (almost in tears) to a Dem colleague on the House floor, that "he did not deserve his purple hearts".
Google and Lexis Nexis is your friend :-)
Sure you did. Sorry but you overly flatter yourself to think you "coined that". It is merely an elementary observation of fact. Maybe the reason you assume your "coinings" are repeated all over is they are the simple conclusion any reasonable intellegent person can observe. Get over yourself.
You can add Harkin to that list. He remembers flying against zeros or something and all he did was shuttle planes back and forth between airfields.
From which colony did the Brits ship the coal to Newcastle?
Didn't know that. I'll have to do some more research :-)
Yep, you're right. One quick Google search turns out Harkin's a lying POS. That is besides being a GD commie, but I'm being redundant :-)
Candidate Harkin Stretches the Truth
Vietnam isn't the only instance.
BY JAMES M. PERRY
Thursday, August 19, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
(Editor's note: This news article appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 26, 1991.)
That's the fallacy of the false choice: you must either submit to police-state methods, or you must die at the hands of Muslims. It's also ad hominem: if you complain about the fourth amendment being undermined, then you're divorced from reality. Further, it begs the question: if you don't support the Patriot act, then you don't support safety from terrorism.
The real solution to the puzzle is to arm the American populace, and overturn any laws that infringe the right to KABA, or that limit the right of self-defense. That includes airplanes: privatize the airports and airlines, and let them hire as many armed Pinkertons as they want to ride on their planes. Let them exercise their private-property rights, by making any rules they want about weapons on their flights.
I for one will fly NRA air, where anyone flying without a firearm is issued one at the gate. You can fly Wuss Air if you want, where only the terrorists are armed. Most people will fly Mainstream Airlines, which will have armed guards in the cockpit and undercover detectives among the passengers, and will require weapons to be securely stowed in baggage--and arabs will be double-checked more thoroughly before boarding.
But airlines aside, the correct way to preserve the American people is to arm every last one. It isn't to take steps (large, small or baby) toward their enslavement. If it comes down to it, I'd rather be an American who died heroically than an Amerikan who lived a long life in chains.
They all make perfect sense. And so, they will never be implemented.
It's a pity.
L
You're welcome.
Please consider yourself having been given permission to continue to cliché my originals.
After all, if the world's Coulters and Savages, polemicists and cartoonists and lampoonists so popularize my thoughts and ideas that they eventually filter to the other end of the other side of the Bell Curve, who am I to prevent you and your ilk from third-handing them?
Heck, to even begin down that road I'd have to start taking myself seriously. And THAT's an excercise I'll gladly leave to you and the rest of the no-neck literalists!
Cordially - Brian
<]:^)~<
<< I for one will fly NRA air, where anyone flying without a firearm is issued one at the gate. >>
Right on!
I'm a career aeroplane driver and posted here on September 11 2001 and scores of times since to the effect that the only sure-fire way to have prevented and to prevent every damned terroristic hijack of an American aircraft was for the stinking lying, looting, thieving, un-and-anti-American feral gummint and its every stinking and otherwise deservedly unemployed remunerant to get the Hell out of the way of the FRee exercise of the American Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Government is (NEVER) the solution to our problem. Government is the problem. -- Ronald Reagan
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