Posted on 10/21/2004 7:57:36 PM PDT by TwoBear
"Annoy a Liberal," the bumper sticker said, "Work. Succeed. Be Happy."
The unexpected epiphany amid Sevier County traffic on a tourist-saturated October day brought a smile to my face. The sticker was on a pickup, not a hybrid. The driver wore a baseball cap, not a beret. He drank coffee, not a latte. He ate a biscuit, not a croissant. There was no windsurfing equipment in his truck.
My mind whirled with other ways to annoy a liberal. Watch Fox. Listen to Rush. Drive an SUV. Buy a gun. Shoot game instead of skeet. Grow, smoke or chew tobacco. Pray. Publicly. In a school. Or a courthouse.
Say the Pledge of Allegiance and emphasize "UNDER GOD." Watch NASCAR instead of PBS. Listen to WIVK or WDVX instead of NPR. Be a guilt-free stay-at-home mom. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Live the American dream. Without apologies.
"Americans have consistently believed that hard work is the key to individual success," writes Harvard academic Samuel Huntington, in his book "Who Are We? The Challenge to America's National Identity." Liberals decry "two Americas" in which the privileged few have hope and the rest are doomed.
Liberals would deem it impossible that the son of a textile mill worker, through hard work, could succeed at college and law school, make millions, be elected to the U.S. Senate and run for vice-president. Whoops, John Edwards defies his own demagoguery.
Liberals are acutely annoyed when conservatives are happy. But life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are more attainable today than ever. Gregg Easterbrook, in his 2003 book "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse," writes, "On the first day of the twenty-first century, President Bill Clinton declared that Western society had 'never before enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity combined with so much social progress.' This statement was not just politics; objectively it is true."
You wouldn't know it from listening to the left. Liberal pundits and politicians complain that only 96,000 Americans found new jobs last month and only 1.5 million new jobs have been created in 2004 while they ignore the reality that the unemployment rate is less now than at the end of Clinton's first term.
Easterbrook explains, "In contemporary Western politics, the party out of power drastically exaggerates all negative trends while denying all positive developments, in hopes of creating voter anger and getting them back into power."
There are other ways to annoy liberals besides working, succeeding and being happy. When liberals wail about the outsourcing of American jobs, remind them it was Clinton who signed NAFTA in 1993. Immediately tell them that H. J. Heinz - the company that helped pay for those five Kerry mansions - owns or leases 93 factories and 69 of those factories are outside the United States. Then shout, "Ms. Kerry, bring those jobs home!"
Undoubtedly, the war in Iraq will surface if you've successfully annoyed a liberal. When they mention Iraq, point out John Kerry's fervent support of abortion. When they talk about innocent lives lost, inform them that the death toll of unborn children by abortion in one week is greater than the death toll in Iraq.
If they bring up Abu Ghraib, illuminate Kerry's support for partial-birth abortion, about which U.S. District Judge Richard Casey recently wrote, "The Court finds that the testimony at trial and before Congress establishes that (partial-birth abortion) is a gruesome, brutal, barbaric, and uncivilized medical procedure."
When liberals whine about No Child Left Behind, annoy them with facts; President Bush is spending 50 percent more on education than Clinton. When they mope about the plight of the poor, enlighten them that Bush's Samaritan Initiative seeks to end chronic homelessness within the decade. Explain that the Women, Infants and Children federal nutrition program is funded at the highest level in history.
Mention that Bush's Faith-Based and Community Initiatives has allocated over $1 million to Knoxville and the region to empower dozens of community organizations that work with at-risk youth, the elderly poor, welfare-to-work needy and ex-offenders and to initiate a new program to mentor children whose parents are incarcerated. Liberals are especially annoyed when conservatives are compassionate.
Yes, there are countless ways to annoy a liberal. But the thing that annoys them the most? The thought of four more years.
Greg Johnson is an East Tennessee native who was a liberal until he grew up, got a job and started paying taxes. His e-mail address is jgregjohnson@hotmail.com.
Call them fundamentalist liberals, that usually sends them into a gagging rage.
Continue breathing? LOL
How to annoy a liberal? Go to church. Want to annoy them more? Live what you learn there.
Oy. I like Bush, but I balk at applauding him for outspending Democrats. I'd rather he be a little less compassionate with tax-payer money.
I have another way to annoy liberals: Vote Republican!
Fly the flag
Be a heterosexual
Pay your bills
Whistle "Hail to the Chief!"
Tell them to "Have a nice day"
Buy them a complimentary copy of "Chicken Little"
Vote Pro-Life
Make definitive decisions
Reminds me of Bill Buckley's old platform for the conservative movement "To annoy the left and keep it unhappy."
I don't like that part, either. This is just my opinion, and worth about half a cent, but just as President Clinton had to bite the bullet (notice I didn't say bite his lip, that's something entirely different) and pass Welfare reform and other things that he was entirely against, President Bush has to regrettably move toward more spending programs.
I think the original bumper sticker said it best.
"Work. Succeed. Be Happy."
Beautiful because it's true...
Buy a gun.
Smoke a cigar.
Laugh at jokes.
Drive an SUV if that's what you want.
Eat meat.
Barbeque the meat with charcoal and then eat it.
Use the gun to hunt the meat before you barbeque it over charcoal.
Smoke the cigar after bagging the meat but before lighting the charcoal.
You get the picture.
Maybe. As I said, I like the guy. But I'm hoping he'll be a bit more hard-nosed in his second term.
BUMP for a fine article and post. My favorite threads on FR are those about annoyed liberals.
Amen
I live in San Francisco which akin to saying I live on Mars.
All it takes here to cheese off a lib in this town is to light up a cigarette.
http://www.realmenwantbush.com/
T-shirts, bumber stickers, hats.
Call them fundamentalist liberals, that usually sends them into a gagging rage.
On the cigarette "issue," as with many other personal choice matters, the "liberals" are more fascist than any conservative ever thought of being.
I was one of those locals who complained about the leftist lean of the Sentinel.
In my e-mail I asked the editor how is was that in all of East Tennessee, which is conservative, he didn't have one conservative on staff at the paper?
There ar so many conservatives here you trip over them trying to walk, but not one on that paper.
After a lot of other people asked the same question the Sentinel started "looking" for a conservative columnists, but at the top of each conservative column they insert the disclaimer:
Recently we sent out a request for a conservative columnist. We have had numerous responses and are considering several submissions. We publish one of those today and will follow with others as space permits. We would appreciate your comments. Please send responses to letters@knews.com
It kind of make you wonder why they don't put a similiar disclaimer atop their liberal columns.
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