A Political Fairy Tale
Once upon a time there were Three Little Libs: Billary, Barry and John. They each constructed a campaign because he or she wanted to be the one living in the big White House in Washington, D.C. Billary’s campaign was made out of dirt, Barry’s out of words and John’s out of deception. They all had one thing in common. Their campaigns were held together with nothing but tissue…a tissue of illusion. The Three Libs hoped the nearby villagers wouldn’t find this out before it was time for the big election!
Billary was really two Libs. She could shriek and shout in a shrill voice until none of the others were audible or she could shed crocodile tears and actually make some of the villagers feel sorry for her. She had to be careful because continual screaming and sobbing might irritate the neighbors; besides, nobody wanted tear stains on the carpet in the big White House. As if that weren’t enough, she had the help of the slimy old troll who lived under the bridge that crossed the stream that divided the village from the edge of the cliff where the Libs lived.
Together, the two of them often threw mudballs at the other Little Libs; an activity which soon became annoying. They would run back and forth across the bridge and fling their clay-like concoctions at the others from both sides of the stream! One day, Barry threw some of the mud back and almost knocked Billery’s campaign down and that’s when she unboxed her deck of black magic cards. The next time, instead of just flinging a mudball, she packed a race card inside to make the projectile harder to handle. As the dreaded card-packed mud hurtled toward Barry, she and the slimy troll jumped up and down screaming, “Look what he’s doing, look what he’s doing!”
You see, Barry had darker skin than the other Little Libs. He wasn’t much darker [in fact, a few of the village elders said he wasn't dark enough] but it made him an easy target. Billary had other cards in there, too…she had already used the magic gender card several times. But Barry had a few tricks up his own sleeve. He could rotate his head a full 360 degrees in any direction as a diversion, so people wouldn’t notice that his words were empty. Oh, the way he spoke the words sounded fine, even inspiring, but he had not the experience to give them any meaning. He chose them very carefully and spoke only in platitudes, so it was difficult to recognize that what he claimed to want for the village wasn’t necessarily what he would deliver if he ever got the chance to govern it. Some of the townsfolk even tried to compare Barry with someone who lived in the big White House long ago but had been shot by a hunter who mistook the peaceful hamlet for an untamed woods. However, the only thing they might have actually had in common was their ability to weave word spells that made people feel good, even though the words were without substance. Still, many of the inhabitants weren’t very smart and it was hoped they would buy the imagery again this time as they had many years before.
Although neither one ever said so out loud, both Billary and Barry wanted to change the village into a collectivist society, where the government controlled everything instead of the people being in charge of their own affairs. They also wanted to take away the people’s right to speak openly and to defend themselves against forces which could do them harm. The latter two items were part of a Constitution written by the founders who built the village. It was a document the Libs had been trying to pervert in order to exercise their own power over the people.
The third Little Lib, John, didn’t want to go quite that far but, in his own way, he was just as dangerous to the village as Billary or Barry. In fact, he told the villagers he wasn’t a Lib at all. He even pretended to be Conservative, though many of the things he had done previously proved otherwise. John was a war hero and was once held prisoner in a far off land…so you’d think he would appreciate the comfort and safety of the village; but this was not the case. He consorted with other Libs to take away the people’s right to the free and open exchange of ideas, to allow illegal foreigners to trample into the village and steal from its treasury, to give legal rights to sworn enemies and even bring them into the village! If that were not enough, once, he nearly snuck into the Big White House by befriending a deceitful lord, who built a campaign of lies which collapsed when the people discovered certain truths just in the nick of time.
In this adult fairy tale, instead of a mean ol’ wolf who huffed and puffed and blew the flimsy campaigns down, we have a knight in shining armor [only a slight bit of tarnish around the elbows] who came riding into town on a great white stallion, trying to prevent a disastrous reign of terror that might have changed the village forever. His name was Sir Romney…and even though several very fine men [who as Conservatives thought and fought as he did] had already fallen in earlier battles, he continued his relentless ride through the village in an attempt to rescue unsuspecting citizens from the onslaught of aspiring Lib legions. He possessed valuable experience in these matters.
A few of the outlying hamlets had already held elections and were handily fooled by John and the other Libs. Will the remaining villagers wake up in time to save themselves or be doomed to the bliss of an ignorant sleep? Will Billary, Barry and John tip their hand and reveal their true identities? Can Sir Romney spur his mighty steed on to The Big White House ahead of those who would do the village irreparable harm? Tune in next Tuesday for an update and in November for the as yet unwritten conclusion of The Three Little Libs.
R.S.F.
Whussamatta’ With Us, Anyway?
A very good friend sent me the following link to a New York Slimes article and I’d like to share my response with you. It might have been nice if the writer of the piece could have found someone to offer comment aside from a past-her-prime consultant type and a guy on a bar stool spouting sour grapes because he made some poor choices. I’m so tired of reading and hearing the downing of America that I hope I haven’t ranted to the point of piercing my friend’s fairly thick skin and he’s still talking to me!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/us/politics/24change.html?
ex=1201842000&en=9f672bf19e8cf6c2&ei=5070&emc=eta1
He said: “Pretty good summary of the discontent out there that’s keeping either party from having a front runner … so far.”
I said: “Interesting article but typical NY Times gloom and doom gibberish. It fits the template of the Left perfectly and is the kind of thing that has finally caused the general feeling of malaise the Democrats have been promoting since the days of the hanging chad. Now they want to ride in on their white charger and save the day. The trouble is, their mighty steed is donkey [also known as an ass]!
It’s like Joe Goebbels said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” The fabrications that put us in this position range all the way from the country is in the toilet to the great global warming hoax. And, of course, everything wrong in the world is America’s fault. Geez, we’re rotten people!
The problems are really simple; the solutions are not. Above all, except for national defense, it’s not the government’s job to solve them.
1. No American that I know wants to live in a socialist or collectivist state. That, plus a general erosion of our liberty, is what the top 3 Democrat candidates are all about and there’s not a nickel’s worth of difference among them.
2. The Republicans are presenting a slate of candidates that may be decent Vice-Presidents but don’t have the qualities necessary to hold the top job, any more than Billary or Barack do. We need strong Conservative leadership and [except for Fred Thompson who dropped out] are looking at nothing but more Liberals like McCain and Huckabee. They might as well be on the Democrat ticket. No one really knows who to vote for because none of the people on either side of the aisle should even be running!
3. There’s so much mud being thrown around and so much vacillation on positions that, except for surface issues, there’s no way to tell what anybody actually believes [if any of them believe anything they're saying in the first place].
4. No one is addressing China’s economic attack on this country and it is costing us.
5. They’re still not closing the boarders and this is HUGE with most people…especially from the standpoint of security.
6. The price of oil and foreign dependence is of great concern. The funny thing is, most of the people who are complaining about it are the same ones preventing us from drilling domestically for our own supplies. ANWR alone has enough oil to satisfy the entire country’s needs for the next 30 years. The need for petroleum products will never go away but it can be diminished by use of alternative energy sources. While these are being developed we need to drill on our own soil and develop more refining capacity. The answer does not lie in windmills, solar panels or smaller, goofy little cars that will cost more lives than they will save gas.
7. There’s still talk of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in the Iraq battle and no one is addressing the totality of the Global War On Terror. Americans don’t like to lose but they do get tired of inaction…especially when a bunch of sand people halfway around the world are saying “We want you dead” and have already proven it a couple of thousand times.
8. The Congress is so busy with its assault on the first and second amendments, taking meaningless votes, and running phony investigations that the real business of government has not been getting done for a couple of years [speaking of inaction]. Those who weren’t participating in the bloodbath were A.W.O.C. (Absent while out campaigning).
9. I’m not sure what this Powell woman is talking about in the article but there has been practically no inflation and most people have never had it better in the history of the world! Everything runs in cycles, including housing; it’ll be back. Meanwhile, a lot of people who couldn’t afford to buy a house before now have a market of opportunity! Unfortunately, some people who made bad decisions, like buying in at rates they couldn’t afford later, are paying the price. If the government keeps their hands out of it, and doesn’t delay the inevitable correction, housing will come back much faster. The people in trouble represent a very small percentage of home buyers. As for job security, do you ever remember having any? I don’t.
10. People have been frightened into believing there’s something wrong with the environment. There is. A bunch of hucksters and snake oil salesmen are getting rich by spinning a yarn more elaborate than Jack and the Beanstalk. It’s a good thing guys like Al Gore weren’t around in the REALLY early days or they would have extinguished the sun and the whole planet would never have evolved!
11. We don’t have any problem with health care. EVERYONE in America gets health care…even Pablo Sanchez and his entire family who crossed the border illegally and is sucking our tax dollars dry. We have a problem with health insurance and the answer is not socialized medicine. Most people who want health insurance can get it; it’s just awfully expensive and that has to be corrected [but not by the same Washington crowd that can't run Medicare, Social Security or the Post Office]. I don’t want to stand in line for a bypass, pull my own teeth with a vise-grip or apply to some government bureaucracy to see if I can even get the treatment I need. I don’t want to see the finest health care system in the world destroyed. I, also, don’t want to be told I have to have this insurance “or else”. Sorry Barry and Mitt (Whatever happened to names like Ike, Harry and Frank?).
Most people’s biggest problem is that they’ve had it so good for so long that they either don’t know or don’t remember what a bad economy is. Want to see things spin out of control? Want to see things get expensive? Want to see a country really in the toilet? Elect the Clintons or Obama. They’ve got a firm grip on the flusher! Meanwhile, everyone who keeps hearing that people are hurting is looking out the window to see if it’s their neighbor…because, in most cases, it’s not them. And if anyone who does have a problem is sitting around waiting for the government to solve it, they’ve got a mighty long wait.
People are confused because they are being told one thing and seeing another. The only “walking wounded” we have are the politicians who keep creating ‘problems’ so they can have talking points; now they have to solve these ‘problems’ right along with the real ones. America is okay. To stay that way, we need a leader who respects this nation, the Constitution…and himself. Right now, I don’t see one.”
R.S.F.