TT's opinion: both Left and Right: rotten
Our Constitution: both sides have forgotten
Washington's address: his final farewell:
"Foreign entanglements lead you to Hell!" [1]
Both factions guilty of empire-building
Ever since Philippines: war, lily-gilding [2]
Spanish-American: started by Hearst
Why did we enter the Great War The First? [3]
Personal liberty: both sides will stick it
Left don't believe in free Right to buy ticket [4]
Right doesn't like Michael hitting a bong
Both are my freedoms; abridging is wrong
No incentives
Success, punish
And reward the bad
The Right wing supports that for Wall Street and such
The Left wing: for worth-less cad! [5]
Egalitarian: actu'lly, hater
Bring us all down: lowest de-nominator
Humanitarian, not! Class war, breeds
Liberal preys and on envy he feeds
Right wing: conformist; won't give you free head-room
Passing more laws: what goes on in your bedroom
'Long as the door's closed, what business is yours?
Nab crooks white-collared; quit harassing whores [6]
Left wing says tax rich, though honestly earned it
Though Windows sucks, without Gates, couldn'a learned it
Puters in ev'ry home? Futurists' dream [7]
Free enterprise: to the top, goes the cream [8]
Failing: Too big?
No such thing, chump
If you suck, go broke
Let all of your assets and workers go to:
A much more success-ful bloke!
I'm free and eighteen, so pawrn? Mind your bizness
Just quit imagining me and my jizzness
Go back to praying and leave us alone
Right wing, get off of your self-righteous throne
Both sides support public (mis-)education
Firstly intended: homogenize nation
Inculcate values: majority fools
That was the purpose of those public schools [9]
Left, Right, please let me do all my own thinking
Smoking and eating; pot, coke, meth, or drinking
If I should suffer, no safety net, need
Responsibility, help it to breed
I'm my own man
Make decisions
Suffer consequence
I don't deserve taxpayers bailing me out
If I show no com-..-on sense [10] [11]
I would prefer to keep private: religion
My tax supporting yours? No, not a smidgen!
Christian, Islam, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu
What if I'm atheist? What's that to you?
President's worship: should not be endorsing
Favor displaying, coercing, enforcing
Moses' Commandments: Great movie, review!
But not on government buildings to view
We'll keep our guns in our cars and our houses
Burglars: You enter at own risk, you louses!
Rapists: My wife, try; she'll plug you right through
All the above: Bill of Rights, One and Two
Get the picture?
Founding Father:
Thomas Jeff-erson:
Which government's best? That which governs the least
In grave, he spins: Plan, undone!
[1] First POTUS, George Washington, gave a Farewell Address in which he encouraged the US to stay on good terms with all nations, so long as possible, but to avoid becoming entangled in foreign affairs. If only we'd listened...
[2] Read about it yourself. Disgusting. Strong expansionist sentiment in the United States motivated the government to develop a plan for annexation of Spain's remaining overseas territories, including the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst published inflammatory stories which many believed caused the public to support going to war. (Grandfather of Patty Hearst, convicted bank robber later pardoned by then-President Bill Clinton.)
[3] "The United States originally pursued a policy of isolationism, avoiding conflict while trying to broker a peace.... When a German U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania in 1915, with 128 Americans aboard, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson vowed, "America is too proud to fight" and demanded an end to attacks on passenger ships. GERMANY COMPLIED" ...(later) "Wilson's desire to have a seat at negotiations at war's end to advance the League of Nations also played a role." (in his change to a pro-war policy) "Wilson's Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, resigned in protest at what he felt was the President's decidedly warmongering diplomacy."
"Britain's cryptanalytic group intercepted a proposal from Berlin to Mexico to join the war as Germany's ally against the United States, should the U.S. join. The proposal suggested, if the U.S. were to enter the war, Mexico should declare war against the United States and enlist Japan as an ally. (WTF?) This would prevent the United States from joining the Allies and deploying troops to Europe, and would give Germany more time for their unrestricted submarine warfare program to strangle Britain's vital war supplies. In return, the Germans would promise Mexico support in reclaiming Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona." ... (And we *believed* that? Makes the "WMD" stories sound like purest Gospel by comparison.)
"Crucial to U.S. participation was the massive domestic propaganda campaign executed by the Committee on Public Information The campaign included tens of thousands of government-selected community leaders giving brief carefully scripted pro-war speeches at thousands of public gatherings. Along with other branches of government and private vigilante groups like the American Protective League, it also included the general repression and harassment of people either opposed to American entry into the war or of German heritage. Other forms of propaganda included newsreels, photos, large-print posters, magazine and newspaper articles, etc." ...
OK, so 90 years ago, a Democratic president, at first claiming to be a uniter, not a divider, changed his mind out of personal and political ambition, brought up intelligence of questionable value, and engaged in a massive propaganda campaign and repressed and harassed dissidents. Anyone on the Left still want to claim that George W. Bush invented this behavior? And, harassing Americans of German descent... pardon me, but it sounds like the Dems were (drum roll) RACISTS!
[4] While with one hand, the Government "attacks monopolies", with the other, it enforced the legalized cartelization of the airline industry: Price competition was prohibited, nor could any new airline enter a market without overcoming impossible red tape. The Left bitterly opposed airline deregulation. Yes, the incompetents (Eastern Airlines, most notably) failed, but more efficient competitors took their place, and the result: massive benefit to the consumer. Ten or twenty years after deregulation, prices for a given route were lower in nominal dollars (the ones you pay); adjusted for inflation, some prices were half or less of the pre-deregulation prices. Same with trucking. And the Left pretends to be the consumer's "friend". Hah! (S&L dereg. is a whole 'nother story, too long to discuss without my Master's thesis, but the problem was that the Gov deregulated their *lending and investing activities* while still *insuring them* with *your tax dollars*. Unh-unh, that's not how it pozed to work in a true free market. Some other time, OK?)
You wanna sell me a cheap ticket? I wanna buy it? Why is that the Gov's biz? TT motto at the time: "Conservatives support your unrestricted right to buy an airline ticket, but not marijuana. Liberals support your unrestricted right to buy marijuana, but not an airline ticket. Only Libertarians support both."
[5] Old saying: "The Left favors welfare for individuals; the Right, for corporations." The LP says screw welfare; the US was the most generous nation on earth before the Govt. decided to monopolize charity and tax us all so much that we can't afford to donate to truly worthwhile individuals and causes instead of to bureaucrats' salaries.
[6] Before raising pacing issues, please keep in mind that the original, and still correct, pronunciation is HAR-ass, and that har-ASS, though also accepted as correct, is more recent, and North American only.
[7] Actually, not. Read sci-fi from the 1940s-50s and you'll find that by the year 2000, we'll all have personal airborne vehicles or rocket packs, so much leisure we won't know what to do with ourselves (hah!), and colonies on Mars, but no mention of the personal computer or that it would be affordable in the majority of homes. Confirmed Win-basher though I be, I'm sitting here with an amazing device that cost less than a TV set did in 1950, a mere fraction if you adjust for inflation. And business productivity soared in the 1990s as IT became widespread. No one who contributed to all of this deserves any reward beyond the median salary? OK, throw it all away, NOW. ... didn't think so. You wanted it, you paid for it, you want to punish the people who provided it. Some day, like in "Atlas Shrugged" (© 1957 Ayn Rand) they're going to say, FYou and quit providing the goodies.
[8] Unless, of course, the Gov keeps propping up the bottom, as in the next verse. Incompetent Chrysler got a huge bail-out in the late 1970s, and what did we get? Continued incompetence and thirty years of prolonged agony before it died recently anyway, as it should have back then.
[9] Public schooling didn't really catch on until non-WASP immigrants entered the US; then it was decided we needed to force them to give up their national and ethnic culture and replace it with ours. This was openly touted as the argument for taxpayer-supported schooling. Now, we encourage people to maintain pride in their native culture while also being law-abiding American citizens, but we still keep those ovens of mediocrity and conformity: taxpayer-supported schools, with little choice: you have to pay the school tax even if you send your childrent to a private school, which stifles competition (not many can afford both tax and tuition). And you pay even if you don't have children. Education benefits all, you say? Fine, give each child's family a voucher and let them use it at the school of their choice: public, private, parochial, home-tutored, whatever. See what honest competition will do to raise the quality of education. (The author is a
prime victim of those ovens of mediocrity.)
[10] Perhaps if all of those tax-dollar "safety nets" weren't there, people would make more responsible decisions. Like, say, "saving". The US has long had the lowest savings rate in the industrialized world, and that rate actually went negative (below zero) in 2005: people spent more than they earned, eating into their net worth. [Accounting note: Buying a home that you can afford is a "capital investment", since it produces a "return" equal to what it would cost you to rent the equivalent housing. Only "current debt" (spending, payments, and liabilities due each month, etc), e. g., the monthly payment, not the $300,000.00 total cost, is included in the above calculations.] This is yet another reason we're in the current fix. In the old days, people were told to have six months' salary in the bank, in case they were laid off or whatever. All of you who meet that criterion, raise your hand... thought so.
The Left's ideal of a socialist haven, Sweden, has a suicide rate 20% higher than that of the war-torn-asundered, divided, politicized, racist, sexist, ethnist, ageist, everything-else-ist USA. Looks like all that cradle-to-grave welfare doesn't bring increased happiness after all, but rather decreases it. Maybe humans were meant to take on challenges and earn self-esteem by their own accomplishments, rather than by handouts?