I-sores

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Good Breeding

Being a city boy, I used to laugh at the strange attitudes of the stiff and stilted upper classes as portrayed in old English films. These snobbish and bloodless characters always seemed obsessed by good breeding and good stock. As if people were horses. And as an American raised in a monarch-free and class-less society (as I naively thought when younger), the concept that character is directly and perhaps solely dictated by genes, has been as foreign to me, and I dare say most of my fellow Americans, as Liz and Phil’s silly hats.
But farmers all over the world believe in the influence of genes. So do dog and cat breeders. So the question arises, if the offspring of animals can be imparted with certain qualities or deficiencies, according to whom their parents mixed genes with, why are human beings generally considered to be different?

The answer, of course, is we are quite obviously influenced. We’re just not allowed to talk about certain aspects of our genetic inheritance. While it’s politically correct to note that little Malaysians who mate with little Malaysians get more little Malaysians, it is far less politically correct to point out that enormously obese citizens from Manchester or Munich who breed with similarly obese individuals, are destined to get porkers for progeny. Humans, we must admit if we have any honesty, can breed ourselves fat, thin, short, tall, quick, slow, black, white, healthy, sickly.

The whole subject of breeding becomes especially and dangerously muddied when intelligence is brought into the discussion. Any mention of I.Q. tests and bell curves receives howls of protests from many quarters, making the entire subject a minefield. And those of us who brazenly use humor and sarcasm as a substitute for soberness and commitment, are particularly susceptible to outraged condemnation.

For example, if someone such as myself, should point out that the world’s population of Jews takes pride in its universal reputation for intelligence, but that that same intelligence is probably the result of 3,000 years of persecutors weeding out the less quick-witted of the tribe, this paradox (and paradoxes are, after all, the cornerstone of all Jewish humor) becomes glaringly obvious, - but in this case not at all amusing. It is, after all, a bit difficult to praise a group by saying, “You’re a smart bunch.. mainly because the dumber of you are no longer around to embarrass you.”

But perhaps this particular observation endows us with a useful definition for intelligence: heightened alertness. As Doctor Johnson pointed out, “the knowledge that one is about to be hanged has a tendency to concentrate the mind wonderfully.”
But having noted the beneficial result of persecution on the Jewish and other ethnic groups, we come face to face with this conundrum: If dumb ass accidents and wars tend to hit dumber people harder than the quick witted, why are we as a race, so relatively stupid?

Put another way, if we assume the average I.Q. of the cro magnon living 30,000 years ago was that of a Jerry Springer fan today, why hasn’t time and misfortune weeded out the dumber, so that we enjoy an average intelligence today of 300 or 3,000.. instead of the measly 110, or whatever the current average is judged to be? Why ain’t we smarter?

Perhaps we ain’t smarter because there is some sort of self-regulation mechanism in effect. Perhaps nature tends to weed out the smart asses, too. As the Chinese note, it is the nail that sticks up that gets hammered down. And in fact, when it comes to people, we can actually see this craving to be hammered down evidenced by comedians (need I note the high proportion of the descendants of Abraham here?) who loudly and annoyingly demand attention so that they can display their awesome wit for all the world to see. And when a comedian fails to impress and he admits his defeat, he notes, “I died.”

..and so the rest of us must go back for another fishing expedition at the gene pool to find our wits.

Forgive Me For Whimpering So Loudly

“How are you?” is perhaps the most common sentence we humans utter, although I understand that the equivalent in China is, “Have you eaten today?” Be that as it may, whether we enquire as to each other’s health or stomach contents as a salutation, we are only being polite. We don’t really want to know. “How am I? I’ll tell you how I am!” is the exact opposite of what we really want to hear.

And yet as I fast approach the age of sixty, I am made more and more aware of something, a natural phenomenon that may well have been with us since the beginning of our time on this planet. On the other hand perhaps it’s just my own age, diminishing hormonal levels, hemorrhaging savings and the growing sense of dread and pessimism as world financial institutions collapse that makes me currently sensitive and aware of this something – this invisible choir, this silent whimpering on the part of many of my friends and the people of approximately my age.

This silent whimpering is just that. No one is yet voicing their personal unease out loud. No one wants to be known for their sudden and uncharacteristic lamenting and gnashing of teeth. No one wants to be thought of as a whiner. No one wants to be thought of as vulnerable and thus pathetic. No one wants to be pitied.
Well, damn it – I do!

I want and need sympathy and I’ll bet most of you reading this do, too – at least on some level.

Remember the story of the Grasshopper and the Ant? I think it may have been an Aesop’s fable. Anyway, the first time I ever came across this story of the frolicking and carefree grasshopper who preferred to dance and play while mocking the ants for their ceaseless hard work – it was in a Hollywood cartoon made for children. And naturally the cartoon had a syrupy Hollywood ending. The ants took pity on the grasshopper and let him stay in their colony and fed him warm and bracing soup all through the harsh winter. (Aesop was merely content to let him starve and freeze to death, as nature herself always will.)

It occurred to me some time ago that I am a grasshopper. And I’m not alone. I would need ten hands and their fingers to count the number of friends and acquaintances who currently stumble around in a state of shock, wondering what in the hell happened. Hey, wasn’t I supposed to have been a guitar hero? A cultural icon? At the very least the conscience of my generation? What happened to success???
(And don’t tell me there are many ways to measure success. Hitler and Mussolini got their girlfriends to commit suicide with them. I can’t even get a woman to go bowling with me! “I’m not putting my feet in those shoes.. eeeck!” Yeah, that’s what a he-man wants to listen to time and again from the overfilled tube-topped tyrant in chartreuse toenail polish who rations out listless sex like the sullen gas station attendant relinquishing the key to the restroom.)

But back to the point: We members of, or of near the Woodstock Generation, whether we were actual hippies or even conservative hardworking schlubs, are now turning ashen and jittery. Is the end near, we wonder? And does it have to be so dismal and humiliating an end? Did we miss something? When did we thrive?
Okay. Sure. We frolicked briefly. Intermittingly. In short spurts. Like the furtive and clumsy sexual encounters that were par for the course. We had some nice vacations. Our mantles are covered with plastic and balsa bric-a-brac from Bali and Cabo San Lucas. Souvenirs as predictable and dreary as most of the vacations themselves. Sure, we had our fun. We skipped and gamboled and inhaled. We let our freak flags fly, however self-consciously. We also procreated, the results, most of us would admit only to ourselves, being somewhat less than optimal. At least in the gratitude department.

Yeah, I know. Our kids are karma’s revenge for the way we treated our own parents. But didn’t we consciously endeavor to avoid the sins, superstitions and prejudices of our parents? Didn’t we strive to make sure our kids grew up in a racially, religiously and sexually prejudiced-free home? Didn’t we? So why then, in Buddha’s name did they turn into such snotty little bastards anyway?? (Luckily revenge is at hand. Spoil and forever ruin your children’s children with indiscriminate materialism. And if your own children have been particularly nasty and ungrateful, give their kids a set of drums.)

But again, back to the current malaise. As I and many of my friends approach our sixties and our once happy world seems about to sink into a cesspool of pollution, unexpected poverty and panic, will we predictably tackle the next decade of misery? Will we keep our trembling mouths shut, our stiff upper lips clamped shut for fear of ostracism? Or will some generous and enlightened leader inspire us with a new path?

The new path: Bitch, moan and complain. It’s good exercise. When it takes you ten minutes to get out of bean bag chair you’re not going to be going for any jogs on a regular basis, no matter how solemnly you increasingly infrequently promise you’re going to begin “after the holidays.”

Give up your illusions. Illusions of success, of beauty, of popularity. Of sexual prowess and the resulting gratitude.

Yes, I know. Churchill cautioned us to “Never, never give up.” But Hitler, too, never gave up. And look where it got him.

Homer Simpson, a wiser man, pointed out, “Children, you have tried and failed. The lesson is: never try.”

At the moment the only luxury left to us curmudgeons on the cusp of codgerdom is the pleasure of bitching, moaning and complaining. And a half hour of grumbling will burn off more calories than a half hour of sex – at least at our age.

Muff Diving

Good Lord! Is nothing safe?

First we couldn’t trust our vittles nor the water we drink.

Now it appears joyful bouts of muff diving can be fatal!

“The sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer in women is poised to become one of the leading causes of oral cancer in men, according to a new study.
The HPV virus now causes as many cancers of the upper throat as tobacco and alcohol, probably due both to an increase in oral sex and the decline in smoking, researchers say.
The only available vaccine against HPV, made by Merck & Co. Inc., is currently given only to girls and young women. But Merck plans this year to ask government permission to offer the shot to boys.
Experts say a primary reason for male vaccinations would be to prevent men from spreading the virus and help reduce the nearly 12,000 cases of cervical cancer diagnosed in U.S. women each year. But the new study should add to the argument that there may be a direct benefit for men, too.
"We need to start having a discussion about those cancers other than cervical cancer that may be affected in a positive way by the vaccine," said study co-author Dr. Maura Gillison of Johns Hopkins University.
The study was published Friday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Human papillomavirus, or HPV, is the leading cause of cervical cancer in women. It also can cause genital warts, penile and anal cancer - risks for males that generally don't get the same attention as cervical cancer.
Previous research by Gillison and others established HPV as a primary cause of the estimated 5,600 cancers that occur each year in the tonsils, lower tongue and upper throat. It's also been known that the virus' role in such cancers has been rising.”

To hell with paranoia. I intend to paint my taste buds with furniture shellac, spray my throat with mineral spirits or tabasco sauce, and I’m returning to the breech to give the little fellow in the boat the tongue lashing he so rightly deserves. A real man can do no other!

(..then again I may use some sort of buzzing device on the end of a long pole..)

Top Heavy

With every year that passes, Mount Everest groans, creaks and increases its lofty majesty. Thrusting upwards in small jolts, the Himalayas accumulate ever greater altitude, pressed upwards as they are, by the Indian subcontinent’s northward flow, as the subcontinent’s wedge-like mass crashes in slow motion into the Asian continental plate and slides itself under. And as the Himalayas become taller, they grow ever heavier.

Will this northward migration of granite and basalt cause the Northern Hemisphere to grow increasingly heavy until the world ”tips over”? Or perhaps just as dangerously, until our planet is nudged into a more unstable wobbling rotation – and thereafter into a disastrously altered orbit – which will then bring us too far from the Sun – or too close? Probably not, if the sole addition to such a growing weight imbalance is the northward drift of the Indian sub continent.

But other weighty minerals are also streaming north. Millions of tons of copper and tin from Chile for our computers and telecommunications systems, coal from South Africa for our furnaces, gold and diamonds for our fingers. Even mountains of guano from the South Pacific for our gardenias.
Adding to all this, several other accelerating factors are at work that may contribute to a catastrophic top-heaviness of our planet. As the citizens of China, for example, become more prosperous, they opt more and more for status-giving beverages such as beer, and fat-laden fad foods, all of which will increasingly require imported grain. Some time around 2010 China will have to import grain from as far away as Australia, South Africa and South America, thereby depleting world surpluses.

And as these grains transport nutrients, water and roughage to China, they also carry with them weight, much of which will be retained in the growing corpuses of the Chinese People, adding countless hundreds of thousands of tons to the weight of the Northern Hemisphere – and every ton of it subtracted from the south.

Other contributing factors to an increasing global top heaviness is the never ending financial tribulation of many nations in the Southern Hemisphere. As these nations increase their exports of rubber, tin, copper, coffee, cocoa, cotton clothing at a desperate pace, the value of their own currencies continue to sink, making their imports of goods from our Northern Hemisphere more and more seldom. Again weight is exported to the North.

Adding to the problem, heavy hardwood forests are being felled at an alarming rate, and the timber either exported to the rich northern hemisphere – or simply burned to make way for quick depletion and move on farming. Whereas formerly ten square meters of jungle land may have been covered by 100 tons of mahogany or teak, today the same area may merely be covered by a half ton of maize plants.

The Northern Hemisphere, too, is becoming more heavily populated, with China, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh alone making up two thirds of the population of the world. Adding to this weight are the hoards of refugees from Africa and South America trying to reach the rich north. Also, because of AIDS, the population of Africa may start dropping dramatically, thereby helping to decrease the weight of the southern hemisphere. Sadly all these trends point to a northward transference of mass.

But what can be done to ward off this alarming shift, the worried reader might well ask. Well, here are a few simple tips for helping to maintain the global weight balance:

1) If you can’t bring yourself to put your overweight brats on a diet, send the butterballs to a school or fat farm in Australia or Paraguay. The change of scenery will do them good (..and the absence of the little eye-sores will help improve the scenery in these parts.)

2) Plan ahead. Before the Grim Reaper begins to beckon with a bony finger, either buy a burial plot in Botswana, or arrange to have yourself cremated and your ashes spread over the Andes.

3) Instead of junking your old car, ship it to New Caledonia where it can house a family of five. Dead refrigerators can shelter Pigmies in the Cameroon.

4) Every time you vacation below the equator, leave your smelly worn-out sandals and chili-stained shorts there. Why bring them home with you to be thrown out? And you could easily buy fewer crap souvenirs. Do you really need a forty pound fertility mask from New Guinea?

5) Clear out your garage. Send those hundreds of pounds of old magazines back to where they originally came from.
(No, not the publisher or printer, but to the paper mills of South America for pulping and recycling.) Desperately bored mathematicians without sex lives have estimated that there are 375 million tons of old National Geographics in the state of Delaware alone. (And another half million of old Playboys under my bed.) The growing numbers of old magazines in dentist offices ought to be enough to tip the world over in another decade. And simple logic tells us that legislation requiring on line-only versions of Sunday supplements, telephone books and Ben Elton excretions ought to be quickly enacted.

6) If you insist on marrying and reproducing, import a miniscule spouse from Thailand or the Philippines. Why marry some great white tuber from Walmart and breed even more flab buckets?

7) As everyone knows, Plutonium is one of the heaviest of all elements. Perhaps we should begin exporting our worn out reactor fuels to Terra Del Fuego? But what would make the citizens of that cold and faraway place willing to accept our toxic wastes, you ask? Free lead-walled homes to live in - and mountains of heavy metal and unsold Michael Jackson c.d.s.

Whew! That’s a load off my mind!

The Lame Excuses of a Bleeding Heart Liberal?

I was intrigued by Neil Boortz’s commencement address in which he lampooned us Liberals.

Allow me to respond in not so brief detail.

Neil said:

Now, I realize that most of you consider yourselves Liberals. In fact, you are probably very proud of your liberal views. You care so much. You feel so much. You want to help so much. After all, you’re a compassionate and caring person, aren’t you now? Well, isn’t that just so extraordinarily special. Now, at this age, is as good a time as any to be a liberal; as good a time as any to know absolutely everything. You have plenty of time, starting tomorrow, for the truth to set in.

Well, Neil’s right. We Liberals have a tendency to be self-righteous.. a human flaw unshared by Conservatives? Don’t we all need to feel we are right in order to feel safe?
Constant self-doubt would make us just as vulnerable as would a petrified certainty in a belief or superstition..

Neil again: So here are the first assignments for your initial class in reality: Pay attention to the news, read newspapers, and listen to the words and phrases that proud Liberals use to promote their causes. Then, compare the words of the left to the words and phrases you hear from those evil, heartless, greedy conservatives. From the Left you will hear “I feel.” From the Right you will hear “I think.”

I would say we are all human and 95% of our lives is emotionalism. Liberals are no more or less emotional than conservatives. We’re just emotional about different things. Some people get a lump in their throat over Martin Luther King, others over John Wayne. (You may admire John more.. but no one ever threw him in jail or hit him with clubs to keep him from voting or sitting in a diner!)

From the Liberals you will hear references to groups—The Blacks, the Poor, The Rich, The Disadvantaged, The Less Fortunate. From the Right you will hear references to individuals. On the Left you hear talk of group rights; on the Right, individual rights.That about sums it up, really: Liberals feel. Liberals care. They are pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics. Conservatives and Libertarians think—and, setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centered on the individual.

Here indeed is the central difference between us Bleeding Heart Liberals and Conservatives. How to best protect the rights of the individual.
In a nutshell we Liberals believe in spending a larger portion of the gross national product on “Insurance.”
Sensible people have fire insurance, home insurance, car insurance.
Liberals promoted and installed programs like Social Security, Medicare, Welfare, not because they thought these programs were 100% effective – but because we thought the alternative, the absence of such programs was much worse and much more dangerous for society.

If you didn’t know it in New England for most of the 18th century they had something called “subscription” fire departments. If you did not make private yearly payments when your house caught fire they would ignore you. Guess whose houses burned down. Yes,the poor’s. But susbscription was replaced by communal when they realized that poor people’s fires spread to rich peoples’ house, too.. imagine that!
Would you Libertarians like to go back to private fire departments, police forces and toll roads? Private armies? No? Ludicrous ideas?

But living in the modern world without sensible taxation and the sensible use of taxation is equally ludicrous and horrendously dangerous.
(We all agree that taxations is needed.. although when income tax first appeared in 1912 the Republican party screamed that 8% would devastate the nation!)
Most of us would agree that we can debate tax rates and we can discuss what to use tax money for. However, conservatives feel it unimportant when slamming Washington to discuss the red rural states’ subsidies of tobacco growing and similar “socialistic” support – or the plundering of taxpayers’ money by war contractors. (see details below for shocking evidence.) Conservatives hate Washington when they’re out of office and not funneling tax dollars to their friends and causes… or am I wrong?


Liberals feel that their favored groups have enforceable rights to the property and services of productive individuals. Conservative and Libertarians, I among them I might add, think that individuals have the right to protect their lives and their property from the plunder of the masses.

Here again we differ over which is more effective and humane.. spending most of our “insurance” money on police and prisons.. or education and yes, welfare. There are those who gladly retreat behind the walls of gated communities, warm in the bosom of the like-minded and safe from the hoards of unwashed. But the very rich and the very cynical are already buying their own cute little islands in the quickly growing Dubai city, as a refuge from the deluge and anarchy to come. Solid gold faucets while the rest of the world runs out of water. That’s some way to wash your hands of others’ misery!

If, by the time you reach the age of 30, you do not consider yourself to be a libertarian or a conservative, rush right back here as quickly as you can and apply for a faculty position.

Neil’s right yet again. People do tend to become conservative as they grow older. Wisdom.. or perhaps weariness? We are disappointed again and again by the flaws of others.. and our own? We have fewer reasons to be optimistic as we see our own health and the health of our friend’s decline. But that doesn’t mean that pessimism is a virtue or a guiding trait to be proud of!

Again, most of the major advances, improvements in human history have been inspired by liberalism. Social reformers and Liberals opposed slavery and got it abolished, they stopped segregation, insured women and minorities right to vote, worked for free speech. For Freedom!

It’s hard to remember that comedian Lenny Bruce was thrown in jail in Boston and New York in the 1960’s, had his cabaret performer’s license revoked – his livelihood taken away from him because he made jokes about the Catholic church!!
Remember when you couldn’t say pregnant on TV? Is that the world you long for? The iron fist of prudery and enforced ignorance?

Yes, sadly the modern world is disgustingly vulgar much of the time. But that vulgarity is just a sign of freedom. And remember, of all the major networks, Fox produces the most vulgar shows! (The clever Rupert Murdoch found out long ago that vulgar entertainment and vulgar political ideas sell best!)

First is that favorite buzz word of the media, government and academia: Diversity! You have been taught that the real value of any group of people - be it a social group, an employee group, a management group, whatever - is based on diversity. This is a favored liberal ideal because diversity is based not on an individual’s abilities or character, but on a person’s identity and status as a member of a group. Yes, it’s that liberal group identity thing again.

Within the great diversity movement group identification - be it racial, gender based, or some other minority status - means more than the individual’s integrity, character or other qualifications.

Here again we meet this conservative moaning and bitching about racial quotas. First of all no college and university in America has a black student percentage of 12% which would match their numbers in population – even with quotas! In other words they are by no means over-represented.

On the other hand from the 18th century down to the 1950’s schools like Harvard, Princeton and Yale had limitations on the numbers of Jews that could be admitted! They were over represented because of their studiousness! Now Oriental kids are being targeted for reverse quotas, too. Conservative white people hate quotas unless their kids are the beneficiaries!

You may, for instance, think that you have a right to health care. After all, Hillary said so, didn’t she? But you cannot receive health care unless some doctor or health practitioner surrenders some of his time - his life - to you. He may be willing to do this for compensation, but that’s his choice. You have no “right” to his time or property. You have no right to his or any other person’s life or to any portion thereof.

Believe it or not doctors in Europe are well off and content without being obscenely rich, despite working in “socialized” medicine. Believe me, too, that hospitals in Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Italy.. and yes, France are every bit as good as the ones in America – plus in these countries if you want to go to a private doctor or hospital you can! They exist! No one is stopping anyone wealthy from buying better care. But on the other hand no one is left to die either.

To imply that one person is homeless, destitute, dirty, drunk, spaced out on drugs, unemployable, and generally miserable because he is “less fortunate” is to imply that a successful person - one with a job, a home and a future - is in that position because he or she was “fortunate.” The dictionary says that fortunate means “having derived good from an unexpected place.” There is nothing unexpected about deriving good from hard work. There is also nothing unexpected about deriving misery from choosing drugs, alcohol, and the street.

Excuse me but this is the stupidest, most heartless part!
We all know Paris Hilton. Did she earn those millions! Did George W become governor of Texas on his own or President? (George senior’s father was a millionaire and a senator!) How in the world can Neil claim that no one in the world is born lucky or unlucky? If your mother is a crack whore and you never amount to anything is it totally your fault???

Does Neil know nothing of human psychology and trauma?
If you grow up in a ghetto where you have never had a face to face conversation of more than 30 seconds with a white person, have never met a doctor or a professor or a businessman – who will you have a roll models? Who can you look up to? What will give you the idea that people like you can succeed??? Environment and genes mean a lot.

And the absolutely level playing field doesn’t exist.

If the Liberal Left can create the common perception that success and failure are simple matters of “fortune” or “luck,” then it is easy to promote and justify their various income redistribution schemes. After all, we are just evening out the odds a little bit. This “success equals luck” idea the liberals like to push is seen everywhere. Former Democratic presidential candidate Richard Gephardt refers to high-achievers as “people who have won life’s lottery.” He wants you to believe they are making the big bucks because they are lucky. It’s not luck, my friends. It’s choice.
One of the greatest lessons I ever learned was in a book by Og Mandino, entitled “The Greatest Secret in the World.” The lesson? Very simple: “Use wisely your power of choice.”
That bum sitting on a heating grate, smelling like a wharf rat? He’s there by choice. He is there because of the sum total of the choices he has made in his life. This truism is absolutely the hardest thing for some people to accept, especially those who consider themselves to be victims of something or other - victims of discrimination, bad luck, the system, capitalism, whatever. After all, nobody really wants to accept the blame for his or her position in life. Not when it is so much easier to point and say, “Look! He did this to me!” than it is to look into a mirror and say, “You S. O. B.! You did this to me!”

The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms.
Some of the choices are obvious: Whether or not to stay in school. Whether or not to get pregnant. Whether or not to hit the bottle. Whether or not to keep this job you hate until you get another better-paying job. Whether or not to save some of your money, or saddle yourself with huge payments for that new car.
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Again Neil denies that any significant number of people have been ruined by poverty, child abuse – or live in an area of little or no opportunities. Liberals recognize that there are millions of people who may be physically unattractive and thus uninteresting to employers, millions who are shy, slow, backwards, ashamed, traumatized. We believe these people cannot be left to starve or become predatory criminals. We liberals believe taking care of the “unfortunates” is both humane and wise.

Conservatives ought to see that it is wise, too, as the price will ultimately be lower than a growing police state and higher walls.

You need to register to vote, unless you are on welfare. If you are living
off the efforts of others, please do us the favor of sitting down and shutting up until you are on your own again.

Oh, dear, the old the more money you have the more votes you should get?
We haven’t heard that since the land barons of Britain 200 years ago.

Liars cannot be trusted, even when the liar is the president of the country. If someone can’t deal honestly with you, send them packing.

At last we are in complete agreement. (Alas, we are all only too human – we prefer our liars to yours and vice versa..)

Don’t bow to the temptation to use the government as an instrument of plunder. If it is wrong for you to take money from someone else who earned it—to take their money by force for your own needs—then it is certainly just as wrong for you to demand that the government step forward and do this dirty work for you.

Don’t look in other people’s pockets. You have no business there. What they earn is theirs. What you earn is yours Keep it that way. Nobody owes you anything, except to respect your privacy and your rights, and leave you the hell alone.

This is only fine and true if you are such a he-man libertarian that you are against All taxes and all governments. If you are for some than we can debate on priorities.

Speaking of earning, the revered 40-hour workweek is for losers. Forty hours should be considered the minimum, not the maximum. You don’t see highly successful people clocking out of the office every afternoon at five. The losers are the ones caught up in that afternoon rush hour. The winners drive home in the dark.

Where is it chiseled in stone that the work week is at least 40 hours? It’s not the 11trh commandment! Neil thinks it’s too little. Others might say work 35 hours as in Europe and spend more time with your children, spend more time doing things instead of working and then buying happiness.

Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.

Again us bleeding heart liberals have worked the hardest for free speech.

1. Proclaim your rarity. Each of you is a rare and unique human being.

We are both unique and one of many. No man is an island nor should he want to be one. But freedom and security can only truly exist when your neighbor has his as well.

2. Use wisely your power of choice.

Yes, but do not mock others whose range of choices are more limited than your own.

3. Go the extra mile ... drive home in the dark.

If you want to retain the love of your spouse and your children, don’t come home late from work too often. There are more important things than careers and money.

To sum up, a liberal wants the maximum of freedom and happiness and believes it can be more closely achieved by trying to insure it for others. We believe in true merit determining opportunities and promotion – once a level playing field is reached – when women or minorities are held back then true merit is never achieved. We seldom call ourselves Liberals but more Progressives because we hope for a world which is better for all, and we doubt that focusing mainly on already well off White Americans is the wisest course in the long run.

And sure.. the Liberal Society costs money – but so does other forms of necessary insurance.

We Liberals may well be wrong - but if so it’s for the right reasons. If Conservatives are right isn’t it for the wrong reasons? – the Holy Self!

P.S. I’ve often heard the epithet “Bleeding Heart Liberal” voiced by the same mouths who used to favor other cute phrases like “Nigger Lover” , “Fag” and “Kike.”

We are all known by the company we keep.

Welcome

The veil lifts.. the fog dissipates.. rays of wisdom break through the dismal gloom..