Many of us here have been engaged in long running exchanges, some of them solicited with conservatives. Many of these have been well documented here and I have found that most of the conservative E-Mails appear to be as deficient as this item that appeared today in my mail. In the interests of inclusiveness I have also included my response.
In an e-mail entitled "Modern Conservative/Liberal differences great and old" an associate sent this in the vain attempt to clearly define her conservative world view and weakly attempt to define my liberal one. Since it does such an excellent job of clearly defining the self image of many conservatives I know I decided to pass it along with my shamelessly adopted plagiarized monologue as a reply for entertainment value.
Here is the conservative introspection from:
http://www.techimo.com/...
Subject: POLITICAL HISTORY
A Brief View of Human History
Early humans existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunter/ gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer & would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in winter.
The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer.
These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the
catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups: Liberals and Conservatives.
Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early human ancestors were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That is how villages were formed.
Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to BBQ at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as "The Conservative movement".
Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the Conservatives by showing up for the nightly BBQ's and doing the sewing, fetching and hair dressing. This was the beginning of "The Liberal movement".
Some of these Liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as "girliemen".
Some noteworthy Liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy and group hugs and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that Conservatives provided.
Over the years, Conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most
powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.
Modern Liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard Liberal fare.
Another interesting revolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men.
Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are Liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it was not "fair" to make the pitcher also bat.
Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firefighters, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, Marines, athletes and generally anyone who works productively.
Conservatives who own companies hire other Conservatives who want to work for a living.
Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to "govern" the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the Liberals remained in Europe when Conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tame and created a business of trying to get MORE for nothing.
Here ends today's lesson in world history:
It should be noted that a Liberal might have a momentary urge to respond to the above before simply laughing and forwarding it. A Conservative will be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately.
Being a liberal I did have the "urge to respond to the above before simply laughing and forwarding it" and did so with a personal adaptation of monologue from the movie "Good Will Hunting". Here is a link to the original monologue.
http://www.whysanity.net/...
Why shouldn't a liberal work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at the N.S.A. and some conservative who wants a war to scare up profits at his friends firms since they are drowning in debt puts a code on my desk, something no conservative can break since they had their liberal girlfriends do all of their work in school. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well enough so I won't get outsourced this month.
But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once the conservatives have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people that I never met and that I never had no problem with get killed while the stock prices of the conservative munitions manufacturers skyrockets. Now the conservative politicians are sayin', "Send in the marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number was called, 'cause they were acting in movies in Hollywood (Reagan) or were a five time deferment (Cheney).
It'll be some liberals kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass because his parents jobs were outsourced to some overseas worker who will do the work for 25% of the going American wage while their college funds and retirement funds savings were destroyed by the conservative leadership that's now working to create demand from a quick and clean skirmish since their economic model of borrow long and spend short is foundering on a mountain of bad debts.
And the liberal soldier comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from by the same conservatives that outsourced his parents jobs and profited from his wounds. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks working for the same folks that profited from creating and deploying the folks that allowed him to put the shrapnel in an Americans ass while 1,500 of his friends and neighbors got killed for his opportunity to have a steady job working for the folks that profited from producing the weapons that made all of this possible.
Meanwhile the liberal realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell the conservatives that run the oil companies that commodity at a more favorable rate so they can hire their conservative political friends to be a CEO at one of their firms (Cheney). And of course the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain't helping my liberal, war veteran buddy at two-fifty a gallon.
The conservatives are takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring another conservative alcoholic like their President (Bush) to skipper their tanker who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my liberal buddy's out of work and he can't afford the gas or jacked up insurance rates to drive because the conservatives that run the insurance companies lost all of their borrowed money and the liberals saved money too backing the CDO's their pals at the banks dreamed up.
So he's walking to the fuckin' job interviews since he cannot afford the bus fare for the "public" transit system since the conservatives privatized the system to gamble the proceeds from the sale on CDO's their conservative friends at the banks dreamed up, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass the conservatives sold to his enemies to make a buck is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoids that the conservatives say my liberal friend does not deserve health care for since he no longer contributes by paying taxes since the conservatives have driven the unemployment rate to 14.8% for those looking for work or those that only get part time work.
And meanwhile he's starvin' 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special the conservatives will sell on the open market is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what do liberals like me think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure, fuck it, while I'm at it, why not show ya what a conservative is. That is someone that would just shoot his buddy for a buck, take his job and sell it to his sworn enemy for a future income stream that could then be borrow against to help finance unmanageable debts, hike up gas and insurance prices on workers and savers, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard. That conservative could be elected president just like 43.
However, I think I would rather be like a couple of liberal geeks who moved to Seattle and made the conservative punks at IBM give up the future of software and become one of the richest people in the world (Gates or Allen) or I just might move to Omaha Nebraska and use the conservatives inability to actually create anything against them by starting the most profitable holding and management firm in human history (Buffett) or I just may decide to become a real liberal hero and dedicate my life to teaching or creating something rather than destroying everything I would ever come into contact with.