Naked Emperors #1, 2 & 3

Well, as promised, here come some of the self-important nude guys. I DID promise 'em, so I can put this off no longer.

"Liberals believe things so laughably stupid, they don't even deserve a listen." How the heck would your average "Naked Emperor" conservative even KNOW what we believe, since they almost never shut up long enough to listen to the sound of anybody's voice but their own?

Right-wingers are forever telling people "what liberals believe." At least fifty percent of it is grotesque distortion and at least another twenty-five are outright lies. The remaining one-quarter of it (when it is admitted to at all) is only the stuff so basic and self-evident to being an American, a Judeo-Christian, or even a human being who lives outside of a cave that no person who hopes even to be seen as decent would disagree with it. Though much that falls into the latter category, conservatives will disingenuously argue away as "unrealistic." All the while piously asserting their support for it in theory.

I saw, the other day, on a conservative blog that shall here remain nameless (though this statement is so common, you can find some variation of it almost everywhere in the Right-Wing blogosphere), a claim that never fails to make my blood boil. "Liberals," it said in effect, "believe there ought to be no standards whatsoever."

Now, nobody who knows me would ever have the guts to say such a thing to me in person. Anybody who does will get a speedy invitation outside. Conservative blowhards pull this crap because they think liberals are all such weenies we won't fight back. I look forward to the chance to surprise one.

Let me clarify, just for the record, what at least THIS liberal believes. I most certainly DO believe in standards, but I believe that they ought to be the same for everybody. Which means that right is right for everybody, wrong is wrong for anybody, and the same rules should apply to all. Conservatives believe there ought to be different rules for different sorts of people: one set for men and another for women, one for gays and another for straights, one for Blacks and another for Whites, etc. They will deny this vehemently, of course -- but their actions speak even louder than their blustery words.

Which brings me to Emperor #2...

"What conservatives believe is so demonstrably reasonable, nobody in their right mind can disagree." In the service of truth, let me tweak that just a tad. What conservatives CLAIM they believe is, indeed, not only demonstrably reasonable, but admirable. Right-wing apologists always describe what they believe by citing what they set to paper, and on paper, conservative theory is unimpeachable.

The problem comes from the huge gap (in fact, it's a yawning chasm) between WHAT THEY SAY they believe and WHAT THEIR ACTIONS INDICATE they actually do. Few of them make even the slightest attempt to live up to their own high-minded and demanding theories. Now, the few who do are fine people; good conservatives are among the best folks on the face of God's earth, and for these few, I have immense respect. But most people who call themselves conservatives are phonies, merely flattering themselves that they stand for something as noble as real conservatism as they hide behind the label.

The Right Wing -- and especially the Republican Party -- has been a haven for bigots, ignoramuses, hypocrites and spoiled, selfish overgrown infants for decades. And if you lie down with dogs, you're gonna get up with fleas. The few genuinely decent men and women left in the movement need to grow some backbone and toss these charlatans out. And they need to do so not only for their own good, but for that of the country and the whole world. Until they show the courage and the integrity to do that, they'd just better stop whining about the fact that not everybody likes them.

"Bush stands for free enterprise." No, Bush stands for Bush. And Cheney, and Condi, and Rummy, and Prince Bandar. I'm going to introduce a fact that will come as a shock to those who've been smoking the funny mushrooms and drinking the kool-aid for so long: capitalism and free enterprise are not always on the same side. Quite often, the former is even hostile to the latter.

Theoretically, any capitalist country will, of course, encourage free enterprise. But in actual fact, countries ruled by big-money, mega-corporation capitalism strangle the life out of genuine free enterprise. Are you an entrepreneur, trying to start a small business in our current big-fish-eat-the-guppies business environment? Well, good luck, but don't count on it! True free enterprise can only thrive where competition is not only allowed, but encouraged -- and competition is the last thing our corporate lords and masters will permit.

Socialism is not always Left-Wing. Just ask the Nazis. What we have in America, today, is a form of Right-Wing socialism that picks the pockets of the folks who actually do the work in this country and redistributes it to the big-corporate barons. The relationship between the common people and the tycoons bears an eerie resemblance, as a matter of fact, to the one that once existed between the vassal serfs and their feudal lords. Both Nazi Germany and Medieval Europe-in-general have returned to haunt us for the lessons we refuse to learn.

I am all for free enterprise. It is the only economic system under which democracy will flourish. Those who speak of "democratizing" our economy by replacing Right-Wing socialism with that of the Left are only fooling themselves -- and they, too, refuse to learn from history. The free enterprise system is the only one, in the history of humankind, that gives the wealthy a real incentive for the betterment of the circumstances of the poor.

Conservatives used to be the ones who would tell US that. What a pathetic state the Right is in when we're the ones who must remind THEM!