We're Not Pets

It astonishes people that I, a lifelong liberal Democrat, have fallen under the spell of libertarianism. They think I have lost my mind. Let me try, once again, to explain at least some of my reasons.

I am sick and tired of being treated, by liberal activists and politicians, as if I am one of their pets. Gays, lesbians, feminists, Hispanics, African-Americans, working people and all the rest of those whose votes professional liberals have so long taken for granted are NOT their pets. Not only have Democrats, in particular, proven they are willing to betray us every time it becomes politically convenient, but in my attempts to reason with conservatives, I find that -- more often than not -- their hostility against us is actually directed at liberals. They spray it at the liberals, in scattershot, Dick Cheney style, and because we're standing so close to the Left (as we have been made to feel we must), we get hit with it, too.

Human beings should not be made into pets. I am a thinking, reasoning person with dignity. If you are unwilling to earn my political support, then you don't deserve it.

Every damn time I try to engage a conservative in meaningful dialogue about the issues that matter most today, I get the usual, mindless audiotape. It's always "you liberals" this and "you liberals" that. I don't think much of most conservatives, at least not those of the Republican variety. God has given the majority of them pretty good brains, and they refuse to use them.

Stop telling me what Rush or Sean or Bill O'Really told you today. Stop letting Pat Robertson and James Dobson do your thinking for you. Are you a human being, or are you a sheep?

Some of the professional conservatives are so obvious, so totally over the top, that sometimes it seems they are trying to parody themselves. Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Michael Savage are probably the worst, but they have more and more company all the time. What has really begun to frighten me about this crowd is that so many of their followers ACTUALLY TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY.

Put your brains back into your skulls and stop playing with them. You're turning 'em into Silly Putty. Each and every human being has a God-given obligation to THINK. And that means FOR OURSELVES. It really isn't as hard as you're afraid it might be. Minds are like muscles; they just need to be exercised.

As that old ad for the United Negro College Fund put it, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." Or as that great, conservative sage, Dan Quayle said, "It's terrible to lose your mind."

The liberals have, in my humble opinion, become as lazy and sloppy in their thinking as are their arch-adversaries. Know what, folks? You are BORING. Very nearly all of you bore the living shit out of me. You need a good, swift slap upside the head to get your cylinders firing again. One of these days, the temptation will prove too enormous and I will take care of that little chore for you.

Fortunately, polls show a clear trend away from the zombie-brain-dead, old as dinosaur shit "Liberal versus Conservative" mental straitjacket. We are now in a new century. Thank the heavens above that a growing number of people actually realize that.

Gay rights should NOT be lumped together, in debate on the issues, with abortion. Nor should feminism be lumped together with gay rights, or abortion with feminism, or illegal immigration with terrorism, or whatever else with anything else. LEARN TO THINK, for crying out loud, while it is still legal.

One of these days, we'll wake up and find that because we didn't hold dearly our right to think, we traded it away for self-gratification, "safety" and the chance to do as much harm as possible to the people we hate. And once the right to think is gone, we will have lost far more than our human rights. We will have lost the right to be human.