Viva la difference

“I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican, and Santa Claus is a Democrat.”
—P. J. O’Rourke.

I was recently encouraged to devote space to a more thorough explanation of the ideological differences between your Host and the conservatively challenged in the peanut gallery.

First, it should come as no surprise that I don’t seek compromise for a reason: Namely, there is none to be found. Allow me to elaborate. Our conservatively challenged friends are always for the things that no normal American could possibly be against. They are for jobs, the middle class, the economy and the environment. (Innocuous little terms that sound good, albeit those who subscribe to these notions are always short on details.)

Only when it comes to those issues on which we seem to disagree do the differences become more stark—taxes, abortion, gun control, pre-emptive wars on terror-sponsoring countries, gay marriage, and, oh yes, giving illegal aliens and felons the right to vote.

Taxes: Every liberal program is bankrolled on someone else’s dime. Every socialist program developed by a liberal comes at the expense of someone else. Typically, this nebulous group is called “the wealthy.” (I’ll support Barack Obama when there’s a 95 percent tax rate for income earned by artists, musicians and people in the film and television industry. Until then, Oprah Winfrey can take her $50,000 dresses and go pound sand.) I mean, does anyone really believe wealthy politicians or celebrities who tell the proletariat they will help them by taxing other wealthy people?

Abortion: a convenient little made-up right. Nowhere does the term “abortion” appear within the United States Constitution. As a matter of fact, the pro-abortion crowd is so disingenuous that they can’t even come up with an honest term for their position. I am, in fact, anti-abortion. Of if you prefer, pro-life. Now, the opposite of these would be pro-abortion or maybe anti-life. Their preferred term, “pro-choice,” is a euphemism made up by the pro-death camp to sanitize the end result of a particularly nasty procedure. Now whether we believe that a fetus is a conglomeration of cells or a person, can we at least recognize that if let alone, that fetus would most likely result in something akin to a person?

If that weren’t enough and at the risk of sounding terribly Victorian, is it too much to suggest that a woman perhaps think twice about playing Russian roulette with her body when she isn’t prepared to accept the consequences—particularly when someone else has to pay the ultimate price for being inconvenient?

Gun control: At the risk of pointing out the insipidly obvious, “the people,” as mentioned in the first, fourth, ninth, and tenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, means “the people.” Yet when the same document references “the people” in the Second Amendment, well, that apparently means the national guard, which of course didn’t show up until created by an act of Congress in 1903.

And if that weren’t enough, consider that in 1976, the District of Columbia imposed draconian gun control on the populace and has since earned itself “murder capital of the United States.” According to the FBI, between 1976-1991, the murder rate rose 200 percent, while it only increased 9 percent for the country as a whole. To that extent, the Supreme Court is now revisiting its first gun control case (District of Columbia v. Heller) in more than 70 years.

As you contemplate the meaning of O’Rourke and the foregoing, I will conclude with Part 2 next week.