Deep Thoughts, by a Daily Kossack
Over at DailyKos, IgnoreAtYourPeril has written a touching poem I’d like to share with you. If you could drop your cynicism for a moment and open up your heart, I think you’ll get something meaningful out of his simple words. It’s called “Why I’m a Liberal,” and it goes like this:
I want to live in a society that cares,
And gives everyone a chance.
No lottery of birth, or fortune with heirs,
An equal opportunity to advance.It shouldn’t matter that your are empty-handed,
You have the right to be healthy.
You should not be left sick and stranded,
And only get care if you’re wealthy.Is it fair to work long without sleep
And bring home a tiny fraction
Of those at the top of the heap
And be a victim of the firm’s contraction.There is no commerce without spenders,
No business without the nation’s roads
Without borrowers there are no lenders,
And your empire starves and implodes.I don’t care if you are gay,
and married you want to be.
You should all be free to worship and pray,
And as a non-believer I should be free.I am liberal because I belong,
to a society of many,
Working together we are strong,
Divided, the wealthy get our penny.
There’s a tear in the corner of my eye right now, and this isn’t the first time I’ve read it today. In fact, IgnoreAtYourPeril has inspired me to write a little something of my own. I call it, “Why I’m a Conservative,” and in the interest of space, I’m publishing it below the fold.
So take a moment to catch your breath, then click the “Next Page” link to see where my heart lies.
Why I’m a Conservative
A Poem
by Stephen Green
aka The VodkaPundit
Get your hand off my wallet
You filthy weeping hippie
I hope this has touched each and every one of you.
There are, indeed, tears in my eyes.
That’s how hard I was laughing! Thank you, VodkaPundit; I really needed that.
He is a liberal because he wants to spend other people’s money liberally.
That’s just the symptom. He’s a liberal because he never learned to take care of himself and needs a keeper and he thinks everyone else should have a keeper, too.
That is really priceless.
Greatness!
*enthusiastic applause* Wonderful, Mr. Green, wonderful. I’m crying from the brevity and beauty of your poetry.
Stephen,
Your prose touched me in ways I haven’t been touched before.
Just the other day I was standing with a group of friends and my 14 year old son. One of them asked him what he was going to be when he was an adult. Without hesitating he replied “I’m going to be a money grubbing capitalist”. His old dad couldn’t have been prouder at that moment.
They grow up so fast don’t they.
“Your prose touched me in ways I haven’t been touched before.”
Is that legal?
Well, it wasn’t in Angeles City in the late 70′s to the mid 80′s.
I want to motorboat Scarlett Johansson. It’s good to want things.
This is why liberals are dumb. They confuse desire with reality. They think that just because they want something there must be a way to achieve it. And, of course, they never pay attention to the law of unintended consequences.
For the record, I enjoyed Mr. Green’s poem more. Mostly because it has the attribute I most look for in poetry: Brevity, the poem of zero lines being the ideal.
Amen, brother. To your very first point, I mean. Kinda stopped reading after that.
Distracting thought, wasn’t it?
In the USA the streets are paved with goals.
So your favorite limerick is the one about the young man from Nepal?
I guess being a liberal means you do not have to adhere to rules – including spelling — “It shouldn’t matter that your are empty-handed,” (‘you’re’ instead of ‘your’)
Uh, “you’re are” would also be incorrect.
LOLPMP, Andy! You’re a man after my own comedic heart!
Steve made me laugh. You made me pee!
Sorry andybud – am part of the Spelling Local, you need to speak to the Grammar Local about fixing the rest of the sentence. Thanks for catching this.
Its not the spelling that gets me…
Its THIS:
“You should all be free to worship and pray,
And as a non-believer I should be free”
Its thier tacit admission that (all) Liberals (ought to) reject God..
YOU, the ignorant voodoo worshipers, verses I, the elegant and enlightened one.
Which justifies our reply of “Godlesss Commie” to each and every one of them.
– trying to persuade himself.
Very good poem Steve. I tried my hand at poetry but ran out of words that rhymed with Nantucket.
“Brevity is the soul of wit” said the Bard. I applaud you VP.
When the money runs out,
Which it will without doubt,
The tender pleas of pity,
Become violent demands of enforced equality.
This just cries out for a touching response from our resident PJ Media Poet, Buzzsawmonkey.
I’ll bet Buzz could provide a thing of beauty.
I think Steve’s piece had an austere beauty all its own.
Minimalist and stark. I could write a fifteen page essay on it. I won’t though, because you guys know where I live and a fifteen page essay on a two line poem is one of the things that calls to the heavens for vengeance. Also, I could only write a fifteen page essay on it if I were VERY drunk.
“There is no commerce without spenders,
No business without the nation’s roads
Without borrowers there are no lenders,
And your empire starves and implodes.”
And hey, without the destitute and starving there can’t be charity… so starving and destitute must be equally good as the charitable man who gives of his time and effort to help them… I guess?
I think I’ve figured out the problem; they can’t see that everyone on every side of every transaction isn’t somehow 100% equal.
When I have money I don’t need I don’t have to lend it. I can keep it in my mattress or spend it on myself, or put it in a big pile and set it on fire.
When you need money you don’t have DO have to borrow it. We’re not equal here, I don’t need you begging for my spare change.
Why anyone thinks that the borrowers are as important (or even more important as we claim here) than the lenders is beyond me.
The first line says it all. “I want to live in a society that cares” [about the things that 'I' care about, and therefore I have the right to use the government for social engineering because I'm too lazy to actually lead by example].
See, liberals don’t believe in living in the society of their choosing. They certainly don’t believe in allowing people with different values to live in the society that they prefer. They believe that society should be forced to conform to their desires. Only their society has the right to exist.
Liberals are totalitarians.
“Why I am NOT a Liberal”
I want to live in a society that works,
And is not politically correct.
No liberal mooch or deviant who shirks,
what Marxist KKKOS types direct.
It doesn’t matter if you’re broke,
or you’re too foolish not to save.
Find a tub you where you can soak,
The least you can do is bathe.
Give us a world where 99 percent is math,
and not some inane platitude.
A world without Joe Biden’s gaffes,
and Obama’s unfortunate racist attitude.
I like the term “conservative”
‘Cause how you decide that you live
Is something everyone must say—
You go to hell in your own way.
You have no claim on what I earn
And I am entitled to spurn
Efforts to make it otherwise;
This is so that you will devise
The life best suited to your skill
And make of your life what you will.
Oh, I agree that it is meet
That nobody starve in the street
But in no way will I abide
Your taxing me for a free ride
Whatever you might want to do—
That benefits not me or you
I wish that I could make you see
The road to human dignity
Is each man ‘neath his fig and vine
And not your trying to steal mine
To quote Selma Diamond (in her inimitable deadpan):
“I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me.”
Uh, you left out the word ‘F@ck!ng’ before the word ‘hand’. Otherwise, your poem is sweet and succinctly put.
Author! Author!
I imagined the usual violin music and sad clowns crying down by a river as I read that. I usually think of that ‘organ’ as the Kids at the Kos. Like all fervent liberals, they feel reality is racist and discriminatory.
“Is it fair to work long without sleep
And bring home a tiny fraction
Of those at the top of the heap”
Wait, is this guy some kind of freak cannibal or something? Why is he bringing home little pieces of his boss?
Shorter version:
I am a liberal
So you can be free
To live your life
According to me.
Why am I a liberal?
- Because it hurts to think for myself.
- Because girls will like me more than they like you.
- Because if I actually had to rely on myself, my mom would miss me.
- Because calling myself a liberal is so much easier than actually doing anything.
- Because being a liberal is the closest thing to actually having a “Willy Wonka Golden Ticket”; being a liberal means you cant be accused of anything bad because being a liberal means you are always good and you are always right and people who don’t like you are just wrong. Everyone knows this because its true!
-Because no matter how talented you are and how hard you work, I can just take it all away in the name of being “fair”.
- Because you are a poopyhead and a big Hitler too and that’s just wrong.
Well done, Mr. Green! Add me to the list of those moved to tears by the elegant beauty of your poetry.
omg, I haven’t teared up this much since field of dreams. Breathtaking artistry in its ability to summarize man’s plight throughout history.
Just priceless, Steve! Take a bow! LOL
I’m having an “Iron Eyes Cody” moment.
Here’s my haiku take:
You don’t know better
What is good for me
Cock
Bravo, Steve! Have a drink on me.
Dear Liberal Clown:
The reason CEOs get paid a lot is not because of the success they bring, but the disaster they avoid. Ask the employees of Kodak how they feel these days. Most companies go out of business eventually. It’s the CEOs job to make sure that day is as far off as possible. The setting of their salaries is impefect, yes, and the accountability isn’t there–but then both are true regarding the setting of salaries of government workers.
In other words, you fricking liberal clown, CEOs have a lot more responsibility than the guy on the assembly line. When that hourly guy screws up, the mistake quickly gets corrected and things move on from there. When the CEO screws up, the company may very well fold and all those jobs get lost, never to come back. Ask Eastern Airline employees, or the makers of other MP3 players pre-IPOD. So maybe you should pay money to get good CEOs. Which is somehow the same argument used for government service, so I’m sure you won’t object.
Or in other words, if the decision of one guy can be the difference in the success or failure of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars of capital, capital used to keep those employees you cherish employed, then maybe I’m not going to be penny-wise but pound foolish and paycap at 200K.
Which means I’ll get the good guys and you won’t. Which means my company will stick around and your won’t. Have a nice day.
That touched me. Stop touching me, Stephen.
So soon?
bwaaaahahaha!
*snort* *snort* *snort*
These were beautiful. I really like the Haiku.
I ignored at my own peril, but my curiosity got the best of me as to who would take the time at KKKos to pen such
tripedrivelhokumnonsenserubbishhorse s__tbeauty.And the best part? IgnoreAtYourPeril has a “TIP Jar.” I haven’t felt so motivated to leave a tip since “Charles Johnson” penned his Humanist Manifesto, Part II. And since libs are notoriously cheap with their own money and incredibly generous with their neighbors, I felt obligated.
So I told “Ignore” don’t play with matches.
What IS it with touchy-feely liberals and really really REALLY bad poetry?
It must be related with Vogon poetry.
…only not as good.
Keep your hands out of billfold
you greedy, illiberal scold.
Sorry, a “my” went awry:
Keep your hands out of my billfold
you greedy, illiberal scold.
Ignoreatyourperil’s first paragraph sounds like he’s writing about feudal Russia in the time of the czars. Hey idiot. This is America. You can be what you want here. Nimrod.
A Poem. By Stephen Green.
(I’d like to think that Henry Gibson would approve.)
He rhymed “sleep” with “heap” and “roads” with “implodes.”
See, that’s the sort of thing Shakespeare never even thought of.
Bravo, bravo! Encore!
‘Course, I’m just a racist kkkonservative, so I probably don’t realize what a gem that liberal dishrag of a supposed poem was. But I do know that it made me cover my eyes and recite “The White Man’s Burden” until it went away.
This verse is my favorite:
Take up the White Man’s burden–
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard–
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:–
“Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”
Now get off my lawn.
Brevity is the soul of wit, and that was very witty, Mr. Green.
So let me see if I have this right, Ignoreatyourperil. As a parent, I would not be allowed to teach my child anything, not even basic survival skills, because that might provide an unfair advantage? This sounds anti-evolutionary, and only possible in a “Brave New World” sense.
I am sorry, but I am going to provide as many advantages as I can to my child, including educational, financial and survival.
Any other approach dooms the species to extinction.
“I don’t care if you are gay,
and married you want to be.
You should all be free to worship and pray,
And as a non-believer I should be free.”
As a non-believer, of course, “being free” means forcing a church to perform the gay wedding ceremony, and suing them when they refuse.
My God. It’s full of WIN!!
” I’ve just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It’s going to go 100% failure in 72 hours.”
Remember the Deep Thoughts and Deeper Poetry of Jimmy Carter?
No? You’re very fortunate.
The kossack shd. take up knitting.
I, Liberal
I’m sure that there could never be
A man as virtuous as me.
I’ve honed my precious self-esteem
In ways no common man could dream!
To feed my moral vanity,
I preen for all the world to see;
The bumper stickers on my Volt
Affirm that I’m no right-wing dolt!
I’ll heal the Earth, I’ll low’r the Seas,
My Healthcare Plan will end disease.
To fund my drunken spending sprees,
The Fat Cats’ profits I will seize!
For those who fail, my heart will bleed,
But woe to those who dare succeed.
I vow to vanquish human greed–
To each according to his need!
Brilliant!
Damned good, Winslow. And damned right, too. (hat tip to the Duke of Wellington)
So how’d this entry fare in the middle-school Poetry Rodeo?
Mr. Green, your poem have touch me in ways that I don’t think is legal in most states.
It shouldn’t matter if you’re empty-headed,
You have the right to my hard work,
It shouldn’t matter who or how you’ve bedded,
We’re all the same, responsible or jerk.
Not exactly the Gettysburg Address of replies, but it gets to the point.
Wrong War…
Think McAuliffe, the Bulge….
“nuts!”
The writer should get a black magic marker (no, not for sniffing), and a big piece of cardboard, write the poem on the cardboard and stand on a street corner in San Franscisco. I bet they’d make a bundle.
Get the salts. This has given Ms. Fluke the vapors, and her ovaries are feeling rejected.
This poem sounds better when I read it aloud in the voice of the priest presiding over the marriage in “The Princess Bride”
Try it, I dare you…
This is the ideal Leftist “creed”…
I’m a lib’ral, I love humanit-y!
Death to RepubliKKKans!!!!!!!!!!
I’m progressive, believe in democrac-y!
Those dumb AmeriKKKans!!!!!!!!!!
Cognitive dissonance on my part?!
Damn lousy wingnut, where is your heart?!
OMG! That poem was almost as deep as ALGORE’s poem about global warming. Yeaah, no.
Thanks for the mentally ‘touching’ poem….Mr. Green. I have mulled it over
the beer I am heartily tasting. Nothing finer than mental touching. Hmmmm
The best part for me is the handle, IgnoreAtYourPeril. Anyone else channeling scary images of Glenn Close indignantly warning Michael Douglas, “I will *not* be *ignored*!!!!”
Boiled rabbit, anyone?