Rules for Being a Republican
-
You must believe that being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime - unless you’re a millionaire right wing radio gasbag; then, it’s an “illness” and requires prayer for “recovery”.
-
You must believe that those born to privilege achieve success on their own, but that all of their customers are lazy and stupid.
-
You must believe that ethics are an inconvenience that only Democrats bother with, and that any way you raise money is okay, so long as you don’t get caught.
-
You must believe that folks who work for their money should be taxed at a high rate, but those who get their money for nothing should be exempt from taxation.
-
You must believe that being “morally upright” means hating gays and liberals, and anyone else who doesn’t hate gays and liberals.
-
You must believe that, to rid the country of crime, you must rid the world of people not like you.
-
You must agree that racking up huge amounts of debt and handing it off to future generations is worth the few thousand extra in tax breaks given to your wealthy “investors.”
-
You must believe the US should pull out of the UN, at the same time you claim our highest national priority is to start a war to enforce UN resolutions.
-
You must believe that the best person to represent the United States in the UN is someone who doesn’t believe the UN should exist.
-
You must believe that government should stay out of people’s financial lives, but should socially engineer any behaviors deemed “unacceptable.” That the government should stay out of our checkbooks, but feel perfectly at home on our bedrooms and doctors offices.
-
You must believe that profitable pollution is perfectly ok, and that all science is bunk when it cuts into profits.
-
You must support prayer in schools, as long as no one prays to Allah or Buddha.
-
You must believe that rushing to Washington to vote to keep a dead woman’s tube in place is more important than seeing thousands of people drown in a hurricane.
-
You must believe that nothing is more important than a fundraiser; not even black people drowning. No, especially black people drowning.
-
You must believe that no Republican is crooked, as long as he says the right thing and writes you a big enough check.
-
You must believe that “Standing Tall for America” means firing your workers and moving their jobs to India, and encouraging corporations headquartered here to move their address offshore to avoid taxes.
-
You must believe that, while a woman cannot be trusted with decisions about her own body, huge multi-national corporations can be trusted to make decisions affecting all mankind with no regulation whatsoever.
-
You must believe that Jesus loves you, but shares your hatred and distrust of the poor, homosexuals, and the Clintons.
-
You must hate the ACLU for representing people whose rights have been violated, and believe they owed it to the country to bail out Oliver North.
-
You must believe that the best way to show appreciation to the troops is to charge them to fly home for leave, serve plastic turkey and cut their VA benefits.
-
You must be willing to believe that group sex and drug use are degenerate sins that can only be purged by running for office as a Republican.
-
You must think that keeping sex education and birth control out of schools is the wisest course, because without them, teenagers will never have sex.
-
You must think that the best way to fight terrorism is to alienate our allies and piss off the rest of the world at the same time we demand their cooperation and money.
-
You must believe that single-payer health care, in which everyone pays for and receives health insurance, would be a disaster compared to the current system, in which 40 million people are forbidden from paying into the system, but still receive emergency health care. You must also believe that insurance companies only care about giving you the best darn health care there is, damn the profit. You must also believe that providing health care to Iraqis is good policy, while providing it to Americans is a “Socialist plot.”
-
You must believe that forcing bankrupt people to pay their bills is a much more important problem than addressing how they got there in the first place.
-
You must agree that the link between tobacco and cancer is “dubious,” that claims of global warming are “junk science” and that creationism has a sound scientific basis that should be part of all school curricula.
-
You must believe that waging war with no security or exit strategy was good for Iraq.
-
You must agree that Saddam Hussein was a good guy when Reagan was sending him arms, a bad guy when he invaded Kuwait, a good guy again when Cheney did business with him at Halliburton, and then a bad guy again when Bush decided that a war in Iraq would be a very lucrative deal for his “investors.”
-
You must believe that the Bill of Rights is absolute in the case of the Second Amendment, but negotiable with regard to the rest of the document.
-
You must agree that the adulterous affairs of Democrats require public embarrassment and impeachment, while those of Republicans are a private matter, and excusable because, well, “boys will be boys” (or girls).
-
You must ascribe to the notion that the Clintons’ business deals were major breaches of the public trust, while the fact that Dick Cheney is still being paid by Halliburton, which is now getting billions of your tax dollars, is no big deal.
-
You must believe that everything that Democrats do should be public knowledge, but that the public has no right to know anything that Republicans do.
-
You must always deride a Democrat’s changes of mind and philosophy as a “flip-flop,” while referring to those of fellow Republicans as “growth.”
-
You must openly support “state rights,” except when John Ashcroft wants to force local libraries to turn over their records or Tom DeLay wants to impose new districts because he doesn’t like election results.
-
You must agree that the outcome of an election is always more important than making sure everyone got to vote and that all votes were counted.
-
You must agree that income tax cuts for the rich are good for the economy, while payroll tax cuts for the working class are bad. Furthermore, you must believe that making sure that the rich have a few extra dollars in their pockets is good for the economy, while raising the minimum wage is detrimental.
Very ugly - but well done for contributing to the growing problem in our country that few seem willing to debate the issues anymore, just to create biased, misleading, propaganda tracts like this one. I certainly hope you feel better now in a sort of smug, self-righteous, contemptible sort of way
This may be biased, but it is NOT misleading, NOR propaganda. You simply are not obviously privy to the truth if you do not see the hilarity of the truth in this post. Just because you don’t like the truth, doesn’t mean you can just yell out propaganda. That is simply ignorant, smug, and self-righteous, like you seem to have insisted the subby was.
[…] Rules For Being A Republican […]
37. Life begins at conception and ends at birth.
38. The shareholder is always right. Shareholder earnings are the purpose of a free economy.
39. I would serve in the military, but I’ve got an open sore on my ass.
40. The Second Amendment states something about “militia,” but I don’t know what that word means.
41. The Constitution should be interpreted strictly, yet selectively. (Failing that, it’s just “a worthless piece of paper.”)
42. Torture is the only way to get some people to tell the truth.
43. Habeas Corpus is just another Liberal plot to undermine national security.
44. Privacy? If you aren’t doing anything wrong, WHAT do you have to fear?
45. The Dept. of Homeland Security has raised the Terror Alert level to Orange.
And finally:
46. Just another Liberal lie….
This post is enlightening. It reveals the degree of self-deception necessary to justify the once extreme but now mainstream progressive view. As an active and involved conservative, all of the views expressed in this list are familiar to me. They represent the paranoid inventions of delusional Democrats. Mainstream conservative views are based on logic, not emotion. For example, contrary to item #26, it is a relatively small minority of the population, including some Republicans and many Southern Democrats, who doubt the theory of evolution. In contrast, those who are not inclined to accept alarmist propaganda about the causes and likely effects of global warming are simply not blinded by environmentalist dogma (Alarmist Global Warming Claims Melt Under Scientific Scrutiny).
Make an effort to hear or read the conservative view on issues of the day, and the basis upon which that view was arrived. You’ll find that the supposed hypocrisies exposed above are untrue distortions. You’ll also be surprised to find that Republicans who base their party affiliation on conservative principles have deeply considered and nuanced beliefs that cannot be effectively parodied with such a “black and white” list.
unfortunately, i must admit that mix is (technically) right that this is not misleading, nor is it propaganda, as it is obviously a joke. however, it is also obviously entirely based on stereotypes and not the truth. if you’re not privy to that mix, i’m afraid that you’re no less ignorant, smug, and self-righteous than bill o’reilly himself.
I’d like to believe that a lot of this isn’t true. But it is.
The biggest failing of the US conservative population is that it is blind to its own double standards, and ignorant of the reality of other world views.
There are great conservatives/republicans in history who would stand way to the left of current standard. These people had brains too and weren’t afraid to use them.
Exhibit one: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” - Lincoln.
Exhibit two: “A bill of rights [should provide] clearly and without the aid of sophisms for… the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land and not by the law of nations.” –Thomas Jefferson.
Exhibit three: “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.” - Jefferson, again.
As a Christian, I am appalled to see my faith sullied by some of the words and actions of US conservatives. While I live and breathe, my God compels me to speak up for the oppressed and those who have no real voice of their own.
Yes, this article is a rant but it rings very true and not just with the left.
JustABrit.
What a pile of crap, I don’t even know where to start. Democrats have never been into logic or reason, just blanket statements without any concept of proof or evidence to back things up. So sad.
Kudos to txcnsrvtve for an intelligent counter. What the writer of this article forgets to see is that a similar list of offenses can be created for Democrats as well.
If people would stop slinging mud, blaming others, and complaining about things without doing anything about them, the world just might change. Until then, things will always be the same. Humans will always be money-grubbing, will always utilize resources to create and destroy, and they will always blindly confess that they are infinitely superior to everyone else.
in response to the responses of txcnsrvtve and Prufrock > HUH?
Hello everybody. I apologize for the eventual mistakes in my writing as english is not my mother tongue.
It is quite complicated to draw the protrait of an ideology. This article tackles this question with an ironical and cynical approach (wich obviously led to a quite sterile debate, but was it the original purpose?) but it sometimes underlines facts that, to me, can not be denied.
quotation #11
You must believe that profitable pollution is perfectly ok, and that all science is bunk when it cuts into profits.
Sarcastic but somewhere true. Why has the Bush governement refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol that president Clinton had promissed to approve (with some negociatings)?
Life is a question of priority. Nowadays, U.S.A still stands out as the most polluting country in term of gaz emissions.
This is just one example that stresses the differences between the two different views and ways of acting. Please let me know your reaction about this, it may be interesting to share our point of view, me as a French, and you as Americans (I suppose).
I allow myself to add that saying that either democrats or replublicans have never been into logic, is totally illogic.