The danger of demonizing your enemies...

... is that you become them.

Here's a snippet from Gold Plated Witch on Wheels that caught me short awhile back [entitled Wisdom from Children]:

At the dinner table one night, she [her daughter] looked at me and asked, "Is it true that Obama kills babies?"

I almost spit out my peas. My husband raised an eyebrow at me and I had to explain myself.

A few weeks back, my 10-year-old son asked me why we weren't voting for the "brown man." I'm sure, just like nk's daughter, my son had been told what a "historic" occasion it was that we could vote for a "brown man," leaving off, of course, that it was also historic because we could elect a woman as vice president. I stopped and thought about how to explain why I thought Barack Obama would be bad for our country. Tax policies are probably a little over the head of a boy who still dreams of flying. And I didn't think he'd be impressed with my judicial philosophy. So, I told him that Barack Obama thought it was ok for women to kill their babies and we didn't think that was a good idea.

Yes, yes. I know that's an overly simplistic way of discussing the abortion debate with a child who doesn't fully understand the birds and the bees yet. But it was the most direct (and accurate) way of describing Obama's abortion position. And I used far fewer words than Obama has to.

So, at the dinner table, my husband turned to our youngest child and said, "Obama doesn't want to kill them himself. He just thinks it's ok if their mothers want to."

Both children looked aghast. "Why would he do that?" she asked.

I pondered that question for a minute and then replied, "I don't understand why he would, honey." And that's the truth.

Now, here's one from today by kavips [from a post entitled Why are there "Republicans"?]:

Got to love little children… they see things so clearly…

After seeing this graph, my preschooler instantly “got it” and asked….”If Republicans are so bad for this country, why do people keep voting for them..”

Damn good question….

Here is my feeble attempt to explain their existence….. (grownups were standing around listening too…)

I said…..

Imagine if you had soooo much money you couldn’t spend it …. You could do what ever you want….

So you were sitting there one day and casually said to yourself……”Wow, if I didn’t have to pay so much in taxes….I could…”

To your right someone pipes up, stands excitedly, waving their hand, and says….”I’ll support that….Hey, give me lots of money and I’ll take that cause and run with it….. Just pay my bills and let me live comfortable on the margins, and hell, I’ll even support “NO taxes”.

So your sitting there, thinking “whoa, that was easy”, and decide to see if it works twice.. …. “Wow, if I didn’t have to pay my employees all this money for working for me, I could make even more money….. To your right…. someone pipes up, stands excitedly, waving their hand, exclaiming……” I’ll support that…. Hey, give me lot’s of money and I’ll take that cause and run with it….. Just pay my bills and let me live comfortable on the margins, and damn, I’ll support the erosion of ALL unions…. I’ll run them into the ground…..”

So you marvel at how just a few words can get policy changing… and you decide to push the envelope, just to see if there is even a boundary….. “Wow, if I didn’t just have to follow the stupid letter of the law, I could make so much more money….. ” To your right… someone pipes up, stands excitedly, waving their hand, exclaiming…..”I’ll support that…. Hey, give me money and I’ll take that cause and run with it…. Just pay my bills and let me live comfortable on the margins, and …. Hey, you know….I’ll even support your right to a kingdom….. No problem…. just pay my bills…..

So you see,…. as long as someone has too much money, “those people” will always be there….. No matter what their name may be, whether we call them Federalists…. Whigs….. Republicans…… or even some different name of the Democratic Party that will eventually will split off to cater to those needy people…. The wealthy will always have sycophants…..who will sell their country’s soul out from under us for a few extra dollars…..

Sound like someone you know?

Two common elements here:

1) Explaining the beliefs of people you don't agree with to children who trust you completely to hand out objective truth.

2) Not living up to that trust.

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

Libertarian National Committee Deathwatch Part 1

As the LNC continues to lurch towards collapse, with the latest news of mass layoffs at HQ, I've decided to begin tracking those things leading the national party to irrelevance, even as state and local parties gain power. As news, rumors and rhetoric break out, I shall chronicle them in this ongoing series at Delaware Libertarian. Organizations approaching failure have a number of characteristics. One of the most striking is renunciation of their purpose and effort to reinvent themselves as a "me-too" provider of services in the marketplace. In this, the LNC has been on a collision course with destiny for a while now. Recently, for example, it hired Republican Party web site developer TerraEclipse to redesign the LNC web site . Terra created a web site very similar to those of the clients it brags most about -- far-right Republican conservatives like Tom McClintock and BJ Lawson. A quick look at the web site they built for the LNC is instructive. The tagline on the ...

Soda tax debate reveals fundamental progressive assertions about your lack of individual rights and the "responsiblities" of the State

I thought it would be at least amusing to use the Delawareliberal comments as sub-headings regarding each category of what is wrong with the proposed tax on sodas and juice drinks. But there are so many different little strands of each comment that it would be impossible to pull them all out. So, instead, I'm going to let you read them in more or less the order they appeared, and note the assumptions. pandora: I’m perfectly okay with taxing sodas and juice drinks. Mainly because they’re total crap, and one of the main reasons our country’s children are overweight. They are also dirt cheap. Assumptions here: (1) Because "I" am perfectly okay with a new tax it should be imposed on everybody; (2) it is the government's responsibility to keep children from being obese; (3) the cheapness of the product to be taxed justifies charging people more for it. John Manifold: Soda fattens your kids [and you and your husband], shortens their lives, costs more than water [a...

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