Things you have to believe to be a Democrat?

In response to the semi-famous "Things you have to believe to be a Republican" email that was circulating there were many attemnpts to respond with a "Democrat" version.  None of them really approached the meme status the way the Republican one did, but I'd like to respond to one of them anyway.  I make no claims that the following one is in any way the most popular or any kind of “official” list. It’s just the first one that came up in Google with the search tag, “things you have to believe to be a Democrat.”

(In case the Google order eventually changes, this is from:: http://www.treachery.net/~jdyson/liberal_beliefs.html)

1. Drug addiction is a disease that should be treated with compassion and understanding...unless the addict is a Conservative talk show host.

LOL – I’m sorry… Most liberals would be perfectly willing to acknowledge that Rush Limbaugh is most definitely diseased. Funny oh this tries to spin around one form the Republican list… and yet utterly fails!

2. The United States should be subservient to the United Nations. Our highest authority is not God and the U.S. Constitution, but a collective of tinpot dictators (and their appeasers) and the U.N. charter.

This one’s kind of bizarre. “Subservient to the UN.” Seems a bit exaggerated, seeing as how the UN would pretty much collapse without US support. I guess they think that endless war all the world over is preferable to having some forum to attempt diplomacy.

3. Government should relax drug laws regardless of the potential for abuse, but should pass new and unConstitutional anti-gun laws because of the potential for abuse.

Yeah, but… I can’t kill anyone else with a little marijuana. What’s more… What “new gun laws” have the Democrats proposed since the took control of congress in 2007? [*crickets*]

4. Calls for increased security after a terrorist attack are “political opportunism,” but calls for more gun control after a criminal’s spree killing is “a logical solution.”

When that “increased security” involves unconstitutional, unamerican measures like warrantless wiretapping and suspension of habeus corpus? Damned strait. When the “criminal” (I’m guessing he’s referring to Seung Hui Cho) who went on a killing spree was a former mental patient who should not have been able to buy his gun under existing laws and those “calls for more gun control” are basically just the shoring up of the current system? Again: Damned strait. (And as a graduate of Virginia Tech, I’d gladly kick anyone’s ass who tries to use Seung Hui Cho to make a bullshit political point like this one.)

5. “It Takes a Village” means everything you want it to mean...except creeping socialist government involvement in the nuclear family.

Huh? I’m not entirely sure what ANY of that means! It almost sounds more like something a conservative would believe, but even then it’s not a particularly clever parody.

6. Disarming innocent, law-abiding citizens helps protect them from evil, lawless terrorists and other thugs.

Well, I got nothing here, except what I said under (3): WHAT “new gun laws” have the Democrats proposed since they took control of congress in 2007? (*crickets*)

7. Slowly killing an unborn innocent by tearing it apart limb from limb is good. Slowly killing an innocent disabled woman by starving her to death is good. Quickly killing terrorists, convicted murderers and rapists is BAD.

Oh, you like to kill them quickly all right. Quick enough to avoid having to prove they’re actually terrorists, and quick enough that there’s no change to even consider otherwise. Forcing children on rape victims and people who don’t want them and can’t afford them IS good I guess, huh? Keeping someone alive who WISHED TO DIE is also good I guess. And where’re all those ‘limited government’ principles when it comes to recognizing a husbands right to make medical decisions for his wife? Of respecting a patients own wished?

BTW: As I’ve posted before, I’m AGAINST abortion. Like many liberals I talk to (surprise, surprise) I believe it to be an immoral act. So therefore: I WOULDN’T HAVE ONE. What I won’t do is labor under the delusion that what I THINK is wrong needs to be TAKEN AWAY from everybody else… like Conservatives do.

8. Every religion should be respected and promoted in public schools the name of diversity, so long as that religion isn’t Christianity.

Um…NO! WTF?! NO RELIGION should be “promoted in public schools!” PERIOD! Despite what you lot think, Freedom OF Religion REQUIRES Freedom FROM Religion!

9. The best way to support our troops is to criticize their every move. This will let them know they’re thought of often.

Since when is George W. Bush, “the troops?” OK, I know, I know… I guess they think the best way to win the hearts and minds of a foreign country is to bomb the shit out of their cities and kill as many civilians as possible that we don’t round up at random and torture until the sign confessions justifying their groundless incarceration.

10. Sexual harassment, groping and drug use are degenerate if you’re the governor of California, but it’s okay if you’re the President of the United States.

(Tongue in cheek) Clinton also did all that stuff when he was GOVERNOR. His only marital transgression while PRESIDENT was a consensual affair.

And this one’s almost too easy to turn around. How about: Sexual harassment, groping and drug use are degenerate in a public servant who’s a Democrat, but it’s okay if they’re a Republican. LOL.

11. Sex education should be required so that teens can make informed choices about sex, but gun education should be banned because it will turn those same teens into maniacal mass-murderers.

Um, no… hang on a second… Gun education is something that we liberals would WANT TO REQUIRE any potential gun-owner to get! It’s one of those law thingies you were calling unconstitutional just a few posts ago.

12. Minorities are blameless for the hatred of the racist; women are blameless for the hatred of the rapist; but America is entirely at fault for the hatred of Islamofascists.

Wow. This is pretty telling isn’t it? Think about this. Seriously, this is sick. What they’re saying is that Racism is justified (because I guess all those stereotypes are TRUE, huh? Who knew?) and Rape CAN, IN FACT sometime be the WOMAN’S FAULT. But the U.S. is entirely blameless, no matter what we do. We can debate the last point, but in pairing with the first two, they suggest that those would be equally debatable statements. That’s just…. sick.

13. Poverty is the cause of all terrorism...which is why the leaders of al Qaeda are typically U.S.-educated and were raised in wealth and luxury.

Again, I’m not even sure where this is coming from. As a liberal I’d be wiling to bet that poverty in the US is the cause of much of our street level CRIME. And I’d also argue that street-crime does far less damage to our society than white collar crime – Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Bertie Ebbers, Bernie Madoff. But if poverty has any connection to TERRORISM, it obviously poverty in AFRICA and the MIDDLE EAST. And it only makes people easy for these Wealthy, U.S.-educated types to RECRUIT. You think BIN LADEN is going to be a suicide bomber? Yeah right! That’s an entry level job. In that way, A-Q operates pretty much like the Republican party does: Using religion to get poor people to support an agenda that’s against their interests.

14. The Patriot Act is a horrific compromise of Constitutional rights, but anti-Second Amendment laws and Franklin Roosevelt’s Presidential Order 9066 must be regarded “reasonable precautions.”

First of all… WHAT “anti-Second Amendment laws?” (And what’s with the gun fetish of the psychopath that wrote this, huh?! About 1 in 5 of these are about GUNS!) Secondly… Most liberals would gladly condemn Order 1066 as one of the blackest periods in our nation’s history. It’s rather telling, however, how eager you “loving Chiristians” seem to be to do the same to every Muslim and Mexican! Also… putting aside that 1066 was definitely NOT justified, it was in response to WWII – the single largest and deadliest armed conflict in the history of mankind. Not a SINGLE terrorist attack, perpetrated by a handful of guys living in caves.

15. We should unquestioningly honor the wishes of our age-old allies, even when said allies no longer act like our allies and have vested economic interests in propping up our enemies.

Kind of like how you lot support free-trade agreements with China? You know: Send all of the manufacturing jobs to a Communist country just so you can break our “Socialist” unions.

16. Socialized medicine is the ideal. Nevermind all those people who spend every dime they have to get to the United States so they can get quality medical care...that their nation’s socialized health care can’t provide.

LOL. And I suppose free-market medical care is the best? Never mind the 40+ million American who are denied health coverage due to “preexisting conditions” or can’t afford it unless their employer picks up 75-80% of the tab. (And that anyone else can be dropped at any time!) And never mind that many chronic, deadly diseases have no available medicines (not to mention the shortage of snakebite anti-venom, and a dearth of new anti-biotics!) because it’s more profitable to put yet another erectile dysfunction drug on the market.

17. Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and Natalie Maines are perfectly qualified to criticize our leadership, but Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charlton Heston, and Dennis Miller are just ignorant political hacks.

Yeah, that’s pretty much the size of it. Again: We all have freedom of speech, some of us just have more intelligent things to say.

18. John Lott’s research on how gun ownership reduces crime is junk science, but Michael Bellesiles is still an authority on why gun control is good (even though he was forced to resign from Emory due to research misconduct over his book “Arming America”).

I have no idea who either of those men are, and I have never brought up, or heard them brought up in any discussion I’ve ever been in about gun control. Personally? I don’t support restrictive gun laws, and (as I’ve mentioned several times now) there have been no proposals put forward by the Democrats to create any.

19. Bush’s toppling the Saddam regime was a “diversion,” but Clinton’s lobbing a couple of cruise missiles at Iraq in the thick of the Lewinsky sex scandal was “sending a message.”

Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with this? I’m pretty much fine with this one! LOL. (Also: Which is the bigger story: A reputed philandered having an affair, or a purported great anti-terrorism fight being unable to find the ONE GUY that he said was responsible for 9/11?) (Well… at least he said that until he couldn’t find him. Then it was magically all SADDAM’S fault.)

20. A president who lies under oath is okay, but a president who references sixteen words from an allies’ intelligence report should be dragged through the streets naked.

So… Lying about an extramarital affair, which was an immaterial question, in a civil trial involving ONE PERSON is an impeachable offense, but cherry-picking, omitting and lying about your evidence to start a war that kills thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of enemies and civilians alike and which could accomplish NOTHING in the war on terror, is OK? Glad we could clear that up.

21. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning Second Amendment rights and shopping the courts for judges sympathetic to causes that wouldn’t pass in any legislature.

Again – What’s with the gun fetish? Haven't we adequately covered this issue  yet? And what the hell is this guy talking about – there are no anti-gun laws being proposed! As for the rest? Why is that any different from a judge overturning some “anti-2nd amendment law” that had majority support? Also: “Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution” is a CONSERVATIVE talking point. And it not really one you lot really believe in either!

22. “The People” in the First Amendment means The People; “the People” in the Fourth Amendment means The People; “the People” in the Ninth Amendment means The People; “the People” in the Tenth Amendment means The People; but “the People” in the Second Amendment (ratified in 1791) means the National Guard (created by an Act of Congress in 1903).

Again with the gun-fetish. You’d think that being anti-gun and loving terrorists was the only thing the Democrats ever did wrong! Where’s the stuff about high taxes?

23. You support a woman’s “right to choose” to kill her unborn child, but don’t believe that same woman is competent enough to homeschool the children she bears.

This makes no sense at all. Chances are that home-schooler is a pro-life conservative. So it probably isn’t THE SAME woman. And based on the superstitious bullshit religious pseudoscientific nonsense conservative want to teach their kids? Yeah: DAMNED STRAIT.

24. Proven draft-dodging is irrelevant, but baseless claims of AWOL status is crucial to national security.

Proven? Baseless? I realize that, as Obi-Wan stated, “many of the truths we cling to depend greatly upon our own POV,” but, in the words of Indigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Oh, and… I don’t think Bush being AWOL during Vietnam was ever considered a matter of National Security. Just of the Right's credibility.

25. Threatening to boycott Dr. Laura’s and Rush Limbaugh’s advertisers is exercising Freedom of Speech, but threatening to boycott CBS’s “The Reagans” and Liberal actors over their asinine anti-American remarks is censorship and McCarthyist blacklisting.

No… both are absolutely excercises of Free speech. As I mentined earlier, some of us just have more intelligent things to SAY. (Some of those liberal actors, for example.)

26. You fervently believe that rabidly referring to your political opponent as an “idiot” is a good idea...even after that “idiot” whipped your ass in the 2000 and 2004 elections.

Project much? It’s my experience that liberals debate while conservative resort to insult. (And I have no doubt that some “idiot” conservative will come by, post here, and prove my point!) Also… “whipped your ass.” Interesting way to describe 2000 – when that idiot LOST the populat vote and “won” (notice the quotes, liberals?) the 2nd closest electoral college vote in history. And 2004? That was the narrowest REelkection bid in history. The only incumbents that faired worse than Bush did in ’04 LOST. Also – while you lot insist on CALLING us idiots, we insist on PROOVING that you lot are. There’s a difference.

27. Everyone must unquestioningly support a junior senator with negligible political experience for president. ’Cause, like, if you don’t, well...dude, you’re a racist!

I thought we were supposed to be elitists or something. Huh. Who knew?

28. All cultures must be treated as equal. This is why we have to make excuses for Muslims when they riot, rape and slaughter, but vilify Christians when they organize letter writing campaigns.

When the hell did Christians “organize letter writing campaigns?” We couldn’t have POSSIBLY vilified that, because we never even HEARD about it! Probably because it was obviously COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE. (Which must be why they instead took to killing doctors and denying poor women access to pre-natal care.)

29. America can only be great if it raises taxes, punishes the successful, rewards the lazy, creates bigger government, and funds more socialist programs. It worked for the Soviet Union, right?

Did it really take this guy 29 points before he got around to mentioning taxes? He’s obviously not a REAL conservative, just a gun-toting, muslim-hater. Anyway…

I guess America was going to be great under ever increasing DEBT due to WARS and TAX CUTS and the COLLAPSE OF A DE-REGULATED BANKING SYSTEM. At least we WERE, until Obama took office, then suddenly thirty years of accumulated debt were not only everyone’s top priority, but also entirely OBAMA’S FAULT.

30. Being against illegal immigration is racist. Nevermind that illegal isn’t a race.

Riiiight. Because, you know, there are so many Canadians coming over the border, eh? Must be for that free health care we offer or something. Why do I get the feeling that if Mexicans were lighter skinned and spoke only English Illegal Immigration wouldn’t be much of an issue? (Except with pro-labor LIBERALS who recognize what it does to working class wages!) (And other than RACE why is it that this seems to ONLY issue under the sun where Republicans are willing to do ANYTHING to support blue-collare wages?)

31. Global warming is caused by humans burning fossil fuels, which is why the Ice Age ended a mere 10,000 years before the invention of the internal combustion engine.

They have such a wonderful grasp of climate science, don’t they?

32. Everyone has the right to disagree, but only with Republicans.

This is cute. I think I’ll keep it. It makes a good bumper sticker. I’d just change “but only” to “especially.”

33. The only way to be a “real American” is to hate everything America stands for.

Like… torture, indefinite incarceration without trial, endless war, violation of international treaties, warrantless spying on our own citizens, keeping immigrants from becoming citizens… that sort of thing?

34. The only unbiased media is the European media, but only because they hate the United States of America even more than the liberal media in the U.S.

There’s a liberal media? WHERE? I want to watch!

35. Congress must create a “Fairness Doctrine” to counter the commercial success of conservative talk radio and the resounding failure of Air America. (Nevermind that we already have a government-subsidized liberal mouthpiece called National Public Radio.)

LOL. Yeah… Again, the proposal to recreate the “Fairness Doctrine” only exsist in the depraved ramblings of RW Radio. But calling one of the last remaining relatively objective media outlets a “liberal mouthpiece” and suggesting that giving someone a few inutes to refute a three-hour broadcast would somehow bring AM Talk Radio crashing down is a pretty blatant admission of what WE already know: Facts tend to have a liberal bias.

36. Any Republican who sides with Democrats should be instantly assigned the role of “leading Republican” in all media reports. This position is immediately forfeited the moment said Republican starts acting like an American again.

I’m kind of stunned at the audacity of this one. How many times was Independent Joe Lieberman identified as a Democrat while here cheer-lead for Bush’s war after 2004? How do you explain away the FACT that the only Democrats that got interviewed in the build up to the Iraq war were PRO-WAR, even thought the majority of the Party (and eventually of America) were opposed to it? You’ve got this one COMPLETLEY BACKWARDS. Again: Project much?

Also… How do square this idiots statement, that you’re only “acting like an American” if your serving as a Republicans mouthpiece, with #33 (for example)? You no what? I take that back… Actually that’s remarkably (though I’m sure unintentionally) consistent: Since Republicans pretty much hate everything America actually stands for, and only Republicans are “real Americans” I guess he’s, right – only from a conservtaive’s point of view!

37. The pseudoscience of "global warming" must be unquestioningly accepted because a consensus of scientists say it's real. Nevermind that there was also once a consensus among scientists that the Earth was flat, the Sun revolved around the Earth, and that caucasians were genetically superior to all other races.

*sigh* Global Warming is not pseudoscience. Nothing becomes a pseudoscience just because you think that a funny way to try and be dismissive of it. It’s SCIENCE. And the case has been building, without any legitimate challenge, since the 1950’s and it ain;t going away any time soon. (Reality really sucks that way.)
What’s more… The “consensus” that the earth was flat, or that the sun revolved around it, was not one of SCIENTISTS. See… Scientists were the ones DISPELLING that nonsense, even at a risk to their own life posed by that most CONSERVTAIVE of forces: the CHURCH. As for that stuff about Caucasians being genetically superior to all other races? Seems to me like THAT consensus still holds… among WHITE CONSERVATIVES anyway.

That was fun. PAINFULLY EASY. But still fun.