It is too obvious, and needs only fictional support for the obviousness to be even more apparent than is already deeply obvious. I think we’re toast.
Observe the Conservapedia identifying the clotheslessness of the American Liberal, né Progressive.
Quoth Conservapedia: The style of a liberal often includes these characteristics:
1. Uses the term “controversial” to describe what he opposes (e.g., classroom prayer), but not to describe what he supports (e.g., theory of evolution)
C. I think Jesus Christ should be praised in our schools by all students, regardless of their personal beliefs.
L. That seems illegal, and controversial to boot.
C. [Does shocker gesture in mock surprise]
2. A lack of originality and a predominance of copying and imitating.
C. Hey check out this Malkin post with 500 trackbacks!
L. I agree with this digby post on a topic very important to me, the direction of our country.
C. !!!
3. Virtually never criticize hateful comments or behavior by a fellow liberal.
C. Why have you not commented about serious problems at Republic of Dogs?
L. I was unaware of such a post.
C. Your silence on this issue spe- er, is very telling.
4. Obsession with the media, and even the few conservatives in the media.
L. Why are David Brooks and Bill Kristol wrong all the time? Also, the entire network devoted to Conservatives, Fox News?
C. You want to have their babies. You sicken me.
5. Like to use the phrase “Silence Speaks Volumes”
L. Hey, are you going to respond to the contradictory nature of issues 5 and 7?
C. I’m not going to dignify that.
L. Whatever flo’s yer bo. Anyhoo, I’m going to this talk tonight, Joe Silence is going to do some readings from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, entitled “Silence [muffled]…”
6. Call something disliked a “conspiracy theory,” but don’t use that term against wacky liberal theories like global warming.
C. So Sheman-dos and Gayvy Seals are infiltrating day cares making them gay cares and converting our children to Lt. Liberaces in their army of Sodom. Also are renaming the New England Patriots the New England Gaytriots.
L. Does that not seem far-fetched?
7. Respond with “sigh” when presented with repeated examples of harm caused by liberal culture, yet persist in denying the harm despite overwhelming evidence.
C. Rachel Carson killed more people than Pol Pot who was equally liberal. Also, Jimmy Carter stepped on a bug.
L. *sigh.*
8. Thinking in terms of what someone likes or doesn’t like, or has or doesn’t have, or belongs or doesn’t belong.
L. Hey, I’m going to Dairy Queen for Blizzards, what does everyone want? Should I just get Reese’s for everyone? What? Pigpen is allergic? OK, I’ll get Heathbar for him.
C. *sigh*
9. Declaring that one is insulted as a response to an argument.
C. Liberalism is really just fascism. It also is Communism. Environmentalism is also Fascism. Isn’t it funny how all 20th century atrocities, including the Holocaust, are essentially due to civil rights and minimum wage legislation?
L. That’s kind of insulting.
C. Can there be no reasoned debate?
10. Unjustified claims of expertise, authority or knowledge.
L. Man did not ride on dinosaurs.
C. How do you know?
L. I KNOW.
C. *sigh*
11. Insistence on talking more and having the last word in a discussion or debate, or last wordism.
C. This argument is over.
L. You can’t just declare that unilaterally.
C. *sigh*
12. Attempting to portray conservatives as callous or uncaring; bait them into making insensitive remarks; falsely describing them as angry.
L. Look, here’s a bunch of stuff about how conservatives thought price gouging in the wake of Katrina was good a good way to distribute essential items to the trapped population. Also, here are a bunch of untrue things about murders and rapes and shootings. Also, a lot of stuff about the genetic inferiority of minorities and how immigrants are lepers.
C. I don’t choose to discuss any of that, but let me defend all those things anyway. Also, f8CK you you f84king f*4k f2ce. I hope you die deservingly of AIDS. And your entire family. You should be in a concentration camp.
L. Wow. Angrytime McGoo.
C. Telling.
13. Calling others “extremist” or “racist”.
C. I think black people are genetically inferior. I also think Muslims should be deported along with Gays and 11 million Illegals. And income taxes are illegal.
L. That seems Rextremacist™.
14. An obsession with and exaggeration of artificial scarcity, such as wealth, rather than focusing on creating more.
L. Soon there will be no more Rhinoceroses and food for people without food.
C. Think about it, Liberal.
L. This is a hard one. Conservation, third world development, less waste?
C. Stone cold.
L. This is hard. Is it right in front of my face? Feed the starving people to the rhinoceroses, also bionic limbs and flying cars?
C. Warmer.
15. Ignoring or failing to recognize abstract concepts and denying obvious correlations between liberal beliefs and destructive behavior.
L. Wait, so G*d is all powerful, but only has power if I choose to believe in such, but if I don’t believe in such, then SATAN has power over me, but also I have free will, but how does that relate to Satan? Also, JC is a God and a Man and the same material as God, but God is totally without sin but man has sin and there’s also the Holy Spirit and they are three different exactly the same and indivisible things and this cracker turns a chunk of human flesh in my mouth. Maybe that could work for me, but I’m just going to go about my own stuff and you can do your stuff and we’ll just call it even.
C. If you don’t have God in your life you have no morals. Also, the world is exactly as it is described in the Bible, 6000 years old and the sun revolves around it. Also I heard about this woman that kept getting pregnant just to have abortions.
L. Uh, no, and that story sounds made up.
C. Last wordism at its finest.
16. Deny the obvious and embrace the implausible; see examples of liberal denial.
L. I don’t deny that a list of 12 things is not a list of 10 things.
C. So you deny to deny that you deny the rest of the list. Crickets are chirping, and their chirps belie an explanatory silence.
17. Attempting to appear smarter than others, when often the opposite is true.
L. I just don’t think people rode on dinosaurs. The fossil record is pretty clear on this.
C. Welcome to the land of the opposite is true.
L. You seem like a giant brainiac.
C. Thanks.
18. Attempting to appear more reasonable than others, when often the opposite is true.
L. I think it makes sense that people should have space for their own beliefs and to worship as they would like, while trying not to infringe on each other’s space or beliefs.
C. I’m not going to be tricked by your secret unreasonableness. I vote no. Need I remind you we reside in the land of opposite truth?
L. Capt. Brainwagon on the Braniac Patrol with Rocketpants! I am chastened.
C. Thank you.
OK, here are the rest, please handle as you might in comments in the above or your own preferred style. The best ones are the ones that are the most recursive, as usual.
Please do better than me in comments. The field is fertile and needs to be plowed. Give me your best comments. Only you know the depths of the liberal hive mind!
Alternate 16:
16. Deny the obvious and embrace the implausible; see examples of liberal denial.
21. Denial of accountability
22. Believing that bureaucratic honors or appointments are meaningful achievements, as fights over political office
23. Insisting on a mindless equality, as in “if you have an entry for Beethoven, then you must allow entries for vulgar rap artists!”
40. Often declare that an adversary should be “ashamed of himself,” while rarely saying that about a supportive co-liberal (such as Ted Kennedy)[11] [12]
L: You should be ashamed of backing politicians who for 40 years railed against regimes, and cited torture as one of the things that made them worse than us.
C: Well you should be ashamed of Ted Kennedy for killing that poor girl in Chappaquiddich
L: I am. But I still vote for him, and he doesn’t support torture
C: Tell that to the poor girl who drowned.
L: any chance you’re going to address my torture question?
C: No. Fucking. Way.
49. Using non sequiturs in argument, such as responding to the point above that liberals over-rely on accusations of hypocrisy by citing an example of conservatives’ observing liberal hypocrisy. But their example does not help their argument. Quite the contrary, use of that example tends to prove that liberals do over-rely on accusations of hypocrisy (relativism). Think about that.
C: How can you defend Ted Kennedy?
L: I like pie.
53. Inability or unwillingness to differentiate between genuine conservative arguments and parodies of conservative arguments.
C: I sure do wish someone would blow up the top 4 floors of the NYT building
L: Really?!?! That’s entirely crazy.
C: As crazy as letting men get married
L: Um, what?
C: You’re a liberal from massachusetts, and you support ted kennedy, so what do you care about the NYT?
L: …. I like pie.
36. Reluctance to admit that anything is morally wrong
C: But men marrying each other is morally wrong.
L: No, you think it’s icky becuase you’re insecure
C: But heterosexuual marriage is the cornerstone of civilizations
L: I’m not sure the ancient Greeks agreed with you
C: But that poor girl drowned.
L: You really ~do~ support torture, don’t you.
C: I like pie.
46. Dismissing legitimate criticism as “a joke”
C: The Grand Canyon was formed in the Biblical Flood and your “science” “is” “made” “up” of “facts” that are “wrong”. Also, Satan made me bob on that dude’s knob. I’m as str8 as they get, because the Devil made me do it. He actually didn’t make you gay because you have free will, you chose to be that way, and is why you will burn in hell.
L. You must be joking.
53. Inability or unwillingness to differentiate between genuine conservative arguments and parodies of conservative arguments.
C: You’re unable or unwilling to differentiate between genuine conservative arguments and parodies of conservative arguments.
L: HAHAHAHAHAHA. You funny.
53. Inability or unwillingness to differentiate between genuine conservative arguments and parodies of conservative arguments.
C: There is a 3000 scientist conspiracy to suppress data suggesting that Global Warming is not real. Counter opinions are suppressed and denied legitimate discussion by the thousands of liberal scientists all working in close lockstep.
L: You are kidding right?
C: PROOF!!
39. Claim that science supports their position, and ignore any evidence that shows their position to be false
L: 150 years of biological research completely supports the theory of evolution. It is the foundation of all biological research.
C: An electrical engineer says the retina is too complicated to evolve so god must have designed it.
L: You are kidding right?
C: DENIAL!!!
This page is amazing:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Talk:Liberal_denial
Bonus Liberoninja Combo of 17 and 49 (and probably 50 as well):
C: How can you defend Ted Kennedy?
L: I like pi.
Bonus from the page Mandos linked:
It really is a question on the nature of scientific knowledge. Given that humans are imperfect, we must interpret our environment imperfectly. The tools of science, mathematics, and statistics help us describe that reality, and religion helps us give it meaning and purpose. What happens when our scientific knowledge collides with our moral understanding of the world? Do we change our morals? Of course not. Do we change scientific fact? No, certainly not. The only choice is to take those facts, and use our morals to understand them better. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that the critic above is right, and that breast cancer and abortion are unrelated (hypothetically!) That doesn’t make abortion morally right. It doesn’t affect the morality of abortion in the least. Abortion is wrong either way. It seems silly to hang onto an idea in order to support a moral reality—we already know what is moral, we don’t need to twist science to support it. Science has a different role. RobertK 23:24, 13 February 2008 (EST)
I’m so accustomed to the status quo that I hope Obama wins just so I can watch the fireworks at conservapedia, redstate, LGF, and, well, since you know more than a few of them are going to go entirely off the deep end – on the nightly news perp walk.
I just hope no-one gets hurt for real.
# 34. Believing that the education of children is for liberals to control
L: I sure do wish teachers got paid more
C: Yeah, you would want to see your liberal buddies enriched
L: No, I’d like to see a real incentive for the best and brightest to teach our youngest
C: Oh, the Youu-nions will make sure the brightest conservatives don’t get -those- jobs
L: Well, if they were paid better maybe more conservatives would become qualified educators
C: Being conservative doesn’t mean their unqualified, see, that’s what I mean.
L: You really DO like pie.
50. Selectively citing the Bible when convenient, even though they hold much of it in disdain.
L: I thought Jesus told us to love our brothers as ourselves and to turn the other cheek?
C: I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I was firing my assault rifle at some shoplifters when you were talking.
Someone suggested to me last night that Conservapedia was a blogs4brownback style put on.
I remain conflicted. If something is so good and perfect, does that make it a parody?
Whoops, I just exhibited 53. Wah wah.
Also, there was another one somewhere where it would be liberal to accuse them of not being the real conservatives and saying what real conservatives would say. This would also be long-winded and verbose, and last-wordism.
So, is Conservapedia Blogs4Brownback writ large?
Have we been taken in? Hoodwinked?
I cannot compute.
I remain conflicted. If something is so good and perfect, does that make it a parody?
And as is spelled out in Mother Night, does it matter?
24. Concealing one’s liberal views rather than admitting them
LAST WORD!!!!
It’s real. The owner is Andy Schlafly, the real son of Phyllis. A whois on the domain reveals that he’s registered it from the address of—get this—New York Law Firm. No joke.
(The law office in question is possibly an employer, since Schlafly is a lawyer by training, apparently. Further Googling reveals that one of the partners filed an amicus brief for the gynaecologists’ association on a case regarding whether federally funded programs can be prohibited in offering abortion referrals. Presumably, this person was thus arguing against the government. The Rehnquist court decided in favour of the government and denied the First Amendment Claim.)
So yeah, I think it’s quite real.
fishwagon,
I cited Mother Night to the hinter of the thing.
25. Calling conservative free speech “hate” speech [2]
The above is 11, 17 and 18. And this comment is 11 itself. And possibly 17. Sigh (7).
You silence speaks volumes (5).
my personal favorite is 47. Denying something widely known to be true but difficult to prove, such as observing that men are far more likely to work in gas stations than women.
It’s like George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. You can’t prove it, but everyone knows it’s true. Why do you hate the Father of our Country, and, thus, America?
I sure taught that cherry tree a lesson!!!
Kathleen, that is funny, because I once read that men are more likely to be seen chopping down cherry trees than women, therefore it follows that our founding father had to be George Washington.
23. Insisting on a mindless equality, as in “if you have an entry for Beethoven, then you must allow entries for vulgar rap artists!”
C: You have Wikipedia? Well I’m going to create Conservapedia!
L: Is that furry porn on your computer screen?
C: It’s just research!
Oh, on the denial things that I deny- sports are bad for women, so to sum up- women suffer via sports. Totally denied.
New York Law Firm.
eleventy-one?
No joke.
MAI MILKSHAKE!
26. Calling conservative humor “unprofessional and meaningless, and degrades the quality of your encyclopedia.” [3]
That’s not in there, IS IT??????
Don’t know. The joke was courtesy Clayton Williams.
I hope Clayton Williams gets hit by lightning, and he lies back and enjoys it.
43. Often long-winded and verbose, and in debates liberals often consume more than their fair share of the alloted time, leaving less time for the other side.
L: your list of “Liberal Style” contains 56 entries.
C: *sigh*
53. Inability or unwillingness to differentiate between genuine conservative arguments and parodies of conservative arguments.
L: New York law Firm. Q.E.D.
Kathleen’s up two is 49 as well, and the one right below, sadly, is 30. AGAIN, mine is last wordism.
27. Pretending to know more than he does; Isaac Newton admitted that he knew almost nothing, yet a liberal rarely admits that and often pretends to know more than he does
30 – Over-reliance on mockery
Mine is over-reliance on travishamockery.
28. Resistance to quantifying things, such as liberal bias or openmindedness
tl; dr.
21. L: What is this, a turd in my soup?
R: Looks like a bit of brownie to me.
L: Oh, I forgot I was eating a brownie sundae, forgot about it so long it must have melted.
27. R: You spilled your brownie sundae. It’s going all over the place.
L: No problem, R. I’ll catch it this extra cup I have and sprinkle some agar over it to keep it from getting runny. I watch Iron Chef.
R: Newton didn’t defeat the godless Leibniz in the calculus wars because of agar.
36. L: This brownie sundae sure is tasty.
R: What about the brownie sundaes who melted to death in Iraq before we invaded?
46. R: I can’t believe you ordered a turd sundae on Veterans’ Day.
L: Hahaha, that bit of brownie does look like a turd. You’re too funny.
R (shrugging): The kitchen staff was really pissed about what you said about the soup.
48. L: Have a bite of my brownie sundae, R, it’s delish.
R: Why sure, L. It is delish, but the brownie and vanilla seem a little intermingled don’t you think?
L: I sure do, R, but I can’t help it. They’re melting. If I could stem the tide of vanilla into brownie I would but I can’t. It sure is a problem, though. Look at our inner crunchcones.
Annotated Swoof:
21. Denial of accountability
27. Pretending to know more than he does; Isaac Newton admitted that he knew almost nothing, yet a liberal rarely admits that and often pretends to know more than he does
36. Reluctance to admit that anything is morally wrong
46. Dismissing legitimate criticism as “a joke” [14]
48. Will often deny being a liberal, or will claim to be a “true conservative”, while spouting liberal and democratic talking points and criticizing basic conservative beliefs and principles.
My mind has been bended.
Will often deny being a liberal, or will claim to be a “true conservative”, while spouting liberal and democratic talking points and criticizing basic conservative beliefs and principles.
He can bite me.
Hooray! The USA is now no longer under the odious yoke of the fourth amendment. How do you feel people?
*waves at NSA*
49. Using non sequiturs in argument, such as responding to the point above that liberals over-rely on accusations of hypocrisy by citing an example of conservatives’ observing liberal hypocrisy. But their example does not help their argument. Quite the contrary, use of that example tends to prove that liberals do over-rely on accusations of hypocrisy (relativism). Think about that.
R: You know, L, you should have annotated our discussion last night about your brownie sundae. It would have been much easier to follow.
L: Yes, but you conservatives often overly Lexis-ize your discussions with footnotes to obscure the falsity of your arguments.
R: Think about that.