Spooky Creatures At The Supermarket?
Creamed Corn
Once upon a time, there was a grocer. And in his store he sold canned creamed corn. "Wholesome" Brand creamed corn. It was quite good and it sold very well.
One day, while he was stocking the creamed corn, he was approached by a mysterious stranger, smelling of burnt sulfur, who said, "Y'know, this display looks like you're promoting Wholesome corn, and not promoting other brands. It seems like favoritism to me, clearly violating the principle which requires a separation of the store from the product. You're abusing your authority and discriminating against your victims. You're under arrest."
Terrified by the legal consequences of his own insensitive ignorance (as well as the stranger's darting forked tongue), the quivering grocer pled his best (though guilty) case: "I had no idea I was so bad! I repent! How can I make everything correct again?"
"Since you may not favor one brand above another, you must promote our brand, Generic Brand creamed corn."
Fearing that he might sin further, the frightened grocer asked, "But wouldn't that be just as bad? How can I endorse your brand without slighting the others?"
The dangerous fellow lifted his scaled hand to strike, and the grocer sank to his knees to avoid the blow. Satisfied, the sinister being said, "As Liberals we believe that all brands are equally good, equally noble as corn. For that reason we are not a brand at all. By approving the brand which is by definition not a brand, you honor all brands instead of just one. It's that very diversity of brands that you acknowledge and promote by favoring ours."
Surely there was a kind of logic there, so the grocer acquiesced, and in no time his shelves were filled with Generic Brand creamed corn. People were curious and confused, but so many eerie Liberal shills showed up and spoke so well of the new brand that even the skeptics were inevitably shamed into buying it. Everything seemed all right at first.
Alas, the quality of the Generic creamed corn proved disappointing, and the customers grumbled about it, refusing to buy any more, lamenting the loss of the Wholesome kind. In response, the Liberal advocates became accusatory, bullying, horribly browbeating in their manner until no one was brave enough to stand up to them and demand an end to the bad situation. Inevitably, they just bought whatever the Liberals told them to buy, took it home, but didn't really enjoy it at all. Huge amounts of money were wasted, the Wholesome brand went out of business, and only the Liberals got what they wanted, the destruction of their betters.
And so it is in real life. Liberalism is in fierce competition with every other brand of reason, be it personal ethics, education, culture, or religion. It will settle for nothing less grand than total domination and microscopic control of the entire human experience and environment, and to that end it has become a system of personal beliefs and ethics, become a religion, fighting tooth and nail for the complete, unmitigated ownership of the human mind, and our future. Third-Way Social-Democratic Liberalism is their God, and they force our traditional, Wholesome God out of America's public arenas so their political pseudo-religion can pick up the pieces and fill the void. The tactics are sheer genius, admirable and noteworthy.
The simple notion of separating church from state leads inexorably to the idea that no one mindset, no one culture, no one gender or race should be allowed to direct human events. Instead, each competitor is honored for his contributions, assimilated into the greater vision, with Liberalism as the arbiter of value and the referee of disputes, with the indisputable tenets of Liberalism itself for the rules of the game. If you honor your enemies, you transcend them, you bring them under your umbrella. You outwit them, and your overall philosophy thrives. Your cause is bigger, better, more enlightened, more correct than theirs, broader in scope, more fair to everyone.
And if someone doesn't like this benign smugness, you say horrible things about him, intimidate, browbeat, and humiliate him until no one likes him and he's terrified. Inevitably he disappears, so you were right all along.
The goal, the vision of Liberalism is Utopian Sameness, a world-culture of identically-unique world-citizens, each one underwritten, empowered, and protected by a feminist, parental world-Liberal-government. To this end, Liberals will destroy all opposition. Their goal is so bloody noble that conscience flies out the window. They will say anything, do anything, tell any lie, commit and condone any atrocity to win.
Our government, at the hands of the Leftists, has been selling us this generic sameness for the last forty years, and we should be well-tired of it by now. I, for one, am sick of opening the can and getting Liberal causes instead of wholesome political practices. There's no equity of choice between healthy, robust virginity, and patterned contraceptive abortion; there's no reducing both socialist international utopian numeric parliamentary multi-pluralism and competitive free enterprise to the same social value; the Tower of Babel failed, there is no honor in classifying people into factions, dividing them into a pool of separate, competitive equals.
I'm tired of being told that I have no right to decide that anything or anyone is bad, unless it's me (and others like me) for being judgmental. I'm tired of watching pure evil triumph while good is ridiculed. Good is not bad, Bad is not good. I want all the Wholesome Brands back. Or at least a refund.
(Posted August 8, 1999)