You know you're a right-winger if...

 

07/04/99

By Bryan Zepp Jamieson

bullet You believe that if you stop spending money on it, a social problem will just go away.
bullet You believe that human life is important is if you are an embryo, or dying. In between, you're on your own, bub.
bullet You hate and despise the public schools, but nevertheless want them to take over your child's moral training through school prayer and bible instruction.
bullet You have to believe that wasting money on legal services for the poor is a bad thing, but you can't spend enough on those insurance companies.
bullet You have to believe that people are more concerned about a non-aggressive nation 5,000 miles away that has had nukes for 35 years than about the raving loon driving around town shooting at their friends and neighbors.
bullet You have to strain to convince yourself that pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere has no effect. But dirty pictures on the internet are a grave threat to humanity.
bullet You have to believe that your own, small-town social constructs are the natural laws of the universe and the direct will of God.
bullet You have to believe that the market system can do a better job of running a society than a consensual and responsive government.
bullet You have to believe that the imaginary right to drive your ATV wherever the hell you want is more important than a bunch of damn turtles, anyway.
bullet You have to believe that only the rich have earned the right to self-esteem - or much of anything else.
bullet You have to believe that all art funded by the federal government is evil. This, presumably, includes such federally-funded "art" as the flag, the Lincoln memorial, the Washington monument, the designs on the money and stamps, and much of the music of John Phillip Sousa.
bullet You have to be capable of simultaneously believing that LBJ was a conservative because he opposed those long-hair hippie anti-war freaks, and that those freaks were conservative because they opposed LBJ.
bullet You have to believe that 16 hours of informercials a day is just as good as Scientific American or Masterpiece Theatre.
bullet You have to believe the NRA has a constitutional footing, and that the ACLU doesn't stand up for ALL of the constitution, whether you like it or not.
bullet You have to believe that money being funnelled into international banking corporations is better than money being recycled into the domestic economic engine and that the debt is thus good for America.
bullet You have to believe that Robert E Lee was of any importance in American history.
bullet You have to believe that helping people is just the same as hurting them.
bullet You have to be able to turn on a dime, and declare HIV to be a silly liberal cause, except when you want to defend tobacco interests.
bullet You have to believe that Ann Coulter is any known human gender.
bullet You have to believe that letting blacks get ahead is racist, but equating rights to money is not.
bullet You have to pretend that successful and happy countries like Canada, Sweden, and Germany aren't socialist. But that vicious catastrophically failing capitalist economies like that of Yelsyn's Russia is socialist.