Floating around the internet is a piece attributed (without verification) to Jeff Foxworthy that gives voice to popular assumptions that liberals are the agents of moral decline and erosion of treasured American values. Intended to evoke humor, it also wallows in Pinocchios. Just for the fun of it, I’ve taken each Foxworthy like joke, rewording it to suggest a different view. So here goes:
If you live in a country awash in plastic pollution and no one cares, you might live in a dumb country.
If your leaders use genuine immigration issues as a cover for prejudice and bigotry, you might live in a nation run by idiots.
If you live in a nation where minor aged girls can be forced to bear children, you might live in a nation run by idiots.
If once you have registered to vote legally but are forced to prove your citizenship at each election, you might live in a nation run by idiots.
If your government arms dictators but doesn’t regulate civilian ownership of guns in sensible ways, you might live in a nation run by idiots.
If you live in a nation where large sugary sodas are considered a basic right but health care isn’t, you may live in a nation run by idiots.
If you live in a nation where TSA supplemental searches are racially-ethnically motivated, you may be living in a nation run by idiots.
If you don’t understand the economics of national budgets, debts, deficits, and trade balances, you can be easily led into spending and tax cut demagoguery in a nation run by idiots.
If you think seven year old boys really are expelled for saying a teacher is cute, or that sex education should not begin by grade six, you probably consume too much Fox News in a nation run by idiots.
If ultra wealthy people are systemically propped up by government programs, and those who are trying the hardest yet remaining the poorest are demonized for needing government assistance, you may live in a nation run by idiots.
If you believe only spendthrift wastrels take personal bankruptcy, but it’s OK for corporations and wealthy investors to do the same, you may be among the idiots running the nation.
If you believe being armed helps make you safer, or that the second amendment is the hinge of the constitution, you are mistaken.