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Feb. 22, 2007 I usually avoid the words 'conservative' and 'liberal', because I've never been able to figure out exactly what they mean. Sometimes you see someone who calls himself a conservative agreeing 100% with someone who calls himself a liberal. At the same time you might find either two conservatives or two liberals disagreeing vehemently with each other. I try instead to take the issues one at a time and see what I myself think without relying on the consensus of opinion of any particular group. And I do this on very few issues anyway, because I am indifferent or unable to decide on most issues. For example, being in Argentina, I'm not as concerned with Virginia's gun laws or how Texas was gerrymandered by Democrats as some of our contributors are. Still, let me attempt to describe my vague notion of a model American conservative. He is an honest, dependable man, who stays at the same job or in the same business year after year, providing for his family and paying his taxes. He is probably a Christian and devoted to Christian principles like temperance, personal modesty and forthright but proper language. He believes in America first, but thinks America should be guided by a policy of decency and fairness. If this brief description fills the bill that I set myself, portraying the typical middle-class conservative, then the last person it describes is Tom Pain, who has used at least two other names, Ron Lewis and Zappa U. Frankly. I can't say for a certainty which, if any, of these names is his true name. It certainly is not terribly conservative to go around making up new names for himself just in order to dodge the rules of a website that expelled him because of his numerous uncalled-for insults to fellow contributors. Pain likes to pretend that his criticism is meant to explain, educate and edify, but why is he always talking about everyone's bodily functions and why does he resort to saying that a fellow contributor has hermorrhoids and needs Preparation H or looks like Liberace? How is that edifying? Pain often sounds more like a guttersnipe than a conservative. If Pain is so staunch and stalwart, dependable and loyal, why was he fired six or more times? It is always someone who gets fired for incompetence or other unworkmanlike habits that whines, "It was office politics," or "I was performing too well and they got jealous." What do his children and his various wives have to say when he gets the axe again? Maybe that's the reason he gets involved in these divorces. Do the divorces drive him to drinking or does his drinking drive his wives to divorce him? Then too he smokes marijuana. This certainly is not the hallmark of a conservative as I understand the word. Yes, he says he's been smoking grass for 30 years. Maybe he was caught smoking grass on the job. Maybe there were too many martini breaks. Maybe he gave one of his fellow employees one of his obscene tongue-lashings. Maybe he smarted off to the boss. It's fine to put America first, but Pain's strident outcries and revolting shrieks against Muslims, Mexicans, Russians, Chinese and Europeans would alienate almost any level-headed human being. Is that what conservatism is all about? Can't he tone down his shrill rhetoric a few decibels. After all, many conservatives would talk about substance abusers and alcoholics like Pain in the same way Pain talks about foreigners and less fortunate people everywhere. How do we know his substance abuse ends with marijuana? Maybe he snorts cocaine too. Pain is not really a conservative, he's just a living vaudeville act, an obstreperous clown or noisy comic. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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