To change my stripes

LITTLE ROCK — Thanks to Don, my lifelong friend from Springdale, and the Internet spiel he forwarded the other day, I now understand how I’ll have to change my belief systems if I’m ever to become a fully “enlightened progressive.”

It’s become painfully obvious that, in my conservative, more traditional view of our nation, I’ve become dazed and confused while wandering aimlessly in a maze of common sense, personal accountability and reason.

So in my attempt to avoid being called all form of foul names (yet again), I’m thinking about casting aside all adult sensibility and choosing to blindly embrace some of the following “progressive” perspectives.

I sure wouldn’t want to be thought of by certain elements in society as being close-minded, mean-spirited or opposed to tax-funded handouts from our soaring national debt.

So here are some specific ways I’ll need to change my world view if I’m ever to be accepted by those among us who look in the mirror and admire higher-functioning elitists: Oil companies’ profits of somewhere around a nickel on each gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon of gas by at least 15 percent is not.

Corrupt and wasteful government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I will. I have to learn to despise initiative and free enterprise in favor of sloth and dependence.

It helps everyone’s financial condition to both waste and spend a whole lot more than one actually takes in.

My honest freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody else is offended by it.

I’m way too irresponsible to own a gun for our family protection and self-defense. Local police are all I need to protect me from murderers, thieves and home invaders who very likely will have guns with which to shoot me.

I should just say anything and pretend like it’s true for the moment, so long as it gets me where I want to be.

Of course, state and government bureaucrats can do a better job of raising my own children than I can. So can those who administer inadequate and poorly performing school systems.

Other fallible people, who are unable to tell me even if it will rain Friday, can assure me that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don’t drive a GM hybrid vehicle. No actual proof is necessary, just my blind agreement. Same with the type of light bulbs I can use.

I shouldn’t fret over the millions of babies who have been aborted in America, so long as we keep death row inmates alive. Some lives just matter more than others.

It’s never, ever my fault. The responsibility for my choices and actions always rest squarely on someone else’s shoulders. Most likely it’s a heartless someone who believes in self reliance.

Illegal aliens (aka those who entered this country in violation of established laws while many of their naturalized brethren conquered the demanding legal challenges to citizenship) have a right to have me pay for their free health care, education and even Social Security benefits from an overburdened system that’s in danger of collapse.

Any private business shouldn’t be allowed to make a profit for itself. Instead, it should break even and give the rest to the government for politicallydriven redistribution-and to unions with large blocks of votes.

Liberal, activist judges need to rewrite the U.S. Constitution every year or so to pacify the handful of fringe kooks who would never come close to getting their agendas past voters in our democratic republic.

I have to learn to think of the late Osama bin Laden, who helped murder 3,000 people on 9/11, as an unpleasant frustrated adult male rather than a radical terrorist killer.

It’s better to pay billions weekly to people who hate us for their oil than to drill more in our petroleumblessed nation, since doing so might upset an endangered beetle or minnow, or even offend some radical political group that votes.

Though we already lived together in the greatest, most blessed country in the world, I was nonetheless promised the vagaries of “hope and change” that would substitute a dismal world that is universally impoverished and much less free. Give me a sign. I demand it.

Finally, if I’m among the 70 million Americans who don’t pay taxes, the government will give me almost anything I want, from food to housing, as long as I predictably vote for one political party’s agenda.

Wow. How freeing it is to abandon morals and truth. Is this a great country where personal accountability doesn’t even matter and boundaries don’t exist, or what?

Mike Masterson is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest edition.