Wednesday, April 01, 2009

A SWNIDish Confession: We Contritely Repent

Our blogging has been infrequent of late. Today we reveal why.

It's not the press of real-world duties that has impeded our cyber-world bloviation. It is our very deep, painful re-evaluation of our political, economic and social views, a process ongoing since the first Tuesday of November, 2008.

That process has taken us to this day to complete. And so we are now prepared to reveal the transformation, something akin to Saul's on the Damascus Road.

Our views on matters of faith and art remain unchanged. But the revolution has overtaken us in politics, economics and society. We hereby repudiate our earlier positions to affirm the following:

  • The body politic consists of two groups: worthy and unworthy. The former, if they work and have access to a shower, shower after work. The latter, if what they do can be deemed "work," shower before. The former are blameless in all matters. The latter are to blame for everything. The former are not subject to the hubris that gives rise to what Christians call "sin." The latter are incapable of anything but. Call this "limited total depravity." Or Proletarian Gnosticism, if you prefer.
  • Though the worthy class is indeed worthy, it is also mostly helpless. It needs an exceptional few champions to rise up, either transcending the limitations of their origins or abandoning the privilege of their class, to enter the political fray and protect the hapless plebes who otherwise would be continually victimized by the unworthy.
  • Economics is inherently a zero-sum game. If someone has more, it's always because someone else has less. Productivity is unimportant. Distribution is everything. Nevermind that something has to be produced before it can be distributed: production happens irrespective of the incentives to do so, largely because there is a class of good people in the world who always do the producing as long as they aren't victimized by the unworthy.
  • When the right people, those who are pledged to protect the worthy folk, are elected, they can be trusted to do what is right. Limitations on their power, out of fear that they might abuse their power, merely interfere with their doing what needs to be done.
  • The world is filled with peace-loving, friendly people who want nothing but harmony and goodwill with their global neighbors. The only thing that can provoke them to hostility is the hostile attitude and futile saber-rattling consistently demonstrated when the wrong people get elected to power in the United States.
  • A very special class of worthy humans are scientists. These exceptional women and men know not only their disciplines, with their specific methods and narrow outcomes, but precisely what the implications of their findings are for the public at large. Their conclusions, mediated by the right people in public office, can never be questioned.
  • The great heritage of conservative political and economic thought (Locke, Smith, the Federalist Papers, Burke, von Mises, Buckley, Friedman, Kirk, everything every published by National Review, even including P. J. O'Rourke) is really an intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt sham to keep the wrong people in power and oppress the right people.
  • Conservatism is completely uncool: pale, fat, backward and nasty, like Ned Beatty in Deliverance.
  • Conservatism is also inconsistent with Christian faith, which is obvious to anyone who knows the gospel. See all points above.
So that's it. We were WRONG. But from today forward, we'll be right. Er, we mean left.

11 comments:

L. Samuel Fuhrman said...

So does the rule of thumb convert to "Simply see what Frank Rich and Paul Krugman think. Then think the same."?

Rob said...

And a very merry "day" to you as well. But does this mean that your views on religion and art HAVE changed?

neil eckstein said...

this is all quite hilarious.

Chief Grinder said...

I would type a lengthy response but I am too busy wiping away tears of joy....

Martin said...

I've been praying for you and it now seems that prayer works.

Anonymous said...

The return of 北春机电!

Mrs SWNID said...

So Mrs. SWNID is a little slow on the uptake. Between this and my friend Sean's April Fools' joke yesterday I almost had heart failure, and this after over 29 years of marriage. Brother!

Jon A. Alfred E. Michael J. Wile E. SWNID said...

We encourage those gentle readers with the curiosity and the discretionary time to copy the Chinese text in the comment above and paste it into the Babelfish Translator to discover what we have learned by so doing: agents of a foreign power are using this blog as a place to send and receive secret messages.

Anonymous said...

Can't stop laughing

Anonymous said...

People with even more discretionary time can get a laugh when translating english to chinese back to english. Matthew 5:

God blesses poorly, and realized that they to his need's these people, [a] regarding the heaven are their. 4 God blesses the mourning these people, regarding will comfort them. 5 God blesses is the humble these people, will inherit the whole Earth for them. 6 God will bless to the just hope and the thirsty these people, [b] regarding them will be satisfied. 7 God blesses is the benevolent these people, will demonstrate the mercy regarding them. 8 God blesses the heart is pure these, will see God regarding them. 9 God blesses for peace work these people, will call God's child regarding them. 10 God blesses to make the right these people who persecutes, regarding the heaven is their.

Anonymous said...

i really enjoyed this. very clever. i dream big dreams for this post. it should be published. however and despite your april foolery, i do actually think conservatism is fat and pale...and awkward right now.

bfox