Seeing as how things are quiet on loon pond this Sunday sabbath (well except for contrarians who favor Saturday or Moonday), I thought it would be a good time to review the ten key commandments, to be religiously followed by loons starting out in life as members of the ruling class, chattering elite commentariat:
1. Government intervention: complain bitterly about the government's constant intervention in personal lives, personal morality and personal faith. Then demand the government censor anything that affronts your own personal morality and personal faith. This is a particularly handy tactic when confronted by talk of gay marriage, which threatens to undermine civilization as we know it, but equally applies to the intertubes. Don't be fooled by smooth talking chat show hosts like Ellen - she's actually a front for satanists.
Bonus? Get control of government, and inflict your own personal prejudices on anyone within range.
2. Cut government spending: demand government cut spending on everything. Then demand that the government increase border protection, vital police work, vital defence work, and vital defence infrastructure. It's particularly important to note that going to war doesn't actually involve any problematic spending; it's just a way of getting rid of men and munitions so that new stock can be brought forward, thereby creating economic demand and beneficial economic multipliers, especially if you're a defence contractor. Talk that the Bush administration was the biggest spending government America's ever seen can be dismissed easily as idle liberal fascist blather.
Bonus? Get control of government and make sure they cut government spending on all the leftie bludgers, while saving enough to spend on your own pets, friends, mates and associates and affiliates.
3. Lower taxes: demand government lower taxes, but only for the rich, so that a few silvers of bread and a few droplets of water can trickle down to the poor (alternatively they can always eat the cake with the 'use by expiry date' expired, to be found in bins out the back of supermarkets). Lowering taxes must always go hand in hand with lowering spending, except of course spending on anything to do with a pet project favored by the commentariat, such as border protection. Sample strategy: confiscate hair shampoo while ensuring anyone can carry a gun.
Bonus? Make sure the government lowers your taxes, while protecting your perks. And to hell with the rest, let the devil take the hindmost. Talk of social contracts or calling Jesus a socialist with his talk of the poor requires execution on the spot.
4. Blame the government for anything and everything: demand government never intervene in economic matters of any kind, since we all know that politicians and bureaucrats are failed business people. A few cynics might note that scribbling columns for a living hardly amounts to expertise in economic matters, but ignore them. At the same time, demand that government fix all the matters it is responsible for, such as the current global financial crisis. It must of course fix this disaster by not doing anything.
Government however can help by accepting full responsibility for the crisis, mass unemployment, the failure of banks, the failure of financial markets, and the failure of neo con administrations - except that you must also demand that people never look back or play the blame game, but should look at the current mess the current administration has created. If the current administration plays the blame game, make sure you can cherry pick standout triumphs of the previous administration.
Bonus? No need to dwell on the past. Mistakes are mistakes, we made a few, but let's move on.
5. All government is a failure: harp constantly on the way that government is a failure, without ever wondering if there is any conflict between demanding government do nothing and that government fix everything. There is a splendid role for government to fulfill, and that is to cope endless abuse from commentators unhappy with their lives, and anxious people searching for a scapegoat to explain why their jobs have been shifted to China. Remember government can't be good at anything and is good for nothing, in contrast to the splendid folk at Macquarie Bank, who manage such marvels as Sydney Airport and produce such capital goods as Bris Connections.
Bonus? Talk endlessly of personal responsibility, but never imagine it must apply to your own personal life, only to others, and never imagine that you might be out changing the world because there is an insuperable burden preventing any personal activity. That's right, the government. All that's left for you to do is to write endless columns blaming government (unless also blogging and talking to think tanks about the endless failures of government).
6. Playing the man: whenever anybody mounts a counter argument, always accuse them of playing the man, not the ball (never worry about mentioning women playing the man, it's a well known fact that women are hopeless at ball games and never have a sensible opinion. This truth can only be varied when talking about female members of the right wing commentariat, who are allowed to express views because they sound vaguely masculine).
Whenever someone plays the ball, and not the person, wonder at their stupidity and play the person, not the ball. Give them a good coathanger or a kick in the balls. Never give an inch or attempt a rational argument with these soft deviant perverts. They are possibly working in the government, and likely responsible for the downfall of government as we know it.
Check their elbows - if you see patches it's a sure giveaway, though a fondness for green tea is also indicative. Coffee and chardonnay are no longer as reliable as they once were - just look at Gloria Jean's - but anybody wearing black and partaking can be dismissed out of hand.
Bonus? As soon as you mention playing the ball, women will think you're talking about sport and nod off. That's fifty per cent of the population, give or take, out of the game. Never mention the arts, unless associated with the phrase arty wankers, poseurs, ponces, what would they know.
7. Simplify and distort: when confronted by technical issues, always simplify and preferably distort. A maximum of fifteen hundred or two thousand words is not the place for a detailed technical or scientific argument, and in any case readers just want their prejudices reinforced. Leave any quest for truth to hopeless academics wearing patches on the elbows of their cord jackets. They won't find it, because truth is of course exclusively copyrighted and patented to members of the loonatariat. Academics by definition are hopeless wankers and hair splitters, aloft and alone in their greenie ivory towers. Abuse is way more entertaining, and always preferable.
Bonus? Complain loudly that the other side is always simplifying and distorting, and if you only had the time and the space, you could explain exactly how they do it. But never bother, since spreading FUD is much simpler and easier than civilized debate and discussion.
8. Always shout: this doesn't mean use the cap key, like some troll in a discussion thread, but rather means an abundant use of adjectives and adverbs. This is always essential in carrying a crucial argument in these alarming times. Hysterical fear mongering and talk of approaching catastrophe is the very best coinage, and it's preferable if any issue can be characterized as certain to bring about the imminent demise of western civilization as we know it.
Given the immensely huge success of vital strategies like zero tolerance, this is a wonderful strategy for government. Do not wonder if it is the role of government, which should stay out of private lives and public policy as much as policy, to introduce and implement policies like zero tolerance, since zero tolerance is an important, vital and compelling bit of behaviour modification that only numbskulls on the left fail to understand in their vile Marxist stupidity. Cultivate zero tolerance for disagreeable people.
Bonus? The other side is always shouting, and that's why you can't get your voice heard, even though you might get published regularly in a large metropolitan newspaper. A sense of grievance, outrage and paranoia is essential for healthy debate. Some call this a persecution complex, but you can call it wisdom.
9. Choice and double speak: when debating, always make sure you know how to characterize the enemy. Doublespeak is essential. Thus when opposing condom use, make sure you present it as a choice. Sure it's a choice between not using condoms and getting pregnant, or not using condoms and not using condoms, but everyone loves choice (and government is always snatching choice away).
When discussing liberals, make sure you call them fascists. They might not be fascists, but that's hardly the point. When discussing socialists, make sure you also call them fascists. Then you can go on a roll, by calling them liberal socialist fascists. Get the sulks if someone chivvies you about this, because they always call right wingers fascists, and tit for tat is only fair. After all, life is just like a school playground.
Always accuse the opposition of semantics of dissembling and word games and clever dickery, then get out and do it yourself. After all, torture is just an enhanced interrogation technique if you look at it the right way. If lefties laugh at you about this, remember that's what you always expect from liberal fascists, childish name calling.
This is particularly handy when debating emotional issues in a scientific way. It's important to characterize people concerned about global warming as religious cranks in the grip of a mass delusion. That way you can make them sound like creationists. This is a particularly handy for religious zealots in the grip of a mass cult like the Roman church, as it makes your own zealotry sound so much more harmless.
Bonus? Sticks and stones will hurt their bones, and so will calling them lowlife dickheads, a happy pastime now threatened by government intervention and government laws and worst of all activist judges (as if lesbian lorry truck drivers cared about such trivia!) Crank up the abuse and hysteria while you can, before civilization as we know it comes to an end.
10. Always jump and down about activists: the worst kind are activist judges, but there are activist politicians, and activist greenies and activist socialists and activist liberals. Right wing people and gun owners are never activist. They just point their finger at you like they're Clint Eastwood.
Never think for a moment that writing columns is a form of activism, so much as quiet contemplation. After all, all you're doing is urging the government to get out of private lives and out of the economic sphere, so we can all fight it out tooth and claw.
This might sound a trifle Darwinian, and we all know that Darwin is the anti-Christ, responsible for suggesting we're somehow related to monkeys, but there's nothing illogical about demanding the survival of the fittest and the toughest competition in the economic sphere (along with a little human wastage and despair) and blaming the government for everything that ails the wretched and the hopeless, taught to be failures by the government education system since the age of five. It's particularly important to bemoan the failure of education in this country, while demanding the government reduce taxes and spending (after all, the rich can fund their own education needs, so where's the harm).
The same thing goes for public medicine and hospitals, which is after all socialism, and prevents doctors from playing golf on Wednesdays, while public banking is also socialism, and likely responsible for the GFC, unlike the private sector, which as always has been super efficient and super responsible in shipping as much wealth as possible to the badly underdeveloped Cayman Islands.
Bonus? Not being an activist allows you to actively blame liberals and governments for everything that's wrong with the world, and the imminent end to western civilization as we know it.
11. Always flock and dog whistle: this is not so difficult or contradictory. Loons have their own special call, a kind of meme that races around the intertubes (except of course we always deplore the degenerative effect of these very same pipes when used by fascist liberals to gather and squawk their ill-sounding, unharmonious tunes). Calling it a dog whistle is much more elevated (and involves supersonic hearing), unlike calling it a loon squawk.
Memes are very important - every week there's a new threat to western civilization as we know it, and it's most important to deal with these in a united voice, and never to look back, especially if a new threat to western civilization actually failed to materialize or to destroy it within the allotted seven days. There's always a new threat around the corner, and therefore a new column. Happy days. If all else fails, bushfires, croc and shark attacks are all the fault of greenies.
However it is safe to say that hippies and greenies living in out of the way places are the most likely parties responsible for whatever has gone wrong, as opposed to company directors, stock brokers, financiers and bankers, those fine sturdy pillars of western civilization and greed. (Incidentally remember greed is good, and productive, unlike those with their paws held out for government help, in which case greed is astonishingly bad and counter-productive, as it always involves taking taxpayers' money away from where it's most needed, which is either your wallet, or propping up the banks and other fine pillars of greed).
12. End socialism in the media: always demand the abolition of public broadcasters. If this doesn't work, demand that the government enquire into the left wing bias of public broadcasters. If this doesn't work, demand that the public broadcasters employ members of the right wing commentariat to correct their patently false bias.
Bonus? This will drive soft core lefties who hate watching the commercials on commercial television into a frenzy, thereby teaching them a stern lesson in life. They can never escape loonery. Never ever question why commercial television isn't the appropriate safe haven for commentariat loonery, as commercial viewers have much better things to do, like watch the tits on Underbelly. Never wonder why commercial television's idea of loonery is foot in the door journalism of the worst tabloid kind, and never ever wonder why newspapers are controlled by just a couple of entities in Australia. After all, controlling eighty per cent of ratings isn't enough, and it's a well known fact that the Fairfax press is actually an eastern suburbs front for socialism. World domination requires complete obliteration of the enemy.
Oh there you go, I started out with the ten commandments and it turned into the twelve days of Christmas. Great, we started out with rules to follow, and then we land up with libertarian anarchism, a partridge in a pear tree and white cockatoos in a gum.
Come to think of it, you could probably build up a top twenty or even a top forty of loonish ways, but I'm no Casey Kasem. (We don't have even have time to go into the general principle of relativity, which explains that we're all loons in our own way).
Twelve will do just fine, especially as mid-week week I'm off to the home of all that's wrong with the country, namely Canberra, home of satanists, politicians and bureaucrats. Better pack the silver bullets and the garlic and the stake and the wooden cross, and clutch tight to my loons as they lead me out of the darkness and into the promised land, free of government. But who are we gunna blame then?
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