I’m a liberal, or at least a civil libertarian and an economic centrist. But I can see some features of liberalism that inspire humor. I don’t automatically get in a huff when someone skewers one of my beliefs. For instance, on Red Dwarf, Rimmer’s new personality in “Polymorph” was hilarious, I think because it started from a fairly accurate depiction of how liberal advocacy groups think and function, and took it to a silly extreme (or even maybe not so extreme).
But I was alternately confounded and bothered by this bumper sticker I saw recently:
Annoy a liberal:
Work hard and be happy
Huh? The implication being liberals want people to be lazy and miserable? Or perhaps only miserable if they work hard, and only happy if they are lazy? I could almost understand “Make huge piles of money and be happy,” since rich liberals often seem to have some guilt over it, and it spits in the eye of progressive taxation. But I just don’t get the connection here.
I certainly don’t have anything against working hard, and I agree people who do so should be happy. I find the implication of the sticker to be obnoxious without being the least bit clever or insightful, and therefore not funny.
I guess the driver is probably happy in any case: he annoyed a liberal, even if it was by an unintended method.
Maybe he’s saying that if poor people work hard enough to be happy then liberals will be unhappy because they won’t be arguing for welfare, universal health care, a higher minimum wage, etc.?
Liberalism: The belief that there is no problem so big that it can’t be solved by adding more layers of big government.
Convervatism: The belief that there is no problem so big that it can’t be solved by throwing outrageous amounts of money at your favorite big-business contractor(s).
