Give me your Aphorisms — by guestblogger Danny Lemieux

I confess that I really like Book’s aphorism, “Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.” I like it because it works. I have used it numerous times with Liberal-Lefties and I could see that it (miraculously) forced them to think. Another one for the ages is Maggie Thatcher’s “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”, which has been a rallying cry for conservatives.

I like aphorisms because a good aphorism cuts straight to underlying truths. With a good aphorism, you don’t get stuck in the brambles, dead ends, closed loops and non-sequiturs that mile-mark debates with Liberal Lefties. We know that logic doesn’t work, because Liberal-Lefties are so unclear on the concept thereof. A debate with a Liberal-Lefty provides only a very short window before he/she starts emoting or name calling, at which point (as we know), debate is over.

However, a good aphorism, delivered early with ad-byte precision, forces the Liberal-Lefty to address the underlying truths of their propositions up-front. There is no escape.

So, I would like to ask /plead with all Bookworm salon groupies to help me out with good aphorisms that we can use to define the oh-so-critical debates to come. Let me start off with a few of my own:

  • Liberals believe poverty leads to bad behavior, conservatives believe poverty is the consequence of bad behavior.
  • Conservatives believe in elevating people in the name of achievement and betterment, Liberals believe in devolving people to the lowest common denominator in the name of social justice.
  • Conservatives believe America’s primary threats are foreign, Liberals believe that America’s primary threats are domestic.
  • Liberals believe wealth is a fixed value, conservatives believe that wealth is created.
  • Conservatives defines generosity as giving of one’s own, Liberals define generosity as giving of other people’s own.

Any others?