Commie Pinko Musings at 5 AM

I really enjoy Tom Tomorrow cartoons (like this one, "The Undecided Voter")and his website, This Modern World, is one of my favorite blogs. Recently he posted this article, which is supposedly in wide e-mail circulation. I didn't get one from one of my lefty buds yet, so I'll cross post a bit of it here and you should go to This Modern World to read the rest.

"A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN"

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

It's sort of the mirror image of a cartoon I saw in the New Yorker many years ago, where an executive looking out of his office window at belching smokestacks tells his son not to give him any lip about polluting the environment because that pollution paid for his college education.

I think this resonates with me right now because I'm currently helping an outstanding Chinese student with a personal statement (a letter that's part of an application to go abroad to graduate school). She's an International Trade major, fascinated with both theoretical and practical economics to the point where she does research above and beyond her academic requirements. "I recognize there are no perfect answers to some of the questions in economics, she writes, "such as how to deal with the ethical components of economic development."

I'd say she's well ahead of the game. I hope the currently tight visa situation doesn't deprive her and other exceptional Chinese students of a chance to pursue graduate study in the west.

One more thought: In the first paragraph of the article, the reference to "commie liberal." That certainly takes on much more irony when you've lived for 2 years in modern China.