The King is Dead but not Forgotton

My Left Wing has a thoughtful piece on the death of conservativism. Apparently it's dead.

Republicanism is not dead--far from it--but "conservatism" as we have come to know it is. Kiss it goodbye; it's gone, and it's not coming back.

It's an interesting read, and rests on the idea that the philosophies espoused by conservatives in the middle of the last century are not what so called Conservatives are espousing anymore. Fair enough.

But it reminds me a bit of the argument some conservatives make about classic Liberalism and how it's the opposite of what modern Liberals believe. Words change meaning over time, unfortunately, and if Conservatives now believe in big deficits and an internationalist foreign policy, well, that's there call, after a fashion.

Anyway, it's well worth reading and considering.

22 Lines from 22 Songs

When will you change this sad refrain / I always knew that you were insane / I like vanilla it's the finest of the flavors / I Wasn't born, so much as I fell out / If you're looking for a thrill that's new / Take a look at my new toy, It'll blow your head in two! Oh boy! / There's three of them she'd rather have going down on bended knee / J’ai ouvert la portiere pour te jeter dehors / Come on in out of the cold / I'd have my fun with a shy girl and maybe hop a train and I'd look back at her standing in the rain / Take me in your arms I'm a fade away when i hear you say what you gotta say / Burned down days like cigarettes for your hollow praise / I give her my heart, but she wanted my soul / She's three miles of bad road / I don't want your cadillac car / And everywhere I look there's none around / You're your favourite stranger / I'll see the sights, I'll hear the sounds / your hat's all off and i'm gone away... / Who said I lied because I never / a smile from a frown circles round / Tonight will be all I have left to recall

Stop Punching Yourself!

As you know, President Bush, following his buddies in the conservative pundit class, made the following statement in the State of the Union.

Some in this chamber are new to the House and the Senate -- and I congratulate the Democrat majority.

Of course the adjective associated with the Democratic Party is, well, Democratic. But people have positive associations with the term Democratic, so Conservatives are switching to the Democrat party. From there it will be a short step to DemocRAT party - which I think I saw on FOX News just the other day.

Anyway here's two different responses to the controversy. The first from Conservative Mary Katherine Harris.

How about the Party of the Suffixionally Fixated? The Lexical Paranoiacs?

And, how dare Bush be insincere in preaching bipartisanship?

The Democratics can dish it, but they can't take it. They're whining about an -ic. Leaving off an -ic is all that's required for the president to be accused of lowering the level of discourse. The double standard is just terrif.

And here's Joshua Micah Marshall, at Talking Points Memo.

You address people the way they choose to be addressed. You address them by what they consider to be their name. In the ordinary course of life, when people do otherwise, we rightly recognize that they're trying to pick a fight or demean the person in question.

It is, as Matt points out, another illustration of the 'bitch-slap theory of politics'. You assert dominance over someone by mangling their name and continuing to do so even after the correct pronunciation or style is pointed out. It's right off the schoolyard and it's no surprise that it's a stock and trade of this president.

You can guess which side of the fence I come down in this issue.

More on Hillary

I just can't shut up on this subject just now. It's a problem. But then again, I'm not the only one with this particular curse. David Limbaugh's latest article is about the Clinton Campaign. He's worried that people might not realize that Clinton is a far leftist.

Though we will continue to see abundant evidence apparently to the contrary between now and November 2008, Hillary knows exactly who she is and what she wants. The open question is: How many naive or uninformed voters can she fool without permanently estranging herself from her natural soulmates on the far left?

It's interesting how people can look at a person differently. My take on Hillary Clinton is that when she makes feints to the left, she's being a little phony, while her centrist statements, pro-business and pro-war statements strike me as more sincere. I note, for example, that her "socialized medicine" was essentially a give away to the insurance companies.

There's also this interesting passage, which reveals a bit of why Conservatives aren't keen on Ms. Clinton.

In the past, Hillary has vacillated between righteous indignation at any expectation that she should be home "baking cookies" and her acquired awareness that she must not go too far and project herself as cold and heartless.

You'd think there'd be some difference between staying home baking cookies and being cold and heartless - but not to Limbaugh Conservatives. To Conservatives of a certain stripe a strong woman is, almost by definition, cold and heartless. Which reveals a bit more about them than it does about Ms. Clinton.

Is this Treason?

These are the words of Radio Host Mike Gallagher who really really really hates Jane Fonda (and peace protesters in general, apparently).

Seeing Jane Fonda Saturday was enough to make me wish the unthinkable: it will take another terror attack on American soil in order to render these left-leaning crazies irrelevant again. Remember how quiet they were after 9/11? No one dared take them seriously. It was the United States against the terrorist world, just like it should be.

Is that treason? The answer is left as an exercise for the reader.

A Very Cynical Attitude

Paul Weyrich, determined to become a prophet with honor, has written a new article about the Democratic field of candidates. As is standard forh im, he tries to take a very scholarly route, so it's not as fun to write about as say "Why Liberals Hate Christians."

Instead he says that Conservatives don't like Clinton, which is not a shocker, and that they think she's cold and divisive. I think she's divisive at the very least (for which I will be chided by The Daily Howler (see below)). He gives Edwards and Obama marks for not being the front runner and therefore having the opportunity to move up.

Front runners have only one place to go - down. Whereas Obama or Edwards, reasonably close to Hillary in the latest Fox Poll, can look forward to going up if they gain traction.

He notes that Bill Richardson is a strong candidate and will probably be Clinton's pick for Vice President (assuming we get that far). And he takes Biden to task for not being interesting enough on the senate floor.

He does praise Nancy Pelosi on the other hand - a safe move considering she's not running for anything.

Turning back to Hillary Clinton and divisiveness, The Daily Howler went on a bit of an extended discussion about this very issue yesterday.

Is anyone dumber than our Dem Party activists? In fact, even as these party stalwarts spoke, Newsweek released another national poll. This poll, conducted last Wednesday and Thursday, showed Clinton leading McCain by six points (50-44) and Edwards leading McCain by four (48-44). In fact, it was the third straight Newsweek poll, in a span of two months, which showed Clinton ahead of McCain; she also leads Giuliani by three in this latest survey (49-46). But so what! Nothing stops us liberals and Dems from reciting the types of defeatist points which reporters then rush into national papers. Hillary Clinton is unelectable! Because of “her political baggage!” (Sometimes, we’re such perfect tools that we say it’s because she’s “too polarizing.”) In short, the RNC doesn’t need to exist. We liberals and Dems are now quite pleased to recite their talking-points for them.

. . . We’ll discuss other spins this week and next, including the utterly matchless spin-point: Hillary Clinton is soooo polarizing. But then, we’ve even seen major Dem Party strategists repeat that bromide on the air! Could we possibly get any dumber? Could our “leaders” be any more clueless?

I'm a big fan of the Daily Howler, and have been for a while now, but I'm not sure I agree with their analysis here. I do agree that we shouldn't say that Hillary Clinton is unelectable. But I do think those polls aren't the whole story. What I've always said, is that the campaign of Hillary Clinton will energize the Republican Base to fight meaner and uglier than they have in the past (and it's not like they held much back in the last two elections). But her grass roots support is not that strong.

I also don't understand why he is so upset that we describe Hillary Clinton as a polarizing figure. It strikes me as the simple truth. Now I happen to live in the south, where perhaps resentment of her is a bit higher. And if it is the truth, why shouldn't it be said? Particularly at this juncture, when we are deciding who will represent us in the 2008 election. If one sees flaws in Hillary Clinton (and I do, both from a political and from a governance stance), why shouldn't one express them?

Somerby promises to get back to this subject, so perhaps a more complete analysis will be forthcoming.

Senset

This sequence of letters defies Dictionary.Coms prodigious powers of definition. That must be why Cal Thomas chose to use it in the title of his latest article "Aquarius senset." In the article he uses the more definable word "Sunset," but for an article with the novel, even revolutionary tactic of making fun of hippies, only "Senset" would do.

Or it's just a typo and they have fixed it by the time you get over to see it.

At any rate it's a hippie bashing article - apparently people who want peace are monsters, and we should take our political cues from the writers of 24 because they understand how we are all doomed unless we follow our conservative masters. Because invading Iraq has proven to be such a bang up great idea.

Why I hate Kevin McCullough

Kevin McCullough's latest article is entitled "Why Liberals Hate Christians." That's reason enough.

At first I thought I could see my way through his patent nonsense by pointing out that some Liberals are Christians (including, I hope, myself), but no such luck. His first sentence makes it clear that not all Christians are Christians, at least in this context.

Liberals in America despise Christians of true faith.

Presumably those liberals who dare to call themselves Christian are not Christians "of true faith."

The bulk of his article is about a movie on HBO that does not show Christians in that good a light. For one thing it implies that they want to do nasty things to homosexuals. Which is true. But Kevin McCullough pretends that liberals are opposed to any expression of faith when it comes to sexual matters. There may be some liberals who feel that way, but I don't know of any. Liberals do on the other hand oppose laws which discriminate on the basis of sexual preference. Those are two separate issues.

He then pulls out the old "look liberals are just jealous" routine.

And it is the reality in seeing the joy, peace, and contentment that we have and that they do not - that drives liberals to draw angry conclusions.

Conclusions that will send them to a Godless eternity...

To unpack that last line, McCullough is reminding his readers that us Liberals are going to hell.

I should think that God might have something to say to his children who consistently judge and discriminate, who fight to make life harder for societies underprivileged, who support a President who takes us into an unnecessary war.

But what do I know; I'm apparently not a Christian of true faith.

The Future

The future is looking pretty blurry to me. Or maybe it's just my monitor.

But my future looks positively rosy compared to the future Craig Shirley paints for the GOP and the Conservative movement in his latest article. He accurately describes a party and a movement that has made any number of Faustian bargains with itself. Isolationism has been thrown overboard in favor of Neo-Conservativism and Laissez-Faire Economic policy in favor of corporate welfare. Not to mention the Social Conservatives.

Cynical politicians have manipulated the social right, through the meddling in the Terry Schiavo case, to the banning of gambling on the internet and a constitutional amendment defining marriage has helped transform the conservative movement, which was once about the expansion of freedom, into "Big Christian Brother" which is now concerned with the expansion of virtue. It is the height of intellectual dishonesty for a political party to say out of one side of its mouth, overturn Roe because we believe behavioral issues belong at the state level, while out of the other side of its mouth say we need to federalize the private act of marriage. Republicanism has become incoherent for most Americans.

It is pretty bizarre to line up their rationales for a federal ban on gay marriage with their rationales for overturning Roe v. Wade.

At any rate, he does hold out hope that his version of conservativism will prevail once everybody comes to their senses. I suspect most conservatives feel the same way, which makes it hard for me to fathom any real compromise coming soon.

Smarty Pants Random Goblin

Random Goblin did make a good comment on a post down below.

"So... 20,000 people *demand* that Bush send 20,000 more troops it Iraq?

"Hmm, where can we find some volunteers...?"

He's pretty sharp, but should blog more. Also Katy has started a blog as well, and it's pretty good. Random Goblin and Katy have some sort of connection.

Another piece of the puzzle

I commented earlier that the Republicans want to raise the stakes in Iraq because they want failure in Iraq to be the Democrats fault. Jonah Goldberg continues this themes in his latest article, complaining that Democrats for failing to support President Bush's plan to win the war on terror.

The president asserted that no one wants failure in Iraq. Understandably, the commander in chief wanted to avoid conceding how very real a possibility failure is, so he chose his rhetoric carefully. He spoke in the abstract about the bipartisan desire for victory and success.

And yet the Democrats for the most part sat on their hands, refusing to applaud, never mind rise in favor of such statements from a wartime president.

What Jonah wants to say is that Democrats failed to applaud because they want to lose. The truth is that if we could win that would be great, but the President has not shown that his plan will work. Rather his track record in Iraq is one of failure after failure.

We have to Win in Iraq

Or at least that is the new mantra of conservatives. Given that there is an outlet for the opposition to the Iraq War in the Democratic Congress, they have to start taking the Anti-War argument seriously. Or at least a little more seriously than they have.

Consider Dean Barnetts latest article. In it he writes glowingly of a pledge not to support the National Republican Senatorial Committee if they support any candidate that votes in favor of an amendment calling for the President Bush to withdraw or to not do the proposed escalation. Apparently 20,000 people have already signed this pledge. That doesn't seem like that many, actually, but I guess it's the thought that counts.

There are two reasons to demand loyalty to Bush's war. One is that they genuinely believe that we can triumph. The other is that they want to ensure that Democrats get the blame when we lose.

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

Hey all - expect low posting the next few days. They are refurbishing our cubicles, and as such I am like a pack-rat, moving from cubicle to cubicle, one step ahead of the law. Well maybe a few steps. The laws not actually looking for me so it's hard to measure the distance between me and the law.

Anyway I do want to post some thoughts on Hillary Clinton. I think she's probably an OK Senator, but I don't want her to get the Presidential Nomination. I can point to a few practical reasons - she botched the best chance we have of getting health care, her position on the war is awful, she hasn't shown the kind of leadership in the senate that I would like to see.

But my biggest reason for not being keen on her getting the nomination is largely selfish. Her run is going to bring out the worst in the Republican Party. They hate her. She makes them angry and crazed in a way that John Kerry or Al Gore didn't. And we all remember how vicious those campaigns were. Their response to her run will make what Kerry got look like a walk in the park.

Part of their hatred of her is connected to the fact that she's a strong woman who doesn't fit the mold of what a strong woman should be (i.e. secondary to her husband). They don't like her because of the type of woman she is.

That's awful. But the flip side is that I don't like how she has failed to fight for liberalism. She's a moderate at best, and on foreign policy there's not all that much different between her and President Bush. Domestically she'd be better, I'm sure.

So I find myself in a situation of wanting to defend Hillary Clinton against the slings and arrows of some truly despicable people, while being quite conscious of the fact that Hillary Clinton's not fighting for my values and will sell me and most of the left out for political advantage.

And that just annoys me - I wish she would choose not to run (although I recognize that she has every right to do so). Anyway those are my thoughts on this issue - and I expect I'll be writing variations of this article up until she gets the nomination.

Are Democrats Traitors?

Dinesh D'Souza is scrambling to the top of the liberal hatred pile with his latest book explaining that, yes, we are traitors. He must be feeling his oats because today's article concludes with yet another reminder of this "fact." Most of his article is about how the Sunnnis and Shi'ites are not fighting a religious war. Apparently the fact that it's not a religious war means that if we just let them get on with slaughtering each other, things would settle down once somebody won.

It's a ruthless war, to be sure, but it's not a religious war and there's no reason to think it will go on and on. One gang will win.

Cause that's what happened in the former Yugoslavia or in many African nations. Southeast Asia too, come to think of it. There was a little violence, a little bloodshed, maybe a slight genocide and then everything calmed down. Thank you Mr. D'Souza for pointing out that, in the long run, we have nothing to worry about.

Kind of puts the lie to the theory that we are there to help the Iraqi people though, doesn't it?

At any rate, he then talks about where we Americans get the bizarre idea that this is a religious war.

The myths are part of the propaganda produced by the cultural left which is rooting for Bush to lose the war in Iraq and the war on terror. If Iraq is lost, the chances are it will be lost not in Baghdad but in the American mind. Bin Laden and the insurgents are completely outmatched in force, but they can still win, courtesy of the lobbying efforts of the enemy at home.

Yep it's all liberals fault. Just like in Vietnam which we could have won if it wasn't for the Democrats and Media. It's the same damn thing.

Of course the ongoing question is what should be done to those D'Souza has declared America's enemies. I mean we know what the Right wants to do to Muslim Terrorists - but what plans do they have for us Leftists.

Dogs are better than Cats

Shocking I know - but Mixter's Mix has the news that people who own Dogs live longer than people who own cats. Hooray for Dogs.

I have one Dog, Lupita. I will have to post some more pictures of the little scamp. She is currently obsessed with a sock monkey a friend sent me. She wants to destroy it. She also hates squirrels. On the other hand she hasn't met a people food she doesn't like.

I weep for my cat-loving friends. Not literally because I have a heart of stone. But figuratively.

How Black is Barak Obama

This is the subject of a thought provoking article over at Salon by Debra J. Dickerson. I usually don't post too many articles from Salon because you have to watch an ad first but this one is worth it. I'll be honest I'm entirely comfortable with the implications of this article, but that's not the articles fault - it's realities fault.

The ending though gets me angry and depressed.

Yet until Obama survives the scourging he's about to receive from Hillary Clinton (God help him if he really did lie about his Muslim background) and the electoral process, no candidate of color will ever be taken seriously. Clinton isn't about to leave the stage in the name of racial progress, and the pundit class has only just begun to take apart the senator's record, associates and bank accounts.

This drives me nuts - Hillary Clinton should drop her run for the Presidency, but she won't. So we are stuck with her. I'm not sold on Obama either, but at least he has the potential to run a campaign that will make me feel good to be a Democrat.

What does your soul look like? (Pt 2)

For those interesting here are the answers to yesterdays song titles. For those who don't want to be spoiled we will make them fade into the background; just select down and you will see them.

The Smiths - Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before
U2 - Bad
The Beautiful South - Old Red Eyes is Back
The Velvet Underground - heroin
Neil Young - The Needle and the Damage Done
Spiritualized - The Twelve Steps

So mystery solved. And the theme of these songs was, of course, substance addiction. Which is fitting, given Mr. Thomas's back story.

On to today's article.

Continuing from Thomas's theories, Dinesh D'Souza has written a book entitled "The Enemy At Home - The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11". I'll bet you didn't know that you and I (assuming you are Liberal) were responsible for 9/11. Anyway he got interviewed over at Townhall, and he is not asked for clarification on how we caused 9/11 - I guess they want you to buy the book. But he does make several interesting statements. And by interesting, I mean annoying.

Even so, the cultural left has shown itself extremely reluctant to support Bush's war on terror. They aren't just against the Iraq war, they are against the Patriot Act, and the telephone surveillance program, and the invasion of Afghanistan, and the sanctions proposals against Iran' nuclear program. In short, they want Bush's war on terror to fail. And this means that they want the Islamic radicals to succeed.

If you don't favor Bush's boneheaded way of fighting the war on terror, you want the terrorists to win. Republicans have been saying this for a quite a little while now. You'd think they'd taper off given how poorly Bush has performed, but no, they just keep on keeping on. It's Bush's way or you are pro-Terrorist.

But that's not all - the leftists need to be stomped out not just because we don't want to defeat the terrorists. We need to be stomped out because we stand in the way of making friends with mainstream Muslims.

. . . we have to persuade traditional Muslims. Why? Because traditional Islam is the recruiting pool for radical Islam. It's not good if we kill a hundred Islamic radicals and 200 traditional Muslims sign up the next day. So we have to address traditional Muslim concerns about America. The radicals are telling them that America is a fount of global atheism, that America fosters family breakdown, that American values corrupt the innocence of children. I think it is foolish to dismiss these concerns entirely, because there is a grain of truth to them. Not all of America is like this, but it is the America that has been promoted by the cultural left, and it is the America that most Muslims see through the images of our popular culture. I think America could improve its image among people in traditional cultures, including Muslim cultures, if we showed them "the other America": the people who go to work every day and look after their families and abide by traditional values and go to church on Sunday.

Yep - we need to show Muslims that we hate our gays and atheists and we oppress our woman. Then they will be cool with Israel and our imperialism. Apparently.

Or to put it another way - we must stop the lefties because they will force us to surrender and they will keep us from surrendering (to traditional Muslims).

I was very nearly clean you know

Why this crap scares me, even as it amuses me. Jack Thomas clearly believes this stuff he's saying. He clearly has the opinion that people who disagree with him politically are "not normal." Read this bit from his piece on Jonathan Haidt.

First, the fact that he is a professor of psychology tells me a lot about him as an individual. Very few people ever went into this field in order to help other people. They entered the study of psychology to cure themselves of some sort of emotional disorder. But, in the process of searching for that elusive fix, they were granted a degree, license and authority by the state to tell other people how to deal with their mental problems. Remember, if you educate a crazy person, all you end up with is an educated crazy person.

Haidt is a psychologist so he must be crazy. Good analysis there, Thomas.

Here's a more complete analysis of where Non Normies come from and what they are.

Normal people seek guidance in life, knowing that they don't have all the answers. This is why most normal people believe in some sort of God, and they pursue His help in their daily lives. When normal people get angry, it usually is due to a specific rational cause.

Non-normal people are like the earth's two polars-both frozen in place on two opposite ends of the world. One type of non-normal people seeks license to do whatever they wish, while the opposite extreme non-normal people seek total law to force everyone to behave according to a strict set of their guidelines.

There is no if and when about non-normal anger. It's a constant and permanent part of their psyche, and it looks for places where it can be displaced.

. . . Yet, both types of non-normal people still want (actually demand) to gain the same good results out of life (for themselves) as normal people receive. They are jealous of normal people because non-normal people are basically selfish and self-centered.

Boy us Non Normies sound awful don't they? Selfish and self-centered? Angry? Extreme? We're just awful people. And fortunately Thomas has a simple 5 step plan for normals to combat us. Define us as non-normal, divine our arguments as non normal, assault our arguments as being non-normal and therefore false, ridicule us, and marginalize us. Nice to lay it out like that.

Let me stop here to underline something - opposing President Bushs plan in Iraq as Chuck Hagel has done, is not normal. Of course polls show that the majority of the American people are not keen on it, but I suppose that means that a lot of people aren't normal.

Liberalism itself is non normie.

Liberalism is a polar-left anti-capitalist philosophy.

This philosophy of the polar-left non-normies is based on serving the driven dysfunctional psychological anti-capitalistic symbols that reside in the psyches of polar-left non-normie members.

I don't know, however, if you can take my word for it, since I'm so clearly a non-normie. After all, as Mr. Thomas explains, "They [non normies] may even assault this site, non-normie.com, as idiotic."

I guess he's one step ahead of me.

He does not advocate any sort of governmental action against non-normies which is probably smart. However his whole tone is that there is something fundamentally and psychologically wrong with me and with most of you. Our brains don't work properly. In a perfect world, should people whose brains don't work properly be allowed the same access to the political system as people who's brains do work properly? As far as I can tell Thomas hasn't answered that question, but it's one you can figure out the answer to relatively easily.

I sing the song because I love the man I know that some of you don't understand

So now we get to the part of my review of Non-Normie.com where I explain why I bring it up at all. I don't know if he defines a normie as a conservative Republican, but it's pretty that he defines a liberal Democrat as a non-Normie. And you get this most clearly when you review his Non Normie of the Day feature. He picks a person or organization and explains why they are not normal, taking a moment to analyze their underlying psychology.

Let's look at the last 10. Jonathan Haidt, Chuck Hagel, Barbara Boxer, the ACLU, the Queen Bee (the phenomenon, not the creature), Malik Shabazz, Eric Vickers, the Former Non Normie Friends of Oprah Winfry (in this case he means that they were formarly friends, not that they were formally Non Normies), Robert Scheer, and Cameo Patch.

Cameo Patch (1-4-07) had sex with a student, Jonathan Haidt (1-17-07) wrote an article making an positive analogy to certain aspects of Hinduism, The Queen Bee (1-11-07) is a phenomenen where in a female executive prefers to surround herself with males so as not to be threatened, and the Former Non Normie Friends of Oprah Winfry (1-8-07) are upset that she spent money building schools in Africa rather than in America. So these are more or less non political. Or not directly political - obviously many Conservatives are often opposed to non Christian religions getting respect and woman executives (I guess I can't really comment on sex with underage students in the wake of the Foley scandal).

Barbara Boxer (1-15-07) and Chuck Hagel (1-16-07) are both considered liberal politicians (albeit from different parties), The ACLU (1-12-07) is considered a liberal organization, Robert Scheer is a liberal columnist, Malik Shabazz (1-10-07) is part of the new Black Panther organization, so also a liberal. Finally Eric Vickers (1-9-07) argued on behalf of Minneapolis / St. Paul Cabbies who wanted to refuse to transport alcohol and animals (i.e. pets (including seeing eye dogs)). He would argue of course that Erik Vickers in on the right side of the fence, but that is just a way of keeping conservatives in the middle (the normies).

So that 60% liberal in the first 10, plus 2 others that while not technically liberal reinforce Conservatives opinions of Liberals. I've scanned down the list and seen this patten to be broadly consistant; Conservativism is normal, liberals are non-normies.

The more I read this site the more disturbed I get (in between the laughter). I'll come back to this this afternoon if I can.

I wish that I was born a thousand years ago

Are you normal? Jack Thomas, creator of Non-Normie.com has a simple 100 question test that can help you determine your normalness. Let's check out a few of the questions. Incidentally, each yes answer moves you closer to non-normie-ness, while a no answer indicates that you are normal.

17. Do you work in any of the following occupational fields: nursing, mental health, politics, law, care-giving, social work, teaching, journalism, media, entertainment or religion?

Everybody in those fields is apparently less than totally normal.

38. Do you either: Favor gay marriage? or... Believe that gay people should be arrested for practicing homosexual acts in private?

Again - each yes answer subtracts from your normalness quotient.

43. Do you either: Wear Birkenstocks? or...Regularly wear camouflage outfits?

I guess this one is self explanatory - look down - if you see Birkenstocks, you are not normal.

55. Do you like to mock things or people?

I know I do.

57. Do you either: Believe that feminism hasn't achieved all of its goals yet? or... Think that a woman's place is only in the home, doing a woman's work

Believing that there's still some work to be done in the field of gender equality is not normal.

64. Have you been single for a very long time?

I refuse to answer on the grounds that I might incriminate myself.

85. Do you either: Believe that the United States is imperialistic and should be made to decrease its influence in the world? or... Think that the United States is not imperialistic enough and should spread its influence even further?

It's normal to think that the United States is doing everything right, apparently. Stupid eyes, stop looking at Iraq.

Here's a final one, out of order.

33. Do you pathologize normal behavior (look upon normal behavior as being abnormal)?

When it comes to Mr. Thomas's definition of "Normal" I sure as hell do. And I doubt I'd be alone. I took the test, incidentally, and came up with a score of 25% - I'm normal but borderline.

Of course here Mr. Thomas is pretending to be even handed, but when you get into his Non-Normie of the day feature you find out which political philosophy he has declared Normal, and what philosophy is good for us non-normies.

Incidentally we are continuing our post titles as being lyrics from songs - all of yesterdays and todays lyrics share a common theme - how many songs can you guess and what's the theme linking them together?