Obsolete Conventional Wisdom
1. The love of money is the root of all evil.
That was before plastic credit cards, identity theft, usurious interest rates, outrageous late fees, and the new bankruptcy law to protect the generous credit card issuers. You don’t need money today if you have a valid credit card that isn’t maxed out.
2. Spare the rod and spoil the child.
Child abuse is illegal in America. Ask any child. Spoil the child is the politically correct way to raise a child in the 21st Century.
3. The best things in life are free.
Everything else costs a lot of money. When the government can figure out how to tax the best things, they won’t be free for long either!
4. Taxation without representation is tyranny. (James Otis.)
Grin and bear it until you have experienced taxation with representation. Then, you come face to face with the tyranny of the majority of representatives in Congress who likes to spend your tax contribution on their pet projects.
5. Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis foolish to be wise. (Thomas Gray.)
When ignorance isn’t bliss, ’tis unbearable to be human and the victim of someone else’s intelligent exploitation. By the way, show me a wise man or woman who isn’t ignorant about something.
6. Flattery will get you nowhere.
So, who’s going nowhere? More than 6 billion living homo sapiens who call Earth their home. They are lost in space, circulating a dying star, and burning all kinds of energy trying to have fun and forget that they are headed into oblivion. Please flatter them so that they will feel important. Most of them lack hubris and pride.
7. A penny saved is a penny earned. (Benjamin Franklin.)
But don’t let Alan Greenspan invest your savings. He thinks that citizens earning 1% interest per annum on their savings should be happy. Actually a penny saved and devaluated by inflation won’t buy you a sucker in a candy store in America today. That just proves what suckers we have become thanks to the anti-inflation policies of our watchdog federal government.
8. No man is an island, entire of itself… (John Donne.)
Neither is a woman, geographically speaking. Unfortunately, marriage of two non-islands is no longer the desired union it once was except by those who are prohibited from indulging in its numerous pleasures like the gays, the Lesbians, and a few public school teachers in love with their students.
9. Rome was not built in a day. (Cervantes.)
Even though the Romans had all those hustling slaves earning less than the minimum wage, the ancient Italians were more patient. Miracles weren’t expected back then except in Jerusalem, where Jesus promised his Jewish followers that he could rebuild their temple in three days. It’s taking the Jews a little longer in Israel today to build a wall to separate them from the Palestinians.
10. Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. (Rudyard Kipling.)
Indeed, they have met twice on the battlefields of Kuwait and Iraq recently, proving that even famous poets can be false prophets. Oil seems to be the motivating factor. Religion certainly isn’t!
11. A pessimist is just a well-informed optimist. (Anonymous)
Due to the constant manipulation of the facts by the media, neither an optimist nor a pessimist can be certain that sources of information are not fabricating news. We can be sure, however, that statistics quoted by the media are based on a legitimate random sampling of sincere and honest respondents answering simple, straight-forward, and easy-to-understand questions.
12. Vox populi, vox dei. (The voice of the people is the voice of God. Alcuin.)
Today, the voice of the Republicans is considered by them the voice of the Lord. Tomorrow, who knows?! Yet, I have never met any human who has actually talked with the Lord. Maybe there is some poor soul in the world that talked with God once, perhaps an inmate presently incarcerated in an insane asylum somewhere because he or she hears voices. Or some Muslim die-hard in Iraq who doesn’t want to accept democracy because Allah told him to hold out for an Iranian or a Saudi Arabian style of theocracy.
To be continued…
Show me Some Moxie…Fight Orthodoxy! Part 1
Show more Moxie…Challenge Orthodoxy! Part 2
