Liberal Battle Cries

"Peace! Land! Bread!"

New Deal, New Frontier, Great Society. Affirmative Action, Social Security, Welfare.

Lock-box.

Want to create a liberal war-cry of your own? It's easy! Just think of an issue about which you care, remove any complicating details (including all those that seem to weaken your stance on the issue), and reduce to a phrase or command of three words or fewer. Exclaim. Repeat. Now it's no longer an issue, it's a cause.

Take, for instance, "Help the poor." What was once a complicated issue involving rights, ethics, morals, economics, and law is now a single-minded quest which any good citizen can understand and support. Sounds almost - oh, I don't know... religious, doesn't it? Just a thought.

My dear readers, take pity on us libertarians, for we have not such purely noble calls to arms. "Shrink the government!" we cry. "Leave me alone!" we plead. "Let those who wish to help the poor do so by methods of their own choosing!" Are you rushing to enlist yet?

Nay, we must win our allies through intelligent discourse. And just as we cannot win arguments with people shouting "You're lying!" or "You're stupid!" or "Fuck you!" at everything we say, we cannot hold intelligent discourse with liberals' Commandment-quality aphorisms.