Those Persnickity Natural Socialists

by Bob Wallace 

There is a woman I call She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, after the queen in H. Rider Haggard's novel, She.  A few months ago, SWMBO decided my poor pitiful self needed a dog, specifically a pug dog, who, at ten weeks old when I got him, was about eight inches long.  His being so tiny was a mistake.  

As we were driving back the few hundred miles from the breeder, she held this dog (" Norman ") in her lap the entire time, and told me she had this nearly overwhelming desire to take him home with her.  Why?  

For one thing, pugs are bred to look like babies. They have big eyes, sometimes nearly on the sides of their heads, giving them chameleon-like peripheral vision.  Then there are the cute pug noses, orifices they use to snore, wheeze and sneeze all over you.  They are the only dog that bears a resemblance to a human baby.  

Women find him irresistible. Whenever I take him for a walk, women from 17 to 70 use baby-talk on him.  "Ohh, him is so cute!"  Guys just look puzzled and ask, "What kind of dog is that?"  

Looking like a human baby, however hideously mutated, was not the main reason SWMBO wanted to keep him.  It is because I was so stupid and incompetent I'd kill him (as she said, "You'll kill my dog!").  Not out of malice or sadism, she told me, but out of simple male incompetence and stupidity when it comes to babies of any species.  Only she could raise this puppy without sending him to a speedy grave.  

When I asked her what specifically I would do to kill Norman ("Nornan the XI," according to his AKC papers), this is the list she gave me:  

Drop him.  

Close the car door on his head.  

Close the house door on his head.

 Lose him.  

Step on him.  

Sit on him.  

Sleep on him.  

Poison him.  

Choke him.  

Let a car run over him.  

Let him get into a plastic bag and suffocate him.  

That's not the complete list, by the way.  It's about ten percent of it.  

All of this proves exactly what I've been saying for years: Most women are natural socialists.  I think it's why they've traditionally been denied the vote, and why they now overwhelmingly vote Democrat.  Just take a look at how many voted for Bill ("Look at This Tear in My Eye") Clinton .  

A lot of women operate on the assumption everyone is a baby or a little kid needing to be taken care of, and being a baby or a little kid, are incompetent.  It's why SWMBO thought I couldn't raise a puppy.  God knows what she thinks I'd do with a human baby ("Where is my adorable widdle Sweetums?"  Me [edging toward the golf bag]: "I'll get him.  He's okay.  Nothing to worry about.  Honest.").  

While this mommy-attitude is relatively harmless in personal relationships, it is far from harmless politically.  The State as Mommy is a terrible thing.  Treat adults like kids, and they'll act like kids.  

I hasten to add that some men are natural socialists.  I am reminded (snicker) of a fat, drunken, incoherent slob like Teddy Kennedy.  That mommy-socialist attitude in government translates to the government being Mommy, and as such, all goodness flows from it to all the little kiddies who are too stupid and incompetent to run their own lives.  Isn't that the essence of liberalism?  

Even though some men are natural socialists, I'd still have to judge it mostly a feminine thing.  And if socialism, or leftism, or whatever you want to call it, has any place in society, it's in the home, and the home only.  In politics, absolutely not.  

Friedrich Hayek, in his book, The Fatal Conceit, made the comment that he considered socialism to be primitive, a tribal value.  I'd have to agree.  A tribe, most of which are rather small, is just a large family.  Being that small, it's necessary to share.  

But just because socialism works, however creakingly, in a family or a small tribe, doesn't mean it'll work in a country (which is a really big tribe) with hundreds of millions of people.  How can hundreds of millions of people share equally (or be equal)?  They can't, and it is the worst of delusions to think the State (all of which are based on force and coercion) can function this way.  

The Mommy State is Mommy at home, in the form of welfare.  Then we have the Daddy State abroad, killing people by the hundreds of thousands, to protect Mommy at home.  That's why welfare is never just welfare; it's always welfare/warfare.  It's Mommy and Daddy writ large.  Bad Mommy and Bad Daddy, to be totally accurate. It's the worst aspects of Mom and Dad ("Wear your seatbelt, or I'll beat you like a rug!"), and almost none of the good.  

I suppose if we had nothing but a Daddy State, Norman would be told to love his country or leave it, that being a mercenary abroad was the same thing as being a patriot, and that there would be no higher honor than if he "made the ultimate sacrifice" for his dog kennel.  

I still have Norman, who is now four months old.  He spends his time the way all dogs spend their time: sleeping, playing and eating (and I suspect when he's sleeping, he's dreaming about eating and playing).  She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed thinks the possibility still exists that I'm going to kill him.  She gives me directions on how to raise him. I just roll my eyes. I figure she can't help it, poor thing.  

Poor Norman has a brain the size of a walnut, which serves him quite well for his simple life.  My brain's a bit bigger, or so I'm told, yet I need the ever-expanding Blob of a State to run every aspect of my life?  Yech.  

I think I'm capable of raising a puppy, just as I'm capable of running my own life without a surrogate Mommy and Daddy, in the guise of the State, regulating every itty-bitty part of what I eat, do or say.  You know things are getting weird when a pug dog has only a fraction of the laws to live under than I do.