That's what hippies used to be told. Or so I have been told. It was fun to see the same argument used now:
Speaking to a Lincoln Day Dinner in West Palm Beach for the Palm Beach County GOP, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla) fired off a humdinger of a line that within minutes drew recriminations from Democrats on Twitter.Contrast this to the often-heard false equation politicians make between the government and the family. We must all tighten our belts! We must decide if granny gets her heart fixed or if the children get dental care! Just like a real family.
"We need to let President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, (audience boos) and my dear friend the chairman of the Democrat National Committee, we need to let them know that Florida ain't on the table," West said. "Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America."
That parable doesn't work. Families can't print money and don't have private military forces. Families don't have the same tasks and functions as governments do, and arguing that governments should tighten their belts in a recession simply makes the recession much worse.
But still. If the United States is seen as a family, then surely it is a most dysfunctional one when a politician suggests that some members of the family should just get the hell out of here.
This is a trivial post. But it's a nice way to show the two common angles in political debates: The "Murkan People All Want The Same Thing" angle and the "Kill The Opposition" angle. Neither is very adult.