Rutherford McReagan wants your time
From The Left
by Joseph Waldman
29 November 2001

Joseph Waldman, our regular "From the Left" columnist, whose heart bleeds at the slightest plight or provocation, was hospitalized with chest pains after Thanksgiving dinner. We wish Joe a speedy recovery, and urge him to cut back on his monotonous diet of scrambled eggs and scotch, suggesting instead barbecue and bourbon. Substituting this week is his evil conservative arch-nemesis, Rutherford McReagan, about whom Joe has said, "This isn't at all like it was with Spock and Evil Spock. I'm the good guy, and yet I've got the beard. He doesn't even have an arch-nemesis's twirly mustache. What gives?"

"How good it feels to have that do-gooder Waldman out of the way! Pitiful liberal--he can't even enjoy wasteful bounty without coronary guilt. How does he expect to stimulate the economy if he can't even choke down half a Thanksgiving turkey and then throw the other half away?

"But enough about him. I am delighted to be in the pages of the Transcript, a fine newspaper at one of the finest colleges in the world, if one limits the range to low-tiered, evangelical-based institutions largely dependent on filthy rich, intellectually underqualified Caucasians from the East Coast for its enrollments. But, I ask you, what other university in the Midwest can boast of such an impressive and diverse array of students from Connecticut?

"One never should forget that Thanksgiving is the preeminent WASP holiday. Those brave and hardy pilgrims who landed at Plymouth nearly four hundred years ago are the original Americans, and it has been scientifically proven that no one was there before them. It is therefore altogether appropriate that the rest of the nation, as it has since expanded, should remain under the fair but strict control of the Pilgrims' descendants. Colonies of the colonies, one might say.

"The East Coast is where the old money is; ergo, it is the finest segment of this great nation. Money makes the world go 'round! For once, I find I have something in common with those disgusting deviants from Cabaret. I mean the painted dancers, of course; I am practically indistinguishable from those fine young National Socialists.

"But back to my favorite subject. Stocks, bonds, commodity futures, yachts, diamonds, furs, and slaves (if only they were still allowed; those original so-called Republicans, such as Lincoln, were not, to the best of my ideological knowledge, real Republicans)--to me, these all symbolize the American Dream at its finest, the spinning of great personal fortune from items one has purchased or, at any rate, inherited from one's relatives.

"You may wonder about my name. It reflects my family's staunch Republican heritage. 'Rutherford,' of course, comes from Delaware's own President Hayes, elected in the entirely fair election of 1876 and predestined to bring such good, clean Methodist values as teetotaling and heavy-handed proselytization to Washington. The 'Reagan' component of my family name, happily, matches up with America's latter-day Jupiter, whose golden effigy ought to be superimposed on the official design of the American flag, in recognition and appreciation for his humble and democratic defense thereof.

"My middle name is 'Benito.' Activist government can, in some cases, be a good thing. In all other cases, however, I am committed to the most for the least. Ideally, we would have no government; the market would run, and reign, completely free; and there would be peace on Earth and a blissful, happy apocalypse. Of course I realize that this rhetoric may seem to place me in the leftist camp of so-called anarchism, or rather with the college cliques that claim the mantle of 'progressivism.' I would sooner die than ally with an authentic liberal, though I often rhyme in a Jesse Jacksonesque manner. But the pseudoprogressives and I are much closer than they realized. I assure you that no true, consistent leftist ever has come out of the wealthy suburbs of Cleveland or New York. The benefactors of these young people--their parents--are my brothers in spirit, no matter how liberal they may claim to have been in their own youth.

"I am a profoundly religious man, and I do not feel ashamed to profess it loudly, publicly, and often, nor to expend great quantities of time and energy directing other people toward the light of God. I find it astonishing that, nearly two millennia after the Lord Jesus Christ emerged from his cave and vanquished the Satanic groundhog, there yet remain people on this planet who would prefer to 'live for themselves' rather than submit to the reheated dogmas of the old Roman Empire, in whatever denominational form they may have taken since. The Lord helps those who help themselves, and He loves even more those who help the blind to see the light, especially when He gets to play host to these newly visional children not long after the application of 'extreme ministrations'.

"But my time here is nearly up; I must go pay a visit to Waldman, and see if perhaps I can beat a little conservative sense into him while he is still bedridden. The boy rarely has shown signs of weakness before, but this may be my opportunity. If I succeed, this column will be much different from now on. If not--well, there will be plenty of opportunities in the spring to put him on a sabbatical and once again take over this space. God bless you and God bless America; and do not forget that recycling is for sissies, so dispose of this paper in an all-inclusive trash receptacle once you have finished with it."