A conservative and a liberal are walking along the beach when they see a man drowning a hundred feet off shore. The conservative throws him a 50 foot rope and shouts to the victim "You provide the other fifty feet." The liberal throws the man a 200 foot rope...and lets go of both ends.
What does this even mean?
That's very confusing. I guess that the parable is that Conservatives are sadist fucks who never go far enough to help anyone, blaming the victim and Liberals are well-equipped and idiotic, who go too far but don't do any work themselves. The guy is drowning one hundred feet off the shore, how the hell is he to have fifty feet of rope, or for this 50 feet of rope to marry itself to the Conservative's 50 feet of rope? Or are we to assume that the drowning man will take the 50 foot of rope, knot it with his own, then throw one end back to the Conservative to pull himself back in with assistance?
Clearly, the parable is a masturbatory tale of personal accountability and work, but it only goes to advance a moral that if you should be given a poor hand by fate, the Conservative will gladly watch you die and say to himself "Well, I did my half, he should have done his." I'm not sure if this was the intended meaning or simply the incidental one. It's pretty telling of the message of the wiki though, and probably the most true window into their perspective that they have up there.
A conservative and a liberal are walking along the beach when they see a man drowning a hundred feet off shore. The conservative throws him a 50 foot rope and shouts to the victim "You provide the other fifty feet." The liberal throws the man a 200 foot rope...and lets go of both ends.
What does this even mean?
That's very confusing. I guess that the parable is that Conservatives are sadist fucks who never go far enough to help anyone, blaming the victim and Liberals are well-equipped and idiotic, who go too far but don't do any work themselves.
The parable works better if it is rewritten to be more representative.
The Drowning Man
A conservative and a liberal are walking along the beach when they see a man drowning a hundred feet off shore. Each of them is holding a 50 foot piece of rope. The conservative shouts to the man that he should have made better choices in life. The liberal grabs the conservative's rope, ties it to his own with a fisherman's knot, and then saves the drowning man. The conservative then attacks the liberal, because he is livid with rage that his property rights were violated.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.