“So God Made A Liberal”

This amused me today, on a day when I needed something amusing.

First, you have to hear the serious one, the original, to appreciate the second, less but more serious one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRDaPEaDJ7E&feature=player_embedded

And then

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUzMPlQb2G4&feature=player_embedded

And now you know the rest of the story.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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23 Comments

  1. frahobbit says:

    Dear Father Z, this happened when I cut and pasted the address to the address bar:

    “This video is unavailable.

    Sorry about that.”

  2. Mike says:

    It’s really quite sad.
    But I would have ended it:
    God said “No, I don’t need someone like that. But I know someone else who does, and I’m sure he will take care of it himself.”

  3. Kathleen10 says:

    Excellent! Wow, it is just that clear.

  4. incredulous says:

    It angers me… and I just went to confession. Blech.

  5. cowboyengineer says:

    Made milk shoot out my nose

    [Should I have posted a warning? … Nah.]

  6. GypsyMom says:

    Who says the second one isn’t serious?!!

  7. BigCath22 says:

    Wow! That second video is very hateful!

  8. JKnott says:

    Sums it all up very well.
    The only consolation is that we are blessed to be Catholics, who can at least pray for them.

  9. incredulous says:

    The intellectual leftist would find the first video hateful most likely.

  10. CGPearson says:

    “17th Century Belgian Lesbian studies”…I about lost it at that part.

  11. BigCath22 says:

    We should all befriend one liberal so that:

    1. We can convert them.
    2. We don’t spend our lives making worthless, childish, hateful Youtube videos. I, too, am often annoyed by liberals but that is that really how Christ wants us to act? What do you all think?

    I’m open to criticism.

  12. ocleirbj says:

    @BigCath22, I agree that this video is pretty unedifying. It perpetuates nasty stereotypes about “liberals” in a way that only reinforces the equally nasty stereotypes that “liberals” have about “conservatives”. Does anyone think that a liberal will watch this and be suddenly stricken in conscience, repent, and join the Church? What is its purpose? To encourage conservatives to sit in a corner with Screwtape and snigger at those misguided liberal idiots, I mean those other poor sinners for whom Christ died? No, I don’t think that this is how Christ wants us to act.

    P.S., I’m not saying that behind any stereotype there isn’t a grain of truth. I’m saying that stereotypes in themselves can be pernicious, when they are shallow, partisan generalizations, that can easily be misused to assign motives and actions to individuals which may be far from the truth. I know that most comedy relies on the unexpected juxtaposition of stereotypes for comic effect. But this video makes me think that enjoying the humour in stereotypes can be a near occasion of sin for us when they are so exaggerated and delivered with such a pointedly mean spirit. I don’t think we should be encouraging Christians who enjoy pointing a mocking finger at those they disagree with, “just for fun”. See C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, on flippancy [ch 11].

  13. Jean Marie says:

    Fr. Z – that made my night! To be always surrounded by these people 24/7, 365 and hear the constant drumbeat of “we know better” despite all the evidence to the contrary, to hear this shot to their pomposity was delightful!
    PS – Of course I pray for them. Most of these people are my co-workers and family.

  14. donato2 says:

    Some of it would be better titled “So God Made A Teenager” or “So God Made A Millennial.”

  15. catholictrad says:

    To be fair to BigCath22, if we buried ourselves in mockery, it would be unhelpful. But not to pull back and laugh a bit now and then would be unhuman.

    For instance, in a moment of youthful insensitivity, I noticed an elephant idol with several multi-colored devils standing around it, all but in flames with candles in the room of my friend from India. I asked him, “You can’t possibly be worshipping that elephant can you?” To which he shouted, “You have no business discussing my gods when you yourself are a god cannibal.” We found the humour in our separate points-of-view, then went back to playing baseball.

  16. shoofoolatte says:

    These videos are not amusing to me, but obnoxious, made with partisan half truths and meant to provoke an illusive response to how things really are. I’m sorry I bothered to watch either of them. I really don’t have time for this. My New Years Resolution is to stop reading this blog. [May you never flag in your resolution.]

  17. bookworm says:

    ocleirbj makes some important points. However, there is another section of The Screwtape Letters that I have found helpful WRT how we think of/behave toward people who are our literal or ideologial enemies.

    In one letter, Screwtape tells Wormwood that how his “patient” treats the real people he meets every day is more important in determining his damnation or salvation than how he feels about the Germans (as a British subject during the World War II Blitz) or any other group of people in the abstract. “There is no use in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him, his mother, and the person he meets in the street,” Screwtape states.

    I think a similar principle applies to how we approach liberals, gays, RINOs, CINOs, or any other group that represents opposition to what we believe in. How you feel about these groups in the abstract is less important than how you ACT in real life toward a member of one of these groups when you meet them or do business with them, and toward the other people who are part of your daily life, regardless of their religious/political beliefs. So if you are conservative, trad, etc. and have friends or regular acquaintances who are not, I think that is a good sign, not a bad one.

  18. bookworm says:

    To continue what I stated above… when it comes to posting satirical or critical commentary, etc. on the internet regarding people we don’t like, it’s a little more complicated.

    On the one hand, I think it is entirely possible to joke about, lampoon, parody or make fun of liberals, etc. up to a point, without causing grave harm to your spiritual life. Everyone needs to “vent” once in a while and political satire and humor do serve a purpose — provided that you are just as able to TAKE a joke about yourself or your “side” as you are to make a joke about the other.

    On the other hand… stuff that is posted online or aired over radio and TV is seen by real people with real lives and real immortal souls and over time it DOES have an effect on them. Posting YouTube videos or scathing tweets may SEEM like a merely abstract exercise in venting one’s feelings toward faceless targets, but it isn’t.

    To be able to make a truly funny joke about anything, you first have to take it seriously and know it well. That’s why religious and ethnic humor only “works” when voiced by a member of the group being joked about (Jewish comedians telling Jewish jokes, etc.) Flippancy, by contrast, is simply a lazy imitation or attempt at humor being made by persons who do NOT take seriously or respect the subject they are joking about. This type of humor, as Screwtape says, dulls, rather than sharpens, the intellect and poses the greatest spiritual dangers.

    Humor is also, I think, meant to “spice up” public life and daily discourse — which means that you don’t forbid it completely, but you use it judiciously, in small amounts, and NOT to excess, just as you don’t smother everything you eat in salt, sugar or chili powder but you don’t ban these things completely from your diet either.

  19. BigCath22 says:

    Thanks for the responses, all!

  20. Kathleen10 says:

    @catholictrad….oh let me hang out with YOU! Your story was a funny one, and I am with you 100%. Being a follower of Jesus is the goal, and we all clearly care about doing just that. We have various personalities and ways of looking at things. I’m grateful to God for my propensity to laugh at things, appropriate, inappropriate, this is how I was made by God, and I appreciate it. In this fairly insane world, where stress is rife and nothing is certain anymore, without that stress release I’d get sick or go bonkers right quick. If we are not careful we can get somewhat scrupulous about humor. Hey, some days we are targets and some days we are the arrow. It all balances out. Not laughing at ourselves, our situation, other people even, would be mentally unhealthy and I think makes us religiously unappealing. To each his own but, in life, humor, lots of it, seems very necessary to me. It seems healthier to not be too zealous about humor.
    Not a surprise I liked the videos, both of them.

  21. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    To toss a little more Lewis into the mix: in his 26 September 1945 letter to I.O. Evans, he said, with reference to That Hideous Strength, “The trouble about writing satire is that the real world always anticipates you, and what were meant for exaggerations turn out to be nothing of the sort.” (I have seen something similar attributed to an Austrian in the 1930s about the difficulty of satirizing the Nazis.)

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