Republicans hate women! Democrats eat orphans!

Some writers gain immortality by the wisdom they distill into a few golden words: Lao Zi, Ecclesiastes, Aristotle, the Sermon on the Mount, the lyrics of the great Tang poets, great passages in Hamlet and elsewhere in Shakespeare. 

Others seek 15 minutes of fame by expressing the essence of clap-trap in a finely distilled form. 

I came across a commentator of the latter variety this morning, a poster on Amazon named Michael Altaribba, expressing political notions.  Let's label those notions "A":

A. "It's a reflection of the Republican Party's fundamental (pun intended) misogyny . . . they see every woman as tainted, subservient, and inherently unclean. Women exist for the purpose of making children (preferably sons), keeping the house clean, and providing pleasure to their husbands. If they engage in sexual activity with someone other than their husbands, it is their fault, and they deserve to be punished, regardless of the circumstances. And, if they dare to actually enjoy that sexual activity, they are especially deserving of punishment.

"It's a revolting reflection of their Bronze Age social perspective. With any luck, the Republican candidate will lose by a landslide this November, and, perhaps finally, the Republican membership will reassess their ideology, and jettison the ideological poison (and those who produce it) from their midst."

Of course, it would be easy to formulate a caricature of Mr. Altaribba's preferred political party along similar lines.  Let's call those lines "B:"

B. "For Democrats, babies are conceived to be killed, so their parents can pleasure one another, without worry about contractions or diapers.  If they survive the womb, they are taken as tools to assuage the teacher unions' endless greed for benefits.  Later, when western society is forced by its creditors to deal with its economic (and concurrent moral) bankruptcy, the 'half-aborted generation' will be further saddled with paying back the $20 trillion in bribes the Democratic Party has paid its constituents for votes.  All this is sanctioned or prophesied by the spiritual denigration of humanity argued for by philosopher Peter Singer, for whom a baby is no more than a pig or dog.  Democrats obviously hate children.  Since secularism derides the spiritual aspect of humanity -- treating us as more than barn animals -- Democrats will no doubt want to will eat children once it is legal."
 
I won't, of course, argue that B is true.  Its purpose is mainly to provide people who buy A a mirror by which to spot the absurdity of A.  But if anything, I do think it more plausible to say Democrats hate children than that Republicans hate women.    
 
A case could be made that Republican men like women more than Democrats do, or in a more flattering way.  54% of Democrats are now single, while 62% of Republicans are married.  If Democratic men really loved women so much, why don't they marry one? 
 
Oh, a left-wing slickster might coyly reply, but it's so hard to choose!  Bill Clinton surely loved women -- and they loved him back!  While fooling around crosses the aisle, the culture of one-night stands and hookups seems most powerfully affirmed by a long series of Democratic politicians.  For every Newt Gingrich on the Republican side, one seems to find two or three equally prominent Bill Clintons, JFKs, or Teddy Kennedys, or even a Barney Frank, with a male prostitution ring run out of his apartment. 
 
Which might help explain the overwhelming Democratic support for abortion at all stages and under all circumstances.  If you want free love, what makes more sense than to rid oneself of the ultimate romantic entanglement -- a new generation of ankle-biters? 
 
OK!   You've had your laugh.  But judging ordinary blokes by seedy politicians is not fair!

So let's look at Michael's claims more closely, and see if we can find any sense in (or behind) them.
 
"It's a reflection of the Republican Party's fundamental (pun intended) misogyny... "\
 
Get Michael's point?  The real reason Republicans allegedly hate women is because so many Republicans are Christians, aka "fundamentalists."  That's also the point behind his later "Bronze Age" shot -- the Bronze Age being when most of the Bible was written. 
 
In an earlier series, "How Jesus Liberates Women," I laid out what I think is pretty conclusive historical evidence that this common belief is mistaken.  Far from demonstrating a hatred of women, the "Bronze Age" teachings of the Bible have done more to liberate woman around the world, by the billion, than any other force of nature or super-nature.  I still await a serious attempt by any skeptic to disprove those arguments. 
 
As for evidence that Republicans are particularly mysogenistic, of course refuting that would take a different argument, if any evidence for the claim were given.  But since Michael has given no such evidence for his assertion, we have no need to rebut it.
 
"They see every woman as tainted, subservient, and inherently unclean."
 
Michael seems to be suffering relapses from experiences in a past life as a leper.  This is almost too over-the-top to do anything but laugh. 
 
"Women exist for the purpose of making children (preferably sons), keeping the house clean, and providing pleasure to their husbands."
 
Oh, that explains why more Republicans are married!  We want our womenfolk to scrub the floors after our masculine, beer-swilling, Monday-night-football watching sons throw up on them!  Curious, though, that married women are also far more likely to vote Republican than unmarried women.  They must all be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
 
Here again, thinking of actual Republican women I know and the men who love them, one finds this caricature tremendously amusing.  
 
"If they engage in sexual activity with someone other than their husbands, it is their fault, and they deserve to be punished, regardless of the circumstances.  And, if they dare to actually enjoy that sexual activity, they are especially deserving of punishment."
 
Here, I think (looking behind as well as at) we spy the nub of the matter for a lot of men on the Left.  What is better for the natural desire of a callow, self-seeking man with little thought for the future, than that women would accept the adolescent 60s ideology of "free love?"  Free meaning, you get sex without paying anything in return -- no hand-holding at birth, no hospital bills, no cleaning diapers, no crying at inopportune times, no tuition, no work late at night like Tiny Tim's father for Mr. Scrooge.  You can come and go when you like, like Charlie Sheen, or many other healthy, left-wing, Hollywood role models.   
 
But if you say, "I will love and honor you, in richness and poverty, sickness and health, so long as we both shall live, even when you wrinkle up and I might still 'get' younger women -- aging is not fair -- I choose to stay by your side, and provide for you and our children" -- that's exploiting women, somehow!  
 
One can almost see the wheels churning, here, and who is really hot on exploitation.    

"It's a revolting reflection of their Bronze Age social perspective.  With any luck, the Republican candidate will lose by a landslide this November, and, perhaps finally, the Republican membership will reassess their ideology, and jettison the ideological poison (and those who produce it) from their midst."

Because in the Bronze Age, everyone lived just like the Cleavers.  There was no rape, no concubinage, no sexual exploitation, right?  Or perhaps the Christian ideal was the real revolution, the liberating revolution, then, and remains so today?

If the Left wins the upcoming election (post-script: it did, this was Obama vs. Romney), think what we can look forward to:

* Roe vs. Wade will continue as the Law of the Land, and with it the normative Charlie Sheen lifestyle -- whether or not that makes for real and lasting happiness.  

* No one will do anything about our present debt, which has passed 100% of GDP, sailed through $15 trillion dollars, until Obama is gone, and the next generation is forced to finally pay the piper.  (Or our economy collapses, as that of Greece has already done, as it may well soon do.) (Note: now $20 trillion.  What, me worry?)

* The great god government will continue to undermine marriage, fueled by the kind of contempt for marriage commitments suggested by Michael's comments. 

Some philosophies become the pillars on which civilizations are founded.  Others fall like wrecking balls upon them. 

Most Democrats are not cannibals, of course, any more than most Republicans hate women. 

But many Democrats (and some Republicans) have become champion of ideologies that, it seems to me, are cannibalizing our civilization.  And that, I think I can say without much exaggeration.