WORLD IDEOLOGIES EXPLAINED BY REFERENCE TO COWS



FEUDALISM

You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.



SOCIALISM

You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn

with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The

government gives you a glass of milk.



FASCISM

You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of

them, and sells you the milk.



PURE COMMUNISM

You share two cows with your neighbors. You and your neighbors bicker

about who has the most "ability" and who has the most "need". Meanwhile,

no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of

starvation.



RUSSIAN COMMUNISM

You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government

takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it

on the black market.



PERESTROIKA

You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes

all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the

"free" market.



CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM

You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.



DICTATORSHIP

You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.



PURE DEMOCRACY

You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.



REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the

milk.



BUREAUCRACY

You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed

them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then

it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the

drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the

missing cows.



CAPITALISM

You don't have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows,

because you don't have any cows to put up as collateral.



PURE ANARCHY

You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your

neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.



ANARCHO-CAPITALISM

You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.



SURREALISM

You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica

lessons.



OLYMPICS-ISM

You have two cows, one American, one Chinese. With the help of trilling

violins and state of the art montage photography, John Tesh narrates the

moving tale of how the American cow overcame the agony of growing up in

a suburb with (gasp) divorced parents, then mentions in passing that the

Chinese cow was beaten every day by a tyrannical farmer and watched its

parents butchered before its eyes. The American cow wins the

competition, severely spraining an udder in a gritty performance, and

gets a multi-million dollar contract to endorse Wheaties. The Chinese

cow is led out of the arena and shot by Chinese government officials,

though no one ever hears about it. McDonald's buys the meat and serves

it hot and fast at its Beijing restaurant.



AMERICAN CORPORATE CAPITALISM

Both cows are bloated with toxic steroids. They are set out to graze on

privatized public parks, release massive amounts of flatulence that

destroys the ozone layer, die from excess ultraviolet light, and are

processed into meat-like products that look great as a result of clever

and unprincipled marketing strategies. When you mortgage your

artificially devalued farm at high interest rates in order to buy meat,

you consume the poisoned material and develop terminal illnesses because

there is no health care plan to treat you. The corporate management uses

your purchase price to acquire THEIR meat from cows raised "naturally"

on tree-free rain forest land outside of the country where labor and

resources are cheap.



BRITISH REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

Both cows are mad