Dakota Beacon

It’s funny that liberals try to advance the caricature of the stuffed-shirt conservative. It’s projection, actually, because “killjoy” could be synonymous with “progressive.” From demonizing toy guns to banning dodgeball and sweets to stigmatizing innocent jokes as “racist” to, generally, ensconcing everyone in bubble wrap, never was a rainbow born the libs couldn’t turn gray (except, you know, for the rainbow cause they’re obsessed with). A good example of this is a recent Lost Angeles Times article titled “How vegetarians, gluten-frees, grain-frees and other L.A. food tribes ruined my BBQ tradition” (a.k.a. “How Being around Liberals Really Stinks”).

It was written by one Robin Rauzi, who informs, “Anyone who knew my wife and me knew that on Friday night we would be on the patio, grill fired up.” Therein lies the first indication of the problem: Rauzi doesn’t have a wife.

Rauzi is female herself and apparently had a faux marriage, which means she has a wife as much as I did when, in first grade, I participated in a momentarily popular aping-adults pretend game and announced “I married Lisa.”

So when at issue are Lost Angeles liberals, is it any surprise they’d turn a barbeque into a bolsheque? Liberals have damaged the tradition (and institution) of marriage, foreign policy, the economy, education, entertainment, the media, our immigration regime, demographic integrity and, basically, everything meeting with their reverse-Midas touch. Why would barbeques be an exception? The only surprise is that Rauzi’s comrades haven’t ostracized her for emitting grill-disgorged greenhouse gases.

But Rauzi tells us that hot dogs and hamburgers were off the menu because her “wife” stopped eating beef; she also informs that due to a neighbor’s dietary restrictions — “no mammals” — they one summer “grilled a lot of variations on chicken and turkey sausage.” I’m not sure if this is driven merely by species-centric prejudice and patriotism (I’m assuming the neighbor is a mammal), but I’d like to hear the explanation of how it’s more moral to eat a mother hen than, let’s say, a dormouse, which was a delicacy in ancient Rome. The difference seems likely to be that, given our modern sensibilities, liberals may author mouse-like foreign policy but find eating one pretty disgusting. But they fancy chicken yummy.

Rauzi then writes of a new semi-vegetarian attendee who wouldn’t eat fish and of how the no-mammal-eating mammal “developed a mysterious stomach ailment that required avoiding hard-to-digest fibrous vegetables, such as lettuce, kale, spinach and pretty much anything else you’d use as the basis for a salad. And corn on the cob.” Rauzi also tells us, that Mrs. No-mammal’s “husband began contributing barley or bulgur grain salads. Around the same time, the book ‘Grain Brain’ became a bestseller, blaming whole grains for everything from Attention Deficit Disorder to dementia. He took home a lot of leftovers.” Then she informs that the next restriction involved the general fear of sugars and gluten, the latter of which is a huge money-making con (gluten is absolutely fine unless you’re the rare person with Celiac disease).

The result was that Rauzi’s bolsheque was suspended. She explained, “My communal barbecue was now fully populated by people who would not or could not eat the same food.” But here’s what escapes her: This is a metaphor for the problems of liberalism and what it visits on the wider society.

It’s what happens when you try pandering to every little minority, when you forget that the “good of the many outweighs the good of the few” and confuse minorities having rights with minority rule. You don’t make a barbeque a bolsheque because the odd person is confused about his eating any more than you should completely rewrite the whole of society’s bathroom policy because the odder person is confused about his sex.

As for food-oriented events, let’s get something straight: It’s extremely rude to expect a host to accommodate your every dietary whim. I eat what’s served when I’m a guest, to be polite, whether I like it or not. After all, what are we? Children?

Speaking of which, a commenter under Rauzi’s piece mentioned that it’s even worse if you have finicky youngsters, because then you have to jump through culinary hoops every day.

Huh?

This is also liberalism: treating kids as if they’re princes and princesses. I didn’t like everything my mother served — notably sweet potatoes — but I knew I had to eat it; there was no other option. Good training, too, because it teaches children the right kind of tolerance (for objectively good things you don’t happen to like) and reflects the idea that you appreciate whatever’s on your plate, as it’s a gift from God and someone labored to prepare it for you. And do you think children living for most of history, when diets were very limited, could choose their menus? For sure, an idle mind makes the Devil the chef.

As for barbeques, I attended one Sunday in another den of iniquity — New York City — and some at the gathering were certainly quite liberal. Guess what? There were pig-in-blanket hors d'oeuvres, tortilla chips, hot dogs, hamburgers, pork ribs, gluten-replete bread, soda and sweets for dessert. Everyone ate and no one complained. So here’s some advice: if you experience anaphylactic shock when a neighbor calls his daughter “Peanut,” if you won’t eat anything that “has a face” (nothing has a face by the time it’s on my plate), if you make diet your religion, if dinner to you is an occasion for moral preening,   gatherings centered around normal people consuming large quantities of food probably aren’t your bag. Stay at home and cuddle with your bean sprouts and tofu.

So liberals killed the Rauzi bolsheque just as they kill civilization. Oh, Rauzi desires to resurrect her event, even though it appears a fruitless endeavor, saying, “I want very much to have the kind of home where people can just stop by and feel welcome no matter what food tribe they are in.” But this is another liberal delusion. And it also has metaphorical meaning. You can’t have an event — or a country — in which every conceivable tribe will feel welcome. Something established is just that, a “something,” and a “something” always has a definition. And definitions limit; they exclude what doesn’t meet the definition. You can have tradition and exclude iconoclasts, or you can make today’s iconoclasm tomorrow’s norms and exclude traditionalists. But you can’t have your gluten-free cake and eat it, too.

As for health, every civilization has a nut allergy. The Rauzi realm’s dietary and voting decisions make plain that nuts abound in our nation today — and all of America is descending into anaphylactic shock.

              Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com