An Identity Question

This was floating around the net and washed up in my email.

How do you tell the difference between liberals, conservatives, and southerners?

Answer: Pose the following question:

You’re walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children. Suddenly, a dangerous looking man with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, raises the knife, and charges. You are carrying a Glock .40, and you are an expert shot. You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family. What do you do?

Liberal Answer:

Well, that’s not enough information to answer the question! Does the man look poor or oppressed? Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack? Could we run away? What does my wife think? What about the kids? Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand? What does the law say about this situation? How do I switch the safety off, anyway? [Ed: Glocks don’t have manual safeties.]

Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway, and what kind of message does this send to society and to my children? Is it possible he’d be happy with just killing me?

Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he be content just to wound me? If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away while he was stabbing me? Should I call 9-1-1?

Why is this street so deserted? We need to raise taxes, have a paint and weed day, and make this a happier, healthier street that would discourage such behavior. I wonder why no one has demanded knife control….

This is all so confusing! I need to debate this with some friends for a few days and try to come to a consensus.

Conservative Answer:

BLAM!

Southerner’s Answer:

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! … (sounds of reloading).

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Daughter: “Nice grouping, Daddy! Were those the Winchester Silver Tips?”

[P.S. In the version that came to me, the last BLAM! in each of the Southerner’s two magazines was followed by a “click.” But any true Glockaholic would know that you can’t click on an empty chamber in this situation with a Glock; its slide locks back after the last round in a magazine is fired.]

UPDATE

I thought this was just a light, silly diversion, but see this. Which is a joke and which is real life?

Between 1998 and 2000, the CIA and President Bill Clinton’s national security team were caught up in paralyzing policy disputes as they secretly debated the legal permissions for covert operations against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan

….

There was little question that under U.S. law it was permissible to kill bin Laden and his top aides, at least after the evidence showed they were responsible for the attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. The ban on assassinations — contained in a 1981 executive order by President Ronald Reagan — did not apply to military targets, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel had previously ruled in classified opinions. Bin Laden’s Tarnak Farm and other terrorist camps in Afghanistan were legitimate military targets under this definition, White House lawyers agreed.

Also, the assassination ban did not apply to attacks carried out in preemptive self-defense — when it seemed likely that the target was planning to strike the United States. White House and Justice Department lawyers debated whether bin Laden qualified under this standard as well, and most of the time agreed that he did.

Clinton had demonstrated his willingness to kill bin Laden, without any pretense of seeking his arrest, when he ordered the cruise missile strikes on an eastern Afghan camp in August 1998, after the CIA obtained intelligence that bin Laden might be there for a meeting of al Qaeda leaders.

Yet the secret legal authorizations Clinton signed after this failed missile strike required the CIA to make a good faith effort to capture bin Laden for trial, not kill him outright.

….

It was common in Clinton’s cabinet and among his National Security Council aides to see the CIA as too cautious, paralyzed by fears of legal and political risks. At Langley, this criticism rankled. The CIA’s senior managers believed officials at the White House wanted to have it both ways: They liked to blame the agency for its supposed lack of aggression, yet they sent over classified legal memos full of wiggle words.

….

Some CIA managers chafed at the White House instructions. The CIA received “no written word nor verbal order to conduct a lethal action” against bin Laden before Sept. 11, one official involved recalled. “The objective was to render this guy to law enforcement.” In these operations, the CIA had to recruit agents “to grab [bin Laden] and bring him to a secure place where we can turn him over to the FBI. . . . If they had said ‘lethal action’ it would have been a whole different kettle of fish, and much easier.”

We all knew that Clinton wasn’t conservative, but apparently he wasn’t a Southerner either.

Say What?