A certain Chinese encyclopaedia entitled 'Celestial Empire of Benevolent Knowledge'

In the past two days, two different liberal blogs I read have featured amusing links to manifestos written by conservatives. First, Lawyers, Guns, and Money linked to a "reactionary catechism" posted on Redstate. For those unfamiliar with it, Redstate is the conservative equivalent to Daily Kos, with DKos's small population of wacky bleeding-heart liberal moonbats replaced by a small group of wacky arch-reactionary conservative wingnuts, and the larger group of committed progressives replaced by an equally large group of wacky arch-reactionary conservative wingnuts. These gentlemen apparently wish we hadn't gotten rid of that whole segregation thing:

Tradition and custom need not constantly explain or justify themselves as practice or policy. The presumption is in their favor. To drag them before the bar of a rigid rationalism is profound impiety.

Men, and societies of men, are ultimately more apt to maintain loyalties among those who are like them. This is natural and not to be either deplored or extirpated, but rather disciplined by civic virtue.

Indiscriminate blending of cultures is thus undesirable, and more often than not an at least implicit act of aggression against the existing majority culture.

Next Matt Yglesias picked up on a manifesto by someone who apparently wants us going to war even more frequently:

When foreign leaders issue threats against us, we take them at their word and act accordingly.

Great, now we can bomb everybody else every time they make a hollow threat.

As a response, let me propose the following manifesto to counter all these manifestos:

1. The Talmud tells that a gentile came to Shammai saying that he would convert to Judaism if Shammai could teach him the whole Torah in the time that he could stand on one foot. Shammai drove him away with a builder's measuring stick! Hillel, on the other hand, converted the gentile by telling him, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it." Hillel set his standards too low: one should do what is pleasing for others, not just avoid doing harm. Libertarianism is for people whose moral scheme got fixed in the third grade.

2. No manifesto should have more than one item. It makes you look like a raving lunatic, and gets away from whatever you wanted your central argument to be. No manifestos more than one item!

3. Writing a manifesto puts you in some questionable company. Marx wrote one, along with a buddy. The Unabomber wrote a rambling one. More recently, a group of British "leftists" wrote one, and were joined by a group of American "leftists" who look a whole lot like neocons and Iraq war supporters. This is not the company you want to join.

4. If something is immediately obvious, you are wasting you time putting it in a manifesto, since everyone already knows it. If the point is not immediately obvious and you want to convinve anyone other than yourself, you'll need to explain you argument through logical reasoning, and are wasting your time by putting it in a manifesto. This point is of the former category.

5. Those that have just broken the water pitcher.

6. Those that from a long way off look like flies. Seriously, click on the link, it'll make you a better person...and encourage you to stop making stupid lists. This post is over, so click on the link damnit!