I am grateful to Antonia Senior for a new take on an old warning:
You have two cows. The communist steals both your cows, and may give you some milk, if you’re not bourgeois scum. The fascist lets you keep the cows but seizes the milk and sells it back to you. Today’s Green says you can keep the cows, but should choose to give them up as their methane-rich farts will unleash hell at some unspecified point in the future. You say, sod it, I’ll keep my cows thanks. Tomorrow’s green, the Bolshevik green, shoots the cows and makes you forage for nuts.
Sir Alexander Bustamante used a version of this in the campaign which led to the 1961 decision, by popular referendum, for Jamaica, the largest and & most prosperous member, to leave the West Indies Federation. He claimed that a Jamaican who had 2 goats would have to give one up to help the less developed small island members
We have had our GOAT (Government Of All The Talents) too
But – sadly? – it seems that the goat “not only lacks much talent, it also lacks much interest in government”
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