Many, Many Cows

It's one of those evenings on which you realise that, sometimes, the old jokes really are the best jokes. For many years, I collected versions of the infamous 'Two Cows' political jokes. Today, for the first time in years, I am putting a short selection online. Enjoy them, especially you out there who have just finished the HL History paper. Bear in mind that tomorrow is the Fourth of July. And laugh a lot. Have yourself a cow. Or two.

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Two Cows (And Friends)

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

PURE 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 as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You then have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

NAZISM: You have two cows. The government takes the brown one away and you never see it again. The white one milks you.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbours help you take take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

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

TOTALITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

MILITARISTIC DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you, saying, "Every citizen must do his or her duty."

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbours decide who gets the milk.

ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your male, rich, slave-owning, cultured and intelligent neighbours decide that they should have your milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbours pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate".

BRITISH DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. You feed them sheep's brains and they go mad. The government doesn't do anything.

KOREAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows, and your neighbours clash with riot police outside your home for three weeks because they might be *foreign* cows.

INDONESIAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows, and someone bribes you to put a yellow t-shirt on one of them, and a group of thugs intimidate you into putting a green t-shirt on the other.

SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment. Then they realise they can make you ballot for the right to pay for a certificate allowing you to own cows of different capacities. This is where the fun starts...

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

ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbours try to kill you and take the cows.

HONGKONG CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the feng shui is bad.

ENVIRONMENTALISM: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.

FEMINISM: You have two bovines of politically indeterminate genitive status seeking special concessions for the nature of their chromosomal arrangements.

CRYPTO-FEMINISM: You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

COUNTERCULTURE: Wow, dude, there's like... these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk.

SURREALISM: You really have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

ANARCHY: Keep the cows. Steal another one. Shoot the government.

CONSERVATISM: Freeze the milk. Embalm the cows.

LIBERALISM: Give away one cow. Get the government to give you a new cow. Now give them both away.