Lifter?

On Tuesday, Michael Moore published a much-heralded “letter to disheartened conservatives.” He was so proud of his manifesto that he turned it into a petition–which now has more than 17,000 signatures.

It goes on like this:

Dear Conservatives and Republicans,

I, and my fellow signatories, hereby make these promises to you:

1. We will always respect you for your conservative beliefs. We will never, ever, call you “unpatriotic” simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.

2. We will let you marry whomever you want, even when some of us consider your behavior to be “different” or “immoral.” Who you marry is none of our business. Love and be in love — it’s a wonderful gift.

3. We will not spend your grandchildren’s money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It’s your checkbook, too, and we will balance it for you.

4. When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home, too. They deserve to live. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on either a mistake or a lie.

5. When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you, too, will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that affect you and your loved ones, we’ll make sure those advances are available to you and your family, too.

6. Even though you have opposed environmental regulation, when we clean up our air and water, we, the Democratic majority, will let you, too, breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water.

7. Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you…

Moore’s red meat (or rather, blue meat) got thumbs up from Daily Kos commenters. But not all the lefties on the Internet are singing Moore’s praises.

Jim Hoft noticed this long Democratic Underground thread by a liberal blogger justifiably upset with Moore’s apparent cribbing of her open letter to dismayed conservatives published five days before Moore’s.

Here’s a bit of her compare-and-contrast:

Moore: A Liberal’s Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives
Me: Dear dismayed conservatives:

Moore: I, and my fellow signatories, hereby make these promises to you:
Me: I hereby make these promises to you.

Moore: Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you.
Me: We will protect your lives and livelihoods.

Moore: We will always respect you for your conservative beliefs.
Me: We will listen to and respect your beliefs.

Moore: We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don’t put those beliefs into practice. // We will let you marry whomever you want, even when some of us consider your behavior to be “different” or “immoral.”
Me: We will never try to force you to change your religion, sexual orientation, or first language.

Moore: We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.
Me: We will do our best to reduce the number of abortions in our country.

Moore: We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and who are bought and paid for by the rich.
Me: We will have no tolerance for corruption and cronyism, even in our own party.

Moore: And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side FIRST.
Me: ESPECIALLY in our own party.

Moore:We will never, ever, call you “unpatriotic” simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.
Me: We will never tell you that you are unpatriotic. We will never tell you that your opinion doesn’t count…

…Moore: If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it.
Me: If we forget this, please, please, please, remind us.

Moore: You are every bit as American as we are.
Me: We need you to do this. You are America as much as we are. Let’s go.

The DU commenters are siding with the blogger. As one commenter wrote in response to one of Moore’s defenders who mused that “great minds think alike:”

“Nobody thinks THAT much alike. Smells like plagiarism to me. And that’s a shame.”

Another suggests:

“Please get a camera and track him down. It’d make a hilarious meta-movie.”

They report, you decide.

To be fair to Moore, the manifesto form is hardly an original concept. But it would have been nice for the Voice of the Common Man to tip his hat.