You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

When I was a kid that was a pretty common phrase I would hear from the adults in my life. To me, it basically meant you couldn’t have something you wanted without also accepting the consequences that came with it. Officially, it is a common idiom meaning you can’t enjoy two mutually exclusive benefits or options at the same time—you must choose one or the other.

The official explanation doesn’t fit the context of this article as clearly as my childhood interpretation. You’ll see what I mean in a minute.

Recently, I was engaged in a deep conversation with an ultra-liberal type. I use the word “type” because I no longer know what “liberal” actually means anymore. The term has been twisted and redefined so many times that it has lost all recognizable shape. We’ve had to invent a new label—“woke”—to describe what used to be called liberals who have now drifted far beyond reason.