So how did this small-town girl get interested in politics? After much thought, I can answer that. It wasn't one event, it was an evolution.
When my daddy would come home from work each night, he would sit down with the newspaper while Momma fixed supper. Often, I would sit by his chair, looking over his shoulder and read with him. I loved the comics part of the paper, but I wasn't so sure about the cartoon on the political page. It wasn't quite as funny as Peanuts. I would ask my daddy about what it meant and he would attempt to explain it to me. Sometimes he admitted it didn't make much sense to him, and other times he would launch into a detailed explanation of a current event that would either enthrall or bore me. My daddy was a democrat back then, from a long line of staunch democrats. His family wouldn't buy gas at a station until they verified the owner was a fellow democrat. These people were hard-core.
When the political cartoon was about communism, it was different. Daddy owned a business that was involved with a company from Germany. He would make trips to Germany, and he always came home with great stories. When the cartoon was about communism, he would pull me up on his lap and tell me about some sad stories from his trip. He would tell me about the Berlin wall, and his trip to East Germany. He had gone through Checkpoint Charlie, and he told me how scary and difficult it was to enter the world of communism. While the stores had ads for all sorts of goods, they were actually empty; people stood in long lines just for simple items like bread. He laughed when he told of going to a restaurant with an elaborate menu, but everything he attempted to order was unavailable. Finally he and his friends asked the simpler question, "What do you have?" The list was short. His countenance was sad and reflective as he told of the people he met and all he saw. When I asked why they lived like that, he explained the big differences between communism and our life of liberty. I didn't fully understand, but I wanted to.
The first time my daddy voted for a Republican, it was for Gerald Ford. I remember him talking about his taxes, and how hard he works for so much of it to be taken by the government. In junior high, when Ronald Reagan ran for office, and my friend's parents swore he would start WWIII, my daddy reassured me it wasn't true--we needed a man with those ideas in office. The ideas of Carter and the democrats were running our country into ruin and we needed to turn it around. When I asked my grandma why she was a democrat, her standard response was that the democrats are the party of the little people. Hoover was a republican, and he almost ruined our country until FDR saved it. Looking back on it later, I realized my grandma didn't really think that one through.
In college I lived with three Reagan-hating democrats. I didn't know enough about it to argue, and the truth is, I didn't care enough to want to. One time Reagan came to my campus and I walked to see his motorcade drive through. To this day, I promise that man looked right at me, made eye contact, smiled and waved (of course), and I was giddy. Not that my roommates understood. The big political issue on campus then was the shanty town built to bring about awareness of Apartheid. As I walked by those people in the cardboard houses day after day, I never did understand how that helped anyone in South Africa. It seemed fairly useless to me. I was to later understand the liberal philosophy of symbolism over substance was behind it all. At the time, I just came to the conclusion that they really hadn't thought it through.
After I married and became a momma, I was acutely aware of every cartoon, book, and tv show that could influence my children. My radar was constantly up, evaluating the toys at the burger joints, the laws that dictated how my children were to be taught to read, the popular books and shows; I was constantly educating myself about the deeper implications because I had learned things weren't always what they seemed. I really wanted to think it all through.
Then we started homeschooling. As I taught my children American History, I learned far more than I could teach about our heritage. The biggest leap in my political intrigue came when we dug into World History. Over five years, we went through world history from creation to now, seeing the rise and fall of civilizations, the strength and decay of empires, the Dark Ages, the vikings, the Renaissance....you get the picture. I felt my heart break as I imagined the families blown about by the winds of the political changes. It seemed so sad that they had little to no control over their destinies. Then I was dumbfounded by societies that made choices that put them on a path to their own ruin. Why would someone choose this destiny? What motivated them? The founding of our country is even more astounding when put in the backdrop of World History because it is such an incredibly unique experiment.
I had a new appreciation for these United States. Born of a diverse people who created their own identity, we became a world power in a short time. The face, and the outcome, of WWI was changed when the doughboys showed up. Europe was hanging by a thread when our WWII boys helped and the tide was turned. People risked their very lives to come and live under the liberties of our country.
This experiment is not without its pitfalls, a huge one expressed by Alexis de Tocqueville, who said, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years."
So many times I read and hear of events occurring over this great land, and I think to myself, "How can these people desire to give up these liberties of ours? What is the motivation? Is it security?" I love Ben Franklin's observation, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Yes, people desire to live secure lives. If that means they sacrifice their freedoms on the altar of security, they willingly do so. But what is the outcome of this? How much have they thought this through?
I love reading and hearing the stories of people who have come to America from other countries. Their appreciation of our freedom and opportunity is so refreshing after seeing people take it for granted, or worse, scorn it, each day. They are saddened by the track our great nation is on. These people have thought it through. They know the outcome.
I often tell my children, who I have raised to think about these issues carefully, to not be so hard on people with whom they don't agree. I explain that most people begin as a liberal. I tell them about Winston Churchill's quip that a person who isn't a liberal by the age of 20 has no heart, and a person who isn't a conservative by the age of 30 has no brain. Liberalism is easy. It is what our media tells us to be. As a person who generally likes to just "flow" with things, I fit the bill for awhile. Conservatism is harder. It takes thought and energy. To be a conservative, a person always has to think things through.
I have the utmost respect for liberals who have thought it through, and simply come to a different conclusion than I. Our desired outcomes may differ, or our worldview may not be the same. If, indeed, this is the case, so be it. If, however, it is a liberal who hasn't thought it through....perhaps one who votes that way because their parents did....or perhaps they haven't an affinity for history and do not know that there is nothing new under the sun and people have trod this path before....I encourage them to think it through. Learn of the people who have gone before and the outcomes that we can expect.
In the meantime, I continue to evolve. I want so badly to be someone who thinks it through.
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