This is the three page letter I received today from my father. In 2004 just before the general election, he sent a letter to us four kids sharing with us his disgust at the Swiftboating of Senator John Kerry. Like him, my father was in Vietnam. He was revolted by the way friends of the Bush Administration had tried to politically destroy this man who wanted to serve our country again from the highest office.
My sister, like me, is a Democrat; she's also an attorney and mom to two kids. My two brothers are Republicans, married and fathers each. So, I think that the letter was a way for Dad to reach out to all of us and delineate once more, beyond the time for him to parent us, who he is, what he believes and why he feels that way as a reminder of our family story.
At any rate, this year's election letter below is no different. It's also addressed to the grandchildren, two of whom are old enough to begin to digest and understand the sentiments. It is a reminder of the power of our personal histories and backgrounds. Since my paternal grandfather died before any of us kids were born, it is a missing portrait of an unknown ancestor. This letter is a beautiful legacy of a 68 year old man to his progeny.
My father was born in 1894 in Heber Springs, Arkansas and moved to Decatur, Texas when he was a little boy. He finished the 7th grade and went to work as many boys did in those days. One of his jobs was working in a funeral home. He told a funny story about he and another fellow picking up a casket and carrying it to another location. When they got there the lid lifted by itself and a fellow worker sat up. My father was in on the joke but the lid lifting by itself scared the co-worker and he ran out of the storage building screaming.
My father joined the Masonic Order in Decatur. Since I am not a Mason, it is just conjecture on my part, but I believe the Masons are guardians of the separation of church and state in whatever country they are in. My father was a self-motivated person and as a young man read self-improvement books. Since most everyone lived in a much more primitive way than we do nowadays, he wanted to be successful financially as security for his family.
During the Depression, he was co-owner of the Ford agency in Electra, Texas. He was President of the Electra Country Club and a community leader. In 1938 Ford started pushing cars down their dealers' throats and Daddy and his partner had to give up the dealership as there was no one with any money to buy cars. The hardest part of the Depression in Texas was the end of the 30s. It was in this period that there was a weather drought, too, which created the dust bowl in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Times were hard and I'm afraid my father felt they were hopeless as he went into deep depression and went to bed for the first year of my life. In those days his psychological condition was called a "nervous breakdown".
It was from that experience that my father learned that the power of the corporate world was a cold and "bottom line only" decision-making monster. He was still a voracious reader and he read such books as John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath". He told me when I was a teenager that he thought it was one of the best books ever written. He said he saw the failing farmers have their farms taken by the banks, then they'd head for California to pick fruit. In California they were paid only sub-living wages and if they didn't like it, the owners would hire bullies to run them off.
So my father was for the Democrats because Texas had always been Democratic and FDR was his hero and a Democrat. FDR realized that the only way for the Depression to be ended was for the federal government to put people to work. The government had the most money of any institution and needed to provide for the common good by getting people to work. It was the individual's dignity, as much as the money he needed, that FDR realized needed to be provided through work. FDR had seen what big business's appetite for greed did when it had no checks and balances. He knew the only fair controls for big business were government controls. My father agreed with FDR's policies pretty much 100%.
In 1964 I entered the University of Texas Law School. It was a wonderful time to be there and an affirming time to be a liberal Democrat as America was changing. The Civil Rights movement was just perking up and Austin was at the forefront of the thinking. My brother Bob and I walked in an integration march on the sidewalks along Guadalupe Street beside the campus to integrate a bar that would not let two Army buddies, one black and one white, have a beer there together. Before the marchers started, we met in the YMCA and I'll never forget a black law student, whose last name was Christian, noted for the crowd that integrating a bar might not be our highest calling. We laughed and knew he was right, but the crowd wanted to strike a blow for freedom (the freedom to associate with whom you wished) so we did the march. The protesters to the march were so full of anger and hatred that I came out of the march aware that I was emotionally spent and could not stand ever again to be the brunt of so much anger.
The law school was a place of free ideas and thoughts and made my heart dance with joy that the laws of this nation were there to protect the sacredness of the individual. President Kennedy had been assassinated but had presented our country with lofty ideals. He began the Peace Corps so that American values and skills could be shared around the world, especially in third world countries. LBJ was elected the fall I was in Austin and he did two very important things, he got Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act that removed all the laws that limited the individual because of color and he passed the Medicare Act. The Medicare Act made doctors wealthy with its passing and gave the elderly protection from devastating illnesses.
One of the requirements for being a liberal is the belief that the individual has a right to fair treatment by our courts and laws. There was a saying in law school that was taken from Christian teaching and it was, "do it unto the least of these and you do it unto me." It meant any law that limits the weak or powerless limits me, too. If a law can limit any individual's rights, it limits my rights. It was used to say to government, "don't tread on anyone's civil rights."
One of the curious things that has happened over the last forty years is that the liberals used the federal government to overturn state and local laws that were unfair to a group of people such as minoirities. All the time the Republican's screamed that the more local the law, the fairer the law to represent the thinking of the local majority. Now the Republicans who control the Congress want to overturn local and state laws that allow individual freedom such as same sex marriage.
I've always thought that the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party was that the Democrats supported small businesses and small farmers and Republicans supported large corporations. Too, being Republican meant you were conservative about the size of government and fiscal responsibility. Now it seems to have changed. The Republicans have enlarged government by the pharmaceutical bill and given up fiscal responsibility with unlimited spending on defense and the war in Iraq. The Democrats don't believe the war was anything the US should have been involved in. They think the only time we, as the strongest military nation in the world, should attack another nations is when we are in eminent danger of being attacked.
Under the guise of individuals having control of their own destinies, the Republicans have said they want to save Social Security. Social Security was created under FDR to protect the very poor from living in poverty in their later years. It was never a replacement for savings by those who could afford to. It was a guarantee against hard times for the elderly. One of the basic elements of Social Security is that it takes all of our support to keep it operating. If you allow some to invest as they wish, it weakens the amount going into the general pot and hence the amount derived from the pot.
The Bush Administration has admitted that self-directed funding doesn't cure the ills of Social Security. Since people earning over $90,000 don't pay into social security beyond that $90,000, it is a break for the very largeset income earners. Perhaps asking them to pay into Social Security beyond their present $90,000 limit would help. I'd be for that, but would not want the companies that employ those earners to have to match it beyond $90,000 because the small companies have enough taxes to pay plus the burden of medical care for employees.
A liberal is a person who feels religious freedom means the personal freedom to worship any way I want as long as it doesn't infringe on the religious freedom of others. It means I can pray silently anywhere, anytime and anyplace I want. Public prayer is another issue. I remember when I was a cheerleader in high school, the squad came up with a pre-game prayer that all of the students were encouraged to pray in unison at the pep rallies. My oldest brother Ottie told me that was wrong and I remember being totally baffled as to why he would say that. He was a Mason and I suspect wanted to keep religion and public education separate. I never thought that prayers would offend people who didn't believe in any deity or believed in religions other than Christianity, Judaism or Islam. It never occurred to me that I was pushing my religion on to others.
I am a liberal because I know women have not been treated fairly in our society. Women deserve to have the same control over their own bodies that men enjoy. They deserve the same pay for the same job as a man gets. When I was a boy my mother could not have a credit card in her own name. It had to be in my father's name. Her mother couldn't vote most of her life. Grandmother Young was born in 1865 and died in 1957.
People who feel our country is going to hell in a rowboat remind me of Chicken Little yelling "the sky is falling, the sky is falling." All is not perfect but we have the laws and the mechanisms to make it more perfect. Still, I am very fearful of people who want our country to be more religious. I want our country to be more educated and informed. Religion is personal should be respected for its personal meaning. However, the power to reason is one of man's most precious gifts and science is a result of this power to reason. I hold the human intellect in high regard and believe in the power of education. It is important in keeping us all free.
As a generalization I am distrustful of large corporations because of their abuses of power. I feel the same about government institutions. When power is isolated in the hands of the few, they too often abuse it. I think President George W. Bush has done this and I don't trust him for it. He ran on a slogan of "compassionate conservative". He has only been a divider of our people and compassionate toward no one except his supporters.
I'm afraid he is not much of an intellect and has surrounded himself with people who want to exercise power through him. Power is a very strong drug and politics a very sad and sick game today. The President's last political campaign was as mean-spirited as any I've seen. I was especially saddened by the attacks by his people on Senator Kerry's military service. The President's condemnation of the attacks after they'd been leveled, of course did nothing to change anything. President Bush makes me uneasy because he can't admit any mistakes. How shallow and lacking in reality his position is if he can't see any error he may have made.
I started this to explain why I am a liberal. I hope I've helped you understand why I am who I am. I am proud to be labeled a "liberal" and even a "tax and spend" liberal. At least we raise taxes to offset spending. I am a person who has never minded paying taxes. the more taxes I pay, the more money I am making. I've had such a blessed life because of the way this nation operates. I can't imagine resenting paying my share of the blessings taxes bring. Taxes provide me and my family the most bang for the buck...highways, schools, parks, protections (police), courts, government, etc.
Well, I guess I've said all (and more) than I'd intended to share. I love the US and I want you to love it, too. But don't get caught up in patriotic fervor. It is dangerous and can become mass hysteria. Use your power of reason to help keep us free. Think of what you believe and why you believe it. Don't be a go-along with the majority just because your friends are. Be your own person and know what you stand for. I love you each and all.