One of the many highlights of last week's Democratic convention is that it framed the election as two competing visions for the future of this country. The Republicans presented a Randian view of the future that included tax cuts for the rich and vouchers for Medicare. Of course, the one glaring exception was in the area of reproductive rights. The Democrats, on the other hand, presented a vision of the future based on citizenship and community. As Colbert King in the Washington Post noted:
To those GOP conventioneers whooping it up for Mitt Romney, that well-connected rich kid who grew up to make millions taking tender loving care of other people’s money, America is a land of makers and takers.
And for those makers convened in Tampa, the United States is in danger of being overrun by, as Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan put it in an appearance at the Heritage Foundation last fall, “a net majority of takers.”
My conservative friends on Facebook argue that the Democrats have created a "culture of dependency" (a more polite version of the Cadillac-driving welfare moms meme). I beg to differ. Blue jersey dad and I are living the American dream, thanks to federal programs that are designed to give our citizens a hand up. We may not be Mitt Rmoney-rich, but we have a great life, and it would not have been possible without the programs that were started under the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society. More on our story below the orange squiggle of power.
Blue jersey dad's father, blue jersey granddad, came to this country as a nine-year-old in the early part of the 20th century. He was forced to leave school and help support his family at age 12. His first job was bringing buckets of beer to construction workers. (This was just before prohibition.) Blue jersey dad's family was poor. His mom was a housekeeper with a third-grade education. His dad owned a hardware store, but he lost it during the Great Depression. Blue jersey dad was an excellent student, but he could not see any way he would ever be able to go to college. When he was 21, he received his "letter from President Johnson", and he decided to join the Air Force. After 4 years in the Air Force, he returned home and entered college using the GI Bill. Using the GI Bill, federally-insured student loans, and other financial aid, he was able to earn a BA, MA, and PhD in Archaeology from one of our Ivy League institutions. He spent most of his career as an archaeologist for the US National Park Service and retired in 2006.
My story is a bit different. We were a middle-class family who fell on harder times when my dad lost his job and my parents later divorced. Although my mom had a college degree, she returned to work after spending over 15 years as a stay-at-home mom. She worked for 25 years as an account clerk, and she never made a lot of money. I was able to go to college because I had a New York State Scholarship. I also relied on federally-insured student loans to support my education. My PhD research was funded by a Fulbright Grant (paid for by the US and British governments) to the University of Southampton and a grant from the National Science Foundation. My post-PhD research was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (I even have a nice letter from Lynn Cheney in my files.). I have been lucky enough to work as a college professor for almost 30 years.
Today dad and I are really living the American dream. We own our own home. It is a 3-bedroom, one-bath ranch, but it's paid for. We don't own a "couple of Cadillacs", but our Toyota Echo is paid for as well. Of course, it doesn't have its own elevator. It is parked in our car port. With the help of federally-insured student loans and the federal Work-Study program, we put three kids through college. The oldest is now a post-doctoral researcher at Harvard University. The middle son is a writer in LA who was recently invited to join the Writers' Guild. My "baby" is a college junior who hopes to go to law school.
In Romney World, dad and I are probably written off as "takers", but in the real world, federal and state programs gave us a hand up into the middle class. And we do pay a much higher tax rate than Mitt Romney does. No we did not succeed on our own. We succeeded as part of a community that values education and hard work.
Let me close with a final quote from Colbert King:
Those faceless people, ignored by the privileged, are giving it their all because they, like the mother of Democratic National Committee keynote speaker and San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, are fighting hard so that, as he put it, “instead of a mop, I could hold this microphone.”
A brief addendum: I wrote most of this diary a couple of days ago. Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I am a native New Yorker. I was born in Queens, went to high school in Long Island, and attended college in Manhattan. I have lived in suburban NJ for most of my adult life, and I have worked in lower Manhattan for the past 23 years. My cousin's husband walked out of the 16th floor of the North Tower on that day 11 years ago. Yesterday, I arrived at Penn Station about 8:45, just in time for the 9/11 memorial. This is the first 9/11 memorial I have ever attended. A string quartet played Bach, and bagpipers played
From the New World and
Amazing Grace. Here are a couple of pictures I took with my cell phone:
It is important to honor all those who lost their lives on that awful day. It is also important to remember that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are being advised by the same group of neo-cons who ignored the warnings before 9/11. I do not want those folks in charge of our foreign policy ever again. As Joe Biden says, "Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive."
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