|
This column has been a long
time coming. I suppose that’s because -- about so many things in my life -- I’m
an intensely private person. And though there is no doubt about my political
orientation among my friends and many of my acquaintances, I wear many hats during
which I do not discuss politics. I generally don’t discuss politics at
church, for example, and that is, perhaps, odd -- because church informs my
political decisions. Let me explain.
I didn’t start life as a
Democrat. I grew up in Georgia
at a time when there were only two political parties there -- the Democrats IN
office and the Democrats OUT of office. But my parents voted
Republican in national races, and I was a staunch Republican as a teenager ...
staunch enough to be very active in the Young Republicans.
Three things happened to
change that. The first was a meeting of the Young Republicans during the 1968
presidential election when a very good friend of mine suggested that we raid
the local Democratic headquarters and steal a pile of their election material
and throw it all away. I don’t know if the others went ahead with the plan, and
I did not know until years later that that was to be the pattern of “dirty
tricks” in national GOP politics during the Nixon era, but I refused, and that
was the end of the active phase of my membership in the GOP.
I did, however, continue to
vote Republican for a while. Fiscal responsibility has always appealed to me. I
keep my own checkbook balanced, and I think the Federal Government should, too.
I also liked the Clean Air and Clean Water acts and the creation of the
Environmental Protection Agency, which happened under Nixon. But the corruption
in that administration (some members of which have been repeat contributors to
the more troublesome behavior of this current Bush administration) brought it
down. And as the years passed and moderate Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller
and Charles Percy died off, I didn’t so much leave the Republican Party as the
Republican Party left me.
And along the way, I grew
up. I became the person I wanted to be and, frankly, the person my parents
raised me to be. And that brings me back to church. I come from hard-working,
middle-class people. My mom raised four kids on a shoe-string while Dad worked
6 ½ days a week building a business. They believed in taking care of their
family, taking care of God’s creation, and giving back to the community --
especially helping folks who were less fortunate. It’s the Biblical injunction
about loving our neighbors and caring “for the least of these.”
That means I reject the
politics of divisiveness and greed. I did not like its beginning under Newt
Gingrich, and I haven’t liked anything I’ve seen of it since. I find myself
taking a stance opposite many of its central ideas. For example:
I realize it’s odd, but I
don’t much mind paying taxes. I drive on tax-paid roads, my kids go to tax-paid
schools, my meat and veggies are inspected by tax-paid inspectors, my savings
are insured by the feds, my son-in-law’s paycheck in the army is paid for by my
taxes ... and I wouldn’t be making so good a living if I lived in any other
country. So I figure I owe. The funny thing is, I think people who make even
more than I do owe, too. But those at the top of the income scale are the least
likely to pay their fair share under President Bush’s tax cuts!
I don’t mind a certain
amount of regulation. I breathe air, and so do my kids. I like rules
against dumping mercury and other pollutants into the air and water. I also
know that creating better technology to clean up the air and water means more
and better-paying American jobs. I don’t understand the tax cuts that are given
to American businesses that send our jobs overseas! That may be “good for
business” (affecting a company’s stockholders), but it’s bad for the economy
(which affects ALL of us). I also appreciate regulation against contaminated
food and medicine, incompetent doctors and engineers, and monopolies
(competition being the soul of capitalism). But I do NOT appreciate the federal
government coming in and demanding that local schools test, test, test our
kids, without providing any funding to improve the actual education the kids
are receiving (as with “No Child Left Behind”).
I believe in hard work and
personal responsibility. But I also know that anyone can fall on hard times --
folks get sick, breadwinners get laid off (see “jobs going overseas,” above),
families may have to choose between paying for heating oil or food. There needs
to be a safety net ... and not just for multi-billion-dollar Wall Street
companies, but for families, too. It scares me that the companies we’re bailing
out are the very ones Bush wanted to turn our Social Security over to under his
“privatization” scheme!
I do not believe in preemptive
war. Defense, YES! Go find bin Laden in Afghanistan. Stop a madman who’s
trying to take over half the world and engaging in genocide. But don’t decide
to topple a dictator we dislike (and used to support and give weapons to) just
because his country’s sitting on a oilfield your buddies want. And NEVER
descend to the depravity of torture. I thank God that Germany
subscribed to the Geneva Conventions and that my dad came home in one piece as
a WWII P.O.W. We have no standing to demand the same humane treatment for our
troops serving today.
I’m still a fiscal
conservative. The last seven years have brought a disastrous federal deficit ....
a deficit that makes a weaker dollar (which makes everything we buy more
expensive) and puts my children’s future at risk.
Reasonable taxes,
appropriate regulation of business and the environment, good schools, social
programs (the “Safety Net”), and fiscal responsibility. That’s why I’m a
Democrat.
Marjory Holder is a vice
chair of the Watauga
County Democratic Party.
|
