Conservatives: I get it.

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Added: Fri. Mar 06, 2009 9:50am
Posted in: Politics

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The last thing I want to do is brand myself as a political blogger or self-appointed expert because I am neither. But I keep hearing a repeated theme, parroted from the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, coming from the conservative people who follow and engage me. I often engage conservatives in conversation, and watch conservative programs for the simple reason that I cannot turn away. It's like watching one of those shark attacks in slow motion. It's gory, it's bloody, it's over-exaggerated, and it's fascinating in its horrifying carnage.

People keep asking me "Don't you understand that you are paying taxes to subsidize people who don't want to work" ? And my answer is "Don't YOU understand that we'll pay those taxes no matter which party is in power? That the Republicans will use it to make war and the Democrats will spend it at home to help our own people?

See, that's where this gets sticky. I may not have a political education credentials, but I have a brain - a pretty good one - and I've been following politics since Nixon was elected. In 1968 during Nixon's campaign, I was nine years old. My dad was following the campaign pretty closely because he liked George Wallace. You'll have to forgive my dad, he's from Mississippi. My very first political debate was challenging dad when he made a comment about how good Wallace would be for the people. I remember telling him that Wallace was a nut and his platform unworkable and racist. I disagreed with Nixon's platform issues, and the remaining candidate, Hubert Humphrey, was the only candidate talking about bettering America and the American people. So, of the three, even though Humphrey was a weak, non-compelling speaker, he was the best choice. Dad did his best to tell me what I should think and ended the argument with "as long as you live under my roof, you will vote for who I say you will" and I responded with "I'm 9. I can't vote for anyone. But if I could, it would be MY vote and not yours, and I would decide who to vote for". I was probably not an easy child to raise.

Enough about me. Here's what I want conservatives to know. I do understand your objections. I do agree that there are a lot of people out there who milk the system. Who take advantage of government handouts, MY tax money, to sit at home and pop out kids so they can get even more money. People who claim to be disabled when they aren't. I get it.

I also get that there are a lot of people who are on a losing track and have been so beat down by the system, generation after generation after generation, that they have no hope. That they will settle for those measly government handouts because they never had a shot at life. They were crippled before they were born by societal view and by societal treatment. I'm not only talking about black people. I know that prejudice exists, but what I'm really talking about is poor people who are ordinary. If you're poor, your color doesn't matter. You can't get a quality education, so you can't get a decent job. You can't get credit, so you can't get a loan, and even if you do get a business loan, you don't have the education or the savvy to run a business because you were never exposed to those principles. So my advice to poor people is: be brilliant or extraordinarily talented because otherwise, you are doomed to poverty. No matter how hard you work, you are going nowhere unless you are ten times better than a rich person.

Plus you have the added attraction of police suspicion, especially since 9-11 and the loss of rights that came with Homeland Security, a poorly worded bill that was wholly embraced and bastardized by local law enforcement to institute profiling and previously illegal searches and arrests. Thanks, President Bush. Nice work. Most people don't know the extent of the damage done to our freedoms, but someday you will. Someone in your family will find out first hand how corrupt justice has become and how little power we have as individuals to combat it. Unless, of course, you're connected. Which means rich and influential. Neat how that works.

I don't speak for every liberal, but I believe we have to change things from the ground up. Which means we have to support the deadbeats we created and help their children. We have to raise the next generation, and the generation after that, to be productive. To be able to earn a living and more. To be able to think for themselves because they have nourished brains capable of sustaining thought, and not fed on measly food stamps and what passes for nutrition at school. Some kids only get that one meal at school, and I've been there. I was a fully involved parent and volunteered at school as often as I could. School lunches are disgusting and nutritionally inferior to anything I would feed my kids at home.

Let me make something else clear. I'm not poverty stricken and neither were my parents or my grandparents. We have always done fairly well for ourselves. I'm not even related to anyone who can be considered poor. So I don't advocate for poor people for direct personal reasons. I advocate for them because I see this country being run into the ground. Poor people do desperate things. Violence, drugs, alcoholism and crime rises when people become desperate. I don't want to have to barricade myself and raise my own food because we have ignored the poor for so long that their primary source of income is preying on people like me, something we see far too often in the news. We have to raise ourselves up as a whole, and that can only be done by taking care of people who have no means to take care of themselves. They need jobs and food and health care. And we all need to be safe. This is going to take a while. Two generations, at least. But imagine a world where even people who are not movers and shakers can be independent. Where jobs are available and new companies succeed and are not choked out by conglomerates. Where young people think "I need to study hard and work hard and make something of myself to succeed" instead of "There's nothing for me unless I sell drugs. There is no future after the car wash". We must restore America - all of America, including the poor and the minorities - to the basic principle that hard word equals success. We have lost that ideal. Hard work today does not equal success. If you can earn more on welfare than at a minimum wage job, and you will never, ever rise above the minimum wage job no matter how hard you work, then why leave welfare or encourage your children to do so? If you know that nothing awaits you but failure and humiliation, what's the point of hard work? That's what we have to change. Opportunity. Rewards for hard work. Get people off welfare by giving them something better. Pride.

I get it. Do you?