Why I Am A Democrat
Ezekiel J. Krahlin
(a forwarded essay)
---begin essay:
From: bil...@aol.com
To: okdem...@egroups.com
Subject: [okdemolist] Why I am a Democrat
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 22:52:07 EDT
The attached is a letter I wrote to my son who is searching
for his political home. The letter was published in The
Oklahoma Observer.
Billye VanSchuyver
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Dear Son,
Thanks for reminding me of Patrick Henry's speech.
When I was a 12-year-old seventh grader I memorized that
speech. I love the phrase "give me liberty or give me death"
(although some are now arguing that old Pat never said it).
But notice he didn't say "give me freedom or give me death."
Liberty and freedom: two different things.
I appreciate your stimulating e-mail messages. So,
you are disillusioned with the two major parties, you have
changed your registration to Independent, and you are
identifying with the Libertarians? I guess we find ourselves
in a time when many people are looking around for the perfect
political party. I take a mother's prerogative to make a few
points on the issue:
1. I agree with some but not all of your Libertarian
views. In a perfect world, populated by perfect people, I
would probably agree with it all.
2. I agree with most but not all of the Democrats'
stands.
3. I agree with virtually none of Bush and the
Republicans' platform. Point: It is not going to be possible
for me to find a party with which I agree one hundred percent.
So I am sticking with the Democrats, and the remainder of this
letter will tell you why.
You imply that because I am as you say "a far left
liberal," that I am a Socialist. I am not socialist and
neither is the Democratic party. However, some of our best
protections under the law are social in nature. One of these
is Social Security. Another is Medicare. Another is the FDIC.
You may decry these protections as socialism, but you have
lived a privileged life. You can't remember a depression; you
can't remember a time of want; and you can't remember how it
was before these government protections.
You can't remember when old people dreaded the day
they would be taken to the "poor house," which George W. Bush
might call "a faith-based institution," a thousand times worse
than today's poorest nursing homes. A fate worse than death.
There was no Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.
You can't remember when a large family did farm work
for another family for a dollar a day, and sometimes sat down
to a supper of biscuits and water gravy. There was no minimum
wage, you see, and there were no food stamps.
You can't remember when a rural family would call in a
neighbor woman to help deliver another baby. There was no
pre-natal care for such mothers, and no post-natal care
either. There was no Planned Parenthood. There were no State
Health Departments. There was no contraceptive information,
and heaven forbid that there should be legal abortion.
You can't remember the time your paternal grandfather
drew out the hard-saved money for his annual mortgage payment
just in the nick of time, only to have the bank close the next
day. All deposits were lost. This happened over and over
across the country: failed banks, ruined families. There was
no FDIC.
You can't remember the year your grandpa could not pay
the mortgage and faced imminent foreclosure. Fortunately,
FDR had just come into office. He closed the banks for a day,
and told the bankers to loan money to the farmers, and the
government would guarantee the loans. Your grandfather's
farm, the very land your father and I live on today, was saved
by FDR's "socialism." Prior to FDR there were no secured farm
loans.
You can't remember the great dust storms when the sun
disappeared and the sky grew black, when parents hurried the
children into the house and stuffed rags around the windows
and doors in a vain attempt to keep out the choking sand. The
government was minimal (just as today's libertarians would
have it to be and Republicans claim they want it to be) so the
farmers were on their own. The topsoil blew away. Crops
failed; the mortgages could not be paid. You see, son, there
was no Soil Conservation program in those days.
You can't remember the pitiful farm families who
conceded their family acres to the banks and loaded up their
ancient cars and went west to pick grapes. Whole families
worked in the vineyards for the smallest imaginable amount of
money--there was no minimum wage, and child labor laws did not
apply to farm work. The Grapes of Wrath is more truth than
fiction.
You can't remember when blacks and whites drank at
different fountains and went to segregated schools. Black
people worked mostly at menial jobs such as janitors and
housekeepers, or they operated poor farms and garden plots.
There was no affirmative action and civil rights were unheard
of.
You can't remember when the only jobs open to women
were nursing, teaching, clerking, waitressing, or laundry
work. You can't remember when farm women did back-breaking
farm work beside their husbands while they raised huge
families and bore all the household responsibilities. There
was no affirmative action; there was no legal birth control;
and abortion was illegal. (This is what today's Republican
platform is leading us back to.)
I agree with you that there are too many laws. But,
Son, I think you are living in a dream world if you think a
country of almost 300 million people (as opposed to Patrick
Henry's three million) can handle perfect freedom. Liberty,
yes. We must have liberty. But that is not the same thing as
freedom.
The government is, after all, Mark, the people.
Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, soil
conservation, the FDIC, civil rights legislation, Legal Aid,
free public schools and state supported colleges: all of these
resulted from the will of the people through their elected
representatives. Are these programs socialistic? Call them
what you will, but where would we be without them?
I love the word freedom. It sounds so good. Sure I
would like to be able to run any old red light I want to run.
I can't--we live in a social environment where there have to
be rules (laws) to provide a safer world. Liberty, however--I
have that. We have more liberty than any other country on the
face of the earth. But freedom? Perfect anarchical freedom
for every person in this country? To paraphrase the
songwriter, freedom is just another word for nothing left to
lose.
Freedom is what we had in the 30s before FDR was
elected. Freedom for barefoot men to walk by your grandpa's
farm and beg to work for food. No place to turn for help.
Those vaunted faith-based institutions just couldn't or
wouldn't spread themselves to cover the hundreds of thousands
of homeless, free people, like the Joads in The Grapes of
Wrath. During the Great Depression the gap between the rich
and the rest of us was a Grand Canyon of despair. Are we
heading back to that condition? The Republicans are working
to take us there.
George W. Bush and his ilk talk about limiting
government--I guess that is their way of saying they want
Americans to be free. They want to limit government--but they
want corporate welfare. Do you realize WalMart gets subsidies?
Do you realize what tax breaks such huge companies as General
Motors get? Do you realize that in order not to "inhibit"
research, the big drug companies are allowed to charge such
exorbitant prices for drugs that many old people cannot afford
them? Is that freedom? No, that is corporate welfare masked
as freedom.
GWBush and his ilk say they want to take the
government off our backs. Sure they do, by putting every
female in this country in bondage to the government from the
time she reaches puberty until menopause. Sure they do, by
taking my tax money and giving it to folks who want me to
support their religious schools. Sure they do, by requiring
prayers and other religious observances in the public schools,
that last bastion of the separation of church and state. Sure
they do, by supporting the teaching of religion (creationism)
in our public schools' science classes. Sure they do, by
denying full citizenship to the one out of ten citizens of
this country who is gay or lesbian.
Sure they do, those compassionate conservatives. They
want the freedom to foist their own brand of religion on the
rest of us. For them, that's freedom. Hang the rest of us
misguided fools--it is for our own good. As Jimmy Swaggart
said one time in a passionate sermon, holding the Bible high:
"This is the Constitution of the United States!" Give George
W. Bush a chance to stack the Supreme Court, it will be.
Your elders can be wrong, and we often are. But, son,
believe it or not, life experiences teach hard lessons. I
learned some in my dust-bowl depression childhood: I learned
it is okay to have a little government in my life. And I have
learned that those who say they want to "free" us from
government control are the most anxious to take us back two
generations to that halcyon era of Herbert Hoover, backstreet
abortions, civil and human rights for the privileged few
(white, rich, male), and the public school teacher leading the
children in prayer before the class begins.
Thanks for the stimulating emails. Keep 'em coming,
but only if you want long-winded replies like this.
Love, Mom
---end of essay
---
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Disgusted with our choices for next President?
Write me in: Ezekiel J. Krahlin, gay activist,
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