My dear old dad says people often live according to conservative principles even if they verbally espouse liberal policies: on April 15, for example, not many pro-tax "progressives" volunteer an additional 20 percent to Uncle Sam or cheerfully eschew legal deductions just so they can pay more. Perceiving genuine physical danger, most goateed, latte-sipping pacifist professors breathe a sigh of relief when as many armed-to-the-teeth police officers or national guardsmen as possible show up.
What "tolerant," middle-aged Obama delegate would deny a pang of disappointment when his son surprises him with, not his wife and new baby, but a same-sex "life-partner" — and their kitten? And I suspect even Dennis Kucinich groupies would concede a level of horror upon discovering their 20-something daughter pursuing a "free-love" — albeit condom-protected — lifestyle with all the guys at the office.
The recent doings of the Barack Obama campaign underscore this curious incongruity. At the Democratic convention, his number-one booster, wife Michelle, waxed appropriately rhapsodic about her father's personal determination: diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, he continued working, even rising an hour earlier each morning so that he would have time to dress himself.
Her husband followed suit a few evenings later in his acceptance-speech paean to his single mother and sacrificing grandparents who went to great lengths to raise him properly.
Yet — that same oration found the Illinois senator grousing about "that old, discredited Republican philosophy ... the 'Ownership Society.'" Candidate Obama deciphered its actual and nefariously hidden meaning for the little guy facing challenging times: "Tough luck, you're on your own."
Michelle's father? Obama's mother and grandparents? They found a way, made a way in the teeth of daunting obstacles. Their strength of character and devotion to their children prevailed. Twenty-first-century citizens who are not, by Obama's lights, fretted over sufficiently by more and more and more government caretakers? — apparently floundering, helpless victims. "Tough luck, you're on your own."
Keep in mind: as of the night of that big speech, something on the order of $10 trillion had already been plowed into Washington, D.C.'s 40-plus-years-old war on poverty. President George W. Bush — he of the flinty-souled, GOP, on-your-owners — has quantifiably increased spending in those anti-poverty efforts. Still not enough for the honey-tongued Democratic candidate — the overcoming fortitude he and his bride observed growing up and now extol is, presumably, awol in the nation he wants to lead today.
("On Your Own?" Sounds to me like "Leave Us Alone" would be a more appropriate motto for many already tax-smothered Americans.)
Conflicted liberaldom is further detected in the ranks of global-warming worrywarts who propound enviro-friendly theory, but want to crimp only other people's modern amenities. Nice cars, sometimes fleets of them, even private jets convey them from palatial estates to the environmentalist rally-of-the-week. No chilly/hot residences, no walking or biking from place to place for them — carbon emissions for me, but not for thee could be their mantra.
And, as gasoline prices continue to hover at historic levels, the earth-firsters' elected heroes are, one by one, slinking from rigid alternative-fuel absolutism and concluding that, maybe, drilling isn't such a bad idea after all.
Then comes the Republican ticket's vice-presidential nomination of Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin. Suddenly, the denizens of the ideological Left admit a previously undisclosed ardor for stay-at-home motherhood. It develops that, after all these decades of burn-your-bra, fill-the-daycares feminism, brow-furrowing liberals have discovered an uneasiness with a mom who commits both to raise her children and pursue a demanding career outside the homestead.
How could Sarah Palin even think about taking the number-two White House position with all those kids underfoot? Won't the little ones suffer from neglect? Or might the country be neglected?
Washington Post scribe Sally Quinn went on national television to concede "everyone knows that women and men ... and that moms and dads are different." Traditionalists, of course, have acknowledged that, and factored it into their daily decisions, since the events of Genesis chapter one; but, it turns out, on this issue at least, we've got philosophical confederates in the precincts of the cultural Left, as well. Heretofore, we've been dismissively instructed by the anything-goes set that: mommy/daddy? Mommy/mommy or daddy/daddy? Just-mommy or just-daddy? It's all the same.
What's around the corner? — Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanding Palin and her career-climbing sisters return to barefoot-and-pregnant status?
I support John McCain's tapping of the lady from Alaska, but also think questions about her juggling mommyhood and daunting, governmental responsibilities are not altogether unreasonable. Mothers really are different from fathers, (c.f. Sally Quinn) — they provide vital input into children that dad can't; so a sage society encourages them to give great weight to their maternal obligations. I suspect Gov. Palin can manage both offices quite capably; still it's not necessarily out-of-bounds to raise the issue.
But the discovery of this bedrock concern palpitating in the hearts of Obamaphiles? That's a revelation — and more proof that, viscerally, it's pretty common for folks to advance idealistic, elitist notions even while opting for behavior that lays bear those notions' impracticability — they don't work where it counts: in the home, the family, at the gas pump, in real life.
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Steve Pauwels is a resident of Londonderry and the pastor of Christ the King Church in Londonderry.
