FROM WHENCE I CAME

By Edwin Cooney

About two weeks ago, a new reader of these weekly musings who proudly identifies himself as a “Conservative” asked me why I had abandoned my youthful Republican/Conservative roots in favor of 21st Century Liberalism. It’s a fair question. Hence, I offer to take you on my political journey: come along!

Growing up in the 1950s was both promising and perilous. The promise was our dedication to peace, prosperity and freedom. The perils were the threats of polio, Communism and nuclear annihilation. I became aware at an early age that “America the Beautiful” and I lived in a dangerous world. It was a world fast being dominated by a Communist monolith that was poised militarily and determinedly to conquer and communize America and the entire world. The 1950s was an era of air raid shelters, Sputnik, and a chronically angry Nikita Khrushchev whose hair trigger temper was backed up by huge nuclear rockets and a willingness to use them. Additionally, Premier Khrushchev seemed constantly to create a crisis that would justify nuclear warfare.

All this being the case, the best antidotes to these barbarian threats were bravery, patriotism, superior military hardware, and determined leadership. “Peace through strength” most called it.

Domestic concerns such as balanced budgets, civil rights, the minimum wage and teacher’s salaries, important as they were, ranked a distant second to national security. Even more, I came to believe that anyone willing to demonstrate for civil rights while the Russians were watching lacked a sense of both patriotism and national priorities.

My political heroes were -- like good boy scouts -- patriotic, tough, morally straight and decisive in their actions. Their names were Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater and, above all, J. Edgar Hoover. Their brave and the land that I loved safe.

Essentially, my early political awareness had mostly to do with my fears. My heroes feared big government and, if they feared big government, I feared it, too. Big government was both a question of practicality and morality. Moral men believed in state’s rights and that limited government was the best government because it was controllable by the people rather than “bureaucrats.”

Then came the 1960s and 1970s. With the advent of Leonid Brezhnev and the passing of Nikita Khrushchev, Russian rockets may have grown in numbers and precision, but they rattled less. My heroes convinced themselves, as did John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, that Communism was as dangerous in Vietnam as it was in either Russia or China. Therefore, any advancement of Communism -- no matter how localized -- was a threat to our security. Add to that the tragedy of Vietnam, the fate of John Kennedy and the political squalidness of Watergate and my political priorities began, ever so slowly, to shift.

Ebbing away was the immediacy of American Soviet nuclear confrontation. The Vietnam conflict with its legal, moral and legitimacy issues began to blur the once sharp distinctions in the cold war struggle. Did Marxists not have the same rights as democrats to unite their own country without the intervention of an ideologically opposing super power? Even more, does the fact that Communism prevails today in a united Vietnam cause us to sleep less securely at night? My old heroes insisted such would be the case. Do we gain if we cling to our fears, if our fears rather than our capacity for forward-looking government lie at the root of our political affiliation?

I’m not in the least ashamed of my once proud association with Conservatism. Nor did I think that I was joining the party of the angels that Saturday afternoon of October 30th, 1976 when I officially changed my party affiliation. Still, I was pleased to become a Jimmy Carter Democrat even though that had its own perils.

Today I’m a Barack Hussein Obama Democrat. Of course, our hopes and our fears dictate our political affiliation. I now worry about people’s right to healthcare regardless of previous condition or ability to pay. Money should never be the reason people live or die. I worry too about American joblessness. Of course, “free enterprise” requires that profits prevail over patriotism or else it would alleviate the situation. Its managers and benefactors would hire American just as they insist that consumers “buy American” and workers would be sufficiently -- rather than minimally -- paid. Today, the political descendants of my old ideological heroes would rather see an American president fail than cooperate with him in the passage of legislation that might be beneficial to the American people.

We live in a time when both Conservatives and Liberals are absolutely certain of their moral superiority. Liberals use their tradition of political independence to pressure their party leadership. Conservatives use their money-driven capacity for effective organization to keep their membership in line.

Of course, you and I affiliate with the political party we decide best meets our needs. However, what’s both sad and ultimately destructive is the following truth:

In 21st Century politics, issues matter much more than solutions!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY