Tim says they had only two conversations, but to me it seemed that every time I glanced toward the kitchen table, he and my father sat deep in talk, heads similarly bent and forming careful, quiet arguments. My mother and I left them alone; they seemed to be having fun.
My boyfriend Tim accompanied me to Seattle this summer, to meet my family. I worried about his interaction with my father, whose views have tended to the far left in the last decades, and who, refugee from totalitarianism that he is, takes his politics seriously. I imagined shouted arguments over the Second Amendment, and wondered if we would last the planned six nights. But their voices never got loud, so I relaxed.
After we got back to Colorado, I called to ask my father what he thought of Tim. “He’s a bit extreme,” he answered. “I looked up that Ron Paul on the Web.”
Well, yes, Tim followed Paul’s progress and that of the Libertarian Party. But he hasn’t been to a Tea Party event yet, and he thinks Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are unmitigated blowhards.
We talk politics a lot, too. Our conversations follow a predictable arc. I’ll throw out a case of economic injustice, he’ll ask where in the Constitution it says that the government should take care of everyone. He worries about undocumented immigrants, I respond that they contribute far more to the U.S. economy than they take out. He says that, according to the Constitution, the only function of the state should be to protect its citizens from enemies and to provide for security through policing. I say the Constitution is a living document, and should be re-interpreted as times change.
He says people should take care of each other, not the government. I say people, left to their own devices, don’t. He says the government spends too much money. I remind him that neither he, who works as a technical writer for a defense contractor, nor I, a special education teacher, would have jobs without that government spending.
We go on like this until we get dangerously close to a fight, and then find something else to talk about.
Tim fits nobody’s image of a selfish, grasping far-right thinker. He drives a small, fuel-efficient car, and maintains it diligently. He recycles. He keeps his house warmer in the summer and cooler in winter. He rides his bike to go grocery shopping. He donates frequently and heavily to local charities.
I once taught in a school that was a half-mile away from the Focus on the Family campus. In the 2004 election, car bumpers in the employee parking lot sported Bush-Cheney stickers. But when the custodian totaled his vehicle in a snowstorm, $1,200 was collected in two days, and he had enough for a down-payment on a new vehicle. The Christmas trees in the library and lobby blossomed every year with the gifts requested by the families the school sponsored. Again and again, this right-wing crowd demonstrated its generosity.
Perhaps Tim and his constitutional constructionist crowd are right, I sometimes think. Perhaps if the government doesn’t help with subsidies for people who don’t make enough money, private citizens will step up.
Then I consider a family I met a couple of years ago. The father, who had recently lost his job, was ill with diabetes severe enough to land him, frequently, in an emergency room. He and his autistic daughter lived in a homeless shelter. She would miss school while she watched her father in the hospital, and later, after they returned to the shelter. This is not a family that will benefit from a one-time collection or a Christmas basket. Families like this need reliable, effective, inexpensive health care, a decent place to live, humane day care to provide respite to overworked parents.
No school collection or charity will give them that.
Eva Syrovy (evasyrov@msn.com) of Colorado Springs is a special education teacher.
