One Small Voice: I confess to a political schizophrenia history

Sometimes I feel a bit schizophrenic about my political identity.

Being raised my first 18 years in northern New Jersey, we were, by tradition, Republicans.  Pop always said that if you wanted to protect your wealth, minimal as it was for our family in those days, you voted Republican, because they stood for fiscal responsibility.  A balanced budget was a healthy budget.

I can’t be 100% positive when I make this statement, but I think both sides of my family were, in the beginning, staunch Republicans.

Thus, it was, growing up, that I proclaimed myself to be Republican, too.

But as I entered my mid-teens and began to become aware of the world around me, I began to accept some of the causes Democrats advocated.

Although I was certain that fiscally I was Republican, I couldn’t buy into their resistance to social platforms.

Typical teenagers, my friends and I were exercising our independent muscles, and we were, as a group, pro-Civil Rights Movement.  Feminism was in its infancy, but we young women were joining that sisterhood as well.

We were fully in support of Johnson’s war on poverty, we were becoming radically anti-Vietnam War, and we were in favor of the emerging rights for homosexuals, as we referred to them in those early days of the 1960s and ’70s, before we were “woke” to all the issues of LGBTQ.

As my sisters and I, and some of my cousins, too, became more and more socially and politically aware, we, like most teenagers, confronted our parents with our opposing points of view.

And it wasn’t long before parents and children alike were of two minds: fiscally Republican and socially Democrat.

Richard Nixon and his Watergate scandal helped move my parents into the Democratic camp, where the Vietnam War divisiveness had not.  Our shared developing social consciences served to anchor all of us firmly as Democratic voters thereafter.  Even Pop, who had become something of a financial player in stocks and mutual funds, believed that sometimes one’s conscience had to take precedence over money.

I can recall back in the day, when my sisters and I were debating with our parents the virtues of the Democrats over the Republicans, Pop would say “Just wait until you have something you’re afraid of losing!  Then you’ll change your tune.”  What he meant was, wait until you’ve finally amassed some savings of your own through your sweat and blood, then you’ll be voting Republican.

But we never got there, and he was the one who was changing his tune.

My folks were not religious sorts.  They saw that we had some Presbyterian religious training in our early years, and we had plenty of Sunday School to expose us to the basic tenets of Christianity.  As teens we followed the flock of the Young Life organization.  But the crux of our sense of morality and ethics came more from the literature to which our folks exposed us.  And we were made to understand that there was much more to life than a fat wad of money in the pocket and a hefty bottom line in the bank account.

As vitally important as it was to be financially responsible for oneself, to be self-sufficient, it was equally important to ease the way for those less fortunate.

Both my folks had seen and lived the hardships of the Great Depression, and they had taught us frugality from our youngest days.

“Close the door, you’re letting all the heat out!”

“Turn off the lights when you leave the room.  Do you think we’re made of money?”

They had also seen the financial kindnesses granted by their own families, and the churches in which they were raised, to people less fortunate.

“Make sure you collect for UNICEF when you go trick-or-treating.”

I’m sure that’s why today I bristle at being labeled Democrat or Republican.

I have embraced some of what each party has expounded in the past.

But neither party looks much like the parties I knew in decades not so long ago.

Used to be men of conviction got excited about things they really believed in. They didn’t compromise their core values in exchange for those of someone else who bankrolled them.

Used to be that Republicans fought hard for a balanced budget, a small national deficit, and a growing GNP.

Used to be that Democrats exhibited more outrage, more righteous indignation, over the social ills in America, willing to spend some of our tax dollars for the greater good.

But, in my humble opinion, it’s hard to tell the parties apart any more.

Thus, I am stuck in the middle, juggling the various balls of social responsibility, ethical action, financial prudence, and defense of the Constitution of the United States of America.

Are the balls Republican?  Are they Democratic?  Are they both?

I’m not sure I have the mental and moral dexterity to keep one or another of those balls from falling from time to time.  Each is vital to the health of our republic, regardless of political label.

I must keep practicing though.  How else can I remain a devoted citizen of my country?