Life is a continuum of family experiences. Our parents are the model that nurtured the important values in our lives. They contributed to who and what we are today. We cannot escape family ties, good or bad. They are imbedded forever in the fabric of our character.
My character was influenced by parents who understood the intemperate times of the 1950s that I grew up in. They left me a political and moral legacy that has served me well for eight decades.
It began in grade school. I remember “duck and cover” in our school, which was supposed to save us from the impending Soviet nuclear nightmare. The Korean War was a reminder that the world was still a dangerous place. Then, years of local fear-mongering about adding fluoride to our drinking water was accompanied by the divisive politics of the Goldwater conservatives, with their politics of “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” and the 91 percent marginal income tax rate of the Eisenhower years. It ended with the calamity of the president’s chief of staff and a vicuna coat. It all sounds too familiar.
We lived in Belknap County, the most Republican county in the state. State politics was then controlled by the publisher of the Manchester Union Leader, William Loeb. He was Mr. Conservative Republican. I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a Democrat until I served in our military.
My parents never talked politics at home. Discussing politics and religion along with plastering your front yard with political signs was considered bad taste. Politics was a private thing, reserved for the polling booth. They were too busy with careers, making a living and keeping a roof over our heads to worry much about it.
The spectrum of politics was as mean-spirited and polarized then as it is today. The pivotal political issue then was the “Red Scare” of world communism, and today it is irrational fear of undocumented aliens.
National politics in the 1950s could get ugly.
The Army-McCarthy hearings, with its government-sanctioned bigotry and the House Un-American Activities Committee that ruined the lives of many good people, were sad chapters in our history and will forever be a stain on what our democracy should be all about. Funny how history repeats itself.
My parents were moderate Republicans, a breed that is almost extinct today. They were second-generation Americans who grew up during the Great Depression. They suffered through that difficult economic period and once they got back on their economic feet they were generous to those who were less fortunate. They believed in an America where if you worked hard and played by the rules, you could expect to enjoy the bounty of a country filled with opportunity. They never spoon-fed me any of their political convictions. I never heard them demean or marginalize those whose political opinions were different than theirs. The word “compromise” was common currency in their lexicon.
Sadly, their America is gone. It has been replaced with a gun-toting “every man for himself” fear of government, big or small. It is a “them against us” syndrome. It is collective paranoia. Every issue today has to have a political component. I am sick of it.
Our vehicle license plates used to proclaim “Scenic New Hampshire,” simple and honest. In 1971 it was changed and became politicized with “Live Free or Die.” Those are declarative fighting words and not a welcoming invitation to come and enjoy the splendid wilderness and natural beauty that our great state has to offer.
The Old Man of the Mountain saw where that was going. The political landscape he viewed from his perch on Cannon Mountain was getting ugly. He pulled the plug in 2003. He had had enough. I witness people calling those who disagree with their politics crude names and use expletives that were unheard of in my social circles during the times of the Greatest Generation. So much for family values.
Participatory democracy is a messy business. With all of its faults, it has proven to be the best governing system since the golden age of the Classical Greeks. Expecting political perfection is a fool’s errand. Expecting competent government is a citizen’s duty. Republican or Democrat, we should stop the political polarization and try to do what is in the best interest of all Americans. We are now at a moral abyss. You do not have to be a moral purest to understand that we are all in this together.
Pause for a moment and reflect on the motto on the great seal of the United States of America, “E Pluribus Unum,” and you will, according the old Shaker dance song “Simple Gifts,” “Come ‘round right again in the valley of love and delight.”
That’s the type of family value that I prefer to live by.
(Jim Baer lives in Concord.)