Liberal Mama
I really want to get my kids these books, mainly because they need to learn more about my politics than what they hear me grumble about everyday. As a mom, I find it absolutely essential to be politically active. We take the kids with us when we vote and that’s a big improvement over what I grew up seeing. My parents were too busy keeping body and soul together to teach us about political issues and I don’t fault them for it. I do, however, fault them for repeatedly voting against their own best interests when they did vote.
It may be out of fashion to refer to myself as a liberal, more people are using the term progressive, but I like liberal because I see nothing wrong, and everything right, with being a liberal. Especially since I don’t see conservatives caring about the things that are important in my life. Family values? Don’t make me laugh. Whenever somebody on the right bleats about “family values”, it’s code for “we hate gay people.” Check it, you’ll find I’m right. “Traditional family values” is even worse. The gay-hatred still applies but with a goodly portion of woman-hating dolloped on top. These “traditionalists” hate and fear women so much that they believe the only way to save society from the girl-cooties is to severely limit the rights of women.
But they don’t really care about families or children or women. Or old people or disabled people or poor people or people that don’t look exactly like them. As a woman and mother, I know that to vote republican is to vote against the very things that I love-my family, my home, my future, my children’s future, my elderly grandmother, my elderly MIL, my civil liberties, my country. And since I’m a decent human being, I also don’t want to vote against my neighbors, classmates, acquaintances, friends, or strangers in need.
Some mothers feel or claim that they are too busy to be politically engaged, but I believe that in order to be good parents we are obliged to know as much as we can about the things that could negatively or positively impact our children. If people refuse to research the issues themselves and form their own opinions, then they will just believe what some politician, preacher, or pundit tell them to believe. These people are literally handing over their freedom, their free-will, their minds to someone else. Example: someone who believes that the administration (and political party thereof) that refused to expand SCHIP to cover more uninsured children actually cares about the “babees” involved in reproductive choice is uninformed at best, deluded and foolish at worst. If republicans actually cared about any children whatsoever, that care and compassion would not cease at birth.
Look, moms, if you truly care about your kids (and I know you do), get involved, get informed, get wise. Take the time, make the effort. If every mom in America voted in the best interest of her family and all other families, this would be a much better country for families. We wouldn’t have to make such hard decisions. Leave baby in daycare at six weeks just to work the job the family needs to survive or quit the job and stay home and lose benefits and income; buy insurance the family can’t afford or take a chance that no one gets hurt or sick.
There are many reasons that I am a liberal, but the most important one-my family. I am a liberal because I want my children to live in the best possible world. And I just don’t see that happening in the borrow-and-spend, amoral, corporate welfare, tax cuts for rich white guys, step on the little guy, war-mongering, no civil liberties future the republicans want to take us to at warp speed.
Maybe I should print up the world’s scariest t-shirt: I’m smart, I’m a woman, I’m a mom, I’m paying attention, and I vote.