This Christmas, as with every Christmas, I spent a lot of time in rooms full of conservatives. I grew up in a conserv family, nearly everyone I knew was conserv, and most of them are still of that political persuasion. Luckily, with some help from the Iraq war, I broke the bonds of the conserv cult, and a few years later I got both of my parents and brother to vote for Obama. My dad has slipped back a bit-thanks to the siren-like fear-mongering of Faux News, but my mom and brother have broken away from the Kool-Aid drinkers pretty firmly. However, nearly everyone I grew up with are still social conserves. So, as I visited my friends this year, I got to hear about "welfare queens," "job stealing Mexicans," how Dems are "baby-killers" and was called everything from Socialist, Marxist, to Chairman Mao, etc.
The most interesting discovery though, was that out of the approximately 18 conserves I met, every one of them was for the public option and, also, for my pet issue - publicly funded elections.
As I visited one such house full of conservs, I was greeted by a close friend who in a joking manner called me socialist. Of course, I was ready with the response - "Me? You are much more socialist than i am!" He gave me a quizzical look as I explained "your whole life is built on Socialism. You work for the government (public school teacher), you were just bragging about how your union is going to get you retirement at 55, your dad has been on disability as long as I have known you, half your family works for the government (IRS), and you made it through college on public grants and loans."
~ I looked him in his eye, smiled, and said "My friend, you are living the Socialist Life."
Finally, I capped it off with the most important impact socialism had on his life - his daughter, who is almost three, has had some developmental disabilities. I asked him how many times she has been to the doctor and whether his insurance covered it. He meekly returned, "well, she meets with a therapist every week and has had multiple surgeries - and New York State covered it... But, i paid into the system."
I responded "Really? You really think you have paid enough taxes to cover over 50 meetings with a therapist a year and multiple surgeries and procedures? You've only been working for about 10 years. Even if you are right and your taxes have covered your daughters medical problems, do you really think that it covers every other service you use?"
After a few minutes back and forth, he asked me to make a list of services that he uses. I told him that I could make a list hundreds of lines long, but only a few would cover it. First, being married with two kids and making 60,000 dollars a year, he has some great deductions and credits. Second, every man, woman, and child pays 2,700 dollars a year for the defense budget. So, his family of four's portion of defense would be 10,800 a year alone. Add police and fire protection and we are already beyond his tax payments for the year even without his daughter's medical help. Of course, I could list Food and Drug safety, public parks, product safety, the courts, public buildings, roads, highways, etc.
Once again, i said "My Friend you are living the socialist life - you should be very thankful."
I am not sure how it connected to the conversation, but his only response was to complain about how the welfare people were taking all his tax money and began telling me a story about how free cell phones were given to some welfare people he knew and asked "Where's my cell phone? With our monthly bills I can't afford a cell phone."
My response was - "First, you could afford a cell phone if you really wanted - you have two big screen tv's, four video game systems, a room full of toys, a huge house, two nice cars, etc. You could easily trade in any one of those things and get yourself a cell phone. Besides, that money for the cell phones is not coming from you, you don't even pay for your own services, let alone someone else's."
There seemed to be a disconnect on this point, but a few people in the room seemed to get it. I said to the room - "not a single one of us pays for all the services that we use each year, so we should be very thankful for what we get. Somehow over the course of my lifetime, I have seen greed grow into the 'Me, Me, Me' generation, where we all think that something is being stolen from us, when in fact we are very blessed, should be thankful for what we have and not begrudge what others get - even those that take advantage of the situation - work towards reform, but realize we are not completely paying our way either."
"My Friends you are living the socialist life."
The debate continued for quite awhile, and one of the most unique conversations was about how wrong it was that Home Depot has 18 handi-capped spaces (yes they counted!) and that evil Political Correctness was the culprit. Of course, I asked my friends how this hurt them, other than getting them a bit more exercise, and the response was "it is just what is wrong in America today."
Finally, and this is the most important part of this entry, because of the rooms that I was in, I found myself in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the senate health care bill. I say uncomfortable because, as a single-payer advocate who thinks the senate bill is a huge shovel for money going to health insurers, I find my feet wavering underneath me daily on whether I am for it or against it. However, because most of the opposition in the room was built on inaccuracies, I decided to stand for the bill.
I was asked - "so what is good about the health care bill? Name anything that is good about it."
I responded "health exchanges, ending recision, ending pre-existing conditions, forcing health insurers to pay a percentage of their income into health services, and most importantly Bernie Sanders's health clinics." I then explained how my mom was refused a surgery that she desperately needed and that this bill would prevent that from happening again.
There was a lot of debate, but shockingly, one of my most conservative friends said, "you know, i would be much more for it if there was a public option, this version just gives too much to the health insurers." I saw other heads shake in agreement.
Surprised, I asked "How many people here want the public option?"
13 out of 13 conservative hands went up. By my count, 4 of them were social conserv, 5 were economic conserv, and the other four were generic or national security conserv, and all of them were for the public option!
While this is definitely anecdotal, I finally believed most of the polls that showed the public option as popular. This random sampling of 13 conservs were all for the public option and would be more for the health bill with the PO in it. 5 others that i talked to the next day were for it as well.
So, why did we let the PO fall out of the bill again? Why are we not pressuring for it to be in the compromise bill? The bill will be more popular with liberals and conservs with the PO. We will win more seats in 2010 with the PO. We still have time, but we need to ramp it up now!
Finally, just as surprisingly, every conservative I talked to was for publicly funded elections. Of course, many of them were for different reasons - it makes more economic sense, it would lessen the influence of unions, and that corporations would have a lot less influence, but all of them were for it. So, why is no one pushing for it? Our elected officials are bought and sold and spend most of their year raising money rather than legislating and educating the public.
Overall, my conclusion from this weekend - from an anecdotal sampling of conservative friends, both the Public Option and Publicly funded elections are popular even in many conserv circles. I think our country is much more progressive than the media would lead us to believe, and that progressive values are truly American values. And most of all, when you confront your friends, remind them:
Most likely, you are not paying for all your services (unless you are independently wealthy), so you too are most likely "Living the Socialist Life."