Politics, Parenting and the Democratic Cowards in Congress

As I watch our Fearless Leader in action - his sociopathic disregard for other human beings, his obsession with his own image and legacy - it occurs to me that my lifelong commitment to not telling other people how to raise their children might have been misplaced.

How different might our country be today if someone, anyone, had told GWB "No" just once in his life? What if his Dad didn't get him out of National Guard duty? What if his mom hadn't enabled his drinking problem? What if he had had to pay the consequences, just once, for his actions? (And no, "crying" is not a consequence, but merely more self-indulgence.)

Now, I'm not the world's best mother. Much of my disinclination to give advice to other parents comes from my understanding that they might not approve of me, either. When my children were young, and they didn't like something I made them do or kept them from doing, I would tell them I was trying for my place in the Bad Mom Hall of Fame. Later, my older daughter told me I wasn't really a Bad Mom, so I changed it to the Mean Mom Hall of Fame.

My point to them was that I was not their friend but their parent. It was my job to love them unconditionally but to insure that they knew how to behave in civilized society. That meant that we never considered ourselves better, or worse, than anyone else. We encouraged and appreciated their achievements, but emphasized that those were just part of the whole person. I made sure to ask what their friends were good at, what things other people did better than they did, what they learned from others and vice versa.

It also meant that we took what seemed like small infractions very seriously. We really didn't have very many rules, but the ones we had we were serious about. You don't lie, you don't cheat, you don't steal. You are kind to people and creatures and the world around you. If you cut off the cat's whiskers ("Mom, do you think that Tigger's whiskers are too long?") you get a stern discussion of how cats use their whiskers for feeling around and if it's dark and she starts to bump into things it is your fault. If you take a quarter out of the cash box at the nature center and try to tell me you found it on the floor, you not only don't get a candy bar, you find out about how we use the money to buy food for the animals and when you steal you are taking food out of a cute little flying squirrel's mouth and now you can do some community service by cleaning out cages.

And if you are caught at 2 a.m. in a church parking lot playing the Flaming Tennis Ball of Death game, you get grounded for a month even though the reason you snuck out of the house in the first place is that it is so UNFAIR that you're 16 and you have to be home at 10 p.m. in the SUMMER!

What does this have to do with politics? The Democrats in Congress are acting like parents who just want their children to like them. Well, let me tell you - your children will not like you. They will scream at you and call you names and pout behind closed doors and write nasty things about you on livejournal that they will not let you read. It doesn't matter because you know that you're doing the right thing.

Democrats are cowering before Republicans, the 30 percenters, when the vast majority of Americans want us out of Iraq. Democrats are afraid of being called names if they don't give in. Well, you're going to get called names no matter what you do - it's part of being the responsible party. Grow a thicker skin and do the right thing.