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Just Another Essay



It’s Time To Go Back Home

Essay Posted January 22, 2008 by James E. Nelson

We’re in northwest Arkansas at the moment, but are heading home tomorrow. When we arrived a few days ago my father was suffering from two problems. First, he has severe arthritis, which makes everyday tasks difficult. Second, he had a mild stroke over the weekend and was recovering from that.

His stroke symptoms have seemed better each day and today he seemed completely back to normal. We had a doctor’s appointment and the doctor agreed. Every indication is that he has fully recovered from the stroke, except for the possibility of some ongoing fatigue. The doctor encouraged us to go home.

But it’s tempting to stay and help out. His arthritis makes nearly every activity he does difficult and/or painful. If we stayed we could do the little tasks that stiff fingers have a difficult time completing; we could push him around in the wheel chair; we could cook for him and clean house.

Dad needed help after the stroke because there were certain tasks he couldn’t do. Now that we’re here with him we recognize that there are also many tasks that are painful for him to do. The conundrum of all this is as follows: it was the compassionate thing to come to Arkansas to help dad with the things he couldn’t do. Now he can do all those things, but it’s painful. Even though it’s painful to watch him function with arthritis, the compassionate thing to do now is to leave and let him make his own breakfast, get his arm into the shirt by himself, and walk under his own power over to the lunch room in the next building.

If we stayed here and did all those things for dad, he would quickly become incapacitated and completely dependent on us. That is not compassion, it’s control. The best thing we can do (according to his doctor) is say goodbye, leave him to his own devices, and go back to Nebraska.

And this brings me to the Republicans running for president. Mike Huckabee, for instance (and I refer to him because the change has been most dramatic in his campaign), started the campaign talking about the need to reduce government, to get it out of our lives. It all sounded pretty good. But as the campaign goes on, his message has transmogrified into another grocery list of big government programs designed to garner votes.

At this point in the campaign every Republican candidate (with the exception of Ron Paul) has a big government program to solve every little problem: Frightened of those scary Mexicans? Don’t worry about the current laws that aren’t being enforced, we’ll build a big government fence. Worried about the loss of the auto industry? Forget about the ridiculous amounts of debt the American auto industry has run up, we’ll build a big government research & development program to help with their financial woes. Concerned about abortion? Forget about states’ rights and how the federal government trampled that principle in Roe vs. Wade, we’ll make an even bigger federal oversight program that is even more alien and antithetical to states rights so the mistakes of Roe vs. Wade won’t happen again (at least as long as anti-abortion people are running those big programs). Terrorized by terrorists? Ditto on not worrying about the laws we’re not currently enforcing, we’ll build an even bigger and shinier army with even louder guns and thicker armor so the Federal government can help you not be scared any more.

We’ve come to expect bigger and more intrusive government from the Democrats; after all they’ve been intruding into our lives since FDR’s New Deal. But it’s disappointing that the Republicans have chosen to follow the lead of George Bush (You know: everything that comes from Texas is bigger, more expensive, and more intrusive, including government) and propose even more monstrous federal programs than the Democratic candidates.

Granted, if the government moves a few steps away from the mommy state, there will be some pain and suffering involved. But what the Republicans need to be reminded of is that this sort of big government “compassion” (which is, in truth, precisely the opposite of compassion) only leads to dependence and the utter loss of capacity for Americans to do anything. It’s running our country into the ground.

Maybe you Republican candidates should take the same advice Dad’s doctor gave me, when he told me to go back to Nebraska. Mike, go back to Arkansas. Mitt, go back to Massachusetts (but stay away from Michigan, your ideas for that state are really scary and wastefully expensive!). Rudy, stay in New York. Staying on the campaign trail any longer, and coming up with these increasingly hair brained big government ideas isn’t doing any of us any good. Some day we Americans have to go back to making breakfast on our own, without your intrusive help.