Family Values

I had just left Burnie’s Bar and was making my way home when I ran into my neighbor Shirley Black tooling down the street in her electric senior scooter. Now, Shirley and I don’t get on too well-- she’s been and ardent conservative all her life and me a flaming progressive—so she tried to roll on past me with barely a nod. But, I’d been thinking about conservatism lately and it occurred to me to ask Shirley about it.

“Shirley, is George Bush a conservative?”

“Of course he is. Everyone knows that. That’s a stupid question,” she responded continuing to wheel down the street.

“The thing that made me ask is his position on family values,” I said running after her

“He’s strong on family values. He’s leading the fight against gay marriages.” Shirley said, still not stopping.

“I was thinking of the Iraq thing,” I called after her

That stopped her. “I don’t understand the connection. What do you mean.” She said turning to me a scowl on her face.

“It’s clear he values his own family, none of them are in Iraq, but does he value the families of all those men and women he’s sent to Iraq?” I said.

“He sure does,” Shirley answered. “That’s the war on terrorism he’s fighting. Get them before they get us.”

“Shirley, who’s them?”

“Al Qaeda of course.”

“But Al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq when we invaded,”

“Who says?”

“Well at one point George Bush said there was no evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. I read that in the New York Times. Of course, he’s waffled on that since.”

“Max, I don’t like you. You’ve always got everything all wrong. You’re wrong here, too. It’s Kerry who’s the waffler not President Bush.”

“That’s something else I’ve been trying to understand. Why do you people continue to say that, Shirley?”

“The prime example is the way he voted for the war and then refused to fund it by voting in November 2003 against the $87 Billion dollars needed to equip the troops .” Shirley swung her senior scooter around to face me. I could see she was mad as hell. “Doesn’t he care if out troops under fire don’t have what they need to defend themselves?”

“Shirley, in 2003 before November Bush was given $431 Billion dollars to fight the war, the biggest allocation of defense money since the Viet Nam War. Why didn’t he use that to equip the troops? Furthermore, we both saw him on that aircraft carrier announcing the war was over. If the war was over why did he need more money? Considering this, I can understand why Senators Kerry and Edwards didn’t vote for the $87 Billion.”

Shirley turned black. I swore I saw smoke coming out of her ears. She spun her senior scooter around and floored it. I didn’t know a senior scooter could burn rubber. As she swung into her driveway I heard her call back, “Max Angst you’re a communist. Learn to love the United States.

Heck, I learned that a long time ago.