Kelly Anderson Wright

The editor’s edict was clear. “You may not use the words ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ in your writing for one week.” I looked down at the sentence I’d just written: “She dropped her conservative bathing suit cover and, much to the delight of the male patrons (and a few of the females), she began to smooth warm baby oil liberally on her taunt, tan, seemingly-endless legs.”

Should I delete the line? No, he liked that kind of writing! No surprise there.

Big Government v. We, the Little People

His new rule was just an experiment, to help us refrain from making sweeping, grandiose generalizations about our political foes: the lefties and righties, the Dems versus the Republicans. But did he want us to stop name-calling, mud slinging and bitch slapping our opponents in the battlefield known to patriots as “Operation American Freedom?” No. We could still act like schoolyard bullies, we just couldn’t use weak, sweeping statements, like “All liberals lie!” to support our position. Instead, he wanted logical, substantive arguments to justify our ideas with clear, easy-to-understand descriptions and valid facts.

Suddenly I was writing Politics for Dummies, instead of gleefully head-slamming my opponents with witty repartee and a plethora of 9-letter, archaic words they’d have to Google. I watched myself describe the left as, “People who believe government needs to fix things, because citizens and businesses can’t or won’t.” I described the right as, “People who believe the government needs to stop fixing things, and instead let the free market and individual ingenuity take the reins.” This was no fun at all.

My mind wandered back to a few hours earlier. I was sitting helplessly in the Radiology Department of Reno’s Renown Medical Center, squirming as my oldest teenage son was prepped for an MRI. It was not Mike’s first. He’d already had MRIs for his ankles and knees, to diagnose the pain he felt after running the 100-meter dash in 11.3 seconds as a freshman in high school. (This is very fast. Not Usain Bolt fast, but fast for a teen, especially one with flat feet.) His previous MRIs used a small machine he stuck his legs into, no big deal for Mike.

Today’s MRI would scan Mike’s head, to find the reason his brain wasn’t working right after suffering a football concussion 2 weeks ago. I imagined the worst kind of damage lurking inside my beautiful little boy’s head, as they strapped down his 6-foot man-frame and size 13.5 feet. This MRI machine was the big noisy kind that encases your body like a coffin, the one where they ask if you’re claustrophobic and want an emergency squeeze ball to sound an alarm if you panic inside the machine. I wondered if all the parents sitting across from their kids wanted one of those balls, the way I suddenly did.

“Honey, wouldn’t you prefer having a cloth over your eyes, so you won’t see where you really are?” I reminded Mike that during my MRI, I’d pretended I was lying in the sun at Lake Tahoe, eyes closed, while big noisy earth movers removed rocks and debris to the left and right of me.

“Mom, you’re acting just like Obama, stop trying to fix things,” my very wise man-son reasoned. “Let me try to do this on my own, okay? If I fail, I’ll learn a lesson. And if I succeed, who knows, maybe I’ll do it better than you did.”

While the MRI clunked, clanged, beeped and whirred, I thought about Mike’s comparison. Was I like Obama? I reflected on a recent discussion we’d had about Mike’s driving. Nearly 17, Mike didn’t have his driver’s license, just his driver’s permit. I’d waited until I felt he was mature enough to get his permit, which was a year later than other kids his age. Now that he’d driven the state-mandated minimum six months with adult supervision, he pressured me at least weekly to let him get his license.

“No, not yet,” I said, “Let’s wait and see what your first semester report card looks like, bud.” Previously, I had told him he needed to earn his first year of insurance money before he could get his license. Before he did that, I told him he had to pass his summer boot camp program. Before he did that, I told him I would need to see clear examples of improved maturity and decision-making.

When I added the new report card requirement, my soon-to-be-out-of-the-nest teen unloaded his frustration. “Mom, it just feels like you keep changing the rules about my license, because you don’t really want me to grow up and be independent!” The first part of that comment, “You keep changing the rules…” surprised me. It was same thing the Feds did in the “Cash for Clunkers” program. They constantly changed the reimbursement requirements, much to the frustration of thousands of car dealers, and much to the delight of small-government patriots who claim Obama and the Feds should get out of the way of the free market and We, the People.

The rest of Mike’s comment, about not wanting him to grow up and be independent, struck me as particularly telling, and that’s when I realized  just how close politics is akin to parenting. For example, because I am the 24/7/365 custodial parent, I tend to act like big government in our household. I am the heavy-handed, Queen Mamadama who wants to ensure my children succeed, so I teach, guide, caution, legislate, regulate, enforce, finance and even step in to help, to make life easier for them.

Mike is just like a small business start-up,  and my endless policies, procedures, rules and ever-changing requirements were keeping him from growing his business, the business of becoming himself. I was hindering his future business success. I was denying him his constitutional right to pursue his life, with liberty, according to his definition of happiness.

The hypocrisy I daily accuse the left of wielding with such aplomb smacked me upside my self-admittedly large (size 7¾”) head. I suddenly realized, in the politics of parenting, at least, I had become my worst nightmare, the opposition I most despise:  I am the epitome of big government. As a parent, I am totally in left field. I have met the enemy, and she is me.

Kelly Anderson Wright is a business owner, freelance writer and single mother in Reno, NV. She writes for North Star National, American Thinker,  Fresh Conservative and Canada Free Press. Feel free to contact her on Facebook, (”energizersnobabe”) or by email: pray4sneaux@yahoo.com.

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