Posted by
Dave on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 9:49:46 AM
My Dad was a Democrat
From my writings many people believe that I and my family have always been a Republicans. But that is not exactly true for you see my dad started out a Democrat as his dad before him and his dad before him and it was not until the mid 1960s and the Viet Nam war that my dad first became an Independent and then latter a Republican. When I was growing up we would always discuss politics. Back then we had three stations ABC, NBC and CBS. My dad would always watch the news on ABC because as he said they at lest tried to be fair. He thought the other two were anti government and were run by Communist. When he supported George Wallace for president I asked him why. He said the Republicans are for the rich and look at the news and you will see Democrat Politicians with the Anti-war protestors spitting on our boys coming back from the war. He would say I don’t agree with the war but it’s not their fault, for they are doing what we asked them to do. My dad felt that since we elected the Politicians and they are the ones that sent our troops to war we the people were then responsible, especially when we kept sending them back into office. He also said everybody should serve in the military when called but then when I first joined the Army in 1970 he had a fit because my lottery number for the draft if I remember was like 364 so I would never have been drafted. I guess his Patriotism rubbed off on me I told him. Then when I received orders for Viet Nam, again he was fit to be tied, he said he did not want his son to die in a war that we were not even trying to win and he did not believe in and wouldn’t blame me if I went to Canada, but we both agreed that I knew what I was getting into when I joined, so that ended that. In 1974 I got out and found that getting a good job that supported a wife and new born son was hard to come by; so in 1976 I went back into the Army (and served for 20 years). My dad almost disowned me this time for he was old Amy Air Corps and felt that intelligent men went into the Air Force or maybe the Navy and those who were not to smart went into the Army or the Marines. Like I told him I might have been the only one in the family to graduate high school but I never claimed to be the smart one. Then when Jimmy Carter became President there was no going back for us, we became truly committed to conservative ideals and by default Republicans. My dad is gone now and I do miss our talks. He only made it in school to the 8th grade, but he had his own unique insight to current events and politics.