Rare News Desk
I grew up conservative in Nashville, Tennessee. My dad was an independent building contractor and architect, and Mama a registered nurse. Both were very practical professionals.
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I’m the oldest of four kids, one brother and two sisters, and we didn’t have a family car till I was in the eighth grade. Our transportation was Daddy’s construction company pickup truck, with “Boone Contracting” on the side door and a comfortable wooden bench in the back for Nick and me to ride on to church and wherever the whole family went. As I remember, when it rained, we somehow crammed all six of us in the cab. I still can’t picture what that looked like, but we managed.
We kids kept begging Daddy, “Can’t we have some kind of car, even an older used one? All our friends have cars, and don’t have to ride around in a pickup truck…please, Daddy, please!” And dear Daddy had to patiently explain, “Kids, I’d like to have a car, too, and when I can afford it, we’ll have one. Right now, I have to buy food and clothes for you kids, keep a roof over our heads, pay my taxes and run a business. I want you to have what you need, but I can’t yet give you all you want. You’ll have to be patient…and be thankful for what you have.”
The day came, when I was in the eighth grade and had shamelessly plagued Daddy for several years, when he drove a new black two door Chevy into our driveway. It had a back seat, a heater, and that was it—no radio, air conditioner, seat covers, or any extras whatever. And to this day, I’ve never seen a more beautiful car in my whole life!
My point? Though I didn’t like it at the time, I learned from first hand, real life experience that the healthy, loving and sensible family lives within its means. If you do, and work hard and look for ways to afford more, you can eventually achieve some of the “finer things,” when you can pay for them, and not go into debt you may never climb out of.
I’ve often thought of the Republican and Democrat parties in comparison to Daddy and Mama. Mama was unfailingly generous, always preparing big meals and letting us kids know we could bring our friends home for dinner, without even calling home for permission. She took in stray animals (and a few stray people) and sometimes asked Daddy if we could help some neighbor near us who was in need. And I would hear Daddy respond, “Margaret, I’m having trouble paying our own bills. If we keep trying to help everybody else, we’ll have to find somebody to help us!”
In my analogy, Mama was the “Democrat” and Daddy the “Republican.” Both are good hearted, caring people, but one was generous to a fault and the other was trying to preserve the structure and live within our means, so we could survive as a family!
For my whole adult and professional life, I and my family have been living in Beverly Hills, in the Hollywood entertainment community, surrounded by thousands of caring, successful people who so remind me of Mama. Their idea of government is a huge benevolent “Big Daddy” who takes care of the poor, provides not just essential needs but most desires, imposes few if any restrictions on behavior, has no limits whatsoever on expenditures…and opens the door to anybody and everybody who wants to come over and move in!
A few of us…not very welcome to many fellow professionals because of our contrary views…have been objecting for years, like my Daddy, “Hey folks, we can’t afford all this! Even those of us who make plenty of money can’t pay for all the things you want government to do, and millions of our neighbors surely can’t! California has been operating as a technically bankrupt state for years, and now our national government is buried under trillions of dollars of unpayable debt, and this President is committed to increasing it by at least two trillion a year as long as he’s in office!! How long do you think this can go on? We’ve got to come to a screeching stop and throttle this administration back or this train called America is headed for a washed-out bridge up ahead, and there will be nobody to rescue us!”
Friends, we are long, long overdue for serious corrections in our thinking, our priorities, our self discipline, our determination to find rational solutions to the looming, real problems we all face as a nation and a family.
We’d all better become conservative, by choice…or it will soon be forced on us by our stupid, blind negligence.
Pat Boone is an entertainer and author of “Pat Boone’s America: 50 Years” (Broadman/Holman, 2006).
