HE WAS NOT A LIBERAL, BUT...

-by Mags

This last week I attended a conference that dealt with mental health issues. At these conferences we are educated about many facets of providing services across the spectrum to those in need of them. It is always filled with a variety of persons which include clients, practitioners, administrators and board members.

The break out sessions cover mundane minutiae related to Medicaid capitation, the rip roaring excitement of evidence based practices, and a myriad other scintillating topics. I happen to be a person who loves these kinds of things. I think it is a character flaw.

Of late there is a push to utilize wisely every single dollar in serving our clients and our communities. We are instituting peer centers and we are working to integrate systems of care to treat the whole individual by making care accessible. I know, us bleeding hearts, barely a dollar to spare and here we are trying to figure out how to serve more people. There is such need.

A colleague of mine and I engaged in conversation at the end of the first long day of the conference. He is an outspoken individual. He is a private business owner. I have always considered him to be at least conservative, probably Republican. We began discussing programs and how different areas could sustain certain programs due to budgets and public awareness of the need for those programs. I expected him to chide me for feeling like we should be able to do more when he said an amazing thing. He told me that he felt like things were getting bad, that they were getting out of hand. It had gotten really bad. It was so bad in fact that a friend of his the other night had called him a communist.

This statement was so shocking to me. For once, I was speechless, and I am glad I was. I was only able to listen as he continued. He said, and I will not put quotes on this because I did not record it or take notes, but he said in effect that he did not necessarily believe that all people would or should have everything equally, but he said (and this I can quote), "There ought to be a base line." I nodded. "Yes," I answered. "I believe that everyone born into the world ought to have at the very least food, shelter, and medical care." What a risk that was for me. I must work in this small community with this man and others like him, and I am at this point unsure as to what extent it is wise to tip my liberal hand.

To my surprise, he emphatically agreed. And, so he continued, "I consider myself a conservative Republican." ( I was right). But, he said, and here I paraphrase. The reason his friend called him a communist is because he told his friend that there ought to be this baseline, and that there might be one, but if there is one, it was awfully damn low. I think I might have added the damn part, but as I type it here, it helps to illustrate his intensity as he spoke.

He continued telling me that as a small business man he would not vote to eliminate the single business tax, because no matter what people say, you cannot take the tax away, it is simply made up somewhere else. Here, I nodded, and added, "Who do you want to have that money, me or some wealthy person who will not walk into your store to spend it?" "Exactly," he answered.

He was not done. He says, "I can solve the Social Security problem by doing one thing, and the only problem we will have is how to spend the extra money." "How?" I asked. "Take off the income ceiling on those who contribute." was his reply. I was dumbfounded. He was right of course, but I never expected to hear it from him. He continued, "Someone could run for president on that." I nodded.

We continued to talk about how such a person would have difficulty getting elected because the really big political contributions come from the very folks who do not want to pay Social Security taxes. What we could do about it, we did not know, but I said, "What we have today amounts to PR politics. It doesn’t matter if you really do something just as long as you can look like you are." He nodded. He smiled, and again, he agreed. And, that was pretty much it. He had to dash off, the conversation was over. But, I stood there with changed perceptions of the man, and a pleasant change it was.

I have a minor in Women's Studies. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard a woman say, "I am not a feminist, but I do believe in equal pay for equal work, and I do believe that women should have help with household chores, and I do believe that women should have reproductive choice," all of these things being part and parcel of feminism. Such is the power of emotionally charging labels.

I was a bit intimidated by my friend. He has been in his position a long time and is a native of this area. I am a newcomer to the position I hold and new to this area. I have no track record, and I am still forging relationships with my colleagues, but in the end, I was rewarded by having this conversation. I wonder how many people out there who would start a conversation by telling us they consider themselves a Conservative Republican are really liberals who just don’t know it yet.

According to the polls, there sure are a lot of them out there.