Follow Up to Letter to Socialist Friend

I hope your friend takes heed.

He already has.

I am the person to whom John's comments were posted. I have carried on a personal correspondence with John for a few months now about social political cultural issues, giving him my perspective as a leftist who is also vitally concerned about many of the problems the right holds dear. For example, family values are very important to me. I see the breakdown of the family as arising from the increasing splitting apart of the family in order to increase corporate profits. working people in the US have the longest work week of any industrialized nation, have the longest commutes, have poorest access to medical care, the least vacation time (in Europe five weeks off is standard). We also have a very high percentage of our adult population in the labor force. It now takes both parents working, often a total of three or four jobs, to be able to own a house, etc. This destroys family life. Because the family home is becoming ever less and less a center of activity, the corporations are making serious money corporatizing our children. Advertisements at schools that are strapped for money, TV learning at schools with corporate ads streaming across the TVs, etc. Children no longer eat meals made at home. I have been a busy attorney for the last 31 years, and have been a single parent to one of my daughters from her age of 2-5 and 14-present. I took the time to make her home cooked meals out of ingredients-vegetables purchased at a local fruit and vegetable market that were far fresher and tastier in quality than the safeway/albertson axis, plus they are about 40% to 50% of the price of the corporate food conglomerates. I still cook 3-5 times a week, often only for myself, because I will not let the marketplace feed me, I will feed myself.
As capitalism seeks ever higher profits, it puts greater and greater demands on parents' time, thereby destroying the family, which is the bulwark of values. Now some of my values may differ with the right, e.g. abortion and homosexuality to name two prominent differences, but I do believe in creating a better way of life for our children, fostering steadfastness, the ability to care for others, the willingness to work around the house, the ability to see that money is not a human value, it is only a necessary evil.
I ramble. But that might clarify to a few of you on the right that an agnostic leftist shares many of your concerns... we are not all robots controlled by some central committee. I take heart in many of the true conservatives that do not want an authoritarian goverment that tramples on our rights, and hence oppose most of Bush's policies and traitorous signing statements by which he signs an bill and then states that he will not follow it, that a president has the right to interpret the law any way he pleases. This pathetic authoritarian, masking himself in the clothes of conservatism and religiousity, is the most unChristian person imaginable.

Ok, gotta stop preaching.

steve