My Daughter the Democrat

My Daughter the Democrat

Last month I took my 5 year old daughter with me to get my truck serviced. It was a Saturday so it was busy. We sat in a large room with about a dozen people while we waited for my car to be done. ESPN was on the TV and I was too timid get up and change it to the Disney Channel for Whitney, so she got board quickly. She picked up a magazine she thought was going to be a picture book because it had a cartoon on the cover, but it ended up being a Newsweek with a goofy cartoon of Obama on the cover. (I think it was this one.) “Look Daddy,” she said loudly, “it’s a cuckoo man!”

There are a couple things you need to know before I go on. First, we don’t have a television in our house and we don’t discuss current events for family home evening, so as far as I know this was probably the first time Whitney ever talked about or heard anyone talk about Barack Obama. Secondly, she is in the pre-operational stage of development, so she still more or less sees the world in black and white - everyone is either all good or all bad. So when she pointed at the picture of President Obama and asked me “Is he a good guy or a bad guy,” I tried to phrase my answer carefully (especially considering I was in a public place and in mixed company).

I told her, “Well, mommy and daddy don’t really like him, but there are a lot of people who do.”

“Why don’t you guys like him?” she asked.

I knew it was would be impossible for me to explain the difference between the Keynesian economics and Friedman economics, so I just said, “Well, he wants to take more of Daddy’s money.”

“He wants to steal from you?”

“Well, kind of. I guess he wants to legally steal from me, yeah. He’s also very pro-abortion.”

“What’s ‘pro-abortion?’”

“Well, he thinks it’s OK for people to kill babies when they’re still in their mommies’ tummies.”

She gasped and actually made a scene by starting to cry. “Is he going to try to kill a baby in Mommy’s tummy?” she sobbed. I gave her a hug and tried to reassure her. I even tried to explain to her the controversies about when human life begins and the relative value of human life vs. the women’s reproductive rights, but I don’t think she really got it. When we got home she told my wife, “Mommy, the Cuckoo Man is going to try to kill the babies in the mommies’ tummies.”

For the last month, whenever Whitney sees Obama in the newspaper or on TV (at grandma’s house) she runs and hides. Also, when she plays super heros (she’s Icy Girl) she freezes and beats up the “Cuckoo Man”, trying to stop him from stealing from people and killing babies.

As much as I had to admire her simple understanding of complex issues, I was still a bit disconcerted. After all, I didn’t want people to think that we were brainwashing our children into hating and fearing America’s first Hawaiian president.

But this morning Whitney said something that should reassure my Obama-supporting friends, who are probably fuming at me right now. A few months ago Michelle made Whitney a sticker chart - rewarding her for the days she practiced reading, practiced dancing, cleaned her room, helped with Dane and ate her dinner. When she filled her chart after 2 weeks we took her to Chuck E. Cheese’s. I decided that if a sticker chart motivated Whitney maybe it would motivate me too. So I made a chart for myself and put stickers on it for the days I exercised, read the scriptures with the family, read a medical journal article, studied Hebrew and spent less than 45 minutes on the internet. This evening, after spending a half hour on Rosetta Stone, I’ll have my month long chart filled with stickers, and next week I'll get to take the family to Famous Dave's for dinner as a reward. Michelle made a sticker chart for herself too, but soon lost interest in counting calories, exercising ext, so she only has about 2 days worth of stickers on hers. After exercising this morning I proudly showed Whitney how full my chart was. But below it she also saw how vacant Michelle’s chart was. With sweat loyalty to her mother she said, “Daddy, it’s not fair. You should give some of your stickers to Mommy.”

And thus a Democrat was born. In the short time Reid, Pelosi and Obama have been in power they have somehow gotten their redistribution of wealth message to my daughter. She now knows that industry should be punished and lack of industry should be rewarded in the name of fairness. At the tender age of 5 she is already a collectivist and will surely have a D after her name for the rest of her life. There is hope for the future America!