When the In-Laws Agree With You ...

For all three of you who wondered why I didn't post yesterday ...

Spent some time Wednesday visiting my in-laws who are pretty sharp people for their late '70s. I always enjoy our talks because they are most definitely not afraid of getting into the nitty-gritty of politics and religion, and we can disagree with gusto. There is no danger that they are going to disinherit my wife and kick me to the curb, which is to say that our conversations have always been passionate and humor laden.

Yesterday was no exception. What was different is that whereas two years ago they wondered aloud if I wasn't getting a bit alarmist in my readout over the political/cultural situation in this country, now they admit they are with me.

"You know," my father-in-law said, "when you told us we were sliding into socialism under George Bush, I thought you had gone off the deep end. Now I think you were pulling your punches."

He's right. They were big Dubya fans, as I once was. None of us have much affection for Barack Obama, but we all agree it has nothing to do with race. (My in-laws were against segregtion and bigotry long before it became a majority opinion in this nation).

Both are dispirited over the alarming apathy so many people display. "Most of the people I talk to around here seem to want the government to take care of them. They think every problem has a government solution," my mother-in-law said. "They don't think they have a responsibility to provide their own solutions."

These two are not typical of the senior citizen stereotype, which might say something about the stereotype. While she is retired, she is active as a Sunday school teacher, and gets involved on political issues at the local level. He still works nearly full time, and jokes that he actually provides most of his wife's Social Security based on the annual withholding on his pay. "Don't tell me Social Security is an entitlement," he says. "I'm still paying for it. If they had actually saved that money over the years, instead of spending every penny of it, we wouldn't have a problem."

I agree with him. Social Security is not an entitlement. An entitlement is an attitude that people have that says "give me something I don't actually deserve." Americans, and their employers, have paid dearly over the decades into that black hole called FICA. That the federal government risks watering down our dollar with Zimbabwe-style inflation is a moral crime against every current and potential retiree.

For all their irritation at the current political and economic malaise, they are not about to surrender the field. "We have to try to talk to people, to wake them up," he says. "We can't do much but we can do something. I love my country too much to give up." Spoken well, like a former officer in the U.S. Army should.

She insisted on cooking dinner for us: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, asparagus and salad. The chicken was natural (no hormones or antibiotics) and was simply delicious. I ate my fill.

It takes us about three hours to drive back to Oklahomily Central, so it was pretty late and I was too tired to check in.

... so now you know.