Imposing Values
All this talk about family values reminds me of my grandfather, the patriarch I happen to have known best. I come from a long line of middle-class Midwesterners with Southern roots. My cousins and I learned to "ma'am" and "sir" our elders early on; I don't think I actually said "no" to an adult until I was in my early 20's. My grandfather was a lifelong Republican.
I mention these particulars to pre-empt a credentials challenge on the part of those who have elected themselves the guardians of "family values." The thing is, my grandfather, while he came from a large and close-knit family and then sired another one, had no "family values." I remember him having only values.
My cousins and I were raised with precepts. One of these happened to be "throw the bums out every eight years," but this essay isn't about politics, so I'll set that one aside. A favorite precept of my grandfather's, outside of election years, was "actions speak louder than words." We were often treated to this one when we tried to smile and sweet-talk our way out of the consequences of some misbehavior (like the time I was tossed water balloons out of the front windows of my grandparents' house as my grandmother was carrying groceries up the steps). In light of this precept, I wonder what my grandfather would say about the habit his party has got into these days of loudly claiming family values as their own when, over the past 12 years, they have presided over the largest shift of wealth to the rich since the 1920's.
As a man with five children who struggled through both the agricultural depression in the 20's and the Great Depression in the 30's, my grandfather clearly understood the stresses that this sort of wholesale destruction of the middle class and profound impoverishment of the working class bring to bear on "family values," not to mention to families themselves. He knew that families do not hold together sheerly through an act of moral willpower, however they are exhorted to do so by those who live easier lives. I think he might have been suspicious.
My grandfather did not hold members of other families to different standards than the standards he held for our family. Once, after letting off a hitchhiker who then failed to thank him for the ride, he collared the "youth," as they were then often called, dragged him back into the car and gave him the sort of lecture on manners that my cousins and I were frequently subject to. His values were social and expansive, not centered on distinguishing and separating our family from others less or more fortunate. While I do not know my grandfather's sentiments on abortion, I do know that George Bush's position -- that abortion, though regrettable, would be a choice for his granddaughter, even as he seeks to deny that option to others -- would have mystified if not incensed him.
My grandfather was a religious man with a beautiful baritone voice; he knew many hymns and attended church every Sunday. According to another of his precepts, often stated, that "comparisons are odious," he did not compare his church with others and find the others wanting, nor did he ever discuss his religious views unless asked, much less impose them on anyone, inside the family or outside. He certainly would not have considered imposing them on countless strangers by political means.
My cousins and I often discuss whether my grandfather was a racist. Certainly, he was a man of his time and place -- he lived most of his life in that former slave state of Missouri and he died before the civil rights revolution had really taken hold. It was my grandmother, a Western Democrat from a Progressive family who, after school desegregation, welcomed without batting an eyelid the black child I brought home for lunch from second grade. My grandfather happened to be at work, but he was proud of the fact that his own father, a doctor, had readily cared for both the white and black populations of the small town they lived in.
And I often mull over another incident, related to me by my aunt after my grandfather's death. At the time, the family was living in an Illinois community with a dusk curfew for black people, not an uncommon civic measure in the 30's. It was summer, after supper, pouring rain, and my grandfather saw a young black man take shelter under a tree in the front yard. Without a word, he got up and went out into the rain. He asked the young man whether he had carfare to the next town over, which had no curfew. When the man admitted that he didn't, my grandfather pressed a coin into his hand and came into the house.
I have often asked myself what this incident means. My grandfather did not exert himself against the unfair law. His action could be viewed as condescending. But I have come to see it as thoughtful and humane. He did not feel so removed from that young black man that he could not see things from his point of view, and he did not wish him harm.
I can't help thinking that he would have strongly disapproved of the strategy of the Willie Horton ads, of phrases like "welfare queen" and of Pat Buchanan's call to "take back
our
cities and take back
our
culture and take back
our
country." Italics mine.
My grandfather didn't look to politicians to mimic how his family worked, and thereby give his family a stamp of approval. I doubt he cared how theirs worked. He knew and honored the difference between the private world of belief and the public world of action. He expected elected officials to do their jobs, and he expected the voters and the press to do
their
nearly impossible jobs of keeping the politicians either honestly performing the public business or out of office.
A worldly man, my grandfather might not have been surprised at the deeply cynical posturing of those self-proclaimed guardians of family values we see asserting their righteousness all over the media. But my grandfather had a terrific sense of humor, and I know he would have laughed and laughed at the idea of taking them as moral models.
HERS Jane Smiley won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for "A Thousand Acres" (Alfred A. Knopf).