Does one's political virginity grow back? I've had a first time about once a decade since the last 1950s.

Hubert Humphrey spoke at my high school in Minneapolis and started the process of weaning me away from family politics. I still wore an "If I were 21 I'd vote for Nixon" button in 1960. Thank heavens the voting age hadn't been reduced to 18 then. Against all my political sins, I can say I never voted for him.

My awakening continued in college as I started reading some wonderful books in my history courses, among them John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash and John Hope Franklin's From Slavery to Freedom. My Evangelical upbringing prepared me to believe that there were forces for the good and forces for the bad contesting, and my history training gave me the skills to pick out which were which.

My first years in Graduate School were "interesting"--Kennedy got shot, Johnson gave us the vision of a Great Society and racial equality which has stuck with me ever since.

Like most my age, I was battered by things we didn't really believe could happen in a modern America. Three assassinations of brilliant committed men within a single decade. Bobby, I hardly knew him. King? I couldn't know him well enough to sake my soul's thirst.

I was clean for Gene in 1968 and I knew Daley's Chicago too well. I dawned with Aquarius and tried my best to let the sunshine in.

I think I still have my "Don't blame me, I voted for McGovern" button around here someplace.

Dr. Benjamin Spock was teaching in the Medical School associated with my grad school...he though too many of the babies he reared by proxy were dying uselessly in Viet Nam. So did I. I did all the things cynics of today see as useless and irrelevant. I marched, I sang songs, I carried candles, I looked to my peers and "the movement" for support in those grim times. Kent State happened a few miles down the road, the National Guard bivouacked a block away from the apartment in which I lived, and there were curfews on the streets.

Once I started earning an honest living I had more time to be involved.  I took a bus from Boston to New York City to march for Nuclear Disarmament, and later, participated in Gay Pride parades. I've come to realize why my generation thought so much about those symbolic acts--we lacked the kind of electronic organizing and networking the computer lets us take for granted. If I wanted to meet and talk to an Aunt Sam I had to go out and find her someplace--marches and rallies were in-the-flesh networks. We still need them, MHO.

Come the election of Carter, many of us made the big political mistake of our lives--we thought we won for good and we went home. It was a reasonable mistake, and we had work of our own to do, families to raise, or not, and for some of us, a desire to test our own capabilities--to do  something notable on some scale or other based on our own skills, abilities, and dreams. We learned to value the private as well as the public arenas.

So I hibernated for a decade and a half--make that two. I voted. I've always voted. I signed petitions for bond issues, all the good citizen stuff that the civics books teach. But I was asleep.

Howard Dean woke me up--and I wound up more politically involved than ever. I went to rallies, I wrote letters lying on my stomach in an Irish Bar near downtown Providence, and sitting at a table in a moderne yuppy bar in Newport. I cursed the media for their relentless scorn of Dean--which I realized was also relentless scorn for me and others not of the social class of which the village elders approved.

I watched John Kerry "reporting for duty" with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, and watched him being savaged by swiftboaters and the Dowd class. I also listened to a political newcomer give the kind of speech I had not heard since the days of Robert Kennedy.

This time I didn't go to sleep. I joined every group I could think of, went to the take back America Conferences in Washington DC (we still need the reality of face to face contact with like minded persons).

I supported Barack Obama, and I still do,through these times which try men's souls (women's too). I trust him: not to succeed, but to do his best. My credo is based on something John Winthrop said over 350 years ago.

The covenant between you and us is the oath you have taken of us, which is to this purpose: that we shall govern you and judge your causes by the rules of God's laws and our own, according to our best skill. When you agree with a workman to build you a ship or house, etc., he undertakes as well for his skill as for his faithfulness, for it is his profession, and you pay him for both. But when you call one to be a magistrate, he doth not profess nor undertake to have sufficient skill for that office, nor can you furnish him with gifts, etc., therefore you must run the hazard of his skill and ability. But if he fail in faithfulness, which by his oath he is bound unto, that he must answer for.

I don't plan on needing to have my political virginity restored again.


Post Script.  Aunt Sam asked me to post this and I don't refuse Aunt Sam.  Thinking a bit further about what I've written above...and inspired by one of her insights, I'm thinking that going private once in awhile is not only normal, but healthy.  It probably isn't good for self or civic life for citizens to make a profession out of political involvement 100% of the time. 
Pericles didn't approve.  Neither did Cincinnatus.  






"Dude, come wield supreme executive power"

"No way man, I'm retired now"

"Please?"

"No."

"Pretty Please?  With sugar on top?"

"OK, FINE!  GOD you senators are so irritating."

    Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was the epitome of honor and personified the Roman ideal of duty to your country and your people above all else.  He put aside his own personal needs to serve his homeland, and when absolute military and political authority was given to him, he didn't go the power-hungry jackass route and seize control of the government or set himself up as supreme ruler for life - he did his job, kicked some fucking asses and then went home to his family when his work was finished.  He single-handedly saved the Roman Republic from falling into the hands of her enemies and his tale served as inspiration for generations of Romans who came after him, illustrating the Roman values of civic responsibility, integrity, and badassitude.