Confessions from the Closet

Confessions from the Closet

 Why I Switched

 

 

For the past twenty years, I have dedicated my life to activism. I have started two nonprofits, testified in numerous Senate Hearings and have convinced legislators to change laws.  I’ve had the incredible good fortune to work with Jessica (Decca) Mitford and Bob Treuhaft (both former communists) on their last book: The American Way of Death Revisited or “Death Warmed Over” as we called it.

 

 Still, even with this resume, the people who have had the greatest impact on my world views have been two Presidents; Nixon and Bush Jr.

 

It was while watching the Watergate Hearings that something deep inside this (then 20 year- old) middleclass housewife changed. A few years later, I left suburbia and headed to Northern California, driven with a need to live a larger life.

 

My activism started when I tried to sell caskets wholesale in San Francisco in a “funerary art gallery.”  The mortuaries refused to allow families to purchase anything from outside vendors.  I went “undercover” in collaboration with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to bring enough evidence for a ruling on restraint of trade. Then in the early 90’s, morticians began charging AIDS “handling fees”.  These obnoxious and scientifically unwarranted charges took me to Sacramento, the capital of California, to protest alongside the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (politics can certainly bring you interesting alliances).

 

 I began to look at the agency regulating the funeral industry and stepped into a hornet’s nest of corruption. I started testifying in hearings and talking with politicians (even odder bedfellows).  I was labeled “The Scourge of the Funeral Industry” by the Boston Globe and was quickly swept up with interviews and exposes for national and international television networks.  I started a nonprofit that distributed consumer information to help people know what choices and rights were involved in purchasing funerals.

 

These activities brought me to the attention of the “Queen of The Muckrakers” Jessica Mitford.  She asked me to be her researcher on updating her national bestseller The American Way of Death.   I found myself in an exciting and heady venue and spent many hours struggling to learn the history of the politics of the left while I lived with Decca and Bob. Their struggles for civil rights made me feel like a dilettante.

 

Because Ms. Mitford died prior to the release of her book, I was thrust into doing the national book tour.  The day I landed in New York, to appear on The Today Show, the scandal of Monica Lewinsky broke. Obviously upstaged, we rescheduled for later in the week. On that day, President Clinton started his assault in Bosnia. Between the Bimbo and the Bomb, my spotlight died out, and I returned to the West Coast.

Still dedicated to battling the funeral industry, I continued to fight in “The Fine Old Conflict” as Decca called the communist theme song of The Internationale.

 

One day I was asked to investigate a homeless shelter by assuming my “undercover” role. It was indeed more of an eye opener than anything I had done previously in my life.  It showed me how intrinsically corrupt government-funded programs are, and how easily “faith based” charities (funded by taxes) can accumulate power and wealth over the powerless and poor.  I confronted the city council with proof of embezzlement and corruption, but was ignored. The only highlight of the event was my being threatened to be arrested for impersonating a homeless person (I actually pulled a rib muscle from laughter). Unfortunately, the people who shared the shelter with me were dumped onto the streets so that they could not testify. Two of them died over the next year and I did a lot of soul searching about my methods and goals.

 

I started my second effort to create change using the internet to search for individuals who tackled major societal problems differently than the standard institutionalized systems.  This is when I furthered my education in how badly government deals with all social issues. The most innovative ideas and real solutions are usually shunned by government, and my contacts were with movers and shakers who were well outside the entrenched government agencies. Learning about the problems in our “justice” system and working for prison reform was nearly overwhelming.  There is something deeply wrong with California when it has the largest prison population (per capita) than any other country in the world. Being tagged the most “Liberal” state in America somehow seems bizarre!

 

When listening to my old comrades of the left talk about what our government should do, I find myself trying to convince them that only programs which work on a local level and are not restricted by the strings that come with government funding have a hope of succeeding.  The response was always that we just needed the government to “fix” those problems too.

 

My greatest example of how impossible this is to do is from my years of trying to work on behalf of consumers against the abuses of the funeral industry. The state regulatory boards were run by the industry they were supposed to be overseeing.  After many exposés and years of victims testifying in hearings, the politicians promised change. They got rid of the public boards and created a Bureau in which the only people who now have access to government are the lobbyists.  To add salt to our wounds, they added more taxes on the cost of death to pay for it.  The FTC, who promulgated the “Funeral Rules” in 1982 after the exposé of The American Way of Death, has handed oversight over to the National Funeral Directors Association, and has promised funeral directors to withhold knowledge of industry wrongdoing from the public if they make “tax deductible contributions” to the FTC.  When my friends protest that this was done by those “damn Republicans,” I tell them they are misinformed- both of these actions were taken by Democrats.  When I have confronted the responsible politicians themselves, they have told me that I needed to be more “realistic” and learn the art of “negotiation.”  More than once I was told they could help me get me a “good paying” job in government.  Having had an insider’s view of government, I couldn’t help but feel insulted by that suggestion.

 

Then Bush Jr. and his neoconservative gang took over the White House.  It was Nixon again, with a better PR machine, and once more something shifted in me politically.  I watched the futility of the left’s struggle against the fast paced erosion of our rights.  The first time I heard Ron Paul speak I felt I must be hallucinating; how could someone whose views so connected with mine be a candidate for president?  And most embarrassing of all – how could he be a Republican?

 

 Research on his ideas brought me to the Libertarian Party.  I roamed the net, reading posts and articles in Libertarian Blogs from all over the world.  I subscribed to Reason Magazine.  I felt a little like I should be reading this stuff in a dark closet with a flashlight.  Many ideas were new to me, and some of them conflicted with cherished beliefs.

 

My first issue of Reason was titled “The Right to Own a Bazooka”.  My husband sneered at it and dismissed it as “rightwing lunacy.”  When I announced to my husband that I was beginning to sympathize with Libertarian views on politics, he was far from pleased.  His mental association with Libertarians was almost synonymous with the Ku Klux Klan. Fortunately for me, he teaches Critical Thinking.  His strong advocacy for reasoning has given me an opportunity to discuss issues and thoughts on politics and liberty in depth.  Here was an open mind against which I could freely bounce ideas and conflicts.  He thinks that the Libertarians have been purposely maligned and that most people do not really understand the issues clearly.  I wholeheartedly agree. Both political parties see government as Santa Claus or God, put there to moralize and/or reward us.  Although I don’t want to own a gun (much less a bazooka), I fear the government’s creation of a private army (Blackwater) more than I fear citizens bearing arms.

 

I still have a great deal to learn, but my trust that government can provide solutions to social problems has been damaged, and my convictions irrevocably changed.  My hostility towards the war in Iraq and the erosions of our civil rights has fueled my exploration and acceptance of different views, ones that in my youth I would have discounted out of hand.  When my friends ask why I am a Libertarian, I explain that it is due to my deep humanitarian leanings.  I have learned that poverty and war are institutionalized conditions that serve governments well.  This gives my friends pause.  As I talk about the failings of the Democrats to stop the war – the largest cause of impoverishment-they nod and lean in to listen. Like my husband and I, most Democrats are frustrated and disenchanted with the politics of the Democratic Party. And like us, they have never studied the diversity of opinions found within the Libertarian Party. There is great opportunity in the present political atmosphere to get solutions and ideas out to those who have fallen into the trap of thinking that Left/Right and Democrat/Republican are the only viable options. The field is ripe for change.