Trick or Treat!

This is a Dalek

With all the bad news in the country, it was really good to escape today with my ten-year-old daughter.  Happy Halloween!  This year, Tabitha decided she wanted to be a Dalek, the famed villain from the long-running British sy-fy TV show Doctor Who.  Her Dad, who is a fun-loving kind of guy, didn't miss a beat.  He went straight to work.  A month later his masterpiece was complete; Tabitha's Dalek costume.  Lovingly designed and built by a very loving Dad.  He didn't have to do it.  We could have ordered one on-line; but that wasn't good enough for him.  

Tabitha as a Dalek

Needless to say her costume was a complete hit.  People stopped and stared and many asked to take photos of her, which made her abandon the notion of getting candy and settle for just walking around showing off her father's hard work and enjoying people's reaction.  She was responsible for a lot of smiles tonight, and so was her dad.  What a night--the best Halloween ever. 

All this started me thinking.  What else do loving Dads do for their daughters?  Sure, they feed, clothe, shelter, and nurture--but what do they do in the bigger picture?  Loving dads don't just love their kids, they learn to love their kid's friends.  They're welcomed in and treated with loving kindness.  Loving Dads become part of the community.  They coach little league, or soccer teams.  They do father-daughter scout camp-outs and volunteer at their kids parties at school.  

Loving Dads pay taxes, because it's that money that funds the parks and rec programs, builds parks and maintains community swimming pools in the summer.  They recognize that they are just a tiny part of a greater whole.  Man, then family, then neighbor, community member, citizen of the state, citizen of a nation.  No matter what you may be told--we are not isolated little bubbles.  We can't live that way.  We need human interaction, and deep down in most of us, when our child's friend falls off her bike, we are inclined to ask if they're okay, and patch up the boo-boo.  

And so we come to the time to make choices; locally, state-wide and nationally.  Who do we choose?  Sure, we can travel the isolationist path, where we're only in it for ourselves.  We can choose, "I've got mine, to hell with you".  However, you have to ask yourself, is this how neighborhoods and communities are built?  Is this the national character we want to have?  One man believes that the cost of living should be passed back to the individual states, and central government should be as small as possible, offering little or no services to the states.  What is its purpose then?  It exists to promote the general welfare of the citizens of the US.  That's directly from the Constitution.  

Keep passing the buck back to the states, and eventually things like parks, community pools and parks and rec programs go away.  The states will struggle to provide basic services like snow removal, road repairs and gods forbid--disaster relief.  No--the states cannot do it alone.  None of us can do it alone.  Ask yourself what a loving Dad would do.  It's easy to push the responsibility off onto someone else.  It's a much more difficult task to say, "We're all in this together."  Sometimes you have to do what is right instead of what is easy.
Vote Barack Obama on November 6th.  Step out of your bubble of isolation into the warm sunshine of a community.