Jonathan E. P. Moore (Updated)
I know “A picture is worth a thousand words,” but when it comes to this picture not so much, but my politics definingly a different story!
I was born in 1952 and have a sister that’s 4 years older, and a brother 4 year younger. My parents were both Democrats and only children who met in Manhattan. My father was born and raise in New England and graduated from Yale undergraduate and then Harvard Law School. My mother graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before moving to Manhattan to follow her career in Modeling.
My first introduction to politics came at a very young age when my father was approached by local politicians to get him to run for the Mayor of our small Bergen County New Jersey town. My brother, sister and myself were sent to our rooms while they met, and just a short time after they left my father informed us that he had refused to accept their proposal!
My father took the time to sit my brother my sister, and myself down to instill a little knowledge that he had accumulated over the years, and the reason why he didn’t jump on that ‘train’ into the world of local politics, or any politics that I know about for the rest of his life!
The one thing he said that has stayed with me from that day forward is that in his opinion an not in all instances, that people who are running for political office generally are not doing it out of their call to public service, but because they want something in return that only answering that call to public service might enable them to get!
After that day and as the years went by I got to observe my father and his life as a lawyer, I learned very quickly that my father interpreted and practiced Law as simply ‘Black and White, or in translation either legal or not legal, or constitutional or unconstitutional only, and never the ‘ Gray (‘Grey’ in Great Britain) area where the ‘Big Bucks’ are made.
My father only practiced law in ‘Black and White’ until the day he died which was in 2001, but thank god in the April of 2001 and not in the September when 9/11 happened on American soil because for him to see that would had killed him if he hadn’t passed on already!
When it comes to my life to date and any other contact with politics that I might have come in contact with, I know that I registered to vote at 18, and when it comes to my military service just know I was the recipient of draft number #334 in the late 60’s!
Now when it came to voting in elections, which I knew was my civic duty, I believed like most my age at the time believed that no matter who was in office or from what ever side of aisle they were selling their snake oil from to those who would listen, that our founder’s ‘Checks and Balances’ would always be there to protect America and the American people from outside interests who might of had other ideas that didn’t run parallel with our founder’s Constitutional Republic!
I didn’t vote until my father passed at the age of 84 in 2001, and voted the first time in 2004 at the age of 52. My reasoning was simple and logical to me, and I knew in my heart that until my father died, and as he continued to practice Law in his philosophical ‘Black and White’ parameters, that I would write my father’s name in before anyone else’s for any position in government including the President of the most powerful, generous, and owned by ‘We the People’ in the world!
My father’s argument and/or his questioning of my reasons for not voting was always “If I went to a restaurant with friends and I didn’t like anything on the menu, wouldn’t I at least order and eat something on that menu because I was with my friends,” and I always told him no, and that like himself with his ‘Black and White’ way of practicing law I wouldn’t just settle for anything or anyone for that matters for my beliefs!
I considered myself back than, but in todays terms a Conservative Constitutional Independent Patriot whose only goal during all of this is and always will be to leave the same country that my Grandfather who made a career in the Navy and fought for our rights during WWI, and than my father who got drafted and fought for the same rights abroad and on foreign soil during WWII where as a forward observer on the Leyte Islands in the Philippines he got wounded, to my children and their children’s children, and not the same country that today’s so called defenders of ‘WE the People’s’ rights have no problem surrendering those same rights that previous generations risked their lives for, and giving them up so easily when asked when the constitution has given them every right to tell them to go FU**’ themselves but don’t!
Since my father passed in 2001 I voted for the first time in 2004 Bush 43, and then one day when I was laying on the couch around 2005 or 2006 watching TV I witnessed a possible candidate for the President of the United States being shown hanging around with Reverend ‘God Dam America’ Wright, and my generations ‘Weather Underground Bomber’ William ‘Bill’ Ayres who the Mainstream Media didn’t even bother to identify, which in my mind was that ‘What the Fu*k’ Red Flag that got me off the couch, and the rest is history!