The Nation's Pulse
Perkel, Charles
THE NATION'S PULSE by Charles Perkel I Was a Teenage Communist A political journey turns spiritual and dignified. I used to be a Communist. Today I am a social worker, which I guess fits. But...
...He was CHARLES PERKKL is a social worker living in Ohio...
...Eventually, I got a kind of job-"vol-unteer" for various Communist organiza-tions within the labor movement, and even-tually full-time union rep for a local affiliate of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU...
...I respected the men and I began to respect- and then share-their views...
...Me, too," I said...
...As it happened, we lived in a mostly orthodox Jewish community...
...The American Spectator February 2001 55...
...They knew jobs trumped welfare...
...Even worse, in the view of horrified friends and family, I'm a conservative Republican...
...Though I was still a labor Democrat, these did not seem like radical positions to me...
...But I was getting a "reputation...
...Raised to believe "God" was a myth for the weak-minded, I was embarrassed even to mention this to my fallen-away Catholic, left-leaning, secular humanist wife...
...They were patriots...
...Think for yourself and don't apologize to anyone...
...That was the start...
...Trembling, skeletal, having lost several children and welfare checks to foster homes, sensing it was to happen again, she pleaded with me: Would I accept a blow job in exchange for looking the other way...
...He hated Commu-nists not only because they attacked God, but because they never hesitated to take advantage of poor people or undermine trade unions...
...The next night, my father, Max Perkel, went to sleep and never woke up...
...Winding up a psy-chotherapist working for the Cuyahoga Department of Children and Family Ser-vices, I got to see the welfare state up close...
...In some ways he reminded me of my father, who for all his leftism was an unapologetic patriot, and a POW during the war...
...But I am also an Orthodox Jew-heavily bearded, bespectacled, soberly dressed, the sort who tends to give secular Jews the heebie jeebies...
...At 20 I dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco's Haight-Ash-bury...
...My wife and son converted on the same day...
...THE NATION'S PULSE by Charles Perkel I Was a Teenage Communist A political journey turns spiritual and dignified...
...I embraced orthodox Judaism...
...Not for ideological reasons, but "because they're a--holes...
...Good...
...At 16, sitting in at a building where, so the rumor had it, the landlord wouldn't rent to Negroes, I had my first run-in with the police...
...They supported civil rights and hated quo-tas...
...Conversations with my new Catholic friend were often heated, but there was truth in what he said...
...So I was stunned when she came to me and spoke for us both...
...For the last two years of his life, my father complained to anyone who would listen about his conservative Republi-can son...
...I noticed the labor officials I came to respect were nearly all of an older generation, fair-minded, mostly former socialists, but not anti-business, and fierce-ly anti-Communist...
...New York lefties from way back, my parents were both blacklisted out of show business...
...I tried to read Marx, but ended up with Lenin and Mao because they were easier...
...their lifestyle was a vivid contrast to the chaos and moral aimlessness I witnessed daily...
...I left unionism and returned to school 23 years after leaving...
...I became aware of a spiritual emptiness in my life...
...He told me that while I was in the process of reinventing myself as a conservative he'd finally quit the Com-munist Part...
...He rests beside my mother in Arlington...
...a devout Catholic and former U.S...
...He paused...
...Still, I stayed active in the local Jew-ish Democratic Coalition, incessantly pointing to Senators Moynihan and Lieberman as examples, ignoring the persistent admonition of a more prescient friend, himself a refugee from leftism: "When it counts those guys will vote the party line, with the rest of the brain-dead leftists...
...and quickly developed a local rep as some-thing of a militant...
...Marine Corps captain, incredibly decent and hon-est- intellectually and otherwise...
...I understand...
...One morning I called on a woman who was using her WIC coupons to feed her habit rather than her baby...
...Then my first granddaughter was born to my daughter and her Ortho-dox husband-his connection to his Jew-ish heritage...
...When I moved to Cleveland where I was assigned to a local janitors' union, a visiting new boss's first words to me were, simply, "I understand you're a social fascist...
...The guy who got me the job eventually became my mentor...
...I also used to think Republicans were akin to child moles-ters and rapists, only less noble...
...Before long, I was marching in the streets chanting "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh...
...Lying in the "passive resistance" posture, I looked up at the overweight, fiftyish cop who nicely asked me to walk down a couple of flights of stairs to the paddy wagon waiting below, and snarled, "Carry me...
...The next day, his voice warming the telephone, my father said, "I've hugged my immortality...
...It took Bill Clinton to do for me, finally, what my friend could not-prove me a fool, even to myself...
Vol. 34 • February 2001 • No. 1
