Back in the sixties, Senator Barry Goldwater was the country's leading conservative. He was considered the model of conservatism and was the Republican party's candidate for President in 1964. He lost in a landslide to LBJ after being portrayed as too quick on the trigger militarily.But he was still the leading voice of conservatism in America at the time. Today he would be a prime target of contemporary conservatives who would probably try and drum him out of the Republican party.
Because Barry Goldwater was pro choice. Goldwater believed in something contemporary conservatives do not -- individual liberty.
Goldwater believed the government had no place in American bedrooms. Today's conservatives want to stick their noses under everybody's sheets, probably because there isnt much going on under their own.
Today's conservatives on a daily basis, display nothing but hypocrisy when it comes to individual freedom. What they want is the freedom to tell you what to do and impose their values on everyone else. Values that have clearly made them so unhappy, that it's not enough to simply live those values -- they have to validate them by trying to impose them on everyone else. What they want is the freedom to force their ideas, most of which are antithetical to American ideals and which most people reject,onto the majority.
Conservatives are against gay rights because they are more interested in taking away things from people they dont approve of than be for anything that makes their own lives better. They oppose health care reform and the idea of universal health care because they dont want people who cant afford it to have it. Maybe, like Alan Grayson said, they dont even want them to live.
The idea of any choice at all is a violation of their values. After all, they believe in towing the line and living lives restricted by rules half of them dont believe in and make them miserable, so why shouldn't everyone else? Misery not only wants company, they want to run the government. Which is why America had nothing but misery under Bush and the Republicans for eight years.
Individual liberty, individual freedom, and the government staying out of people's personal lives is something conservatives, bending more to a new fascism than anything else,want to end. They think they know best and while they hypocritically wave signs opposing health care reform as a threat to their individual freedoms, the only choices they support is the choice to do things their way.
Which is why it will never happen. Because unlike the conservatism of 40 years ago, the conservatives of today, the tea party loudmouths and town hall disrupters, the people whose goal is to shout down anyone who disagrees with them, are the very people the Founders wrote a constitution to protect the country against. These are people as the town hall meetings showed, who have more in common with Berlin in 1939 than Philadelphia in 1776.
And as the election in NY's 23rd district showed, unless the Republican party repudiates them, they will lead the party down the road to its own destruction.
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5 comments:
I don't agree with some of this.
imo--The GOP committed suicide in NY. Owens won by default. I wonder how his constituents feel now that he has already broken campaign promises?
Even here in CA there were attendees at the town hall mtgs and tea parties from all political stripes that had the same grievances--with both parties. This is more about citizens vs BIG government.
I'd also say, the dems need to do some purging of their own
"I'd also say, the dems need to do some purging of their own"
I agree and it might start with Obama.
From your mouth to God's ear, Marc.
I never supported BO, but I never dreamed the dem party would lurch as far to the left as it has.
FROM DR. ALVEDA KING, NIECE OF MLK, JR.
No one batted an eye when President Kennedy opposed the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King. Hardly a ripple of protest was uttered when President Kennedy, through his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped
and investigated on suspicion of
being a Communist. Little attention was paid to the
fact that it was a Democrat, Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Conner, who in 1963 turned dogs and fire hoses on Dr. King and other civil rights protestors. No one noted that it was a Democrat,
Georgia Governor Lester Maddox,
who waved ax handles to stop blacks from patronizing his restaurant. Nor was heed paid to the fact that it was a Democrat, Alabama Governor George Wallace, who stood in front
of the Alabama schoolhouse in 1963 and thundered: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” None of those racist Democrats became Republicans.
During this time of turmoil,
completely forgotten was the fact
that it was Democrat Arkansas
Governor Orville Faubus who in
1954 had blocked desegregation of
a Little Rock public school. To their eternal shame, the chief opponents of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act
were Democrats Senators Sam Ervin, Albert Gore, Sr. and Robert Byrd, a former Klansman. All of the racist Democrats that Dr. King was fighting remained Democrats until the day
they died. How can anyone today
think that Dr. King, my uncle, would have joined the party of the KKK? There is a law of unexpected outcomes. Who could have predicted that the black exodus from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party in the 1960’s would have also ushered in decades of destruction which continue to plague our communities today?
DR. KING...EXPLAINING WHY HER UNCLE AND HER GRANDFATHER WERE REPUBLICANS.
"DR. KING...EXPLAINING WHY HER UNCLE AND HER GRANDFATHER WERE REPUBLICANS."
All that is true. It wasnt about party and never was. It was about conservative vs. liberal. Conservative Democrats or Dixiecrats were the ones standing in the way of civil rights. It was liberals who fought for it. It was Eisenhower, a moderate Republican who sent the national guard to Little Rock. And it was conservative Democrats who tried to stop integration. The civil rights act is what caused the southern conservative Democrats to desert the Democratic party. And they became Republicans
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