Comments on: Memo to the Titanic

By: Comrade Rutherford

Comrade Rutherford — Wed, 13 May 2009 01:55:13 +0000

I turned 18 during Reagan’s Acting-Presidency, AND I was 100% in opposition to the GOP. I was raised by anti-Vietnam war parents, and I listened to punk rock, especially the Dead Kennedys. They summed up my feelings about Reagan perfectly:

Welcome to 1984 / Are you ready for the Third World War?!?
You too will meet the secret police / They’ll draft you and they’ll jail your niece
You’ll go quietly to boot camp / They’ll shoot you dead, make you a man
Don’t you worry, it’s for a cause / Feeding global corporations’ claws
Die on our brand new poison gas / El Salvador or Afghanistan
Making money for President Reagan / And all the friends of President Reagan

By: Barry

Barry — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:29:19 +0000

For those who worry about what the Democratic Party will become without a substantial opposition, I have a few comments:

1) There’s lots of money opposing liberalism, and it can buy lots of opposition.
2) There’re a lot of Democratic politicians (particularly senators) who’ll be glad
to be an internal opposition.
3) If the GOP loses a couple more Senate seats in 2010, and then a few more in 2012 (with Obama’s re-election), they’ll d*mn well change. As the saying goes, they might hate change, but they’ll hate irrelevance even more.

By: Swami

Swami — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:46:07 +0000

LBJ was president when I turned 18..But I was so ate up with patriotism* at the time that I wasn’t capable of thinking straight. It wasn’t until that asshole Bush II started messing things up big time that I finally got wise to how easily I was politically manipulated. I was a prisoner of the “God Bless America” fantasy.

* I needed something to attach myself emotionally to because I was insecure.

By: joanr16

joanr16 — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:59:03 +0000

Gulag and I are close in age. I have to claim Jerry “Whip Inflation Now” Ford as well. In fact, Nixon resigned the day before my 17th birthday. What a gift! Of course, that meant I came of age at a time when everyone was cynical.

I remember being a 19-year-old college freshman, and meeting my first atheist, politically-active liberal contemporaries. Quelle culture shock! We organized for Eugene McCarthy in the 1976 election. We were horribly naive, but we sure were having a lot more fun than the Phyllis Schlafly Juniors running around on campus.

For me, the big awakening came when I read Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will, and realized I was a feminist. That and Watergate were the biggest influences on me.

By: c u n d gulag

c u n d gulag — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:27:20 +0000

Ford was President when I turned 18. BTW – he was the only man to ever hold the office who was not voted in as President or VP.
I don’t know what that says about me. Maybe that’s why I’m the rebel I am…

By: joel hanes

joel hanes — Mon, 11 May 2009 05:06:14 +0000

Goldwater was so conservative that a portion of the electorate thought he might purposely provoke a nuclear war with the Soviets. But he was considerably more honest and forthright than today’s “conservatives”. viz. :

All good Christians should kick Jerry Falwell right in the ass. — Barry Goldwater

About this, at least, Goldwater was correct.

By: Porlock Junior

Porlock Junior — Mon, 11 May 2009 04:30:28 +0000

Enlightened Layperson asks the opinions of those old enough to remember Goldwater. Since that’s the first Republican I ever voted against, I can confirm that the description is right on target.

We should mention his forthright opposition to Social Security, another position that has not succeeded, and in fact was presented in its most recent incarnation in a form that the events of 2008 make hilariously impossible to be taken seriously for the next 70 years or so.

One difference from the current Conservative crew: cojones. He did not run as a compassionate conservative, but as the right-wing case he was, and no shilly-shallying. He talked against Social Security to aging audiences, and denounced the TVA in Tennessee. (The TVA reference will draw a blank with those not old enough to remember Goldwater — Huh? That’s an issue? What’s the TVA? Which is in fact essential to my case.) Allo of this was good practice for when he had to start telling off Republicans, and has left him in better odor with his old adversaries than just about anybody else I can think of.

By: Prodigal

Prodigal — Mon, 11 May 2009 03:56:49 +0000

Reagan was President when I was 18, and his policies and actions while in office are why I doubt I shall ever be a member of his party.

By: Swami

Swami — Mon, 11 May 2009 03:48:21 +0000

So what is so great about Goldwater?

The same thing that is great about Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber, John Gault, or Ronald Reagan..Nothing aside from their elevated stature in the conservative narrative and imagination. A movement needs a focal point to embody its message, and Goldwater justed served that purpose.

By: Enlightened Layperson

Enlightened Layperson — Mon, 11 May 2009 03:02:48 +0000

The Richard Viguerie article emphasizes GOP heroes Goldwater, Reagan and Gingrich as opposed to non-conservatives Nixon, Bush I and Bush II. Those of you old enough to remember Goldwater help me with some things. First of all, he went down to resounding defeat, which Viguerie seems to forget.

Second, I know conservatives revere Goldwater by saying yes, he lost, but he was vindicated later. How? As I understand it, Goldwater’s most distinctive positions in 1964, the ones that convinced people he was a total wingnut (or whatever they called wingnuts back then) were (1) opposition to Civil Rights legislation, (2) the wish to escalate in Vietnam, and (3) willingness to at least thing about using nuclear weapons. So what was vindicated? Definitely not (1) or (3). As for escalating in Vietnam, yeah, we tried that and it didn’t go so well. The GOP resurgence beginning 1980 was not about any of these issues, so much as the rise of the Religious Right, and Goldwater was their harshest critic.

So what is so great about Goldwater?