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Purging the Republican party of Barry Goldwater
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artsandscience.colorado.edu
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 is not enough for them 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 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 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 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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