It was around 7th or 8th grade when Mondale was running against him. At this point in time almost every American was an admirer of Reagan - he won EVERY SINGLE STATE - even commie Vermont! - except for Mondale's home state, that radical bastion of corn and dairy farmers called "Minnesota." Reagan won 49 states to 1.
I remember the night watching it on TV and it will certainly be the ultimate definition of a landslide for the rest of US history. (In my middle school we had one of those "mock" elections at lunch time. At the end of the day they announced the votes over the loudspeaker system - I don't remember how many people had voted for Reagan but I will always remember how many voted for Mondale - 1! When a candidate wins 50 - 0, call Iran okay, because only they can explain that. It wasn't me who voted for Mondale and I wonder how those results might have scarred that poor lone voter for life!
Somewhere around Bush I vs Clinton I, I began to change my mind. Yes, free markets are a wonder, but there has never been a 100% free market that has ever survived the test of time - if you want a 100% free market try Somalia or parts of Afghanistan, without regulation there is no freedom, I'm sorry. One can be free to sell and trade and pollute and rape and murder and pillage as much as one wants in Somalia at the moment but how does that equal freedom for those who are the subjects of the grain monopolies, the murderers and the gangs of rapists who call themselves militias? Without protection from abuse at least half, if not the great majority become the subjects of the inscrupulous and immoral few. This is why I am not an Anarchist.Anarchy exists, if you want to try it out immigrate to Somalia or the south of Afganistan or the north of Pakistan... any takers? I thought not.
As the 80s moved into the 90s we all began to see what massive and careless deregulation had wrought. What "free trade" without any conditions had brought about. Detroit crumbled before our eyes. Nearly every manufacturing job in America moved overseas. It is a downright challenge to find something, anything in Walmart that is made in America. Not even Walmart but try HomeDepot, or better yet, try your local Ford, GM, or Chevy dealer - try to find the vehicle made with 100% American labor - sorry charlie, it doesn't exist.
A funny thing about the so called "conservative movement" as it exists today - it almost always looks back at the 1950s as America's Golden Age. Orderly, simple, friendly, moral. Guess what the tax rate for the top earners in America was in the 1950s? 91% for anyone making over 400,000 dollars per year. Talk about "socialism!" Know what it is after Reagan and Bush "restored" us to the bygone "values" of the 50s? 35%, and still Joe the Plumber whines and whines. For even more enlightening statistics complete with color charts and graphs check out this site: http://www.stanford.edu/class/polisci120a/immigration/Federal%20Tax%20Brackets.pdf. Now, tell me how much you want to go back to the 1950s?
OK, some may say, but that wasn't the golden age after all. The 1950s were after FDR and his new deal brought socialism, however weak or strong, to our shores. The Real golden age was the time of the revolution and the founding fathers!
Lets pick 1790 as the specific date for this golden age. Most all of the founding fathers were still alive and many were now politicians.
Federal debt in 1790, which was $75 million! - and increase it at a compound interest rate of 5.8 percent. The results will match almost exactly actual total public and private debt for the years from 1916 to 1976 - the only years for which the Federal government has published complete data.
The United States went into the red the first time in 1790 when it assumed $75 million in the war debts of the Continental Congress. Alexander Hamilton, the first treasury secretary, said, "A national debt, if not excessive, will be to us a national blessing." ...Since then, the nation has only been free of debt once, in 1834-35. The national debt has expanded during times of war and usually contracted in times of peace, while staying on a generally upward trajectory. Over the past several decades, it has climbed sharply — except for a respite from 1998 to 2000, when there were annual budget surpluses..."
Think of your family members and friends or even yourself: In 1790 you could not vote at all if you were: not the owner of land (what if your bank still technically owned your property because you had not paid off your mortgage yet - as is the case with every single person I personally know who thinks they "own" their own home), non-white, non-male. Again, I do not personally know anyone who meets all of those criteria.
Wanna go to jail? Go back to the 1790s. Ever had oral sex? Illegal in every state at the time. Anyone you know ever gone bankrupt: try debtors prisons on for size. Health care? Forget about 1790, how about the life expectancy rate in 1850, a newborn white baby girl could expect to live to age 40- a boy to age 38. Today a girl can expect to live to 79- a boy to age 73. The fastest growing age segment is 80+ where over half are women. Free Public Education (that is, by definition socialist): still a proposal. Again, forget about 1790 - how about 1870 - only one out of five Americans could read at all! Yes, one could wander off to claim some land and try to clear the trees and brush and fend off the animals and the displaced natives and somehow turn a profit before age 40, but would you really, really, really go back to then if you could? You might not be a landowner, you might have comitted adultery of premarital sex, you might be gay, black, a woman. Or, you might be a white male with land - and still have a one on five chance of being able to read and no real prospects to look forward to after the age or forty. No thanks, I'll take progress.
Can regulation become absurd - of course! That is why we have town, county, state and federal legislatures to elect who in turn make our laws. But the lobbyists and the corporations have all the money! Some might object. Yes, and with that money they can buy TV commercials and lots and lots of pamphlets, but is still up to us as to whether or not we accept their messages. We are not automatons, we posses reason, even the dumbest friend of yours can think about his own self interest and vote accordingly, and the wonder of it all is that if everyone votes in their own self interest it's OK, because it all balances out to equal the general will of the governed, us, the citizens.
Can progress occur where the government does not step in to take some sort of regulatory role? I suppose. But even from the very beginning we had the concept of copyright, which is nothing more than the granting of an exclusive monopoly for a certain number of years over certain information. If you were a publisher in the 1800s and began to make bootleg copies of someone else's copyrighted book the government would warn you first, then if you continued to ignore them, eventually they would show up with guns and take your books. If that is not government intervention in the market then what is?
The point is, that without rules there is no game. Rules make the game. A game with no rules is no fun to play at all. What we should be seeking is the correct balance between rules and free association, free thought, free speech, free actions that do not harm our neighbors.
This last point brings us to the other bugaboo of the current "conservative" leaders (Rush, Coulter, Hannity, our friend the "Falaffel Master" O'Rielly etc.) The environment. Ahhhh, the great feared back door for the one world government to finally get it's hands around our tender throats! If a creek runs through my yard and then out of it and into a river that provides water for a town downstream, should I be allowed to dump arsenic in it? No. The founding fathers would have said that too, it's simply not possible for one individual upstream to poison all those downstream because he happens to own the deed to a few acres. Now open our minds to the following: if I cannot poison people around me through my ownership of the water that runs through my property can I at least poison them through the air that runs over my property (What if I really really really HATE these hypothetical neighbors? :) ) No, of course I cannot do so intentionally. But what if I do so unintentionally? What if I just happen to invent a process that makes wonderfully useful widgets but happens to turn all of the air downstream from me 100% toxic. No one would allow it (at least anyone downstream from my airflow) and everyone would understand the prohibition against my wonderwidget factory. So how about if the substances I was releasing into the air was 50% toxic? How about 20%? How about 1%? Where do we draw that line between destructive freedom and the individual's right to do what he or she wants with their own property? Again, we have an answer in our legislative (and to some smaller degree in the executive and judicial) powers that we grant to our government every four years or so. WE DECIDE how much toxic air is too much and how much intervention is too much. We really do, every nasty un chimenied un catalytic converted power plant across the land can spend as much money they want in Washington DC but when we walk into the booth their dollars matter less than our final analysis of the situation. Now, mind you, I am a big fan of the idea that since only individuals can vote then only individuals should be allowed to donate to political campaigns. For now a pipe dream, so in the meantime I must keep my focus on the individual self interest of the voter. Which brings me to another point.
The individual is supposedly very rational and always right when it comes to "the free market" - the individual becomes informed and then chooses their purchases based on their ability to reason. The right does not worry that some posses more or less reason than others - they simple trust that the aggregate reason of the entire populace will guide the market - the invisible hand will work it's invisible magic despite the multimillion dollar campaigns waged by marketers and advertisers, if a product is crap the people will not buy it, Madison Avenue realizes that this is the case, you can shine a turd all you want but it won't become golden. And in the world of commerce at least, the reason of all the public together will determine what will fail and what will not, regardless of the money poured into any product's promotion. I could pour billions of dollars into unmodified Popsicle sticks as a cure for cancer but after 6-12 months I can guarantee you my business will not turn a profit and my company will cease to exist.
So, why does the right not trust the public to see the advertisements and money poured into our great variety of political campaigns? The public can use their reason to guide the market, but when it comes to those same citizens using their same reason to guide the Republic the trust vanishes.
My first break with the Republican Party (and I must say this is all predicated upon timing, since in 1865 I would almost certainly have been a Republican and since I would have been a huge fan of Teddy Roosevelt in his day - but alas parties change and even, amazingly, become their own mirror opposites) - alas, my first break with the Republican Party came when I read a bit of text from the gospels: "I was naked and you clothed me, I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink." Jesus was speaking in this instance of "what you have done to the least of these you have done unto me." Some might argue that this is a matter of personal charity and should not be something that the government concerns itself with - hence the idea of "faith based initiatives." OK, fine. But what works my tangle is that these same people will then say that America - ALL OF US, as a corporate single body - will be doomed for our corporate sins as a nation in terms of abortion or gay rights etc. Now I challenge you to pick one: Are we as a nation bound to reap what we sow - is our national karma going to come back to us all or is it a "personal" thing, each awarded according to his own? If it is a matter of corporate guilt at the hands of our government, then our good deeds will also be accounted to us as a nation, every child fed, every widow clothed and sheltered, every invalid cared for, we are balancing out our debts with love. If it is not a combined national affair then let us each go on our way and forget about whether God is judging America on gay rights (as "reverend" Phelps suggests) or on abortion, it's each of us for ourselves and the government shouldn't be worried about moral affairs at all.
So, I started this with mentioning that it was somewhere in the early nineties that I abandoned the "conservative mind" and I must confess several things in conjunction with the timing of my "conversion." A: George Bush the first - he seemed to me everything that is wrong and shady about America, his disingenuous snicker, his "absolute" promises, backed up with "read my lips!" when questioned on how he would manage his preposterous promises, all broken, his darting eyes that never looked straight ahead, his position as former head of the CIA. It all just flew in the face of what I thought America's face should be - which is really all that the President is, he has no power that does not go through congress or the supreme court first (minus his veto power and command of the military as Commander in Chief.)
I followed the primaries in 91 through the newspaper headlines and half articles I could read for free in the newspaper boxes outside the liquor store across from where I lived at the time in Santa Cruz. I remember the first mentions of the long shot - this Clinton fellow from Arkansas that nobody knew. By election day I cast my first ballot for Bill. Four years later, as a protest against Bill's broken promises I voted for Dole, as did several of my "counter culture" "hippy-ish" friends. The two specific reasons for my midterm revolt against Clinton - his failure to pass universal health care as enjoyed by every other modern industrial civilized western nation - and his inability to repeal the ban on gays in the military, which he, as commander in chief could do with a pen stroke, as the ban on interracial troops was lifted with the stroke of a pen. Speaking of 94 - poor Perot had started out strong but began to flake as the pressure built and he quit, then un-quit - a steady hand the wheel we need, not a child who whines at the first sign of disapproval!
I followed that second vote in 94 with one for Clinton again - primarily on the fact that he had overturned all expectations and produced a f-cking budget surplus, and the first one since well before WWII. If a Democrat could produce a miracle that was it. Plus, everyone I knew, even the most conservative in my circles, found the Monica Lewinsky circus to be absurd and entirely distasteful. If you recall Clinton's approval ratings soared across the board during the Monica trial. If Gore wasn't sure a BORE he could have easily won coming off of the Clinton popularity and the Fiscal turnaround. All Gore seemed to be able to do was say the words "lockbox, lockbox, lockbox" in reference to Social security (which was a fine idea and fundamentally a conservative one (stop borrowing money from Social Security to pay for pet projects) but his robotic monotone only won over 49% at the least, 50% at the most. We all hing on for a few weeks until the Supreme Court declared that the ballot boxes should be locked up and the recount halted. Those ballot boxes are still out there locked up in warehouses in Florida...
So, I digressed, because despite my personal votes during each of the following elections the Republicans could not fundamentally (Dole withstanding) win me back since my first "vote" for them in seventh grade.
What had I liked about Reagan? A lot! I liked and still do like state's rights. I like the idea of a balanced budget, though he spoke of one incessantly he never achieved it. He had a way with speeches and words and charm who's closest equivalent since is probably Obama, and as much as Obama's speech at the Democratic convention in 2004 made my neck hairs stand up and me say to myself "That's who should be running for Prez!" Reagan's way with words and his ability to charm still beat Obama's any day - so far at least. Just go back and look up a couple of Reagan's old speeches on youtube!
To end this entirely too long for anyone's internet attention span article, I became disillusioned with the following: Christianity as the property of one or the other party. Plenty of mentions of God and Jesus and prayer and life, but less and less regard for anyone the further they were in time from their own personal exit fromt he womb. States Rights began to take a beating as soon as the Republicans were no longer the dominant party - each State's right to decide on abortion, as had been the case before Roe v Wade in 1972 - no, a federal amendment to the constitution, proposed by the formerly state's rights R party. Each states right to decide for itself who should and should not be able to marry - no, a federal intervention called the Defense of Marriage Act, proposed by the formerly state's rights R party. The Balanced Budget - the holy grail of the Reagan years - remember the clock in Time's square that was installed during his Presidency that sowed the amount each American would owe were we to pay off the National debt today? - well, it soared under Reagan and then the deficit became a surplus and the national debt clock began to go backwards for the first time ever. You know what happened after George Bush the second right? It began to tick forwards again, and then finally went so high under Bush that it had to be removed and replaced with a new clock because no one had imagined that it would ever go over 10 trillion when they installed the first one! One more summation of my thoughts: Clinton achieved a budget surplus after 40 years. Gore supported stopping borrowing from Social Security's funds to pay for pet projects of various congresspeople etc. Obama supports state's rights in deciding marriage. Look at 1980 and compare it to 2008. Who is the so-called Reagan conservative now and who is not?
Alas, that is how I, and almost everyone under 40 has drifted very definitely in the direction of the democratic Party.
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