Not much has changed...

12/1/08

From today's "Founder's Quote Daily"

"Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark"... If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?"

--John Adams, the Novanglus, 1775"

I've often lamented that I didn't know where my parents stood on politics, never knew how they voted, wasn't sure what political party they belonged to - we just never spoke of such things when I was a child.

Two possible reasons now come to mind:
1) I never inquired.
2) They knew what could happen to family relationships if politics was ever discussed.

I'll bet it was a combination of both reasons. I believe that my parents might have answered a direct question had I posed one. For example, if I had asked, "Who did you vote for?" my father would probably have said, "None of your business." My mother might have asked why I wanted to know. I wish I had more historical perspective on my parents' political ideology but I'm not sure that ideology would have correlated to their voting record.

I believe even more firmly that nearly all those people who claim to be anti-conservative, anti-Republican, are not liberals in their hearts and minds, they are, in fact, cowardly conservatives.

We have an elderly relative who is uncommonly brutal in their criticism of anyone who does not adhere to the rigid standards of puritan living arrangements: Conjugal relations between a man and woman who are not married is strictly taboo, and an unmarried woman is supposed to stay at home with her parents until she is married. This relative would be considered an ultra-right wing Conservative, correct?

Not necessarily. There's another elderly relative who is a die-hard Democrat but along with being a staunch Catholic, appears to be a social conservative.

Perhaps the Republican party would help itself by peeling off the "Conservative" label, separating "Conservatives" and "Liberals" from political parties.

I wonder what that would look like, a liberal Republican. We already have an image of a conservative Democrat in Senator Joe Lieberman.

The world is full of dichotomies, and most of them have two arms and two legs and walk upright.