Before 1967, I considered myself a Democrat, but only because my parents were Democrats. However, I had no interest in politics, which I saw as an unappealing world of stuffed shirts and smoke-filled rooms.
But I was increasingly turned off by the drug culture, sexual promiscuity and permissivism, the anti war demonstrations and leftist hooliganism on college campuses. And I increasingly disliked the pop music of the day finally ditching it entirely when I found a station that played only "oldies"--along with conservative-leaning commentary.
At the same time, I was discovering conservative thought through Russell Kirk's op-ed pieces in our local newspaper, the "Life Lines" radio commentaries sponsored by the oil magnate H. L. Hunt, and the "One Reporter's Opinion" commentaries by our local television news anchor George Putnam.
In early 1968, President Johnson's timid response to the Pueblo incident--and Governor Ronald Reagan's statesmanlike response to Johnson--made me seriously question whether I was really a Democrat, and on March 31, I declared myself a Republican.
None of it affected me directly, except for the fantastic music on the radio and the interesting television programs I saw, as the world began to open up to me as I became a teenager myself.
I remember the girl who held up the sign that said "Bring Us Together" at a Nixon rally; IIRC, Nixon met with her after seeing the sign.
I wasn't political at all, at that age, but some of my friends were. All very liberal, of course, but I had never heard that word at that time. They were "anti-war hippies," that's all I knew.
I tried to grow my hair long but it just looked bushy and unkempt. I suppose if my mom had let me keep growing it, I would have looked a little like Jerry Garcia, I have that kind of hair.
Not that many boys at my suburban school grew their hair real long, only a few. All the girls did though. At that time, and going into the early '70s, high school girls wore miniskirts that were so short they were virtually one-piece bathing suits. There were so many beautiful girls at my school it was unbelievable. Now they're almost all fat.
My first political thought I remember very well. It happened when I read about some soldiers returning from duty, and going through JFK airport in NYC. Some hippies spat on them and called them baby killers.
I hadn't thought very much about the military, other than that I liked military technology like radar and missiles. Where we lived when I was little, in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, they played the Army PR series called "The Big Picture" on Saturday mornings at about 6:30, and I used to get up real early so I could watch it.
Anyway, the story about the hippies spitting on the soldiers made a real impression on me. My first thought was that the war wasn't their fault, personally, and it was stupid and unfair to spit on them.
But then, as I thought about it more, it really seemed wrong to me. I started to perceive the hippies and the anti-war protestors as more and more silly and self-serving.
I didn't start to become an actual Conservative until about five or six years later, when I found about 50 National Review magazines spilling out of an overfilled dumpster at Clemson University in South Carolina. I was hungry for things to read at that time, so I scooped them all up (without knowing what they were) and took them to my apartment and started reading them. Of course, that was it for me.
A girl I knew in college, a few years before that, had introduced me to Ayn Rand, but I didn't really identify her writings (which I think I read most of, including many issues of The Objectivist) as Conservative, but her words sort of prepared the ground, you might say.
I was 19 in 1968 and saw the riots, hippies, black militants, drug proliferation, chaos on the campuses and degeneration of religion into feelgood and realized all that was alien to me.
Communism was on the march worldwide. The New Left in America was its ally.
Then I discovered a conservative named William F. Buckley Jr. and started reading his stuff. I became a conservative that year. The thrill of reading Buckley’s works and deciding, “it’s OK to be conservative” is with me to this day.
Oh yes, 1968 was also the year of gun control laws and the prevailing view that citizens ought not be allowed to own handguns and that there must be national gun registration and federal licensing of owners. Lyndon Johnson that worthless b@stard wanted to disarm us not for safety but class warfare revenge against his political opponents.
Today it’s world Islam on the march and the same Lefties ally themselves with it. In that sense, 1968 is still with us.
“This is Melvin Munn from Dallas Texas with Life Line”...
I had to play those tapes on the local radio station where I worked in high school and hated it, what a redneck jerk he was! Except for when he started making a lot of sense...
If “everybody was a liberal” in their youth then a good half of us have seen the light (or heard the tape)...
I realized that either the hippies and yippies were truly right, or I was being led down a path of dumb ideas that everyone else I knew and respected rejected. So I joined the side that was winning instead of the side that was whining.
But it’s hardly surprising our generation changed American life and culture, every generation does.
I had a pet white rat that I named Radical. I was eight