How Richard Nixon and Rodney King Changed my Party Loyalty

I grew up in a blue collar, Democratic family. We have been Democratic on both sides of the family, at least since the beginning of the 20th century. I never questioned what decisions my party representatives made as a very young man, say 18 years old. I presumed (wrongly) that these elected officials would always do what was right. I also accepted as indisputable fact that , well of course the Republicans were always, always in the wrong. The republicans were greedy and 'keeping us down'.

You can imagine my surprise when, as a college freshman in 1975, I heard from someone I know with an opposing view. This was in October. I was at one of many back to school after-parties in Columbus, Ohio. The host's girlfriend had just poured me a full paper cup of Ernest and Julio Gallo Sangria (Red). I heard a familiar voice; another student saying how 'great' a president Richard Nixon was. I was amazed. If you think George W. Bush was trashed in the press, you should have heard the wailing after WaterGate. It lasted for decades. Enumerable nattering nabobs. This student was somebody I knew from psychology class. We had discussed Jung and Sarte. He even knew about Simone De Beauvoir. I had thought we were friends, and now this? I sat down with my oversweet wine and listened to him. He mentioned how the economy was very strong under Nixon, and our Earnings to Debt Ratio was impressive. I had the obligatory retorts in reply. I responded with what we now call talking points, all based on emotion or circular rhetoric. I was struck that my friend was focused on results, not personality, as my side always relied on. I thought about that conversation long after, although I made no immediate changes. I still dutifully voted democrat as my father advised. From that short conversation, I realized that not all republicans are horrible people. A lot of my tried and true beliefs were suddenly not necessarily all true.

Fast forward almost 20 years later to the 1992 Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles. Suffice to say that the incredible amount of race baiting and 'reverse prejudice' that I saw on the news or read in the papers (long before internet for regular folks) was disturbing and embarrassing. After hearing the umpteenth person defend those looters who had to be threatened with shotguns from the Korean owners,, I realized I did not wish to call myself a democrat any longer. This was around the time Jesse Jackson made up that phrase African-American, a phrase I still disagree with a refuse to use today when given a choice. I'm not from Africa, I'm from Michigan. This was when the style began to openly overwhelm substance in American Politics. Now, I'm at the point of considering the Libertarian Party. I believe in war and fighting for the right reasons. If there is a page in the Libertarian Book for conservatives who are willing to support defense of the country. well. I may have to give it a good look.

Whoa troll, since you didn’t ping me I missed your rediculous post.

Every one of those libertarian platform positions in post 14 is absolutely accurate, for instance compare the short version of immigration policy in post 14 with the full text version in post 25.

How about abortion? In post 14 it says “Abortion; zero restrictions or impediments.” in the actual party platform it says.
“we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.”

That means “zero restrictions or impediments” zero interference, I can do that for every platform position that I listed in post 14, so we still have to ask, why are you lying and making such nasty personal attacks in what amounts to stalking?

Thanks Lee Martell:

I grew up in a blue collar, Democratic family... on both sides of the family, at least since the beginning of the 20th century... Republicans were always, always in the wrong. The republicans were greedy and 'keeping us down'. You can imagine my surprise when, as a college freshman in 1975... in October... another student saying how 'great' a president Richard Nixon was... He mentioned how the economy was very strong under Nixon, and our Earnings to Debt Ratio was impressive. I had the obligatory retorts in reply. I responded with what we now call talking points, all based on emotion or circular rhetoric. I was struck that my friend was focused on results, not personality, as my side always relied on... Fast forward almost 20 years later to the 1992 Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles... race baiting and 'reverse prejudice'... was disturbing and embarrassing. After hearing the umpteenth person defend those looters who had to be threatened with shotguns from the Korean owners. I realized I did not wish to call myself a democrat any longer. This was around the time Jesse Jackson made up that phrase African-American, a phrase I still disagree with a refuse to use today when given a choice. I'm not from Africa, I'm from Michigan.

Nixon was one of our better Presidents; as he said years after, the negative "was, of course, Watergate."

it is not trivial to destroy America from within on the basis of faux parasitism and concern for liberty, for it is nothing more than libertinism

THINGS I WISH I HAD SAID
True Liberty is not license. Those who think as you, sir, pervert liberty, and destroy the fundamental principles that allow a culture to thrive economically. This is the error of libertarian philosophy.

What libertarianism proposes is moral relativism under the pretense of “non-interference.” However, in the final measure, the result is that guaranteed outcome of any morally ambiguous system, which denies human nature and the transcendent truths that govern all cause and effect relationships. In practice the imagined utopia of the libertarian is identical in its altruistic deception to that of atheistic communism; and the outcome is predictable: the destruction of the individual and the corporate body of humanity we call society.

Libertarians think they may advance the cause of “social liberalism” simultaneously with “fiscal conservatism;” but this duality of purpose is folly, and works diametrically and insidiously against itself. The social plagues induced by such novel philosophies invariably drain the public treasury, render the distinctions of absolute right and wrong to ambiguity, destroy public confidence in justice, and dissolve private wealth.

Human society does not and cannot exist in a moral vacuum. A society that having no absolute standards of conduct defers all decisions to the individual, exercising little or no restraint on behavior, abdicates the single most legitimate purpose of the state: to increase the common good and uphold the moral order. To quote Edmond Burke:

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

-— Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

A corrupt society, filled with men of licentious inclinations, cannot maintain its economic stability; or do you suppose the folly of the Roman Republic is worth revisiting in our times? “Give us bread and circuses!”

Economics does not transcend moral absolutes. Economics does not trump the Natural Law. History proves conclusively that no immoral or amoral culture can long prosper, nor survive its growing litany of perversions against the Natural Law; for such a corrupt body becomes its own undoing. Unfettered liberty generates unfettered vice.

Vice is not virtue; even if for a time libertarianism may advance a nation’s economic standing, it remains a foundation of sand because it denies the absolute transcendent truth indelibly stamped on the consciousness of every man by He who created all things. God is not mocked.

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