First, even though there have always been certain parts of the country where you couldn't buy liquor on Sundays, for example, the nation was not under threat of becoming one big church in 1964. As I wrote in reply to boop in #48, there was quite a bit of concern in the 1960s about what the kids were reading, in school and in the library. For as much heat that produced, I didn't see much in the way of book-banning going on. If anything, the objectors painted themselves as some kind of kooks, especially when they went after Mark Twain's stories of life on the Mississippi.
Goldwater didn't make an issue of the blue laws and such because there were many, many more important things to talk about at the national level. And his "efforts to roll back tyranny" were concentrated more on the ever-expanding federal government than matters at the local level. He was in the Senate, don't forget.
then you're concerned that it is in danger of becoming "one big church " in 2007, or I suppose more precisely, you (or Gold, anyway) think that's what the "religious right" wants ?
Actually who wants to ban Mark Twain nowadays? The left. Who wants to restrict freedom, i.e smoking, what kind of lightbulbs we buy, what we put into the garbage? The left. Who wants to restrict even our thoughts with “hate crimes” legislation? The left. I think you are mixing libertarians with conservatives. I personally agree that republicans spend too much time agreeing with democrats on “settled” issues like social security, but where is the home for religious people? Not on the left. I have never seen hate like that which comes from the left when it comes to religion. Th left poked its snout into the lives of the religious, not the other way around.