Me neither. I was not part of the campaign for Reagan. I had a Dole Kemp sign in my yard, and more recently, a Bush sign, and I freeped for Bush (with my sign "W1," in the election fiasco, on Wilshire Blvd.). But I never felt as passionate about the candidate himself as I do about Fred Thompson. G-d be with him; he needs this win in SC.
I was not either. I was a bit too young to vote then. I found my conservatism in the library and in the life I led in WV. I found it in the value of the patriotism of our forefathers and the plain speaking men and women who surrounded me. The message of the liberal Democrats never appealed to me because of its fatalism. I saw the value of hard work in my one grandfather who worked two jobs all of his life, the farm and the tannery and still knew how to crack a joke and stoke the fire of my grandmothers ire in jest. I saw the value of ones personal sovereignty in a grandfather who believed he owned what he owned and would not back down in a fight for what he believed was right and still found to dream in the darkness of a coal mine.
I saw it in the love of my grandmothers and mom who always let me dream and never saw limits in me. I found in the love of a father who worked every day in the coal mines to make the best life for his family even though he had the simple desire to be a history teacher. I thankful that he taught me through his kindness how to be a good father and a good man.
There is no shame in sacrifice but those who would heap it on us in the name of public charity and guilt laying claim to the gratitude of the weak and lazy for themselves and then feed us on a diet of bitterness and class warfare are not our saviors. We not they are the sovereigns of this great land! We will have our say because those who came before us were not so weak as to sell their souls for the the empty promise of a bit of bread and entertainment.