I suspect that 90% of the people on FreeRepublic that don't think of themselves as sheeple, if a person from 1901 talked to them for a few minutes would think, "my God, 90% of these people don't even know they are sheeple themselves." I hope I'm wrong, but how many sheeple-laws and regulations have been passed in the last hundred years?
My grandma was born in '96, she died in 1992, but before she passed, she taught me the truth as she saw it. She raised 8 children, my grandpa was a teamster(a real one), and was gone for long periods of time. He died when his oldest was 19, the youngest was 6 years old. She was the postmaster of the town, taught school and cooked for ranch hands on the weekends. She refused to take govt "relief", instead she "farmed out" the oldest of the children to local farmers and ranchers, where they did chores, cooked and cleaned, or toiled in the fields, in return she took in the money from all of the children, and kept the house in order for the smaller ones. Now my mother and her siblings are ALL liberals, and look upon her as too stern, and offish. They now have no problem living off the govt teat, although they would never be in the position to do it(their mother taught them too well for that) But out of this enormous family, there are 3 conservatives. Out of nearly 100 uncles, aunts, or cousins only 3 exist. Until I found this site, I really didn't even know there were any others beside me and Rush.
Anyways, she disdained the politics of the family, until the day she died. Told anyone who would listen, that they needed to "tighten your belt", or "buck up be responsible" when things got tough. I don't know if she was just crabby, or if the values she saw in others of this era just grated on her. But you can bet she would think most everybody were sheep(le), to her everyone was either dependent, or independent, and she left not a doubt which one she preferred.
Oh, and I remember her telling me in '60, that JFK was a "rounder", while she proudly campaigned for Nixon.