Replies

I enjoyed reading this. It rings as true today as it did in 1984. Looking back, I chuckle at how I was Democrat that year, a junior in college who voted first for Gary Hart in the primary and then Walter Mondale in November. I have voted Republican ever since. When I tell my Democrat acquaintances that I used to be a Democrat before I "grew up", it drives them crazy. Then I paraphrase Churchill and say "If you are 20 and a conservative you have no heart, but if you are 40 and a liberal you have no brain" and they go ballistic. It is interesting that Reagan and Kirkpatrick were both long-time Democrats through the Truman years but backed away while the Democrat party abandoned its core principles and ideals in the 1960's and 1970's. Today Democrats are clearly on the wrong side of history, and I am proud to be a Republican who believes that all people, not just Americans and Europeans, have a right to live in freedom.

Happily for the Republican Party, if sadly for the demise of bipartisan Americanism, your's is not an uncommon story. Thanks for sharing.

BTW this thread needs a picture of the great lady. Click on it for a link to a bio page at her speakers' agency. You can view some video from some of her more recent speeches (though most appear to be several years old):