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"Dennis has talked about that often. Sometimes I have to think seriously what I would do if the choice was saving George and Kramer, or saving Hillary. George and Kramer have escaped twice, George cost me $2,000 to fix a destroyed leg when he was hit by a car, they have crapped and puked on the rug a few times. But then I look at what Hillary has done and what she is capable of doing. I guess I am leaning toward saving George and Kramer. :)"

Doug:

Nice to hear directly from the renowned DFU. Until recently I was just an ordinary lurker but became more active last fall.

To provoke your thought further on this matter, let me relate the following personal story. I was a Democrat from age 18 to age 26. By 30 I was solidly in the Republican camp and have never looked back. The first Republican I voted for as President was George H. W. Bush in 1988. But I have lots of friends who remembered my liberal days; one day recently, a good friend of mine ("Mike") who currently lives in WDC asked me what happened. [Incidentally, he is a former Director of the Institute for Policy Studies, that incredible leftist think tank in WDC. However, he is one of the most reasonable men I have ever known and he even almost voted for W in 2000.]

Back to the story. Mike asked me why I changed so dramatically. I told him that it didn't happen overnight, but if there was one memorable milestone along my journey, it was the following one.

It was 1981, and I was in graduate school at a prominent Eastern Ivy League school. We had weekly sherry hours, and I walked into one in the spring of that year. Certain national events were all over the news, and when I walked up to a gathering of faculty and research staff, I said the first thing on my mind: "Isn't it terrible about the President?" For the day before, President Reagan had been shot by John Hinckley Jr.

I still considered myself a Democrat at the time. I had never lost the conservative and patriotic upbringing of my youth, however. I was a Boy Scout as a teenager, I believed in God and attended church on a sporadic basis, yet I just believed that the Democrats in America were more compassionate and more just.

But for some reason, the response of the faculty at this Ivy League college provided the jolt to my political faculties. Because, they didn't commiserate with me about the President's wounds. In fact, a very outspoken one looked me in the eye and said, "I'm sorry the gunman missed." When I stammered back "Why?" the response I got back was that Reagan was going to ruin the environment, put poor on the streets, lead us into war, etc., etc. You can imagine what this lady said.

What was even more incredulous was that the rest of this august group of faculty all agreed with her. They nodded their heads very sagely, murmuring their assent, these men with salt-and-pepper hair and tweed jackets with patches on their sleeves.

I was floored. These people wished the President dead! I might not have voted for him, but he was fairly elected and clearly was the will of the people, and he was a man of principle, something I respected even if I disagreed with him. Such was how I was raised to view opponents. But not these faculty. They wished him dead! The thought that I had in my mind was, if they could murder him and get away with it, they would do it! And they would probably think that they had done a moral act!

At that moment I realized that Democrats were no different than the Republicans that I had stereotyped for years as mean, uncaring, indifferent, and even evil. Democrats were not "better" or "more ethical" or "superior." They were indistinguishable from Stalinists or Nazis.

When my leftist but very reasonable friend Mike heard this story, he hung his head. He confessed to me that he agreed with me. The left had become so compromised, and was hell-bent on destruction of so much that America holds dear.

So, DFU, when you say that you wish Hillary would drown in the river, I politely ask you to reconsider. Our Freeperness derives from our character. And our character is compromised when we wish our political opponents dead for no other reason than their politics.

All the best. You're a legend here at Free Republic and don't take my comments to be anything more than constructive.

Tom

Thanks for the good story and kind words. I put a ":)" after my comment. I guess I would save Hillary (but only if she and her husband promised to go away) :). In my lifetime I have found that those on the political right are generally kinder and will go more out of their way to help people. Perhaps that is because of the individualism embraced by those on the right. The most shrill and nasty people I hear are on the other side of the aisle from me.

Before I knew better, I actually voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976. I was outraged by the dishonoring of the office by Richard Nixon. That fling with the dark side, however, was fortunately ephemeral and I've never looked back.

Yes, those on the left really did want Reagan dead. One nitwit called Dennis Prager today and said Bush was worse than Hussein. Two reasons he gave were allowing snowmobiles in Yellowstone and wanting to drill for oil everywhere.