Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the purist conservative of them all?
When I became a Republican in 1962, there were three philosophies within the Republican Party: liberal Republicans=Nelson Rockefeller, moderates=Richard Nixon and conservatives=Barry Goldwater. I supported Rockefeller; I supported Nixon, and I originally supported Goldwater because of his strong America position.
We were in the hot Cold War. I served in the U.S. Marine Corps.
I also was working my way out a modest upbringing after coming from Mexico at 3 with my 17 year-year-old single mother who had an eighth grade Mexican education and spoke no English. That changed when I was 8, and she married a San Diego police officer who was making $200-a-month. Welcome to the lower-middle class. By that time, Spanish nuns had converted me from 100 percent Spanish to English so I was capable in both languages and, most importantly, I could listen to and understand my step-father and his family when we drove to Texas to meet them. Additionally, priests taught me Latin so I could serve the Lord.
Stories of hill country Texas by my step-father horrified me. The modest background I had pre-1949 did not prepare me for stories about Depression-era “county agricultural agents” coming to his family farm and counting pigs and cattle, then shooting any above the number they were allowed to have. Nor did I understand why his family needed a federal permit to raise peanuts.
Shooting pigs and cattle when people were hungry did not make sense to me. I, of course, had no idea about market pricing, but I understood hunger. I remember telling my great-grandmother once that I was “dying of hunger.” To this day, I remember her admonishment that I should never say that when, in fact, there are people “dying of hunger.”
Then came the day in 1951 when my police officer stepfather was honored by the city of San Diego for arresting two robbers a block away from a downtown theater that had threatened a 16-yearold cashier if she didn’t give them cash (when movie theaters charged .25 cents) before the radio call was made. He had stopped the robbers in their car because they made a “California stop” at a stop sign right in front of him. He was writing them a ticket when the robbery call came over the radio. Busted!
Political philosophies aren’t just plucked out of the air, they are formed from early personal experiences.
A government, for example, that kills cattle (beef) and pigs (bacon/ham) while people are economically distressed and, in fact, going hungry, is not a well-run government and is certainly one I can’t support.
A government that allows hunger for any of its people at any time, while the upper class of the country is prospering is not a well-run government and is certainly one I can’t support.
A government that does not police every neighborhood, protect every citizen from those that steal, harm and kill is not a well-run government and certainly is one I can’t support.
A government that allows economic monopolies is one I encountered as a teenager when my family bought an avocado orchard in San Diego County, the Avocado Capital of the world at the time. One day a man drove onto our property and told me to tell the owner that we had to sign up with his avocado association or we couldn’t sell our avocados. It was avocados, not peanuts but it sounded like a license to me.
A government that denies economic freedom to anyone not a criminal, is not a government I can support.
The U.S. Marines taught and equipped me to “defend and protect the Constitution of the United States.” That was reinforced by my fellow boot campers and how we pushed ourselves beyond limits to please our drill instructors who had fought in Marine history-making battles like Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Inchon and the Chosin Reservoir. Thanks to them, I breathed national defense.
The Marines also taught me that ideally Americans are more or less equal and proceed through the ranks regardless of religion, color of skin, race and/ or ethnicity. Then in 1964 Barry Goldwater led six other Republican senators in voting against the 1964 Civil Rights Act that finally ended the Civil War. I could and did not support that act of stupidity.
All this made me a Republican, Even during and after Trump, who doesn’t believe much of what I do, I’m still a Republican. Now to find others like me so we can take the Republican Party back for the good of the country.