re: #227 CommonCents

I’ve heard somewhere that if you’re not a liberal in your youth you don’t have a heart and if you’re not a conservative as an adult you don’t have a brain. Can’t quite recall who said that one.

Winston Churchill iirc.
As much as I admire the man, though, I don’t buy that one. I was very conservative as a young adult. Influences included a contrarian reaction to my parents (who were major Dems), my experience as an eyewitness to the 1968 Chicago Convention riots (my mom was a delegate), and (most especially) my tour in Vietnam and my observations of the media there. If anything I have become more liberal with age, especially after the rise of the relgious right. As with Barry Goldwater himself, the changes may be more with the definitions of conservatism than with my own positions.