This is NOT conservatism

We´re going to have to come to terms with this sometime soon.

Today´s Republican party is a zombie of its former self ...and Democrats seem to be seeking so many concessions from them that we appear to be not far behind.

As a liberal and a Democrat, I remember the Days of Rage and the days of the Weather Underground.  I recognized those proponents as radicals ...and, sometimes, they had my sympathy ...especially as regards "the war" and forced conscription.

From those very same days, though, I remember conservatives and Republicans who were statesmen and fought for sanity.

I´ll let YOU google it ...and let you see if you can find statements from that era by Republicans similar to what we see in papers and other media today.

Moments before the shooting, I was discussing on facebook the Arizona legislation against teaching Mexican-American history in schools there.

We liberals and Democrats moved on from our sympathies with the bomb-throwers of the 1960´s and their outrageous but effective propaganda against "the war.".

However, it seems to me that some Republicans never forgot how effective leftist radicals were in that era.  To me, they have been copying all the worst tactics of the Baader-Meinhof gang ...but hiding under the cloak of their statesman predecessors.

Those predecessors are long gone.  They have been pushed out by the current Republican party until there is no one on that side of the aisle that represents the thoughts and attitudes of Barry Goldwater, Bob Michel, Everett Dirksen...or even Richard Nixon, who, truth-be-told, would be considered today too liberal for either party!  That´s tough for an old Nixon-hater like me to say ...but I believe that to be true and I can back it up.

What passes for "conservatism" today is every bit as radical as any horrible characterization of anarchists or hippies or terrorists.

We could call for a return of the GOP to true conservatism ...and we should ...but all of their proponents are all gone... they have been systematically purged from their own party  It could take a generation for them to return to their principles.

What are conservative principles today?  You might be able to describe them accurately ...but your description wouldn´t be conservative.

We are confronted today, not with the heirs of a Western-US Republican movement that wrested control from the Rockefeller-Eastern part of their party ...but with a modern-day Baader-Meinhof faction that has purged every reasonable member from their ranks.

Politics will change in the US ...but only with concerted effort over enough time.  Sorry, but that is how it works, whether you are talking about a corrupt police department or any other institution that has gone astray.

We have to reclaim sanity even though it seems that everything conspires against us.

Radicalism has become the domain of the right.  It´s not really fair to call them Republicans anymore.