Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain. - John F. Kennedy

A ride in a taxi yesterday reminded me of how conservative Dad drifted late in life, and made me ponder how he got there. To me, conservatives hate everyone except for themselves and liberals love everyone, to their peril and disappointment.

Dad, in my version, drifted conservative in the 1980s because of too much TV and too much time dealing with the poor imitation of political correctness at TC3, his college. He felt marginalized by sensitivity to race and gender to a regrettable degree.

Before that, hearkening back to the quote above, Dad was such a well-educated guy that he could not see things in the cartoon figure forms of the Reagan era, but with all of the complexity and subtlety of a New Yorker reader. Moronic TV news and the disappointments he had with workers and students at TC3 embittered him, made him myopic, and I am sad about that.

The only real way that he could defend his shaky position was with withering condescension, telling me that I, too, would grow out of being a liberal, as it is a sign of maturity. Mercifully, his prediction did not come out.

The Onion recently had a pastiche of an editorial by Jimmy Carter. In it he uses the most horrifying hate speech and obscenities to express that he had a whole lot of good things going on in the 1970s and now they are all dismantled and it isn't his fault. It was heartbreaking to read because of the stinging truth [and AWFUL graphic language], but it also was ironic and funny because a great liberal like Carter would NEVER be so hateful or possess such braggadocio, and it ended up like Rush Limbaugh rage and Carter accomplishments. Extraordinary.

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/i_got_what_america_needs_right

I guess that Liberals are also idealists, so, even though we cannot dream that we can turn back the clock, un-kill the unjustly dead, maybe someday we can cycle back to a time where leaders were actually trying to do good.