“The 19th century American writer Henry Adams said the descent of American presidents from George Washington to Ulysses S. Grant was enough to discredit the theory of evolution. The same could be said of the pantheon of conservative political heroes, which in the last half-century has gone from Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan to Sarah Palin.”
Steve Chapman looks at what happened to Goldwater’s movement @ http://reason.com/archives/2009/11/19/palin-and-the-conservative-des
“The founders envisioned a federal government constitutionally limited to defending our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For that to happen, we must have at least one political party that strongly advocates limiting the power of government. For much of the 19th century, that party was the Democrats. For the early part of the 20th century and from the early 1960s through 1988, that party was the Republicans.”
“Today, it is difficult to find noninterventionists in either party.”
“The Democrats demonstrate a disdain for capitalism, free trade and the validity of contracts.”
Full column by Edward H Crane, President of Cato Institute @ http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10935
“His death is really a tragedy and all the more so that it was not even widely remarked upon in Republican ranks. He was a major intellectual force in his day, and his sympathies with genuine liberalism of the old school made him attractive, at some level, to libertarians, if only because we understood each others’ language.”
“My impression is that the party machine decided to eat him after being a VP on a losing presidential ticket in 1996 and then coming out against the Iraq war in 2002.”
Full Tribute by Jeffrey Tucker @ http://mises.org/story/3452