Hey, I was a liberal then too. Just off a GNR high and voted for Clinton. DOH!
Hey, I was turned into a conservative by the end of my freshman year at college. My hippie school teachers made liberalism out as if it were all about freedom, and I get to a state university and find no free thought allowed, all speech must be approved by the PC police, the separation of church and state crowd was supporting theocracies like Syria and Iran, and the “my body, my choice” crowd was hating pregnant women for causing overpopulation.
And within a month, the Soviet Union fell, and they were all crying about the terrible tragedy of it all. And the next day, the newspapers changed their tune from “Vote Republican and you’ll all die in a nuclear war,” to “Vote Republican and you’ll all be killed by the ozone hole and global warming.” And I said, “You know, that Morton Downey, Jr. guy had some interesting ideas on his show.”
Isn’t that terrible? All the cool neo-cons (as in, born liberal, became conservative... not at all what the liberal press makes that word out to mean) thank William F. Buckley, Rush Limbaugh, etc. for setting them on the path to conservatism. The horrible, deep dark truth is that before I read the National Review or found EIB, it was Morton Downey, Jr. who amused me.
Why? For all his theatrics, he actually heard what his guests had to say.