My loyalty to the Republican Party began in 1979-1981 because, in that time period like most of my classmates, I both hated and was terrified of "The Communists". I don’t know that I understood much more than they had nuclear weapons, they were evil, and they wanted to kill me and my family. At 9,10, and 11 I can’t write that I was some sort of young political genius or that I gave a goose about politics or that I read the paper or watched the news, but I figured for right or wrong was we were going to have a war with the Communists – maybe a nuclear war. And that scared me.

The events of 1979-1980 and the Presidential election certainly helped shape some of these opinions. My notions of the political parties and of the Presidential candidates at that time in my life were vague at best, really only the impressions of a child.

From what I recall, my impression of Carter and the Democrats is that they were scared of the Communists. My impression was that they were weak, or they would get the hostages back. My impression was that they were the ones who thought our relatives, friends, and neighbors who had fought in ‘the war’ were "bad". And my impression was they were way over the line in terms of running down our nation’s symbols, history, and future. Basically I felt like the guys running our country could not be any more alien to me than if they’d stepped off the moon, and that they loathed people like me and my family who loved America. I could not have expressed my feelings at the time with these ten dollar words, but I think that’s the peck of them… in the visceral us vs. them, I felt like the Democrats were too close to them.

Reagan and the Republicans seemed like the kind of no-nonsense tough guys you’d want at your side in a fight. They gave me some reassurance that when we fought the Communists we might win. If Reagan was in charge, I was sure the hostages would come home or we would go get them. I felt they were proud of our relatives, friends, and neighbors who fought in the war, and that like me at the time thought we could have won if we really wanted to. They respected and revered our nation’s symbols and history. And they gave me hope that the future could be brighter than the present. They were icons of strength in a storm. I saw how my relatives, mostly working class or lower middle class and hardly political or conservative in any meaningful way, rooted for Reagan and America – because I think in their mind and probably in mind they were one in the same – with the same passion they rooted for a sports team.

For the next ten years until the collapse of Communism these were the single biggest issues – bar none – that held me fast to the GOP. And I would imagine this is true for any number of folks who were children at that time period, and also who were adults. I have a close friend – older than me by some twenty years and Ivy league educated – who ‘boo-hoos’ the idea that the United States and the Soviet Union were ever going to fight it out. And he makes reasonable arguments about the desire of both the Communist leadership and our own political leadership for self-preservation above all. And while I’m not convinced of that argument, one way or the other it’s not really important what was true or not. The important thing to me is how I felt and what I thought at the time, and what the great masses of the American public felt and thought at the time. And my guess is if we could look back to the early to mid 1980’s and poll jr. high and high school students they would have seen the world much more like I saw it than my friend sees it. And my guess is human nature at that point means many people who believed war was forthcoming took one of two very divergent paths – one to the right that said stand strong and we’ll win, and one on the left (from my perspective) that said it’s more important to live than to be win or be free. I chose the right.

As with most Americans, my life and my ideas were heavily influenced by television and movies.

I’ll never forget the day in 1983 when our teachers wheeled televisions into our classroom to have us watch the movie "The Day After" (for those of you who have not seen it, it graphically depicts a WWIII nuclear exchange’s impact on the Kansas City region). If the reader has seen the movie he can probably easily imagine the impact this kind of screening would have on the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students in my school who were exposed to it. Not to put too fine of a point on it – it scared the wits out of us (and what these schools were thinking by showing this film to children I have no idea). But it also had a secondary impact on me, and on several of my peers when we imagined our mothers on fire, or our homes as ashpiles: it hardened our hatred of the Communists and our belief that WWIII was forthcoming and we were going to be the ones fighting it. No doubt it also knocked some folks the other direction as well, which was I imagine the actual purpose of the production and the showing.

And as trite and sappy as movies like "Red Dawn" and "Uncommon Valor" and "Apocalypse Now" (Note: I wouldn’t call this one trite or sappy, and I’m again surprised they would show this movie to children in school, but in fact we did not draw the same message adults did from this film) and "Rambo" are in hindsight, to me and to many others of my generation they were telling us – just like Reagan and the Republicans – that it was ok to love America and that we could and would win again. That the United Sates had done the right thing in Vietnam and our solders were heroes. That we could and would look the Communists in the eye and it was them who were going to blink from now on, or we would fight and win.

The teachers I had also served to shape my opinions. I would argue – and this may be political heresy that gets me burnt at the Republican stake – that 90% of the teachers I had K-12 had no apparent political philosophy. However, of the remaining 10% most of them were far to the left and in charge of classes that would allow them to drive their opinions home as fact. It’s mostly in college where I experienced class after class of professors teaching opinion as fact.

In the 6th grade, in 1981, however, I had a teacher who was not a leftist. He was a Korean War veteran who was wounded fighting in a battle with the Chinese, captured, and put in a Chinese prison camp until after the war. The camp was was less than pleasant. He was starved, beaten, and otherwise tortured on a daily basis in order to get him to recant his loyalty to the United States, which he did not do. However, his brave resistance had an impact on him. It was an accepted part of our school that sometimes in the middle of class he would start sweating and shaking and need to go sit down at his desk or go into the hallway for a while. Or that from time to time he would have explosive reactions to incidents that hardly merited that time of reaction.

But it’s not this teacher’s war-induced behavioral issues that impacted me. It was that from time to time he would stop what he was doing and sit down with us and just talk. He would talk about his life, and the war, and what happened in the war. Sometimes he would wipe his eyes as he sat there and talked to us about his experiences, about Communism and how it degrades the human soul, and about how although freedom was given to us as a gift, the defense of this freedom should be considered a duty – if possible by words and if not, by force.

I don’t write all this simply to walk down memory lane. I came to the Republican Party because I believed and believe that the GOP is most likely to defend our nation. And as much as I am repulsed by the Republican overspending and ethical dilemmas in Congress, I absolutely loath the idea on November 8 voters may empower the same weak compromisers who if left in control of Congress would have probably lost us the Cold War and if given power now may damn well lose us this war.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 29th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.