We Were Young Once — and Conservative

Charles G. Mills

1/7/2010

The early 1960s were a wonderful time to be young and conservative. Seeing the horror of some middle-aged people at the thought of great masses of young conservatives alone was worth it.

The New Yorker published a cartoon of a teenage boy and girl sitting on the stoop of a New York brownstone with two signs resting next to them that said, “Goldwater for President” and “Young Americans for Freedom.” The caption was, “Do you think we’ll grow up to be stodgy old Liberals like our parents?” The question had occurred to many of us. So many of our heroes at National Review had been communists or socialists when they were our age. Would history play a cruel mirror-image trick on us at the dawn of the twenty-first century?

The story continues …..