It is remarkable how, for decades, the liberals, and now their left wing and the radicals, have succeeded in determining the ground rules of American politics—establishing ideological chimeras as the basic issues for debate, terrorizing opposition (as they did in 1964) when it raises true issues based on reality, setting up their own definitions of what is “moderate” and what is “extreme.”
Thus, despite his horrendous programmatic opposition, Senator McCarthy is somehow presented as a “moderate,” while Governor Reagan, who represents the essentially moderate and anti-ideological outlook of the great majority of American citizens—the stable citizenry, with what used to be called “a stake in the country”—is branded as “extreme.” So far has this gone that I have heard considerable admiration for McCarthy’s tone expressed among conservatives and, also from some conservatives, a fear that Reagan as a candidate “would polarize the country”—which is just another way of calling him extreme.
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