What a difference a half a generation and a little geography make *UPDATED*

I was very flattered that neo-neocon used one of my posts to examine how she, when still a liberal, thought about Republicans.  Her primary point is that, because she is just a few years older than I, she still remembers a Republican era in America that wasn’t bad.  She has Eisenhower memories, while my Republican memories were all Nixon.  In the same way, her memories of the Civil Rights movement focused on actual bad Democrats, while the re-hashes I got in the 1970s had already whitewashed the Democrat party of all complicity with Jim Crow.  I think she’s right.  I came of age when the Republican brand was sold as tainted goods to those who had no memories of the original.

One other difference, though, is that I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.  In that venue, Republican hatred was pretty much the air we breathed.  But San Francisco was my home, and it has always been a lovely city, so I never really questioned the attitude.  It was only when I went to UC Berkeley, which offers San Francisco’s politics on steroids, except without any of San Francisco’s charm, that I started, slowly, wondering if I should espouse the views held so fervently by such very icky people.

It was dreadfully hard for me to question my unthinking assumptions, and took me way too long, but I’m so glad I did.

UPDATE:  This is the perfect video to insert here, because it demonstrates with ugly emphasis how I was taught to think about conservatives:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRk054bz44g[/youtube]

Hat tip:  Paul Rahe at Ricochet