I'm short just a handfull of years on you, but I think I can make up for it in family ties. Through Atilla the Republican I've had a lifelong window into hardcore conservatism. Circa 1960 in LA, I remember watching TV with my Dad, and after pro wrestling he'd watch a spittle-spitting desk-pounding rightwing demagogue named George Putnam on KTLA. The guy scared me, frankly, and so his name was burnt into my five year old mind; so deeply that a couple of years ago I verified that childhood memory was correct online. Through the years I've been exposed to the spectrum from Birchers through Young Republicans (the latter sound so peachfuzz harmless, but in reality they were trying to outdo their elders in extremism).

I've also tried to research the history of conservatism, and you're right, the heavy reliance on smears goes back to the early days of the movement in the 1920s. Long before there was email, there were the "whisper campaigns", housewives passing on the ugly lies over the back fence, the men in furtive water cooler conversations at work. The invention of the xerox machine in the 50s gave them access to their own version of samizdat, and you'd find the grubby little sheets littering the ground at public gatherings, especially July 4th of course; but funny, you'd never see anybody actually passing them out. They just happened.

Another hallowed tradition was called "letterhead committees", little rightwing front organizations consisting of a mailing list and a printed letterhead with some wellknown names listed as advisors or board members or donors; and half the time those people had never given their permission to be used. These little fronts were small and cheap to set up, and so the donors in the shadows set up hundreds of them to present the illusion of a large grassroots front. Sound familar?

I'm not surprised by the smears, that's for sure. But that doesn't mean I've grown numb to it. I'll never give up my respect for the truth, and above all else, I've learned that conservativism is a permanent outrage against the truth.