>Nathan Newman wrote:
>
>>Actually, to engage in a bit of pop psychoanalysis, I assume that with the
>>rise of Reagan in the GOP, being a YAFer lost whatever rebellious chic it
>>once had and you, being the contrarian you are, had no choice but to become
>>a leftwinger :)
>
>Timing, Nathan. I stopped being a rightwinger in 1972. The whole
>period of mad apostasy lasted from my senior year in H.S. until early
>in my sophomore year in college. I'd been elected Secretary of the
>Yale Political Union on the Party of the Right ticket late in my
>freshman year, but by the time I was serving as secretary, I was
>already falling away.
>
>Doug
The real action in the YAF took place in 1968-70, when the group split into conservative and libertarian wings. At the YAF national convention in St. Louis in '69, the libertarians shocked the conservatives by burning their draft cards and shouting "Laissez Faire! Laissez Faire!" The conservatives responded with "Lazy Fairies! Lazy Fairies!" Karl Hess, symbolic leader of the lib-wing and former Goldwater speechwriter, challenged William F. Buckley to a debate, which the crypto-Nazi declined. I believe some of the dissident YAFers went on to start the Libertarian Party, but that wing of politics spread so far out that I couldn't really say.
DP