Nigel Farage's recent comment that he has "never seen so many people scared to say what they think" rang true.  But it is all relative.  The best time to be a conservative for me was before we had any power or even real prospects of getting any. 

Prior to Reagan's election in 1980, conservatives were in the minority, even in the Republican Party, but were extremely energetic.  Their enthusiasm almost won him the nomination in 1976 and did so in 1980. 

Prior to victories in 1980, conservative forums usually consisted of libertarians debating social conservatives on things such as abortion, immigration, public utilities, and foreign involvement and policy.  It was wonderful in that everybody said pretty much what he thought about everything.  What difference did it make? 

It was all academic anyway; solutions proffered never had a chance of seeing the light of day.  Everyone believed that everyone could say whatever was in his mind.  If they were racists or end-of-days folks, everybody would just ignore them, and they'd eventually go somewhere else.  We all thought our particular strain of conservatism superior to all others.  On campaigns, we cynically, but necessarily, analyzed the state of support needed to win a primary, then hopefully the general elections.

On the conservative side were the libertarians, the social conservatives, and the philosophical conservatives, which I prided myself as being.  Looking back, I think we were really the agnostics of conservatism.  We saw merit in the arguments of the libertarians and the social conservatives but were too chicken to stake out a position.  We just pretended to be above the fray — that our positions were strictly philosophical. 

Generally, the conservatives tried to reach some consensus before coming together with the other leg of support needed to win: "The Country Club Republicans," whom today we would call "the establishment."

We were all whores in that we got involved in politics because we wanted policy changed in one way or another.  But most of the CCR crowd wanted immediate action, a tax break for a category, or appointment to this or that.  The conservatives wanted change in policy; the change desired depended on your brand of conservatism.

At the National Young Republican Convention in 1976 in Memphis, we had the same arguments as outlined above.  There was a large libertarian contingent.  My brother and I were two of three non-gay delegates from Colorado.  The other nine Colorado male delegates were mostly libertarian/gay Republicans who were small business–owners. 

The two red-flag issues for us were abortion and marijuana.  We were pro-life and pro-pot.  As I recall, the antithesis was the Westchester County, N.Y. delegation, who were pretty much all pro-aborts and anti-pot.  We spent quite a bit of time haranguing them to distract them from arguing their positions to other delegations. 

Many of the delegates to the 1976 National Young Republican Convention subsequently were elected to Congress.  I always loved watching the guys from the convention on C-SPAN arguing the pot issue.  To their credit, none of their positions had changed a whit on either side.

Roger Stone was our guy for president of the National Young Republicans.  A couple crazy Harvard guys in the Massachusetts delegation, along with my brother and I, worked the other delegations pretty hard for Roger.  He won, but as I recall, it was fairly close. 

It was wonderful, because everybody could say exactly what he thought about anything.  Nothing was off the table.  Gays were open to discussion in any terms.  Some of the anti-pot language was pretty harsh.  People certainly got animated, but never angry.  That would only mean defeat.  How far we have come!