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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

> He was a republican.

He was born in 1930, though, so it's hard to say that he shares much in common with the ideology we call republican today.

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While I think it's good to make a point that the republican party was very different in the early decades of the previous century, I'm not sure being born in the 1930 is the right cutoff for that. Mitch McConnell, one of the major faces of the current Republican party, was born only a decade later.

Fair point, but I'd call Mitch very adaptable and he has remained actively in politics for decades -- so he evolved to match where the voters went. Sol Wachtler hasn't held any office since the 80s.

"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

A pithy quote from the bowels of the Internet (a commenter on a blog). Liberals love it, conservatives hate it, I don't know that it describes an old school republican very well, or even MAGA for that matter.

I did some cursory digging on that before I shared it. There's fundamental differences of thought for what government is supposed to be, and it's obviously mutated over time.

At its core, government is power over people, and the evergreen question is "how far should that power go, and who wields that power?"

I believe that there are reasonable concerns on "both sides" about that, but the reality is that power is effectively wielded by the wealthy. Democracy is an experiment that ostensibly runs counter to that.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=FrankWilhoit>

Cool that he's here. Thanks!

That quote is completely spot on, so any objection to it is worthy of asking why so. The problem with that is that it's not likely to have a satisfactory answer.

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