Mort Sahl Quotes
I'm not a liberal, I'm a radical!
Sahl, Mort. Heartland. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976, p. 52.
Dwight and many other leading clergy and intellectuals of the day were horrified by the French Revolution, enlightenment liberalism and were paranoid about the "Illumnati" a secret society who were–according to the conspiracy theory–responsible for most wars and depressions in the world who would debauch American daughters. The Illuminati were secretly trying to take over the world's economic and political power structure. To this day, there are some who believe that the Illumnati today control the UN and major multinational corporations and are the New World Order. He believed that Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans were already instruments of the Illumnati. He repeated this theme in his election sermon 2 years later in 1798. See {18125}.
Often called Blackshirts. He is one of the few politicians in the world who saw Fascists and Nazis in the middle of the political spectrum.
The liberals of the Republican party had been the powerful and often dominant wing of the party since Theodore Roosevelt had instituted his reformism. Rockefeller was trying to maintain its preeminence inside the party against the then new Republican extremists led by Barry Goldwater. He lost at the convention, as Goldwater was nominated as the Presidential candidate. He was trounced in the general election because of his extreme form of Conservatism. However, while the extreme right wingers lost the election, they had won control of the Republican Party that defined Republicanism for decades thereafter as a conservative movement. They would make “liberalism” a dirty word, and the party did not concern itself with human need much thereafter while fighting the change and globalization that was beginning.
Morton Lyon Sahl is an American comedian, actor, and social satirist, considered the first modern stand-up comedian since Will Rogers. Sahl pioneered a style of social satire which pokes fun at political and current event topics using improvised monologues and only a newspaper as a prop.
