Palin's Reagan quote wasn't about freedom in general. It was about opposing enactment of Medicare.

[jefferson_dem]

CONTEXT MATTERS.... In her closing statement last night, Palin relied on a pleasant sounding quote from Reagan:

"It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same, or we're going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children's children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free."

Jonathan Chait noted the context of Reagan's quote.

In fact, Reagan was not warning about a general lack of vigilance about freedom, he was warning what would happen if Medicare was enacted.

Oops. The McCain aides probably should have checked that one a little closer before handing Palin the script.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_10/015003.php

[Bread and Circus]

1. If you look behind the curtain long and hard enough, you will find

the whole goal of the RW is to dismantle Medicare and Social Security.

Why anyone over age 55 who votes Republican is kind of beyond me. Maybe a lot of them just don't realize what the true goals of the modern conservative movement are about.

[Princess Turandot]

2. FYI..just a point of info: the issue in 1972..

would have been the expansion of Medicare to disabled people. The Medicare and Medicaid programs were signed into law in 1965 as part of LBJ's Great Society.