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John Wayne was active in Republican elections and never shy about his devout patriotism. In 1975, he was sufficiently invigorated to discuss left wing liberalism:

“…I always thought I was a liberal but I came up terribly surprised when I found I was a right wing conservative extremist…I have always listened to every human being I’ve ever met about how I should feel. But this so-called new liberal group… they never listen to your point of view and they make a decision as to what you think and they’re articulate enough and in control of enough of the press to force that image out for the average person. For some reason, maybe it’s these pictures, they have not been able to do that with me…it hasn’t affected my career in popularity in spite of the fact that they’ve tried to make them do it”.

“There isn’t a hell of a lot we can do to change human behavior. We keep making laws to try to change human behavior but we can’t do it…You’re being conned into Keynesianism and socialism now but it isn’t going to stop the selfishness of human behavior. It isn’t going to stop the greed. If you take $20 and give a dollar to every son of a bitch in the room, you come back a year later one of the bastards will have most of the money. It’s just human nature. We’re never gonna whip it with a lot of laws.

As communication gets better and you make people conscious of somebody in trouble, starving or something like that, the average person will help…I think there are people who try to affect a thinking where they know more than some other son of a bitch and try to pull a false impression on what human nature is. We’ve proven we go back to hope at the first opportunity…and bam they’re out there ready to grab it. So we are optimistic; we have to be optimistic. What else would we be if you lose optimism?”