Barry Goldwater (1909-1998) was a businessman, Senator from Arizona, and the Republican Party’s nominee for President in 1964. In the late 50s and early 60s, Goldwater served as a key leader of America’s conservative movement, and articulated opposition to the legacy of the New Deal. His Presidential campaign was something of a disaster. Representing the right of the Republican Party, he defeated the liberal Nelson Rockefeller in the primaries. However, Goldwater’s strongly conservative positions did not appeal to the majority of the electorate. Democrat opponent, the incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson, managed to portray Goldwater as a ‘reactionary’. He lost by a landslide.
However, in the long run, Goldwater’s campaign and legacy helped to shift the American right towards (at a least a rhetorical and theoretical) commitment to small-government, constitutionalism, and defence of individual rights. His attacks on the welfare state, any form of communism, interventionist government, and over powerful labour unions may have been unfashionable in 1964, but would fit in with much centrist discourse following the ‘Reagan Revolution’. His 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, is still cited as a key influence by many in conservative circles.
Interestingly, however, Goldwater cannot be seen as a paragon of standard modern conservatism, or, indeed, as the ‘far right reactionary’ many liberals saw him as. Rather, he was a consistent constitutionalist (and, arguably, a consistent true conservative). He is perhaps notorious for his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act (and the realignment in US politics this fostered). However, for Goldwater, his opposition was purely libertarian - he objected to the outlawing of discrimination by business and private individuals on the grounds that, “You cannot legislate morality”. In fact, throughout the 50s, Goldwater had been a strong advocate for civil rights in a more general sense.
In a similar vein Goldwater was opposed to the influence of the religious right and to any right wing attempts to legislate morality. Whilst he was deeply religious himself, he believed that enforcing moral values through government power was unjustifiable. Thus, the agenda of the religious right was simply another authoritarian attack on individual freedom and personal choice. He was pro-choice on abortion, a defender of gay rights (he was an early supporter of allowing homosexuals to serve in the military), and a critic of the war on drugs.
Goldwater remains a controversial figure even amongst libertarians. Murray Rothbard, for instance, criticised his overly aggressive Cold War foreign policy. However, he can always be pointed to as a political figure who acted from conviction and principle. In many cases, his convictions were also correct.
1) I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible.And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.
The Conscience of a Conservative - 1960
2) I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
Acceptance Speech for Republican Nomination - 1964
3) Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen.Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
Acceptance Speech for Republican Nomination - 1964
4) It is a fact that Lyndon Johnson and his curious crew seem to believe that progress in this country is best served simply and directly through the ever-expanding gift power of the everlastingly growing Federal Government. One thing we all know, and I assure you I do: that’s a much easier way to get votes than my way. It always has been. It’s political Daddyism, and it’s as old as demagogues and despotism.
Quoted in ‘The Underdog Underdog’ in Time Magazine (6/11/64)
5) My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn’t first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which will contribute to a vastly different and better world in the twenty-first century. Recalling what has happened in my short lifetime in the fields of communication and transportation and the life sciences, I marvel at the pessimists who tell us that we have reached the end of our productive capacity, who project a future of primarily dividing up what we now have and making do with less. To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom.
With No Apologies - 1979
6) Most Americans have no real understanding of the operations of the international moneylenders… the accounts of the Federal Reserve have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and… manipulates the credit of the United States.
With No Apologies - 1979
7) I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in “A,” “B,” “C” and “D.” Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?
And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of “conservatism.”
Speech in the US Senate (16/9/81)
8) I am a conservative Republican, but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state. The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don’t hurt anyone else in the process.
Essay in The Washington Post (1994)
9) The big thing is to make this country, along with every other country in the world with a few exceptions, quit discriminating against people just because they’re gay.
Quoted in ‘Barry Goldwater’s Left Turn’ by Lloyd George in The Washington Post (1994)
10) When you say “radical right” today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.
Quoted in ‘Barry Goldwater’s Left Turn’ by Lloyd George in The Washington Post (1994)