Posted on 09/23/2014 12:23:57 PM PDT by cotton1706
Samuel Johnson declared that “men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.” Perhaps Barry Goldwater had this injunction in mind in his famous nomination acceptance speech 50 years ago at the Republican National Convention in San Francisco. Like a liturgical litany, seven times in his speech Goldwater said either “I needn’t remind you” or “let me remind you,” but it was the final two reminders that sealed the speech as the most memorable convention oration since William Jennings Bryan denounced the “Cross of Gold” in 1896: “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.”
For a candidate whose chief vulnerability was his supposed extremism, embracing extremism seemed the height of, well, extremism—not to mention imprudence. It did not matter that the statement’s intellectual pedigree stretched back to Aristotle and Cicero. Theodore White recorded the shock of a fellow reporter: “My God, he’s going to run as Barry Goldwater.” There was going to be no “tacking to the center,” the candidate’s usual tactic once he had clinched the nomination. Goldwater’s defense of “extremism” opened the floodgates for his critics to engage in the reductio ad Hitlerum. Samples include:
•Martin Luther King Jr: “We see dangerous signs of Hitlerism in the Goldwater campaign.” •Civil rights activist Roy Wilkins: Goldwater’s election “would bring about a police state.” •Sen. J. William Fulbright: “Goldwater Republicanism is the closest thing in American politics to an equivalent of Russian Stalinism.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
Minnesota Sen. Gene McCarthy once remarked that the chief purpose of moderate Republicans is to shoot the wounded after the battle is over. Absent Goldwater, it’s doubtful Republicans would have ventured near the battlefield at all. The rhetoric may have been imprudent, but the new fighting spirit it inculcated to the next generation of Republicans was essential. The historical record argues moderation in the pursuit of electoral viability is no virtue. Just ask Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney.
I started our a Goldwater kid. I am a lot more well read and a lot more complex, but I’m still that 16 year old that rang doorbells for Barry in a lot of way.
I've been a pragmatist ever since.
I rarely invoke the Federalist/Anti-Federalist ping list, but this article has a lot of bits and pieces of the argument about constitutional government. It’s thought provoking.
You know who support Barry Goldwater
Hillary Clinton when she was in teens
I just thinking if wasn’t for Barry Goldwather I wonder how Ronald Reagan come to politics
there some in history that Barry Goldwater was Jack Warner of Ronnie get into poltics
The tea party is naturally made up mostly of social conservatives, and is more social conservative than the GOP rank and file.
The 1964 Goldwater was a different politician from what he aged into.
Goldwater moved the Overton Window of national politics back away from the fascist center that FDR had dragged it to. This allowed Reagan to cut through the GOPe hedgerow that protected the ‘Rats. Since Reagan, and with the complicity of the GOPe, the Overton Window has been dragged back to the left. Palin and Cruz and very few others are doing yeoman work to reposition it back to where Goldwater had left it.
Regardless, the downward slide for them, and now for us has been inexorable. If not for Goldwater campaigning as he did would we have had Reagan? Would the New Deal legislation have been a bit less ridiculous if more moderate republicans had been around to whittle away at the edges?
Regardless we have gays in the military (and soon trannies), we have gay marriage, we have Obamacare, we have abortion on demand and paid for by tax dollars, we have basically everything every liberal back in the 60's could only dream of ... and of course they're still not satisfied.
When I saw Goldwater on “People For The American Way” I was really irritated. I had no idea he was a social leftist.
Reagan was already a budding conservative at the time. He gave a great speech for Goldwater called A Time for Choosing. Of course as a well known actor and host he was well known to the public. A link to it is here:
http://www.nationalcenter.org/ReaganChoosing1964.html
A youtube is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY
He was almost Cato the younger to our generation.
“Extremism” was badly, and sadly, misinterpreted in this context. It somehow conjured images of rape, pillage and burning through small villages filled with ignorant but pious peasants, much like the Cossacks sacked the homes of those who did not comply with the will of the tyrant government they served.
Barry Goldwater, really much more of a libertarian than a Conservative at heart, did awaken some kindred spirits in his time, not the least of which was Ronald Reagan, who saw through the rhetoric and the countercharges, to a much clearer vision of what had to be done.
And for a while, America tried this new vision. Golden Ages are never recognized until they are gone.
What grand times they were.
I was a committed Conservative in the Western Libertarian mold of Goldwasser from those heady days onward.
The only smart, honest thing she ever did.
OH okay I thought it was Barry encouragement here
So Ronnie start becoming bubbling conservative
Reagan was becoming a conservative by the late fifties. His hosting of the GE network put him in contact with some people that said okay, you are disenchanted with the Democrats and organized labor, why don’t you talk to this fellow and this other fellow.
The above page takes a while to load, but it give some of Reagans early conversion story.
The Rockefeller wing of the GOP did as much as the democrats to sabotage Goldwater. And nothing much has changed. Karl Rove and Co. are Rockefeller and Scranton's bastard sons.
Back in 1964 I passed out literature and buttons for Barry. I was a 15 year old and proud to support him.
In his later years, I heard Goldwater say that no one needed a semi automatic rifle to hunt deer.
I was taken aback...but realized he was just old and tired and possibly senile by that time....
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