It might be time to erase some of the notion of Barry Goldwater as being "far right".....Perhaps he was in the 1960's after years and years of Democrat rule, but today, what he had to say is right on the money.
Barry Goldwater
1909 - 1998
conservativeforum.org
Five-term U.S. senator (Republican) from Arizona. Sen. Goldwater was an indefatigable champion and outspoken defender of conservative principles in government. His unsuccessful bid for the U.S. presidency in 1964 launched a revolution in the Republican party, eventually wresting control of it from the northeastern liberal elite which had dominated it for years. The movement inspired and often led by Goldwater forced conservative principles back into the party, and laid the foundation for Ronald Reagan's ascendancy to the presidency.
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I won't say that the papers misquote me, but I sometimes wonder where Christianity would be today if some of those reporters had been Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
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Aug. 11, 1964 - in the New York Times, quoted in The Quotable Conservative, by Bill Adler
The first duty of public officials is to divest themselves of the power they have been given.
________________________________________from The Conscience of a Conservative
[The conservative politician] looks upon politics as the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
________________________________________from The Conscience of a Conservative
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 in 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 their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.
________________________________________from The Conscience of a Conservative
Politics [is] the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
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It is the modern liberal who supports education for 'life-adjustment' and fosters permissiveness in the school and the home.
--It is the modern liberal who regards discipline and punishment as barbaric relics of a discredited past.
--It is the modern liberal who seeks to eliminate religious sentiment from every aspect of public life.
--It is the modern liberal who is concerned for the criminal and careless about his victims... who frowns on the policeman and fawns on the social pathologist.
--It is the modern liberal who regards our children as educational guinea pigs... [modern liberals believe that] the Golden Rule of the Ten Commandments or Aristotle's Politics are out of date.
________________________________________from The Conscience of a Conservative
Government has a right to claim an equal percentage of each man's wealth, and no more.
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The laws of God, and of nature, have no dateline.
________________________________________from The Conscience of a Conservative
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
________________________________________1964
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice... Moderation in the pursuit of freedom is no virtue.
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1964 - from his speech accepting the Republican nomination as its presidential candidate, at the Republican National Convention
I believe that the problem of race relations, like all social and cultural problems, is best handled by the people directly concerned. Social and cultural change, however desirable, should not be effected by the engines of national power... Any other course enthrones tyrants and dooms freedom.
________________________________________from The Conscience of a Conservative
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.
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Jun. 16, 1964 - from his speech to the Republican National Convention |
