Spirit of '76
10-10-2007, 08:05 PM
Here's a link to Pat Buchanan's introduction to a 1990 republication of Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative (http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FConscience-Conservative-Madison-American-Politics%2Fdp%2F0691131171%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks %26qid%3D1192067340%26sr%3D8-1&tag=thspof76-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325):
http://www.buchanan.org/pa-90-0101-voice-in-the-desert.html
I was rereading this last night in bed, and I noticed some interesting parallels between our movement and the Young Americans for Freedom in the picture Buchanan paints. The following are some relevant portions.
Every great movement--social, political, or religious--in its infancy, is marked by militancy. Its faithful shine with a spirit of sacrifice, a willingness to accept defeat and humiliation rather than compromise principal. Its True Believers are impatient, to the point of intolerance, with the half-hearted and the half-committed. He who is not with us is against us. That is the way we were.
And that is the temper of the bugle call to battle.
Like the man who produced it, the prose remains unembellished, simple, honest, straight, true. For those of us wandering in the arid desert of Eisenhower Republicanism, it hit like a rifle shot.
With its publication, Barry Goldwater became our champion; as his campaign would become the great cause of our youth. Though 1964 would end with media mockery of The Party That Lost Its Head, no winter would abate that spring's increase. The young conservatives, bonded and blooded in the Lost Cause of '64, would one day change the world.
After Mr. Nixon's narrow defeat, we knew in our hearts what the press did not dimly suspect. The Grand Old Party was ripe for the taking. So, too, was the golden boy of the Eastern Establishment, John F. Kennedy. In Barry Goldwater--that tanned, square jawed, ex-army air corps pilot with the horn-rim glasses, straight talk, and sardonic humor--we had our candidate.
Like every smug establishment, the GOP was deaf to the sound of the trudging feet of the coming revolution. Relying, as ever, on money and media power, it could not match the fervor of those who fought for the true faith. As the Goldwater irregulars began to surface in state after state, the Establishment reassured itself that, surely, Nelson Rockefeller, landslide winner in New York, possessor of one of America's great fortunes, popular and progressive, could not be stopped. As the Establishment dozed in anticipation of its dream race between Rockefeller and JFK, we were at work.
Like a first love, the Goldwater campaign was, for thousands of men and women now well into middle age, an experience that will never recede from memory, one on which we look back with pride and fond remembrance. We were there on St. Crispin's Day. I have never met an old "Goldwaterite" who thought that perhaps we should have gone with Rockefeller, Scranton, or Lodge. Because the cause appeared hopeless, because the crew-cut militants of the Goldwater movement were relentlessly demonized as racist and reactionary, there were few trimmers and time-servers in the all volunteer Goldwater army. In those days, at least, the phrase "conservative opportunist" was a contradiction in terms.
Rarely has an American patriot been subjected to so savage a campaign.
An enemy of discrimination all his life, Goldwater argued that faithfulness to the Constitution was more important than even the most salutary reform that might come of restricting the freedoms the Constitution guaranteed. Discrimination is wrong, he said, but it is not the business of the Federal Government to supplant state government, or to dictate the private conduct of free, if misguided, men. With a small handful, he bravely stood up and cast a futile "no" vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
And the vilification began.
Walter Lippmann denounced him as a "demagogue who dreams of arousing the rich against the poor, a man who would convert the Party of Lincoln into "a White man's party," a reactionary, "who would dissolve the Federal union into a mere confederation of the states . . . [and] nullify if he could the central purpose of the Civil War amendments and ... take from the children of the emancipated slaves the protection of the national union."
This, about a candidate who went down to the White House to ask LBJ to agree to a moratorium on any discussion of "race" in the campaign, lest the nation be further divided. Compared to the others, Lippmann, dean of American journalists, was magnanimous.
In "Thunder on the Right," CBS linked Goldwater to the most extreme elements in America; Daniel Schorr flew to Bavaria to suggest the GOP nominee was coming to "Hitler's onetime stomping ground" to link up with neo-Nazis. "There are signs," Schorr said, "that the American and German right wings are joining up." "[T]he most irresponsible reporting I've witnessed in my life," the Senator said, but the damage was done.
While the Goldwater campaign was scarcely an unflawed enterprise, the portrayal of Mr. Conservative as war-monger, racist, and enthusiast of fascism was a lie, a Big Lie that convinced millions of young conservatives that the press' claim to objectivity and neutrality in national politics was a textbook case of consumer fraud. In the campaign of '64, conservatives acquired a distrust of the media that yet endures.
Ensconced in the "ivory tower" of an editorial page, I watched in frustration as the Senator's campaign mistakes were exploited by the Democrats, aided by a collaborationist press which converted this patriot into a sordid caricature of a man of the Right: ignorant, cold-hearted, racist, unreflective, militaristic.
The moment came for my paper, The St. Louis Globe, to endorse a candidate. The publisher--at the directive of the paper's owner, S. I. New house, a friend of LBJ--refused to endorse either candidate. Our endorsement of Goldwater would have made no difference; its absence was a national news story, a shattering blow to campaign morale. It was not only the 300,000 readers of The Globe in the bi-state area who were stunned; the paper was then among the most stalwart conservative voices in America. What we were saying to Missouri, Illinois, and America was that Senator Barry Goldwater, whom we had championed for years, did not merit solid support in November. Conservatives could, in good conscience, take a walk, or vote for LBJ.
As the publisher flew off to Chicago, I took the phone calls from the bitter, the enraged, the broken-hearted. For days they came. Inescapable was the sense that we were behaving like the other turncoats, the Rockefeller, Javits crowd, all of us lacking the moral courage to go down to defeat with a man who had won the nomination fair and square. We had bailed out; we had cut and run. Observing the one-sided brawl from the press box, I made a promise: Next time, I would be down on the field.
"The Federal Government," the Senator had written, "has moved into every field in which it believes its services are needed. . . . The result is a Leviathan, a vast national authority out of touch with people, and out of their control. This monopoly of power is bounded only by the will of those who sit in high places." Leviathan survived the Reagan Revolution.
In many ways, conservatives served America well, but we accepted truces in too many battles, we surrendered, outright, on too many fronts. Ours is, thus, an unfinished revolution.
And the old challenges remain:
Forty-five years after Hitler perished in his bunker, we have 300,000 troops defending rich, prosperous Western Europe. Thirty years after Barry Goldwater told us to get out of the business of international welfare, we shovel out $15 billion in annual foreign aid to failed socialist and Marxist regimes. We still put the full faith and credit of our empty Treasury and our status as a debtor nation behind the bad loans of globalist bureaucrats.
In this sermon of fire and brimstone that is The Conscience of a Conservative, Barry Goldwater had the answers, if only we had followed his wise counsel.
"The turn will come," he had written, "when we entrust the conduct of our affairs to men who understand that their first duty as public officials is to divest themselves of the power they have been given. It will come when Americans . . . decide to put the man in office who is pledged to enforce the Constitution and restore the Republic. Who will proclaim in a campaign speech, '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."'
The marching orders of 1960 remain wise counsel for 1990.
http://www.buchanan.org/pa-90-0101-voice-in-the-desert.html
I was rereading this last night in bed, and I noticed some interesting parallels between our movement and the Young Americans for Freedom in the picture Buchanan paints. The following are some relevant portions.
Every great movement--social, political, or religious--in its infancy, is marked by militancy. Its faithful shine with a spirit of sacrifice, a willingness to accept defeat and humiliation rather than compromise principal. Its True Believers are impatient, to the point of intolerance, with the half-hearted and the half-committed. He who is not with us is against us. That is the way we were.
And that is the temper of the bugle call to battle.
Like the man who produced it, the prose remains unembellished, simple, honest, straight, true. For those of us wandering in the arid desert of Eisenhower Republicanism, it hit like a rifle shot.
With its publication, Barry Goldwater became our champion; as his campaign would become the great cause of our youth. Though 1964 would end with media mockery of The Party That Lost Its Head, no winter would abate that spring's increase. The young conservatives, bonded and blooded in the Lost Cause of '64, would one day change the world.
After Mr. Nixon's narrow defeat, we knew in our hearts what the press did not dimly suspect. The Grand Old Party was ripe for the taking. So, too, was the golden boy of the Eastern Establishment, John F. Kennedy. In Barry Goldwater--that tanned, square jawed, ex-army air corps pilot with the horn-rim glasses, straight talk, and sardonic humor--we had our candidate.
Like every smug establishment, the GOP was deaf to the sound of the trudging feet of the coming revolution. Relying, as ever, on money and media power, it could not match the fervor of those who fought for the true faith. As the Goldwater irregulars began to surface in state after state, the Establishment reassured itself that, surely, Nelson Rockefeller, landslide winner in New York, possessor of one of America's great fortunes, popular and progressive, could not be stopped. As the Establishment dozed in anticipation of its dream race between Rockefeller and JFK, we were at work.
Like a first love, the Goldwater campaign was, for thousands of men and women now well into middle age, an experience that will never recede from memory, one on which we look back with pride and fond remembrance. We were there on St. Crispin's Day. I have never met an old "Goldwaterite" who thought that perhaps we should have gone with Rockefeller, Scranton, or Lodge. Because the cause appeared hopeless, because the crew-cut militants of the Goldwater movement were relentlessly demonized as racist and reactionary, there were few trimmers and time-servers in the all volunteer Goldwater army. In those days, at least, the phrase "conservative opportunist" was a contradiction in terms.
Rarely has an American patriot been subjected to so savage a campaign.
An enemy of discrimination all his life, Goldwater argued that faithfulness to the Constitution was more important than even the most salutary reform that might come of restricting the freedoms the Constitution guaranteed. Discrimination is wrong, he said, but it is not the business of the Federal Government to supplant state government, or to dictate the private conduct of free, if misguided, men. With a small handful, he bravely stood up and cast a futile "no" vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
And the vilification began.
Walter Lippmann denounced him as a "demagogue who dreams of arousing the rich against the poor, a man who would convert the Party of Lincoln into "a White man's party," a reactionary, "who would dissolve the Federal union into a mere confederation of the states . . . [and] nullify if he could the central purpose of the Civil War amendments and ... take from the children of the emancipated slaves the protection of the national union."
This, about a candidate who went down to the White House to ask LBJ to agree to a moratorium on any discussion of "race" in the campaign, lest the nation be further divided. Compared to the others, Lippmann, dean of American journalists, was magnanimous.
In "Thunder on the Right," CBS linked Goldwater to the most extreme elements in America; Daniel Schorr flew to Bavaria to suggest the GOP nominee was coming to "Hitler's onetime stomping ground" to link up with neo-Nazis. "There are signs," Schorr said, "that the American and German right wings are joining up." "[T]he most irresponsible reporting I've witnessed in my life," the Senator said, but the damage was done.
While the Goldwater campaign was scarcely an unflawed enterprise, the portrayal of Mr. Conservative as war-monger, racist, and enthusiast of fascism was a lie, a Big Lie that convinced millions of young conservatives that the press' claim to objectivity and neutrality in national politics was a textbook case of consumer fraud. In the campaign of '64, conservatives acquired a distrust of the media that yet endures.
Ensconced in the "ivory tower" of an editorial page, I watched in frustration as the Senator's campaign mistakes were exploited by the Democrats, aided by a collaborationist press which converted this patriot into a sordid caricature of a man of the Right: ignorant, cold-hearted, racist, unreflective, militaristic.
The moment came for my paper, The St. Louis Globe, to endorse a candidate. The publisher--at the directive of the paper's owner, S. I. New house, a friend of LBJ--refused to endorse either candidate. Our endorsement of Goldwater would have made no difference; its absence was a national news story, a shattering blow to campaign morale. It was not only the 300,000 readers of The Globe in the bi-state area who were stunned; the paper was then among the most stalwart conservative voices in America. What we were saying to Missouri, Illinois, and America was that Senator Barry Goldwater, whom we had championed for years, did not merit solid support in November. Conservatives could, in good conscience, take a walk, or vote for LBJ.
As the publisher flew off to Chicago, I took the phone calls from the bitter, the enraged, the broken-hearted. For days they came. Inescapable was the sense that we were behaving like the other turncoats, the Rockefeller, Javits crowd, all of us lacking the moral courage to go down to defeat with a man who had won the nomination fair and square. We had bailed out; we had cut and run. Observing the one-sided brawl from the press box, I made a promise: Next time, I would be down on the field.
"The Federal Government," the Senator had written, "has moved into every field in which it believes its services are needed. . . . The result is a Leviathan, a vast national authority out of touch with people, and out of their control. This monopoly of power is bounded only by the will of those who sit in high places." Leviathan survived the Reagan Revolution.
In many ways, conservatives served America well, but we accepted truces in too many battles, we surrendered, outright, on too many fronts. Ours is, thus, an unfinished revolution.
And the old challenges remain:
Forty-five years after Hitler perished in his bunker, we have 300,000 troops defending rich, prosperous Western Europe. Thirty years after Barry Goldwater told us to get out of the business of international welfare, we shovel out $15 billion in annual foreign aid to failed socialist and Marxist regimes. We still put the full faith and credit of our empty Treasury and our status as a debtor nation behind the bad loans of globalist bureaucrats.
In this sermon of fire and brimstone that is The Conscience of a Conservative, Barry Goldwater had the answers, if only we had followed his wise counsel.
"The turn will come," he had written, "when we entrust the conduct of our affairs to men who understand that their first duty as public officials is to divest themselves of the power they have been given. It will come when Americans . . . decide to put the man in office who is pledged to enforce the Constitution and restore the Republic. Who will proclaim in a campaign speech, '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."'
The marching orders of 1960 remain wise counsel for 1990.