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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day 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.
– Barry Goldwater, the greatest president America never had.
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I remember sitting in my grade school class in Chicago during the fall of 1964. The teacher took a ballot of all the students in the class, Johnson or Goldwater? In the entire overlarge class, I was the lone Goldwater vote.
I wonder how many of those ‘liberals’ knew they were choosing to enter a very mismanaged Viet Nam war they would soon hate. I wonder how Goldwater would have handled the situation. Differently, I expect.
Wow, that’s an incredible statement. I hadn’t thought that anyone who has made politics his career could believe that.
Goldwater may have gone down to a crushing defeat, but he did set the stage for the emergence of a very successful Ronald Reagan.
midwesterner: it’s illegal to be republican in chi town to this day.
As has been asked before, can we PLEASE have some references for quotations such as these? It would be wonderful to read them in context. Thank you.
Midwesterner, I suspect the parents of those ‘liberals’ were suffering from an induced fear of imminent nuclear holocaust, if my knowledge of the campaign ads opposing Goldwater is correct.
I just said this.
Reference that, you pencil-nibbling nitwit.
I’m not surprised Goldwater didn’t get in- voters now expect government to give them things, not concepts like freedom and personal responsibility. Even here, in the southern colonies, if the Liberal Party hadn’t promised goodies, it wouldn’t have won (We use ‘Liberal’ to mean ‘Classic Liberal’). Of course, I might be misjudging Goldwater- what sort of politician was he? Did he do what he promised? Or would he have turned into an ordinary politician once elected?
I take it your computer cannot access Google?
‘I suspect the parents of those ‘liberals’ were suffering from an induced fear of imminent nuclear holocaust, if my knowledge of the campaign ads opposing Goldwater is correct.’ Steevo says.
The main policy I remember from the Johnson/Goldwater election was that Goldwater said he would use nuclear weapons on Russia if necessary. He was dismissed by the British political class as a dangerous right-winger.
Unfair as the point of US and British strategy, Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was to claim to be willing to use nuclear weapons if attacked.
It’s a shame you are so unlikely to hear anything like that said these days, certainly not by ‘mainstream’ politicians in the UK.
Goldwater said and did some great things, his role as a hard line cold warrior who kept up the fight when all seemed lost in the late 1970s showed real political courage.
Sadly he allowed his devotion to principal to lead him astray. He voted against the Civil Rights act of 1964 and against the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Both pieces of legislation were necessary to bring an end to legal discrimination against blacks in the south.
While most Republicans in Congress voted for both laws, Goldwater’s public stand alienated blacks from the GOP on a permanent basis. If you believe in principal above all this may not be a bad thing but the results tend to lead towards a more statist society than would otherwise be the case.
“I take it your computer cannot access Google?”
On that premise, Perry, the whole post could have been reduced to something like, “Google Barry Goldwater for some pretty cool contrarian stuff he’s supposed to have said.”
I’m with John.
According to this it’s from his book Conscience of a Conservative
My policy is to plonk a quote up for people to read, not ask them to Google for the quote itself, which is actually preposterous. If you want a citation, find the damn thing yourself because I cannot usually be bothered as it is just a quote of the day (when I am the one putting the quote up it is usually something I already know).
Run your blog as you like of course.
If you cannot provide citations, you are not serious.
You are only enjoying yourself.
Of course, the greatest atrocity that the world promulgates is the assertion that joy is not serious.
I can provide citations. However I choose not to most of the time because I cannot be bothered. I also tend to react unfavourably to people telling me how to run my blog. If I want advice I will ask for it.
And that is indeed why I blog, to enjoy myself. I ain’t getting paid for this.
I sometimes provide citations for my quote of the day posts, but my purpose in posting them is something other than provoking thought and conversation.
As for the assertion that it is illegal to be a Republican in Chicago, that is an exaggeration. We once put a campaign poster for Roman Pucinski, at the time the one RINO on the city council, in our window. The only consequence was that we got dropped from the voter registration rolls.
Strange isn’t it how years later a name emerges with some credibility when at the time you bought into the “He’s no good” campaign. I had Goldwater down as a lunatic but then I was sure, in the early ‘sixties, that Kennedy was the best hope for us all so, therefore, his opponents had to be nuts.
I’m not sure where I got the idea from that Johnson’s swift ascension to power was a little unseemly, and given his role in the USA’s slide into Vietnam maybe he wasn’t entirely a good idea. Certainly of all the conspiracy theories in the world the Grassy Knoll is probably the only one that genuinely appears to have some case.
The politics ads were the infamous daisy girl ads – against a man, Barry Goldwater, who had the same position on nukes as the man who ordered the ads – President Johnson.
On Vietnam – Barry Goldwater was not conscription fan, and he certainly was not a regulation fan. What he would not have tried to do is to micromanage the war from Washington D.C. – as both President Johnson and President Nixon did (as if they were doing Philip II of Spain impressions).
Vietnam was certainly not an “unwinable war”, as it is often claimed be. Indeed in one important respect it was a less difficult war than Iraq or Afghanistan.
This was because (contrary to that moron Robert McNamara) the enemy was NOT “nationalism” the enemy was Marxism – and only a small minority of the population of the Republic of Vietnam, or Cambodia or Laos were Marxists (in Iraq and Afghanistan the enemy is Islam, and almost every one there is Muslim – “but it is a matter of different interpretations of Islam”, O.K, but that is a bit subtle for most soldiers to deal with).
To cut supply lines to the Republic of Vietnam (“South Vietnam”) the army (not just the U.S.A.F. and the C.I.A.) would have have had to hold Laos. This is because Vietnam (unlike Korea) has no sea to the left flank – so one has to hold the land on the left flank (or have enemy forces and supplies outflanking and slipping in behind all the time).
This was known to just about everyone – including President Eisenhower.
However, the smart kids who arrived in 1961 thought that they did not need to understand or follow basic military principles (welfare schemes could win wars as far as they were concerned).
Barry Goldwater had flown recon aircraft during World War II (a very scary job), and (in spite of his age and his postion as a Senator) took aircraft out on patrol over Vietnam.
Goldwater certainly knew the military position better than the kids – who considered that mathematical management methods that had failed at the Ford Motor Company (where McNamara had been before becomming Defence Sec – he failed at Ford, failed at Defence, and then went on to fail as head of the “World Bank”) would work in warfare.
Domestic policy:
Goldwater had a voting record – it speaks for itself.
He was the last of the great anti Welfare State Senators. The others (including John Brickner of Ohio who Goldwater was influenced by) went down in 1958.
On social issues Barry Goldwater could not care less about such things as homosexuality and said so – thus earning an attack by Jerry F. (he replied by saying “every true Christion should kick Jerry Falwell up the arse”).
On the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Sorry – one can not tell a person who he must trade with or who he must employ. It was that (not government Jim Crow laws) that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was really about. It made things like quotas inevitable (as if you have to prove you are not “discriminating” the only way to really do this is to have X per cent of your employees at a certain grade from the racial group that is likely to sue you) – so people who say things like “I am in favour of the Civil Rights Act, but not quotas” are arseholes.
“But voting against it meant the blacks would not vote Republican”.
Mistake – if there is to be a “bidding war” based on special “laws” (like the Civil Rights Act) or other welfare schemes, the Democrats will always outbid Republicans.
As for me the only “Civil Rights Act” I might be interested in is one that said “you must give Paul Marks a good job” – that is no worse than “anti discrimination” statutes for blacks, women, “the disabled” or whoever.
At least an Act that said “give Paul Marks lots of money” would not be pretending to be anything else but corrupt.
Barry Goldwater was not interested in George Walker Bush style “victories” where you get elected to put into effect even more unconstitutiuonal welfare programs (such as “no-child-left-behind” or the Medicare extention) or even Ronald Reagan style “victories” where one is elected to cut “waste and corruption”.
A election victory that is not won to get rid of specific programs is not worth spit – as if you have no mandate to get rid of programs you will not be able to do so in office.
Barry Goldwater got 40% of the vote, in spite of such things as telling the farmers he was against farm subsidies (another unconsitutional welfare program) and so on.
If the American people will not vote for someone who tells them the truth they will not support him in office (when things get tough).
Just as in 1936 the American people (not Barry Goldwater) failed the test set by the old words “a Republic, if you can keep it”.
Of course one can make excuses:
Brainwashing by the “education system” (school and college).
More brainwashing by the media (still going on today – where such things as “wikipedia” are just reflections of the mainstream media and academia, not an alternative to them).
And the failure of the Republican party to back Goldwater up (in some States his literature was not even distributed).
However, “in your heart you know he is right” – and the people, deep down, did know that.
And 60% showed they lacked basic moral character (no shock to anyone who knows a bit about human beings, in any country).
People who lack basic moral character lose their liberty – perhaps not all at once, but bit-by-bit they lose it.
People ask “why are there not honest politicians”.
Because most of you will not vote for them.
Hey Perry, I was agreeing with you.
That was irony, the perfect para-quote of the legions of ball-breakers and brain-crushers who react faster than an F-16 FCS to even a hint of our pleasure.
Goldwater has this reputation of being really hawkish, but I think the man was a bit of a peacenik:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oF5pGXMjVo
But I would disagree that Goldwater was the best ‘president America never had’. Alf Landon and Robert Taft fit that bill more.
I can provide citations. However I choose not to most of the time because I cannot be bothered. I also tend to react unfavourably to people telling me how to run my blog. If I want advice I will ask for it.
Amen brother
My wife and I visited Arizona last October. From visiting museums we were quite fascinated with Goldwater and requested “conscience of a conservative” from our local library. We were probably the first people to read it in several years. Try it for yourself, he would have been an excellent President.
They told me if I voted for Barry Goldwater, we’d end up in a quagmire in Vietnam. Sure enough, I voted for Barry Goldwater, and we ended up in a quagmire in Vietnam.
Common refrain from older Libertarians.
“Run your blog as you like of course.”
I do, of course, and around here, I’m nothing but a consumer.
Get it?
Well. There it is.
We recognize and have no quarrel with the Ownership Principal. Indeed, all blogs may and should be be run as the proprietor sees fit, without additional comment or justification being necessary. On this point we are squarely in Mr. de Havilland’s corner.
Now, we are indebted to the few souls who correctly point out that it is bad form to provide a quote sans link(s). One cannot reasonably believe otherwise when one casually peruses any of the other blogs linked on Samizdata’s main page.
It is unfortunate that this modest dollop of constructive criticism engenders the usual and disproportinately defensive replies from the site owner.
James
Cynic
I agree that Barry Goldwater was against wars that did not have a clear objective (and an objective that ordinary soldiers could understand). And this objective has to be achievable.
And I agree that Barry Goldwater was against wars full of “rules” and “limitations”.
If the war has no clear (and achievable) objective – do not go to war.
And if the war has to be fought with lots of rules and regulations – do not go to war.
On Alfred Landon – had I been around (and a citizen) in 1936 I would have voted for him.
However, (to the sorrow of Liberty League folk) Alfred Landon did not really want to get rid of the “New Deal” – although he did want to moderate it various ways.
Still his victory would have been a wonderful thing – as it would have destroyed the F.D.R. myth.
If a certain Italian Communist had managed to shoot straight in Miami Beach (rather than hitting the Mayor of Chicago) that would have been even better. As then there would have been President Jack Nance Garner – no National Industrial Recovery Act (or all the rest of the New Deal – including the gold stealing and the private contract voiding) and no “Social Security” either.
Sure “Social Security” started tiny – but it was a cancer, and it and the rest of the “entitlement programs” look like the will help to finally destroy the Republic.
As for Robert Taft:
I agree with Murry Rothbard (yes I know I attack the man a lot – but he was often correct) that of the group of conservative post war Senators Robert Taft was actually one of the LEAST reliable antistatists (John Brickner was perhaps the best).
However, Robert Taft was certainly better than later degenerate members of his family who (along with other sell out Republicans) helped turn Ohio from one of the lowest taxed States in the Union to one of the highest taxed States.
The simplest terms that I put Goldwater’s position on war, hawkish or dovish, is if you’re going to do it, DO IT. If you’re not, DON”T. He would not have supported bureaucratic “Pubic Relations With Muscle” approaches. If the threat was clear and present, every option to end it was on the table, so as to eliminate threats and return as quickly as possible to privacy and peace.
Brad,
“Pubic relations”?
Isn’t that something that should only be done between consenting adults?
I seem to vaguely recall that according to the CW a big factor in Goldwater’s big loss was his opposition to Social Security.
No matter what you think of the merits of Social Security, it’s one of the most popular government programs in US history and if you gain the reputation of someone who wants to do it in you will not win elections (it ain’t called the third rail of US politics for nothing).
Just wait until the demographic trends progress for another couple of years. A window of opportunity? We can keep trying. I know I for one am not anticipating anything useful from SS when I retire. If there are enough who share my expectations …
***Brad,
“Pubic relations”?
Isn’t that something that should only be done between consenting adults?***
It must be christmas time – No “L”.
And I don’t know how much consent is necessary, the Government screws me on a daily basis…..
————————————————————–
***I seem to vaguely recall that according to the CW a big factor in Goldwater’s big loss was his opposition to Social Security.
No matter what you think of the merits of Social Security, it’s one of the most popular government programs in US history and if you gain the reputation of someone who wants to do it in you will not win elections (it ain’t called the third rail of US politics for nothing).***
While perfectly true, it still is very depressing. Bastiat’s axiom that once people learn that they can vote themselves plunder, democracy is lost. I think Goldwater understood this and made perhaps the last legitimate attempt at stemming the tide, as quixotic as was even then.
If Reagan was the inheritor of the Goldwater mindset he certainly failed in the execution. It would seem that the Reagan legacy for our modern “conservatives” is that we can borrow our way to prosperity. They caved into the lesson that you can’t win elections by ending socialist programs, but they also learned that they couldn’t win without promising tax cuts, so they trumpeted both while jacking up borrowing through the roof, apparently the preferred method to this day.
Which makes it all the more depressing that we now have a consortium of candidates who both want to erode savings, tax and spend, make promises out of other people’s pocket books, and the only debate is whether current tax rates will go up a smidge or we will borrow more “that’ll never have to be paid back”. The cockles of my heart are really warming up at the idea of Socialist Healthcare. Socialist economics has eroded people’s real equity, Socialist Education has eroded people’s minds, might as well complete the trifecta and have Socialist Healthcare erode people’s bodies.
…..and to all a good night…….
Brad,
I have to agree with most of that.
With regard to Reagan, tax cuts, debt, etc, there is more to it than meets the casual glance.
Bretton-Woods (a sort-of gold standard) broke down around 1970, but gold retained its standing as the principle reserve and the price skyrocketed. By the time of Reagan it was astronomical. What Reagan did was offer the US dollar as a reserve currency and US government debt to justify the issuing of more dollars. The price of gold returned to ‘normal’ as people sold it and invested in dollars and US government debt.
It was wrong on so many levels I don’t have the time or knowledge to cover them all. Perhaps you have read some of my earlier opinions on reserve currencies.
In a nutshell, they needed US government debt in order to give nations something to invest their reserves in. Gold’s skyrocketing price was too blatantly advertising the degree of inflation that was in fact occurring. They did it for so many reasons. None of them good.
Here are a few:
To confiscate the benefits of improved production efficiency and keep it as a hidden tax where possible. Instead of gold for standard, we got the consumer price index for a standard. See my comment at August 11, 2007 12:52 AM.
To provide the money for deficit spending.
To take money’s value from savers and ‘invest’ it in places of the government’s choosing.
To slip a political leash around the economy’s throat and teach it to ‘heel’ on command.
To detach currency from any real, comparable value.
I’m sure Paul Marks could add an encyclopedia’s worth of reasons it was in the interest of politics to go on fiat currency but this is a start.
I have to say that although I’ve been a Reagan fan since I first heard of him running against Ford for the Rep primary (1976), deficit spending should have been obviously flawed to him. Whenever ‘they’ try to confuse you with numbers and ratios and anything else, step back and look at the big picture and it is usually quite simple what they are really proposing. In other areas Reagan was good at this. Apparently not in economics.
Ronald Reagan did what he could (within the limits of his nonmandate from the elections, as he had not capaigned to get rid of many programs, and the Democrats having control of the House of Representatives).
Some programs were cut (a bit), however the basic “entitlement programs” continued to increase as did such things as farm subsidies.
And Reagan wanted (for various good reasons) to increase defence spending.
The much attacked tax cuts actually produced more revenue (just as the Bush tax rate cuts have) – but not enough to fund all the extra spending.
Hence the deficits.
Paul, here is a fairly useful chart of US debt. You will notice a very clear pattern of short hard spikes of debt for wars, slowly payed down in a very clearly visible and repetitive pattern. That pattern abruptly changes in 1980.
Here is a good record of the price of gold in varying currencies over that last thirty years.
When you overlay these two patterns on top of each other, something becomes obvious but not clear. It is obvious there is some correlation, but not clear exactly what it is. I am convinced that debt is a deliberate choice. “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature” to borrow from a different field.
The list of reasons driving the decision is endless, but I am convinced with complete certainty that the debt was not a byproduct of deficit spending, but one of its intentions. Here is how I think it works. People who hold unstable currencies or have generated a trade surplus want to hold dollars. This pulls valuable dollars into savings and out of circulation. This makes the dollar more valuable. More valuable dollar equal deflation. Deflation equals angry borrowers. US economy has more borrowers than savers, ergo, democracy hates deflation. Deflation equals more valuable dollar which messes up exports. And very importantly, deflation makes it more expensive for the government to fund its programs.
For these and many more reasons beside, I am convinced that generating government debt to capture savings and return it to circulation was a deliberate part of the plan. I haven’t found this belief expressed anywhere else, but I haven’t looked real hard for it. I figure if it sounds like a duck, walks like a duck, and lays duck eggs, it’s a duck.
Oh, on that first chart, you will also notice interesting burbles during the 1870s and FDR.
I do not agree that Ronald Reagan or David Stockman (his first O.M.B. director) had any intention of increasing debt as some sort of anti gold move (I do not know enough about Don Regan and the rest of the economic team to make a statement). The increase in defence spending was not done to increase the deficit and nor was the increse in farm subsidies and the (“natural”) increase in the entitlement programs – the deficit was a consequence but not an intention.
As for the tax rate reductions – they increased revenue, the deficit would have been bigger without them.
You know more about mathematics and natural science than I do – so you will remember “a correlation is not causation”.
Another reason why the price of gold fell after 1980 might be the great decline in general price rises (what most people call inflation) – so gold was no longer seen as such a bolt hole.
$800 Dollars an ouce (which, if I remember correctly, was the level in 1980) was also, given the conditions of the time, as speculative bubble.
These days the bubble fiat money expansion tends to go into the stock market or the real estate market.
I agree with everything in that comment, Paul. Except I will go on to say that it was “the rest of the economic team” (government, quango and private) that I am referring to. It is ‘the mystery of the dog that didn’t bark.’
But whether he understood or not (I believe he didn’t) it happened on Reagan’s watch and under his leadership. Clearly the debt as a matter of policy has to be credited to his administration. I think the only barking dog (Stockman) getting decisively shut-up is telling in itself. But clearly, I think debt as policy began at that time. And I am convinced it was a deliberate choice by at least some people in the loop.
Guess he was pretty clear about how he would fight the war.
My first grade class held one of those mock elections; I was one of the very few who voted for Goldwater. Don’t know where I picked that up: Dad was an Air Force sergeant, Mom was ex-Air Force and both voted Democrat. I haven’t voted for a single Democrat in my life; Reagan in ’80 was the last Republican.