From the Archives: Barry Goldwater's 1964 'extremism' speech still defines conservatism 50 years on

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on July 15, 2014. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site was scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Barry Goldwater's 1964 'extremism' speech still defines conservatism 50 years on

Fifty years ago this week, Barry Goldwater accepted the Republican party's nomination for president at the GOP convention in San Francisco. Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign is almost universally credited with launching both the modern conservative and the modern libertarian movements.

In an acceptance speech most famous for its much misunderstood but biggest applause line – “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” – Goldwater laid out a definition for political conservatism without once using the word “conservative.”

Something of a précis of his 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater's convention speech endeavored to explain conservatism – or what he called “Republicanism” on that occasion – to listeners who had not yet learned much about it.

In the same speech, Goldwater displayed a certain amount of prescience regarding the course of human history and offered advice to his fellow Republicans who, then as now, often found themselves among bickering factions.

In one, brief paragraph, the Arizona Senator summarized the conservative view of individual liberty and the proper role of government.

Private property and diversity
Conservatives, he said, “see, in private property and in economy based upon and fostering private property, the one way to make government a durable ally of the whole man, rather than his determined enemy. We see in the sanctity of private property the only durable foundation for constitutional government in a free society. And beyond that, we see, in cherished diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts, of motives and accomplishments. We do not seek to lead anyone's life for him - we seek only to secure his rights and to guarantee him opportunity to strive, with government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwise be performed.”

Goldwater also drew a contrast explicitly to the communist, totalitarian vision and, implicitly, to big-government liberalism then in vogue.

“Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good,” Goldwater asserted, “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.”

In a line that would be welcomed equally by the Tea Party and by the Occupy movement, Goldwater said that conservatives must “resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people.”

A vision of the future
And as if envisioning the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire a quarter-century later, Goldwater made remarkably accurate predictions in this paragraph:

“I believe that we must look beyond the defense of freedom today to its extension tomorrow. I believe that the communism which boasts it will bury us will, instead, give way to the forces of freedom. And I can see in the distant and yet recognizable future the outlines of a world worthy our dedication, our every risk, our every effort, our every sacrifice along the way. Yes, a world that will redeem the suffering of those who will be liberated from tyranny. I can see and I suggest that all thoughtful men must contemplate the flowering of an Atlantic civilization, the whole world of Europe unified and free, trading openly across its borders, communicating openly across the world.”

Toward the end of his speech, just before the famous line about “extremism,” Goldwater pointed out the factionalism in the Republican party was not new, but also was not necessarily bad.

Discord and hostility
The GOP, he said, is “a Party for free men, not for blind followers, and not for conformists.”

Then he quoted Abraham Lincoln in 1858 “because he probably could have said it during the last week or so: "[The Republican Party] was composed of strained, discordant, and even hostile elements.'”

As if he were anticipating the divide between the Tea Party and “establishment” branches of the conservative movement in the 21st century, Goldwater then admonished: “Let our Republicanism, so focused and so dedicated, not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.”

He explained that “the beauty of this Federal system of ours is in its reconciliation of diversity with unity. We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and through our Constitution. Our Republican cause is not to level out the world or make its people conform in computer regimented sameness. Our Republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty throughout the world.”

It was in that context – between “stupid labels” and the beauty of the American system – that Goldwater added:

“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.”

He concluded with the modest thought that conservatives have “a very human cause for very humane goals.”

Barry Goldwater's nomination acceptance speech of July 16, 1964, can be viewed in its entirety on the C-SPAN web site.

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Current politics has Nixons but no Eisenhowers, says biographer Jeffrey Frank

Original URL: http://www.examiner.com/article/barry-goldwater-s-1964-extremism-speech-still-defines-conservatism-50-years-on

From the Archives: Monique Luiz, 'Daisy Girl' from controversial 1964 campaign ad, speaks at UVA

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on October 15, 2014. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site was scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Monique Luiz, 'Daisy Girl' from controversial 1964 campaign ad, speaks at UVA

On September 7, 1964, Lyndon Johnson's presidential campaign bought time during NBC's “Monday Night at the Movies” for a 60-second ad that showed a little girl plucking the petals off a flower, followed by a nuclear mushroom cloud and an excerpt from one of Johnson's speeches.

Long known as the “Daisy Girl” ad (although the flower was a dandelion, not a daisy), the spot – for which NBC charged $24,000 – was produced by the Madison Avenue firm of Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), which had not previously done political ad-making. It was tremendously controversial and, along with other DDB ads that aired in 1964, changed the style and substance of campaign advertising.

The little girl in the ad was 3-year-old Monique Corzilius, who had earlier appeared in print ads but had not acted on film. (She later went on to perform in commercials for products like Kool Pops and SpaghettiOs.)

Now known as Monique Luiz, the “Daisy Girl” participated in a panel discussion hosted by the University of Virginia Center for Politics on October 15, along with Robert Mann, author of Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds: LBJ, Barry Goldwater, and the Ad That Changed American Politics, and veteran journalist Sid Davis, who was a White House correspondent in the early 1960s, covered the 1964 campaign, and was present at President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963.

Red hair stands out
After the panel, Luiz answered a few questions posed by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about her role as the “Daisy Girl” and the reactions to it.

For more than four decades, Luiz did not acknowledge that she was the girl in the ad. In 2009, however, she discovered that another woman was claiming to be her and was trying to capitalize on the TV spot's notoriety. Luiz came forward with documentation that she was the authentic “Daisy Girl” and subsequently was interviewed by Mann for his book, which is how she came to appear at UVA this week.

When she auditioned for the part, neither she nor her parents knew that DDB was making a political ad. She stood out among the many little girls who tried out because of her red hair, and also because her father was persistent.

“I think it was my father who sold them” on the idea “that I could do it,” she recalled. “He pretty much said, 'I can't guarantee anything but she'll try.'”

Listening closely to her in the commercial, one can hear exasperation in little Monique's voice. That was, in part, because the final cut was taken from the 27th take in a long day of filming.

Surprise
Even after filming, Monique's parents did not know how the footage would be used. They found out by seeing the ad on TV.

Their reaction, as she remembered it, was: “'Oh my gosh, it's Monique! She's in a political ad!'”

After the ad appeared on TV for the first time, and it was repeated on news shows in the days that followed, there was a negative reaction, coming from the general public, causing her grandmother, in particular, to become “very concerned about it.”

As she was growing up, Luiz chose not to reveal her association with the ad, and she ended her modeling career at age 7 or 8, preferring to focus on school and normal girlhood.

“I knew about [the controversy] and I just avoided it. I remember my grandmother saying, 'Don't say you're the Daisy Girl! Don't say you're in that ad!' So I grew up not wanting to talk about it.”

For all the publicity that surrounded the “Daisy Girl” ad, Monique Corzilius was paid just one hundred dollars for appearing in it – which seemed pretty substantial in 1964.

As Luiz recalls now, with a smile, “I remember my parents saying, 'Wow! You made a lot of money.'”

The “Daisy Girl” ad is available in several forms on YouTube. Here is a link to one of them.

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UVA Center for Politics commemorates 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates
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JFK was 'cautious, conservative' says UVA political scientist Larry Sabato

Original URL: http://www.examiner.com/article/monique-luiz-daisy-girl-from-controversial-1964-campaign-ad-speaks-at-uva

From the Archives: Barry Goldwater 'absolutely' was a libertarian, his son explains

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on December 30, 2014. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site was scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Barry Goldwater 'absolutely' was a libertarian, his son explains

Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) “absolutely was a libertarian,” explained his son in an interview this year, adding that as a libertarian he believed “in less government and [that] government should not be intruding into our personal lives.” These views were "consistent" with conservative values, he added.

Former Congressman Barry Goldwater, Jr., participated in a panel discussion about the his father's presidential campaign in November at the Virginia Film Festival. The discussion followed a screening of Bombs Away: LBJ, Goldwater, and the 1964 Campaign that Changed It All, a new documentary from the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Moderated by political scientist Larry Sabato, the panel also featured former Minnesota attorney general Skip Humphrey, son of Lyndon Johnson's 1964 running mate, Hubert H. Humphrey.

After the presentation, which marked the 50th anniversary of the Goldwater-Johnson contest, the younger Barry Goldwater spoke with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about his father's presidential campaign and how it launched both the modern conservative and libertarian movements that came of age in the 1970s and '80s.

“He was in there with his paddle in the water,” Goldwater said, “working hard to change the Republican Party from the East Coast liberal establishment to more of a conservative-libertarian philosophy that Americans were looking for.”

Gay rights and abortion
Goldwater, who represented California in Congress from 1969 to 1983, explained that his father remained an icon of the Republican Party despite differing from social conservatives on contentious issues.

In the senior Goldwater's view (and his son's, too), “whether you're gay or a lesbian is a personal thing. It's no business of the government. And abortion, a woman who is carrying this baby – that's her decision, not the government's,” said Barry, Jr. “He was pretty consistent with his libertarian and conservative views when it came to such things as social issues.”

Like his father before him, Goldwater, Jr., attended high school at the Staunton Military Academy, just about 30 miles from Charlottesville. He has pleasant memories of his time there in the late 1950s, though his Arizona upbringing did not prepare him for Virginia winters.

“I remember how cold it got here, and the leaves turning in the fall,” he said. “I remember the warmth of the people of Staunton. I remember the Episcopal Church that I went to every Sunday for four years. It's a beautiful part of the country.”

He also recalled the late Karl Hess (1923-94), an aide to Senator Goldwater who later in life was an activist in the Libertarian Party of Virginia. (Hess sometimes gets credit for the famous line, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice … moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”)

“I remember Karl Hess as one of my father's key speechwriters,” Goldwater said. “He became a good friend of the family. He was somewhat eccentric, colorful, entertaining to be around.”

'Tea Party behaved'
Goldwater also offered some thoughts about the current state of the Republican Party, which just days before this interview had won control of the U.S. Senate and expanded its majority in the House of Representatives.

“The Republican Party is alive and well. I think we came together quite well in 2014,” he said.

“Even the Tea Party folks behaved themselves and, I think, their success was due to the fact that they pretty much stuck to their core values of less government, less taxes, less regulation, more personal freedom and responsibility, and a strong defense.”

Those, he added, “have always been the Republican Party's core values – my father's and Ronald Reagan's.”

Asked whether the new Republican-controlled Congress can deliver on its promises, Goldwater displayed a wry grin and said, “Probably not but we'll sure give them a chance.”

The complete Virginia Film Festival panel discussion featuring Goldwater, Humphrey, and Sabato can be seen on YouTube. It was recorded November 8, 2014, on the grounds of the University of Virginia.

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Original URL: http://www.examiner.com/article/barry-goldwater-absolutely-was-a-libertarian-his-son-explains

50 Years Later, Barry Goldwater's GOP Convention Speech Still Resonates

“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice” was the biggest applause line of Barry Goldwater's speech accepting his party's nomination as a presidential candidate.

It is probably also the most misunderstood, ripped-out-of-context line in a speech that stands, even today, as a succinct definition of conservatism.

Surprisingly, in 3,186 words, Goldwater never used any form of the word “conservative” in this famous speech. This stood in contrast to four years earlier, when he scolded supporters who threatened the cohesion of the Republican Party by saying, “Let's grow up, conservatives.”

Fifty years ago today, on July 16, 1964, grown-up conservative Barry Goldwater spoke to the GOP convention in San Francisco.*

Most readers of this blog are too young to remember Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign, yet it is almost universally credited with launching both the modern conservative and the modern libertarian movements. The principal founders of the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation worked on Goldwater's campaign. The founding members of the Libertarian Party were Goldwater campaign volunteers, and Virginia's current Republican National Committeeman, Morton Blackwell, was the youngest Goldwater delegate at the 1964 convention.

The campaign set the stage for a transformation of the Republican party and Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. As George F. Will has put it, Goldwater won the 1964 election but it took 16 years to count the votes.

Something of a précis of his 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater's convention speech endeavored to explain conservatism – or what he called “Republicanism” on that occasion, eschewing specific references to the C-word – to listeners who had not yet learned much about it and who unfairly feared it.

In the same speech, Goldwater displayed a certain amount of prescience regarding the course of human history and offered advice to his fellow Republicans who, then as now, often found themselves among bickering factions.

In one, brief paragraph about halfway through the speech, the Arizona Senator summarized the conservative view of individual liberty and the proper role of government.

We see, in private property and in economy based upon and fostering private property, the one way to make government a durable ally of the whole man, rather than his determined enemy. We see in the sanctity of private property the only durable foundation for constitutional government in a free society. And beyond that, we see, in cherished diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts, of motives and accomplishments. We do not seek to lead anyone's life for him - we seek only to secure his rights and to guarantee him opportunity to strive, with government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwise be performed.

Goldwater also drew a contrast explicitly to the communist, totalitarian vision and, implicitly, to big-government liberalism then in vogue, and recognized the tensions inherent in simultaneous pursuits of liberty and equality.

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.

In a line that could be welcomed equally today by the Tea Party and by the Occupy movement, Goldwater said that conservatives must “resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people.”

And, as if envisioning the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire a quarter-century later, Goldwater made remarkably accurate predictions in this paragraph:

I believe that we must look beyond the defense of freedom today to its extension tomorrow. I believe that the communism which boasts it will bury us will, instead, give way to the forces of freedom. And I can see in the distant and yet recognizable future the outlines of a world worthy our dedication, our every risk, our every effort, our every sacrifice along the way. Yes, a world that will redeem the suffering of those who will be liberated from tyranny. I can see and I suggest that all thoughtful men must contemplate the flowering of an Atlantic civilization, the whole world of Europe unified and free, trading openly across its borders, communicating openly across the world.

Toward the end of his speech, just before the famous line about “extremism,” Goldwater pointed out the factionalism in the Republican party was not necessarily new, but also was not necessarily bad.

The GOP, he said, is “a Party for free men, not for blind followers, and not for conformists.”

Then he quoted Abraham Lincoln in 1858 “because he probably could have said it during the last week or so: "[The Republican Party] was composed of strained, discordant, and even hostile elements.'”

As if warning the Tea Party and “establishment” branches of the conservative movement of the 21st century, or the social conservative and the libertarian factions, Goldwater admonished: “Let our Republicanism, so focused and so dedicated, not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.”

Explaining that the Republican Party should require no litmus tests, Goldwater explained:

the beauty of this Federal system of ours is in its reconciliation of diversity with unity. We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and through our Constitution. Our Republican cause is not to level out the world or make its people conform in computer regimented sameness. Our Republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty throughout the world.

It was in that context – between “stupid labels” and the beauty of the American system – that Goldwater added:

“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" -- the second part being so often forgotten while the first part so often misinterpreted.

He concluded with the modest thought that conservatives have “a very human cause for very humane goals.”

Perhaps suggesting that he knew victory in November was unlikely, Goldwater went on to note that his 1964 campaign was a first step in a long journey.

This Party, its good people, and its unquestionable devotion to freedom, will not fulfill the purposes of this campaign which we launch here now until our cause has won the day, inspired the world, and shown the way to a tomorrow worthy of all our yesteryears.

Barry Goldwater's nomination acceptance speech of July 16, 1964, can be viewed in its entirety on the C-SPAN web site, where you can see people smoking openly on the convention floor.



*Twenty years later, when the Democrats chose the same city for their nominating convention, then-UN Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick repeatedly dripped with contempt the phrase “San Francisco Democrats” in her own GOP convention speech.

(Cross-posted, in slightly different form, from Bearing Drift. A shorter version of this essay also appears on Examiner.com.)