The Missing Link

Charles Kaiser might be a well-known and award-winning historian, but as a journalist, he's strictly an amateur -- and that's being kind.

Kaiser is the "author" of a feature article in Out Magazine that purports to be about gay Republicans in Washington. The 2,831-word article, as others have already noted, analyzes the presence of gay Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the Executive Branch without a single new quotation from an actual gay Republican.

The best one can say about Kaiser's article is that it is a clip-job nearly worthy of a high-school social-studies term paper. Kaiser does quote previously-published articles by journalists who think enough of their subject to seek them out and ask them what they think. (Oddly, Kaiser seems to have a great deal of respect for Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas, who has done his homework and pursues shoe-leather journalism the old-fashioned way. But why bother doing that when Google is available?)

While Kaiser relies entirely on secondary sources for his quotations from Republicans, Kaiser does take the time to get soundbites from Democratic sources, such as Representative Barney Frank. He quotes Frank as saying:

“Locke says that one of the major arguments for, in effect, representative government is, if the people who make the laws are not subject to the laws, they will make bad laws with impunity,” Frank says. “That was a very important principle in the document that was the single most important influence on our Constitution. A basic principle of free government is that rulers must be subject to the laws they make.”

But then, without citation, Kaiser goes on to say about this:

Practically all Republicans -- and quite a few Democrats -- disagree with Frank about this...

Certainly there are quite a few politicians, from every party except the Libertarians, who would disagree that lawmakers should be subject to the laws they make -- even though this has been a major feature of Anglo-Saxon constitutional theory since Magna Carta. (John Locke merely explicated the point; he didn't come up with it on his own.)

Yet to assert (without a bit of proof, even a quotation from a hostile source) that "practically all Republicans" disagree with the notion ignores the centerpiece of the "Contract with America" that was partially responsible for the election of a Republican majority in Congress in 1994, after 40 years of Democratic impunity that culminated in the House post office/banking scandal. Here's what that Contract said, in part:

This year's election offers the chance, after four decades of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the way Congress works. That historic change would be the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public's money. It can be the beginning of a Congress that respects the values and shares the faith of the American family.

Like Lincoln, our first Republican president, we intend to act "with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right." To restore accountability to Congress. To end its cycle of scandal and disgrace. To make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves.

On the first day of the 104th Congress, the new Republican majority will immediately pass the following major reforms, aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American people in their government:

• FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;...

The Contract with America was signed by all but a few of the Republican candidates for the House of Representatives in 1994. (I recall that there were two or three incumbents who refused to sign on.) That "first principle" was therefore given the assent of the vast majority of GOP congressional candidates that year; that the Contract still remains on web site of the U.S. House of Representatives suggests that it continues to carry some weight with the minority party.

There are legitimate areas of disagreement between Democrats and Republicans. (There are even legitimate areas of disagreement among factions within those two parties.) Clear and civil discussion of the issues is necessary to the maintenance of a free and democratic republic. Kaiser's article in Out fails to point toward those areas of disagreement that separate gay Democrats from gay Republicans. He makes no effort to understand why some gay men and lesbians may choose to be conservative or Republican activists. To him, it's a greater mystery than transubstantiation and therefore he need not explore it.

If, like Kaiser and others cited in his article, you are still mystified as to why there might be gay Republicans in Washington or any other part of the country, take a look at the principles of the Contract with America and other published Republican documents. Read Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative. Listen to Ronald Reagan's speech, "A Time for Choosing."

That not all Republicans today live up to the ideals of Reagan or Goldwater is no reason to abandon the party, any more than the fact that not every one of today's Democrats live up to the ideals of Thomas Jefferson or the record of Grover Cleveland.

Charles Kaiser's effort at "journalism," meanwhile, fails to live up to any standards at all. He, and Out Magazine, should be embarrassed that this jumble of notecards ever connected ink to paper.

First Post of the Year

Besides being the first day of 2008, today is also significant because it would have been Senator Barry Goldwater's 99th birthday.

In a memoir published in 1988, shortly after he retired from the U.S. Senate, Goldwater wrote of his early years in the Arizona Territory (pp. 34-35):

Three people -- my mother, an uncle, and a teacher -- finally convinced me that contributing something to the community was a lot pleasanter life than getting my britches burned in all kinds of trouble. My brother, sister, and some friends stood by my side when the going got tough.

My mother was a very individualistic woman, patriotic and dedicated to her community. Uncle Morris offered decades of public service to Arizona politics and the Masonic Order. Sandy Patch, one of my instructors at Staunton Military Academy, was one of the finest military officers this country ever produced.

My mother had a greater influence on my life than any other individual. It seems worth recalling some of those early years to see how and why the character of one person can leave such an impression on another. One of the things I remember best about Mun -- the three of us always called my mother that -- was our annual summer trip from Phoenix to the cool beaches of Southern California.

Mun and her three desert rats drove to California every summer because Phoenix was too hot. The trip across the Arizona and California deserts took about a week.... We had about two dozen flat tires each way. My brother, Bob, and I patched the innner tubes in mostly 120-degree heat.

Mun wore knickers, leggings, and a beat-up old hat that she'd tilt at odd angles to make us laugh. She was about five feet four inches tall and a hundred pounds of double-barreled action. Mun was a tomboy who loved the outdoors -- camping, hunting, fishing, and climbing. She was spunky and spontaneous, and she spoiled us rotten.

Dad was home minding the store. Outdoor exercise was not his game.

Mun had the uncanny ability of having fun and teaching at the same time. She kept her rifle cocked along the meandering route for coyotes, rattlesnakes, or any other critter that might bother her brood. We learned a lot about guns, camping, and protecting one another. Learning from her was never boring. None of us ever forgot those adventurous treks across the desert because she had so much time to pepper us with her wit and wisdom....

She stitched the forty-seventh and forty-eighth stars on our flag when New Mexico and Arizona entered the union. I was only three years old at the time. She talked about that day for years.

My mother spoke a lot about our country when we were kids -- our heritage of freedom, the history of Arizona, how individual initiative had made the desert bloom. Mun was a conservative Republican and proud of it.

You may have noticed a brief reference to "Staunton Military Academy" in the second paragraph quoted. That is Barry Goldwater's connection to Central Virginia: He spent his high school years in the Shenandoah Valley, just across the mountain from Charlottesville. (Of course, in the early 1920s, traveling between Charlottesville and Staunton was a lot harder than just hopping on Interstate 64 and heading west for about 40 miles.)

Goldwater recalls his years in Staunton on pages 51 through 55 of his eponymous memoir:

My father was always fashionably dressed. Some people called him a dandy because he wore pince-nez glasses and was elegant even when playing poker and billiards at the Arizona Club. However, fashion and elegance were his business. Goldwaters [department store] had a reputation for quality -- the latest and best fashion, especially for women.

Dad was also a very private person. He confided in few people apart from our mother. However, he didn't always hide his feelings, especially about my comportment in high school. One evening at family dinner, he was looking down at me over his pince-nez like I was the two of spades. Dad may have liked cards, but not wild ones.

He didn't care that I'd been elected president of the freshman class or that I was good enough for both the football and basketball teams. His voice lowered as his eyebrows raised. My father said sternly that I was going to Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, and there wasn't going to be any back talk. I felt as though I'd just been sentenced to the state pen. It seemed the whole family was ready to form a firing squad -- except my mother. She was worried about my being so far from home. Dad appeared to say, the farther away, the better -- until I learned some discipline. Then I could come home and return to school in Arizona.

In a long passage about his year as a "Rat" (a first-year student) at the Academy, Goldwater has this minor digression, which should raise a chuckle among certain Ron Paul supporters:

I only had one fight. That was with my first roommate. I owed him money for something and paid him in silver dollars. He'd never seen a silver dollar and said it wasn't U.S. money. I'd never seen paper money, although we talked about it at home. So we put up our dukes and fought a financial war.

True to Goldwater senior's wishes, young Barry did learn discipline:

In my senior year at Staunton, I won the outstanding cadet award and was offered an appointment to West Point. However, my father was not well, and Mother thought it best that I return home.

It was a big mistake. I should have gone to the Point. To this day, I believe I was better equipped, psychologically, to be a military officer than a politician.

Politics is a life that is often out of focus, that rises and falls with the tide of events and everchanging public opinion. For the most part, the military has clear, singular goals. If I had my life to live over again, I'd go to West Point.

The concepts of duty, honor, and country are genuine to me. Patriotism is real. There's no greater service to this country than the defense of its freedom.

Barry Goldwater was a military officer, of course, as well as a politician. And his country is better off because he chose that latter course. (And whether, in the 21st century, the "military has clear, singular goals," is a question quite worthy of exploration -- and doubt.)

On his 99th birthday, let us salute Senator Barry Goldwater. What a celebration we shall have in the centenary year of 2009!

Barry Goldwater Endorses Ron Paul

In the spirit of my long-ago post called "Ron Paul: Last of the Goldwater Republicans?" comes news from Ron Paul's presidential campaign headquarters that Barry Goldwater himself has endorsed Ron Paul for president.

No, not the late Senator from Arizona, but his son, the former Member of Congress from California.

Here is the text of the news release:

November 16, 2007 10:16 am EST

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA—Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul today gained a public endorsement from Barry M. Goldwater, Jr.

“America is at a crossroads,” said Mr. Goldwater. “We have begun to stray from our traditions and must get back to what has made us the greatest nation on earth or we will lose much of the freedom we hold dear. Ron Paul stands above all of the other candidates in his commitment to liberty and to America.”

“Leading America is difficult, and I know Ron Paul is the man for the job,” he added.

Mr. Goldwater is the son of the late former Republican presidential candidate and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Barry Goldwater, Jr. served in the House of Representatives for six terms with Texas Congressman Paul, and is currently on the Board of Directors of the Goldwater Institute. After representing northern Los Angeles County in Washington, D.C. for 14 years, Mr. Goldwater retired from politics in 1983 to pursue a successful career in business and humanitarian ventures.

“The Ron Paul campaign is exceptionally honored by Mr. Goldwater’s endorsement,” said Paul campaign manager Lew Moore. “Dr. Paul and Congressman Goldwater fought together in the Congress for the ideals of limited constitutional government that Mr. Goldwater’s father so tirelessly advocated. The Goldwaters have left an indelible mark on the Republican Party, and theirs is a legacy which Congressman Paul will certainly inherit as President.”

The late Barry M. Goldwater, Sr. sparked the modern conservative movement and was the Republican Party presidential nominee in 1964.

-30-

Earlier this week, the Ron Paul campaign unveiled a series of radio ads that will be run in early primary and caucus states. Here is one of them, the one that I like the best:

HBO's AuH2O Documentary

According to a review in Friday's Washington Times, HBO will be debuting a new documentary about the late Barry Goldwater, who served as U.S. Senator from Arizona and as the Republican presidential candidate in 1964. Goldwater's candidacy, perhaps more than any other single event, catalyzed disparate strains of conservatism into what became the modern conservative movement that resulted in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

To this day, people like myself proudly call themselves Goldwater conservatives or Goldwater/Reagan conservatives, distinguished from the faux conservatism of George W. Bush and the current Republican Congress.

In his review, Scott Galupo shows he understands the fundamental, philosophical core of Barry Goldwater. (He suggests that the documentary, even though it is produced and narrated by Senator Goldwater's granddaughter, fails to do that.) Galupo writes:

... "Goldwater" gives the game away when it conveniently rejects whichever planks of the limited-government platform it disagrees with. Take the senator's opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. There, according to the documentary, Mr. Goldwater was plainly wrong, both morally and on the facts. Yet, on abortion and homosexuals, it rhapsodizes about Mr. Goldwater's broad-mindedness.

Sorry. This does not a maverick make. If you had one of those think tanky graphs that expand on the simplistic left-right spectrum, Mr. Goldwater's libertarian politics were remarkably consistent.

Not unlike his more successful legatee, President Ronald Reagan, he held fast to a few principles -- essentially, that the federal government should stay out of people's personal lives, but still be strong enough to kick the commies in the groin.

Later in his career, he took the same laissez-faire view on abortion and homosexual rights (issues, Mr. Will notes, that didn't figure on the national agenda in the 1960s) that he took on economic entrepreneurship.

Let's be clear: When Barry Goldwater stood on the rostrum of the Republican National Convention in San Francisco and said, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice," he was being brave. He was bucking centrist complacency -- including eight years under the Republican accommodationist Dwight Eisenhower -- that took ever-bigger government and international communism for granted.

In the spirit of National Review magazine's founding credo of "Standing athwart history, yelling 'Stop,'" Barry Goldwater confronted the morality of statism when to do so was highly unfashionable -- not to mention politically suicidal: Sitting President Lyndon B. Johnson beat him by 16 million votes.

Conversely, to say, in 1993, that the military's ban on homosexuals was "dumb" earned you a round of applause from those mavericks who run the New York Times.

Miss Goldwater may gain personal comfort from the knowledge of her grandfather's social libertarianism -- and any truthful account of Mr. Goldwater's public life should acknowledge it.

When Senator Goldwater passed away, I wrote a tribute that appeared in several publications ("Barry Goldwater: Conservative Icon, Libertarian Visionary"), which looks at the historical record and explains why he remains such a hero to libertarians and conservatives alike.

I, for one, am looking forward to seeing the documentary, which promises to be both informative and entertaining, even if (as Galupo suggests) flawed. According to HBO,

Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater includes interviews with Senators Edward Kennedy, Hillary Rodham Clinton (a onetime "Goldwater Girl") and John McCain (who succeeded Goldwater in Arizona); former TV anchorman Walter Cronkite; humorist Al Franken; TV correspondent Robert MacNeil; former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee; author George Will; 60 Minutes' Andy Rooney; CBS News' Bob Schieffer; White House reporter Helen Thomas; political consultant James Carville; former White House Counsel John Dean; Goldwater's brother, Bob; sons Barry, Jr. (a onetime House Representative from California) and Michael; daughters Joanne and Peggy; and others.

Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater will be broadcast on HBO for the first time on Monday, September 18, at 9:00 p.m. (EDT). There will surely be multiple replays. A one-minute video preview can be watched on HBO's web site.

Even though Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater's premiere conflicts with the new weekly episode of Weeds on Showtime (one of the best written comedies on TV, cable or otherwise, with a sly social and political commentary that catches viewers by surprise), I'll just delay watching Weeds until later in the evening. Barry Goldwater's legacy deserves at least that much.

I have to add that the timing of the premiere of this documentary, coincident with the publication of Ryan Sager's The Elephant in the Room, about the tension between libertarian and social conservative elements in the conservative movement (and the Republican party), is precious. The two launches are complementary.

Barry's Boys

Don Goldwater, a candidate for governor of Arizona, was a guest on Sean Hannity's syndicated radio show today. Goldwater's primary campaign theme is that his opponent, incumbent Governor Janet Napolitano, is failing to enforce laws to control illegal immigration.

In the course of the interview, Hannity referred to Goldwater's great-uncle (or should I say "great uncle"?), Senator Barry Goldwater, as a "libertarian," explaining that the Republican Party is a coalition of "Christian conservatives, libertarians," and others. The younger Mr. Goldwater seemed to want to avoid the libertarian label both for himself and for his more famous relative, preferring "conservative," although he defined himself as someone who supported "limited government and individual liberty," which sounds pretty libertarian to me. (I don't know much more about Don Goldwater than what I heard in the course of this 10-minute interview, so I will withhold judgment.)

When Barry Goldwater passed away in May 1998, I wrote a tribute that appeared in slightly different formats in the Roanoke Times & World News, The Metro Herald, and the newsletter Republican Liberty (published by the Republican Liberty Caucus) in June 1998:

Barry Goldwater: Conservative Icon, Libertarian Visionary
Richard E. Sincere, Jr.

"In your heart, you know he's right." So said Barry Goldwater's supporters during the Senator's ill-fated 1964 presidential campaign. Many people disagreed, resulting in a landslide victory for Lyndon Johnson. But as we now know, Goldwater may have lost the battle, but over time, he won the war.

Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign transformed American politics. He galvanized two generations of political activists, and germinated both the modern conservative movement and the libertarian movement. He took a Republican party that was ideologically indistinguishable from its Democratic opponents and gave it a philosophical edge with ramifications that are still unresolved. Some of his supporters went on in 1971 to found America's third-largest political party, the Libertarian Party, and the rest in 1976 almost denied a sitting president, Gerald Ford, the GOP nomination. By 1980, Goldwater Republicans were in the ascendant and elected Ronald Reagan as president.

By the time Barry Goldwater died on May 29, his legacy was being felt not only across the United States, but around the world. His consistent embrace of strong national defense, free-market economics, and individual liberty had an impact on the decline and fall of the Soviet empire as well as the rejection of the American welfare state.

Before Barry Goldwater came on the scene, the Republican party largely consisted of upper-class, aging gentlemen who believed government should advance their business interests. Its leaders were northeastern, "country-club Republicans" like Thomas Dewey, Prescott Bush, and Henry Cabot Lodge. Goldwater, by contrast, came from the Arizona frontier and -- like his contemporary, philosopher Ayn Rand -- inspired teenagers and young adults to join in the struggle for human liberty and to oppose the forces of collectivism that had dominated 20th century politics. He opened up the party to people of all economic backgrounds, to women and ethnic minorities, to Catholics and evangelical Protestants -- all of whom had a stake in smaller government, free enterprise, and individual liberty.

In his later years, conservative Republicans claimed that Goldwater had abandoned his principles. They were wrong, because Goldwater was consistent throughout his life in his belief that government should be limited in its size and scope, that it should not intrude on the private lives of citizens, and that liberty was not only a worthy end in itself, but the most effective means to achieve peace, prosperity, and justice.

That is why, in the 1980s and ‘90s, Goldwater became an outspoken advocate for abortion rights (he was pro-choice) and also for protecting and respecting the rights of gay and lesbian citizens. In the midst of the debate on gays in the military, for instance, Goldwater said archly that "you don't have to be straight to shoot straight." Goldwater rightfully told his "conservative" critics that it was they, not he, who departed from the core principles that guided his presidential campaign and his entire career.

Goldwater's most quoted remark is the line in his 1964 convention speech: "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. . . . moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue." The words were delivered by Senator Goldwater, but they were written by libertarian speechwriter Karl Hess. Hess was just one of many libertarians who got their start with Goldwater. In his 1997 book, Bringing the Market Back In: The Political Revitalization of Market Liberalism, historian John L. Kelley identifies "Objectivists and conservative libertarians, many of them former Goldwater Republicans" as the two groups who "made up a clear majority of those who formed the Libertarian Party in 1971. Both supported a limited, constitutional republic, were unsympathetic to hedonism, defended American Cold-War foreign policy as justly resisting hostile threats, and viewed American history as generally honorable prior to the moral bankruptcy produced by the intellectual classes during the Progressive era and the New Deal."

Goldwater was the herald -- the "voice crying in the wilderness" -- for the new ideas that opposed collectivism and promoted freedom, while his supporters did the intellectual heavy lifting that transfigured American public policy. Goldwater proved to be a visionary when he opposed programs like Medicare and utopian schemes like the Great Society. He correctly predicted that Medicare would turn out to be a form of socialized medicine, eventually ration health care, and raise prices for all of us in the medical marketplace. He knew in the mid-'60s that Medicare, like the older Social Security, would one day go bankrupt -- which everyone now acknowledges will happen sometime within the next 20 years, if no changes are made in the system. He knew that an expanded welfare system would destroy inner city families and create a cycle of dependency on government that would undermine the ambitions and the self-esteem of millions of citizens.

Goldwater's supporters and their successors have, over the past 30 years, created the think tanks and the journals and the advocacy groups that have provided the freshest, soundest ideas to drive public policy, ranging from deregulation of business to market-based environmental protections to educational vouchers for poor students stuck in deteriorating government schools to ending the Selective Service System to pulling down barriers to international trade.

My earliest political memory dates back to when I was five years old. Standing with my grandparents and my mother (who, like future First Lady Hillary Rodham, was a "Goldwater Girl") on a dark, rainy Milwaukee street, I held up a hand-scrawled sign welcoming candidate Goldwater to a campaign rally. Little did I realize the history that was being made.

Goldwater, you see, paved the way for the Reagan Revolution. Reagan's entry into national politics was a televised speech he delivered on behalf of Goldwater days before the 1964 election. Two years later, Reagan himself was elected California governor and began his own, successful road to the White House and eight years of prosperity and strength leading to the collapse of Soviet Communism.

To be sure, the Republican party since Goldwater has had its episodes of backsliding. Its presidential candidates since 1988 (George Bush and Bob Dole) have had no perceptible philosophical foundation -- they lacked, as Bush put it, the "vision thing." Yet the legacy of Goldwater continues to be visible in younger members of Congress, especially those in the freshman class of 1994, and in party activists across the country, particularly those who belong to the Republican Liberty Caucus. This suggests that in the next few presidential elections, candidates who actually stand for something -- Steve Forbes? John Ashcroft? -- will have a better chance of being nominated.

Despite the ongoing dispute within the Republican party between libertarians and social conservatives over the role the government should play in regulating the private lives of individuals, the GOP is more vigorous today as a result of Barry Goldwater's leadership. Democrats, too, have come to recognize that government is not the solution to every human problem, although they have not been as swift to act. Life is better for all of us because Barry Goldwater led the way.

As political activist Chuck Muth frequently reminds us, the "Goldwater Doctrine" is the philosophy that unites (or should unite) libertarians and conservatives of all stripes. As stated in The Conscience of a Conservative, the "Goldwater Doctrine" says:

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.

Whatever you call it -- libertarian, South Park conservative, market liberal -- if you believe in the "Goldwater Doctrine," as I do, you are a Goldwater conservative because in your heart, you know he's right.

Ronald Reagan: 1911-2004

Today, June 5, is the first anniversary of the death of President Ronald Reagan.

His passing came on the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of the D-Day invasion and the twentieth anniversary of his own Pointe du Hoc speech commemorating that event.

Whenever I am asked for the best place to find a summary of Ronald Reagan's political philosophy, I point them to "A Time for Choosing," a speech he delivered on behalf of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater on October 27, 1964. So important was this speech to Reagan and the conservative movement that it became known simply as "The Speech."

"The Speech" can be found in many places on the web, including through the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the Modern History Sourcebook. I prefer the version found at the American Rhetoric web site, because it includes the text as well as both audio and video versions of The Speech. The text is also available in several books, including Time for Choosing: The Speeches of Ronald Reagan 1961-1982 and an audio recording is included on Speaking My Mind: Selected Speeches With Personal Reflections.

It is remarkable how "The Speech" has remained timely for more than 40 years. There are, of course, references to contemporary events and personalities and issues in it, some that require annotation to understand. Still, aside from those few instances, The Speech could be delivered today with few changes.

Consider, for instance, this passage, in light of the current debate over Social Security reform:

Now -- we're for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we've accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.

But we're against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those people who depend on them for a livelihood. They've called it "insurance" to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program. They only use the term "insurance" to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they're doing just that.

A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary -- his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could live it up until he's 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can't put this program on a sound basis, so that people who do require those payments will find they can get them when they're due -- that the cupboard isn't bare?

Barry Goldwater thinks we can.

At the same time, can't we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made provision for the non-earning years? Should we not allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn't you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be under this program, which we cannot do? I think we're for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we're against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as was announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program is now bankrupt. They've come to the end of the road.

In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested that our government give up its program of deliberate, planned inflation, so that when you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar's worth, and not 45 cents worth?

How prescient! Imagine how much better off we would be, as individuals, as families, as a society, if Social Security had been transformed in the 1960s rather than 50 years later. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater knew then what had to be done. Reagan, of course, also knew what obstacles he and smart people like him faced. In "A Time for Choosing" he delivered these well-known lines:

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So governments' programs, once launched, never disappear.

Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth.

The Goldwater campaign mobilized and inspired a generation of political activists. Despite Goldwater's defeat at the polls in November 1964, his partisans went on to launch both the modern conservative and modern libertarian movements. (For in-depth chronicles of these branches of the Goldwater legacy, I recommend The Other Side of the Sixties by John Andrew and Bringing the Market Back in: The Political Revitalization of Market Liberalism by John L. Kelley.)

Reagan himself recognized the inexorable linkage between the libertarian and conservative philosophies (and their respective political manifestations). In an interview with Reason magazine in July 1975, Reagan said:

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to insure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are travelling the same path.

* * *

I don’t believe in a government that protects us from ourselves. I have illustrated this many times by saying that I would recognize the right of government to say that someone who rode a motorcycle had to protect the public from himself by making certain provisions about his equipment and the motorcycle–the same as we do with an automobile. I disagree completely when government says that because of the number of head injuries from accidents with motorcycles that he should be forced to wear a helmet. I happen to think he’s stupid if he rides a motorcycle without a helmet, but that’s one of our sacred rights–to be stupid.

But to show you how these grey areas can creep in, the other day I was saying this to a man who happens to be a neurosurgeon, and who has treated many cases of this particular kind of injury and accident, and he disagreed with me on this issue. He disagreed with me on the basis of the individuals who become public charges as a result of permanent damage–he has pointed to an area where it does go over into not just hurting the individuals directly involved but now imposes on others also. I only use this extreme example to show that when we come down to government and what it should or should not do for the good of the people and for protecting us from each other, you do come into some grey areas and I think here there will be disagreements between conservatives and libertarians.

So, I think the government has legitimate functions. But I also think our greatest threat today comes from government’s involvement in things that are not government’s proper province. And in those things government has a magnificent record of failure.

Reagan's greatest accomplishment as a statesman -- setting aside, for the moment, his role in the defeat of Communism and the end of the Cold War -- was the way in which he changed the terms of debate. He entered the presidency at a time in which liberal thinking (in the American sense of left-wing statist liberalism) was received wisdom and conservatives were known as "the stupid party." Twenty-five years later, the liberals are bereft of ideas. The best they can do is perform a holding action as they are besieged by dynamic, progressive ideas from the right (both libertarians and conservatives). They defend the status quo the way William Jennings Bryan defended fundamentalist ideas of Creation against Clarence Darrow's modern science in the Scopes trial. Troglodytes may have stirring rhetoric, but in the end, it proves to be intellectually hollow.

Ronald Reagan proved to us that the troglodytes need not be victorious.

The legacy of Ronald Reagan is one that will define 21st century politics. His vision lives on despite the fact that his current successor in the White House pays little more than lip service to that vision. The ideas of Ronald Reagan will survive the Bush administration and will flourish.

Ron Paul: Last of the Goldwater Republicans?

It may be unfair to characterize U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) as the "last of the Goldwater Republicans." There are plenty of us out there in the party, but our voices are often lost amidst the shrill sounds emitted by the increasingly larger social conservative wing of the GOP. And a few legislators -- notably Arizona's Jeff Flake -- still hold firm against pork-barrel spending and vote according to a Goldwateresque understanding of the Constitution.

Dr. Ron Paul -- like Senator Tom Coburn, he is an obstetrician-gynecologist in real life -- is the only life member of the Libertarian Party in Congress. He ran for president as a Libertarian Party candidate in 1988, after he had given up his seat in the House of Representatives for an unsuccessful run for the Senate in Texas.

Saturday's Houston Chronicle has a largely positive profile of Dr. Paul. The article says, in part:

Paul almost always goes against the grain. He recently cast one of the few votes against President Bush's emergency spending for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In March, he initially declined to comment when part of the Texas City BP refinery in his district exploded and killed several workers. A staffer said Paul wanted to avoid the appearance of grandstanding.

In general, Paul's goal is to provide an alternative voice in Washington, even if it's often ignored. And his nine terms in Congress may be proof of his constituents' admiration of his independent streak. Texans have a soft spot for those kinds of politicians, said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

"They sometimes value people who will get in the way of government and slow it down to question, to prod and sometimes steer for the ditch rather than down the center lane," Jillson said.

Paul "doesn't work the mechanism and play the game," he said. "He is the guy sticking the broom in the spokes. There are enough people in his district, the old and the new, who know who Ron Paul is in the context of American politics and think that's fine."

Paul opposes anything that in his view is not proscribed in the Constitution as a federal responsibility. He'd like state governments or charitable institutions to take care of those things.

A sidebar to the article lists a few of Ron Paul's votes that set him apart from other Republicans in Congress -- indeed, from most other Members of Congress:

In the U.S. House, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Lake Jackson was:
•One of three Republicans who voted against the U.S. Patriot Act.
•The only Republican who voted against the Child Obscenity and Pornography Prevention Act of 2002.
•The only Republican who opposed the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004.
•One of six Republicans who voted against authorizing military force in Iraq in October 2002.
•One of three Republicans who voted against the emergency supplemental appropriations bill for military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On his own House web site, Dr. Paul lists the "freedom principles" that animate his service:

Rights belong to individuals, not groups.

Property should be owned by people, not government.

All voluntary associations should be permissible -- economic and social.

The government's monetary role is to maintain the integrity of the monetary unit, not participate in fraud.

Government exists to protect liberty, not to redistribute wealth or to grant special privileges.

The lives and actions of people are their own responsibility, not the government's.

This list of principles echoes the political manifesto presented by Barry Goldwater in his 1960 book, 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."

I'd venture a guess that Dr. Paul is the only Member of Congress, Republican or Democrat, in the House or in the Senate, who features on his web site the famous story about Tennessee Congressman Davey Crockett called "Not Yours to Give." The story, which describes an incident years before Crockett's death defending the Alamo, illustrates Crockett's philosophy that Congress cannot use other people's money -- taxpayers' money -- for even a good purpose, unless that use is specifically authorized by the U.S. Constitution. The story begins:

One day in the House of Representatives a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose:

"Mr. Speaker--I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member on this floor knows it.

We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I ever heard that the government was in arrears to him.

"Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."

He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it received but few votes, and, of course, was lost.

The story, taken from Edward Sylvester Ellis' biography of Davey Crockett, ends with a succinct summary of Crockett's view of the men who served with him in Congress and their poor adherence to constitutional principle and concomitant desire for private gain:

"Now, sir," concluded Crockett, "you know why I made that speech yesterday. "There is one thing which I will call your attention, "you remember that I proposed to give a week's pay. There are in that House many very wealthy men - men who think nothing of spending a week's pay, or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when they have something to accomplish by it. Some of those same men made beautiful speeches upon the great debt of gratitude which the country owed the deceased--a debt which could not be paid by money--and the insignificance and worthlessness of money, particularly so insignificant a sum as $20,000 when weighed against the honor of the nation. Yet not one of them responded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it."

Ron Paul is one of the few federal legislators, if not the only one, to see Davey Crockett as someone to emulate. He may not be the last of the Goldwater Republicans, but he is surely among the last of the Congressional Crocketts.