Freedom is something that, so long as we live under the constitution, the government has no right and no authority to deny us, and any time they do, they are acting in a very bad manner.

jimmy the notable on April 9, 2009 at 10:36 PM

The rights that we have under the Constitution cover anything we want to do, as long as it’s not harmful. I can’t see any way in the world that being a gay can cause damage to somebody else.
- Barry Goldwater

MB4 on April 9, 2009 at 11:04 PM

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
- Barry Goldwater

Hubert Humphrey talks so fast that listening to him is like trying to look at Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages.
- Barry Goldwater

I think any man in business would be foolish to fool around with his secretary. If it’s somebody else’s secretary, fine.
- Barry Goldwater

You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.
- Barry Goldwater

It’s a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president …… except me.
- Barry Goldwater

MB4 on April 9, 2009 at 11:08 PM

Didn’t Goldwater write “The =Lack of= Conscience of a Conservative Libertarian”?

jgapinoy on April 9, 2009 at 11:07 PM

I don’t believe I am familiar with a book of that title.

No putatively conservative politician today has the idealism of a Goldwater or brings together idealists like Bozell and Hess. Even the one area where latter-day professional conservatives seem most idealistic, in their support for grandiose schemes of democratization and empire-building abroad, there is a startling contrast. Bozell and Hess, each driven by a vision of a more just America—the one vision radically Catholic, the other radically libertarian—came to oppose the Vietnam War. Late in life, Goldwater described that intervention as “a useless war,” and Tanenhaus speculates that Goldwater, like his friend Bill Buckley, would sooner or later have opposed Bush’s war in Iraq: “Presumably Goldwater would have seen this, but you never know.” The idealism of the Goldwater movement did infect its foreign policy—a look at Conscience of a Conservative will confirm that. But ultimately, the ideals that Goldwater stood for were not nation-building and empire.

Today, nation-building and empire, together with K-Street politics, is about all that animates the Republicans who claim to be following in Goldwater’s footsteps. They’ve lost what the 1960 and 1964 Goldwater movements were really all about, and they won’t rediscover what they’ve lost by furrowing their brows wondering if Goldwaterism was really purely libertarian or fusionist. Goldwater himself was a man of the American West, and his legacy can be claimed by either libertarians or traditionalists—if they can put the principled spirit of the old movement before the emoluments of politics.
- Daniel McCarthy

MB4 on April 9, 2009 at 11:23 PM

What does the secretary quote tell you? He can’t be trusted–he’d break his vows to his wife, so why wouldn’t he break any other promise? That’s the point: immorality can’t be kept in a box; it affects everything.

jgapinoy on April 9, 2009 at 11:11 PM

That, and so much else, tells me that he had a sense of humor.

I believe that Barry Goldwater had two wives. The first was Peggy whom he was married to for almost 50 years before she died. The second was Susan to who he was married to until he died.

MB4 on April 9, 2009 at 11:34 PM