Barry Goldwater – Conscience of a Conservative

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Barry Goldwater lost in 1964 by 22 points.  He was blown out by Lyndon Baines Johnson.  The only thing positive that came out of Goldwater’s movement was Ronald Wilson Reagan, who was a chief spokesman for Barry Goldwater.  At the time of his candidacy, though, Goldwater, a member the United States Senate, had written a book called The Conscience of a Conservative, or had written a series of essays or floor speeches that had been assembled into a book called The Conscience of a Conservative.  Here is part of that book.  It’s probably one of the most famous passages.  It doesn’t get read often enough. Check out today’s transcript for an excerpt from the book and a link to purchase it…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Barry Goldwater lost in 1964 by 22 points.  He was blown out by Lyndon Baines Johnson.  The only thing positive that came out of Goldwater’s movement was Ronald Wilson Reagan, who was a chief spokesman for Barry Goldwater.  At the time of his candidacy, though, Goldwater, a member the United States Senate, had written a book called The Conscience of a Conservative, or had written a series of essays or floor speeches that had been assembled into a book called The Conscience of a Conservative.  Here is part of that book.  It’s probably one of the most famous passages.  It doesn’t get read often enough.

[reading]

Our tendency to concentrate power in the hands of a few men deeply concerns me. We can be conquered by bombs or by subversion; but we can also be conquered by neglect – by ignoring the Constitution and disregarding the principles of limited government.

I am convinced that most Americans now want to reverse the trend. [Mike: This was in 1960, don’t forget.] I think that concern for our vanishing freedoms is genuine. I think that the people’s uneasiness in the stifling omnipresence of government has turned into something approaching alarm. But bemoaning the evil will not drive it back, and accusing fingers will not shrink government.

[end reading]

Mike:  That is a mouthful right there.  Conservatives have gotten really good, or those that fancy themselves conservatives — I call them decepticons, fake, phony frauds who think they are conservatives.  They’re really just miniature statists masquerading as representatives of the founders.  The founders would not recognize you and you would not recognize them, I am here to inform many of you, but salvation is right around the corner, which is why we administer healthy doses of the founders’ red pill on a daily basis, and you have to consume the red pill daily for eight weeks to regain your critical thinking skills, become a member of the self-governing people of these United States, unplug the matrix cable out of the back of your head, and realize what that term self-government means.  It doesn’t mean jobbing it out to John Boehner.  It doesn’t mean standing idly by.  It doesn’t mean accepting things that are unacceptable.  It means more than just rabblerousing, tea partying and complaining about these things.

A woman who called earlier and said it’s going to take decades to reverse this, I said you can reverse this in your own life immediately.  There’s a lot of jawboning going on on the Facebook and Twitter feed what did I mean by that, that I was telling that woman to stay home and not vote.  That’s not what I was telling her.  I said nothing of the sort.  What I said and what I meant was as long as you maintain your circle of what you call wife, children — this used to be called a family.  As long as you maintain that, as long as you’re the head of that household, as long as you are the progenitor, the promoter of Christian gentleman behavior, statesman-like behavior, study the classic works, the things that really matter, creating the next generation of self-governing citizens, you’re doing everything you can possibly do.  You are doing all that you can possibly do.  You can’t control what other people do.  You can try and influence them.  My point to her was as long as you turn that tide around, as long as you don’t crank out good little Marxists, and also don’t crank out good little neocons, warmongering bots, humble, well classically educated, self-governing little statesmen, little gentlemen and little gentle ladies, you’ve done all you can do.  I’d say you’ve done an awful lot.  You’ve done what your forefathers did.  Back to Barry Goldwater, in other words, people were whining and complaining about government way back then.  They’ve been whining and complaining about it since the beginning of time.  No news here.  Back to Goldwater:

[reading]

The turn will come when we entrust the conduct of our affairs to men who understand that their first duty as public officials is to divest themselves of the power they have been given. It will come when Americans, in hundreds of communities throughout the nation, decide to put the man in office who is pledged to enforce the Constitution and restore the Republic.  [Mike: We’re way beyond that.  That was 50 years ago when this was written.] Who will proclaim in a campaign speech: “I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, 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.

[end reading]

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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