Barry Goldwater

“ We do not, of course, want to achieve victory by force of arms. If possible, overt hostilities should always be avoided; especially is this so when a shooting war may cause the death of many millions of people, including our own. But we cannot, for that reason, make the avoidance of a shooting war our chief objective. If we do that—if we tell ourselves that it is more important to avoid shooting than to keep our freedom—we are committed to a course that has only one terminal point: surrender. We cannot, by proclamation, make war “unthinkable.” ”

“ 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. Our defenses against the accumulation of unlimited power in Washington are in poorer shape, I fear, than our defenses against the aggressive designs of Moscow. Like so many other nations before us, we may succumb through internal weakness rather than fall before a foreign foe.
I am convinced that most Americans now want to reverse the trend. I think that concern for our vanishing freedoms is genuine. ”

“ It is hard counsel because it frankly acknowledges that war may be the price of freedom, and thus intrudes on our national complacency. But is it really so hard when it goes on to search for the most likely means of safeguarding both our lives and our freedom? Is it so hard when we think of the risks that were taken to create our country?—risks on which our ancestors openly and proudly staked their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.” Will we do less to save our country?
The risks I speak of are risks on our terms, instead of on Communist terms. ”

“ Thanks to some unwise provisions and to the absence of others that should have been included, the delicate balance of power we sought to achieve between labor and management has shifted, in avalanche proportions, to labor’s advantage. Or, more correctly to the advantage of union leaders. This mammoth concentration of power in the hands of a few men is, I repeat, a grave threat to the nation’s economic stability, and to the nation’s political processes. More important, it has taken from the individual wage earner a large portion of his freedom. ”

“ I have great respect for the Supreme Court as an institution, but I cannot believe that I display that respect by submitting abjectly to abuses of power by the Court, and by condoning its unconstitutional trespass into the legislative sphere of government. The Congress and the States, equally with the Supreme Court, are obliged to interpret and comply with the Constitution according to their own lights. I therefore support all efforts by the States, excluding violence of course, to preserve their rightful powers over education. ”

“ For this reason alone, we should eliminate all government-to-government capital assistance and encourage the substitution of American private investment.
Our present Foreign Aid program, in sum, is not only ill-administered, but ill-conceived. It has not, in the majority of cases, made the free world stronger; it has made America weaker; and it has created in minds the world over an image of a nation that puts prime reliance, not on spiritual and human values, but on the material things that are the stock-in-trade of Communist propaganda. ”

“ Indeed, this is one of the great evils of Welfarism—that it transforms the individual from a dignified, industrious, self-reliant spiritual being into a dependent animal creature without his knowing it. There is no avoiding this damage to character under the Welfare State. Welfare programs cannot help but promote the idea that the government owes the benefits it confers on the individual, and that the individual is entitled, by right, to receive them. Such programs are sold to the country precisely on the argument that government has an obligation to care for the needs of its citizens. ”

“ The people the Kremlin sends over here are, to a man, trained agents of Soviet policy. Some of them are spies, seeking information; all of them are trusted carriers of Communist propaganda. Their mission is not cultural, but political. Their aim is not to inform, but to mislead. Their assignment is not to convey a true image of the Soviet Union, but a false image. The Kremlin’s hope is that they will persuade the American people to forget the ugly aspects of Soviet life, and the danger that the Soviet system poses to American freedom. ”

“ Gomulka moved into an even closer relationship with the Soviet government. Gomulka knew, as American policy-makers ought to have known, that the price of abandoning Communism is a Budapest-type blood bath. This, of course, need not be the case were America prepared to come to the aid of people who want to strike out for freedom. But as long as we give Soviet military forces a free hand in Eastern Europe, it is the height of folly to try to bribe Communist governments into becoming our friends.
We must realize that the captive peoples are our friends and potential allies—not their rulers. ”

“ What could be more fundamental than the freedom to associate with other men, or not to associate, as each man’s conscience and reason dictates? Yet compulsory unionism is the rule rather than the exception today in the ranks of organized labor. Millions of laboring men are required to join the union that is the recognized bargaining agent at the place they work. Union shop agreements deny to these laboring men the right to decide for themselves what union they will join, or indeed, whether they will join at all. The exercise of freedom for many of these citizens, means the loss of their jobs. ”

“ Though we Conservatives are deeply persuaded that our society is ailing, and know that Conservatism holds the key to national salvation—and feel sure the country agrees with us—we seem unable to demonstrate the practical relevance of Conservative principles to the needs of the day. We sit by impotently while Congress seeks to improvise solutions to problems that are not the real problems facing the country, while the government attempts to assuage imagined concerns and ignores the real concerns and real needs of the people. ”

“ Unlike America, the Communists do not respect the UN and do not permit their policies to be affected by it. If the “opinion of mankind,” as reflected by a UN resolution, goes against them, they—in effect—tell mankind to go fly a kite. Not so with us; we would rather be approved than succeed, and so are likely to adjust our own views to conform with a United Nations majority. This is not the way to win the Cold War. ”

“ Consider the consequences to the recipient of welfarism. For one thing, he mortgages himself to the federal government. In return for benefits—which, in the majority of cases, he pays for—he concedes to the government the ultimate in political power—the power to grant or withhold from him the necessities of life as the government sees fit. Even more important, however, is the effect on him—the elimination of any feeling of responsibility for his own welfare and that of his family and neighbors. A man may not immediately, or ever, comprehend the harm thus done to his character. ”

“ Finally, a great number of non-Communist United Nations are sympathetic to Soviet aims—or, at best, are unsympathetic to ours.
We therefore should not be surprised that many of the policies that emerge from the deliberations of the United Nations are not policies that are in the best interest of the United States. United Nations policy is, necessarily, the product of many different views—some of them friendly, some of them indifferent to our interests, some of them mortally hostile. And the result is that our national interests usually suffer when we subordinate our own policy to the UN’s. ”

“ 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. 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. ”

“ Here is an indication of how taxation currently infringes on our freedom. A family man earning $4,500 a year works, on the average, twenty-two days a month. Taxes, visible and invisible, take approximately 32% of his earnings. This means that one-third, or seven whole days, of his monthly labor goes for taxes. The average American is therefore working one-third of the time for government: a third of what he produces is not available for his own use but is confiscated and used by others who have not earned it. Let us note that by this measure the United States is already one-third “socialized.” ”

“ It cannot, that is to say, be defended as a charity. The American government does not have the right, much less the obligation, to try to promote the economic and social welfare of foreign peoples. Of course, all of us are interested in combating poverty and disease wherever it exists. But the Constitution does not empower our government to undertake that job in foreign countries, no matter how worthwhile it might be. Therefore, except as it can be shown to promote America’s national interests, the Foreign Aid program is unconstitutional. ”

“ We have been persuaded that the government has an unlimited claim on the wealth of the people, and that the only pertinent question is what portion of its claim the government should exercise. The American taxpayer, I think, has lost confidence in his claim to his money. He has been handicapped in resisting high taxes by the feeling that he is, in the nature of things, obliged to accommodate whatever need for his wealth government chooses to assert.
The “nature of things,” I submit, is quite different. Government does not have an unlimited claim on the earnings of individuals. ”

“ The Conservative does not claim special powers of perception on this point, but he does claim a familiarity with the accumulated wisdom and experience of history, and he is not too proud to learn from the great minds of the past.
The first thing he has learned about man is that each member of the species is a unique creature. Man’s most sacred possession is his individual soul—which has an immortal side, but also a mortal one. The mortal side establishes his absolute differentness from every other human being. ”

“ With a monopoly of atomic weapons, and with a conventional military establishment superior to any in the world, America was—in relative and absolute terms—the most powerful nation the world had ever known. American freedom was as secure as at any time in our history.
Now, a decade and half later, we have come full circle and our national existence is once again threatened as it was in the early days of the Republic. Though we are still strong physically, we are in clear and imminent danger of being overwhelmed by alien forces. ”

“ Here, it seems to me, is the sensible way to combat graft and corruption in the labor movement. As long [51] as union leaders can force workers to join their organization, they have no incentive to act responsibly. But if workers could choose to belong or not to belong depending on how the union performed, the pressure to stamp out malpractice would become irresistible. If unions had to earn the adherence of their members the result would be—not only more freedom for the working man—but much less dishonesty and high handedness in the management of the union affairs. ”

“ We must, in our hearts, be equally dedicated to our objectives. If war is unthinkable to us but not to them, the famous “balance of terror” is not a balance at all, but an instrument of blackmail. U. S.-Soviet power may be in balance; but if we, and not they, rule out the possibility of using that power, the Kremlin can create crisis after crisis, and force the U. S., because of our greater fear of war, to back down every time. ”

“ But the Kremlin’s aim is not to make Americans approve of Communism, much as they would like that; it is to make us tolerant of Communism. The Kremlin knows that our willingness to make sacrifices to halt Communist expansion varies in direct ratio as we are hostile to Communism. They know that if Americans regard the Soviet Union as a dangerous, implacable enemy, Communism will not be able to conquer the world. ”

“ The key guidepost is the Objective, and we must never lose sight of it. It is not to wage a struggle against Communism, but to win it.
OUR GOAL MUST BE VICTORY
2. Our strategy must be primarily offensive in nature. Given the dynamic, revolutionary character of the enemy’s challenge, we cannot win merely by trying to hold our own. In addition to parrying his blows, we must strike our own. In addition to guarding our frontiers, we must try to puncture his. In addition to keeping the free world free, we must try to make the Communist world free. ”