My life is my message. –Gandhi
After winning his party’s nomination in 1964, Goldwater and his team presented their platform to the assembled delegates. Their platform repudiated many Republican policies. The proposed amendments to the platform endorsing civil rights, reasserting civilian control over nuclear weapons, and condemning extremist right-wing groups were crushed by Goldwater and his followers.
Goldwater upped the ante when he selected fellow Arizonan Dean Burch as national chairman – ‘a politician of limited experience who had never even been a county chairman and who was a complete stranger to hundreds of eminent Republicans around the country.’ [Robert J. Donovan]
Finally, to bring this all to a crescendo, Goldwater’s acceptance speech, far from offering a conciliatory note that was so necessary after the contentious experience divided folks even more. Goldwater said that ‘those who do not care for our cause we don’t expect to enter into our ranks in any case.’ He then hurled his famous challenge: ‘I would remind you that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!’
This two-sentence manifesto was spoken by Goldwater, written by a hard-core right-winger whom Goldwater kept by his side throughout his presidential run and approved by a dozen of his top staff members. Goldwater’s moment of victory at his party’s convention found him firmly in the hands of his ecstatic pseudo-conservative followers.
Goldwater was openly supported by the John Birch Society. Goldwater’s campaign gave focus to the right-wing movement. He attracted, and supported, right-wing extremists (think: John A. Stormer & Phyllis Schlafly for example); these extremists’ conspiratorial views gave voice to the mental passion that supported the pseudo-conservatives and right-wing radicals (there was they claimed a conspiracy afoot to undue all that Goldwater wanted to accomplish and there was a conspiracy directed against Goldwater himself by the moderates, progressives and liberals).
Earlier, Goldwater had offered us these words: ‘this country would be better off if we could just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it fall into the sea.’ John A. Stormer, author of ‘None Dare Call it Treason’ offered the following counsel to Goldwater and his team: ‘For treason to prosper, none dare call it treason!’
Unlike Trump, Goldwater did not agree with all of his right-wing pseudo-conservatives. But he had been caught in an unintended trap of his own making. For example, he did not fully support the John Birch Society but he was not able to distance himself, much less repudiate the members. Any path away from extremism was blocked by the right-wingers he needed [Think: Donald Trump and David Duke and the white supremacists that support Trump; unlike Goldwater, however, Trump continues to demonstrate by his words and behavior that he is a fellow-traveler with the white supremacists. Trump is not trapped by them; Trump openly supports them].
For the first time in our history, the 1964 convention showed us how well organized the radical right-wing movement had become. The convention also revealed during the campaign that followed that the right-wing was organized for a fight it was not organized to conciliate or persuade. They had convinced themselves that the forces they were fighting were conspiratorial and sinister and perhaps treasonous and so they found it impossible to let go of the mental models they had integrated.
Goldwater and his followers were filled with a desire to punish and humiliate – they were not interested in appeasing nor in pacifying. Goldwater went on to conduct a right-wing campaign. He was overwhelmingly defeated.
BUT…
A Culture cultivates whatever is honored there. –Plato
Searcher-Seeker 