# What was so extreme about Barry Goldwater? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 1, 2014, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281 "2014-02-01T15:13:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/41 "2014-02-02T07:57:50Z")
It sounds like it was just a meme that cropped up. No way to know for sure who thought it up. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/42 "2014-02-02T08:26:09Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Let me get this straight. If you and I both support Political Cause X, and I go out and kill someone who doesn’t, you’re supporting violence against the political opposition? Or are you only doing so “in effect”, which means… what? If “Political Cause X” is the state sanctioned murder of protesters, as **Esox** claims, then yes, you pretty clearly do support violence against the political opposition. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/43 "2014-02-02T09:03:42Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > Ironically, Goldwater was a longtime member of the Urban League and had been a member of the NAACP until “they began calling me an S.O.B.” That is a giant load of bullshit. Barry Goldwater resigned from the NAACP in 1952 so he could run to be Senator from Arizona without may right-wingers viewing him as a “nigger lover”. Moreover, he was hardly an ally of the Civil Rights movement since he vociferously argued that school segregation was perfectly constitutional. [http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,870316,00.html](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,870316,00.html) > [@](#): > > Many Southern segregationists feel that Goldwater is really on their side because he sturdily defends “states’ rights.” In his bestselling credo, The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater took a constitutional view of the conflict between states’ rights and federal intervention on the side of Ne groes. The Federal Government, **he said, can lawfully intervene to protect a right, such as the right to vote, that is asserted by the Constitution or by a valid federal law. But public education is among the matters that the Tenth Amendment reserves to the states. “It may be just or wise or expedient for Negro children to attend the same schools as white children, but they do not have a civil right to do so which is protected by the Federal Constitution or which is enforceable by the Federal Government.” He subscribes to the “objectives” of the Supreme Court’s 1954 desegregation decision, Goldwater says, but "I am not prepared to impose that judgment of mine on the people of Mississippi or South Carolina.**" Now, I’ll be blunt and say that anyone who doesn’t find his statement that “Negro children… do not have the right…to attend the same schools as white children” to be “extreme” is delusional or not worth arguing with. ---
**Author:** ![campp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@campp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/campp)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/44 "2014-02-02T12:38:16Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > OT, but I think I’m the only Doper [who met him](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15269518&postcount=124). Nope, I talked to him one day at lunch while we were both waiting for take out ribs. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/45 "2014-02-02T14:26:13Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Now, I’ll be blunt and say that anyone who doesn’t find his statement that “Negro children… do not have the right…to attend the same schools as white children” to be “extreme” is delusional or not worth arguing with. In 1964 that was a sadly commonplace belief. Goldwater’s problem, as a politician, was that he sucked at it. Successful politicians moderate their statements in public and figure out how to offend as few people as possible. Goldwater was sort of the living embodiment of the common TV/movie/fiction fantasy of a candidate who “speaks from the heart” and is honest about his beliefs and sweeps to victory over the lying professionals. Well, he did that and got his ass handed to him. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/46 "2014-02-02T15:05:12Z")
> [@campp](#): > > Nope, I talked to him one day at lunch while we were both waiting for take out ribs. Darn. You win. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/47 "2014-02-02T15:20:22Z")
adaher writes: \> It sounds like it was just a meme that cropped up. No way to know for sure who \> thought it up. This illustrates why I don’t think the idea of a meme is very useful. Yes, of course ideas in certain ways travel like changes in DNA in a species or like viruses and bacteria. Websites (with a particular video or whatever) that “go viral” become popular in certain ways DNA or viruses or bacteria. Computer malware also travels in a certain way like them. That’s true if you look at those things in a very big picture way. However, if you look at the individual ways that those things get created or travel around, the fact is that a website has to be created by a person, and it’s possible to look at why that website becomes popular and say something about why people like it. An idea has to be created by a person, and it’s possible to say something about why people like it. A piece of malware has to be created by somebody, and it’s possible to say something about why other software allows it to be passed around. Somebody originally made the crack about guts and nuts. We may never know who did it, but it was done by a person, not an impersonal force of nature. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/48 "2014-02-02T15:20:43Z")
Goldwater wanted to try and paint Johnson as an ineffective fighter of the Cold War (at times his rhetoric seems to hint Johnson was more sympathetic to the Commies) while at the same time capitalizing on the Truman/Kennedy/Johnson Administrations tendency to get involved in unpopular military contests with the Soviet Union due to containment. Trying to argue the Dems were soft on Communism, while at the same time arguing they started too many wars to fight Communism left his foreign policy statements sounding like a confused muddle. And left him talking about stuff like nuking Vietnam, which while an insane plan, did have the virtue of both killing more Communists then Johnsons policy and not sending an army overseas. I think that’s at least part of the reason why “he’s nuts” was an effective meme. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/49 "2014-02-02T15:30:03Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > I can’t find any evidence that Johnson was the one who parodied Goldwater’s slogan with the slogan “In your guts, you know he’s nuts.” It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that anyone associated with a political campaign would come up with, let alone the politician himself. It sounds like a comedian’s flippant offhand statement. Johnson himself obviously didn’t come up with it, since it doesn’t contain any swear-words. But I think the poster your responding to was just using “Johnson” to mean “the Dem Presidential campaign”, not the man himself. FWIW: [this](http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special25/articles/0529goldwater2.html) AZ article says Bill Moyers “helped coin” the phrase, which is a little vague, but makes sense. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/50 "2014-02-02T16:05:43Z")
What’s the evidence that Bill Moyers came up with the slogan (other than that claim of Goldwater’s, assuming that it accurately quotes Goldwater)? Claiming that saying that Johnson came up with the slogan is equivalent to saying that someone in Johnson’s campaign came up with the slogan just shows me how vague this all is. If a low-level secretary in Johnson’s campaign one day while at home came up with the slogan and told her husband who passed it on to friends, does that mean it came from Johnson’s campaign? I await some definitive evidence where the slogan came from. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/51 "2014-02-02T16:24:59Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > What’s the evidence that Bill Moyers came up with the slogan (other than that claim of Goldwater’s, assuming that it accurately quotes Goldwater)? It’s not a quote by Goldwater, its just an aside the paper put in the article. > [@](#): > > Claiming that saying that Johnson came up with the slogan is equivalent to saying that someone in Johnson’s campaign came up with the slogan just shows me how vague this all is. If a low-level secretary in Johnson’s campaign one day while at home came up with the slogan and told her husband who passed it on to friends, does that mean it came from Johnson’s campaign? That’s my point. Campaigns don’t usually attribute stuff to the person that actually writes them, so if you want to track the quote down to an individual, you’re usually screwed. The best you can say is that it came from the campaign, hence saying “Johnson” came up with it is a useful shorthand. > [@](#): > > I await some definitive evidence where the slogan came from. I don’t think you’ll get it. Anyhoo, its a pretty good line. Up there with “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha” and “Nattering Nabobs of Negativity”. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/52 "2014-02-02T19:53:57Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > septimus, all those quotes you’ve given are from much later in Goldwater’s life, not from around the time he ran for President. It’s hard to tell what he believed on those issues in 1964. He didn’t talk like that back then. He may not have been as public about them, but Goldwater had long been an abortion rights supporter – his first wife Peggy\* was a founder of the Arizona chapter of Planned Parenthood, and in the 1950s they helped one of their daughters obtain an abortion. It’s just that a lot of people mistakenly think that his pro-choice views came later in life, with his second marriage. I couldn’t tell you about his feelings on gay rights, however. (I do know he had a gay grandson, which may have influenced his feelings) \*I believe they even have an award named after her. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/53 "2014-02-02T20:05:56Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Now, I’ll be blunt and say that anyone who doesn’t find his statement that “Negro children… do not have the right…to attend the same schools as white children” to be “extreme” is delusional or not worth arguing with. Certainly it is extreme **now,** but this is not 1964. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/54 "2014-02-02T20:07:17Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > When Goldwater warned of a police state he assumed something that didn’t happen: effective enforcement of the Civil Rights act against ordinary people. In order for that to actually happen, you would need a police state. But it **did** happen, without a police state. The courts proved sufficient. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/55 "2014-02-02T20:10:02Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Goldwater’s problem, as a politician, was that he sucked at it. I read in Rick Perlsteins’s [_Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus,_](http://www.amazon.com/Before-Storm-Goldwater-Unmaking-Consensus/dp/1568584121) that once an admirer presented Goldwater with a new soft drink named after him. Goldwater: “This tastes like piss! I wouldn’t drink it with gin!” A more savvy pol would have downed it with a smile. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/56 "2014-02-02T20:31:37Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But it **did** happen, without a police state. The courts proved sufficient. If an individual won’t sell you his house, the court system isn’t a very efficient way to resolve that. Congress chose not to empower the FBI to just arrest people for things like housing discrimination, but they can under the law, and there was no way for Goldwater to know at the time that they wouldn’t. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/57 "2014-02-02T21:01:04Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > If an individual won’t sell you his house, the court system isn’t a very efficient way to resolve that. Of course it is, and the would-be purchaser can probably get a free lawyer from the Southern Poverty Law Center. > [@adaher](#): > > Congress chose not to empower the FBI to just arrest people for things like housing discrimination, but they can under the law, and there was no way for Goldwater to know at the time that they wouldn’t. But it was still wrong of him to **object** to people getting arrested for housing discrimination, wasn’t it? Besides, I’m not sure the CRA even defines housing discrimination as a crime. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![Itself](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d07c76/32.png) [@Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Itself)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/58 "2014-02-02T22:04:21Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I read in Rick Perlsteins’s [_Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus,_](http://www.amazon.com/Before-Storm-Goldwater-Unmaking-Consensus/dp/1568584121) that once an admirer presented Goldwater with a new soft drink named after him. Goldwater: “This tastes like piss! I wouldn’t drink it with gin!” A more savvy pol would have downed it with a smile. I came in the thread tomention Perlstein’s book. The executive summary of what I took away from it is that (a) Goldwater certainly was not a moderate, and he was actually a (right-wing) libertarian rather than simply a conservative Republican; (b) Goldwater was a terrible campaigner, and a lot of his legacy now is a result of his allowing Johnson to define his public image; (c) Goldwater wasn’t as far right as, say, the John Birch Society, but had trouble differentiating himself from them, especially as his support genuinely was grassroots and not (at least for a while) actively cultivated by his campaign. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/59 "2014-02-02T22:05:22Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue! > > Acceptance Speech as the 1964 Republican Presidential candidate. > 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 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 that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can. > > The Conscience of a Conservative (1960) Conscience of a Conservative was largely written by Brent Bozell (father of the Brent Bozell who runs the Parents’ Television Council today). ---
**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281/60 "2014-02-02T22:23:03Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Let me get this straight. If you and I both support Political Cause X, and I go out and kill someone who doesn’t, you’re supporting violence against the political opposition? Or are you only doing so “in effect”, which means… what? I had trouble parsing that too, so I’ll try to restate the point. If it’s a state’s right to decide to withold civil rights and it has to use violence to do so, the violence must be justified because it upholds the state’s decision. (“Support” was too strong a word for Goldwater, I admit, although a lot of voters at the time probably didn’t think so. “Condoned” is probably more accurate even if he didn’t like the violence himself.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-so-extreme-about-barry-goldwater/680281.md?page=4)