David M. Shribman
William Jennings Bryan called for Americans not to be crucified “upon a cross of gold” in 1896. Franklin Roosevelt introduced the New Deal in 1932. John Kennedy set out the New Frontier in 1960. George H.W. Bush spoke of the “thousand points of light” and issued his “read my lips” vow about new taxes in 1988.
Here, in the run-up to the Republican convention, it may be instructive to recall that of all the scores of American political convention acceptance speeches, the only one that still resonates is the one that spoke of “extremism in the defense of liberty” — the one that was treated with contempt and horror in its own time.
Barry Goldwater’s 1964 speech in San Francisco is 60 years old this week, and the debate that it sparked is fresh, relevant, and vital at this difficult passage in our history.
Most of that speech is fairly conventional, both for Goldwater’s time, when the Cold War was especially frigid, and for ours, with new tensions in the Middle East and on the eastern plains of Europe, and with turmoil on our campuses and crime in our streets. But a mere 30 words catapult a speech from a Republican nominee who lost 44 states into history and enduring controversy.
The Goldwater remarks began innocently enough, though from the distance of six decades they adumbrate important historical events. Indeed, in retrospect, the first nine words (“To my good friend and great Republican, Dick Nixon …”) remind us that this warm introduction served to patch up the Arizonan’s feud with the more moderate Nixon, the Republicans’ losing 1960 nominee, and helped position Nixon as the front-runner for the nomination four years later, when he won the White House.
The following annotated excerpts from the Goldwater speech speak to our time:
My fellow Republicans, our cause is too great for any man to feel worthy of it. Our task would be too great for any man, did he not have with him the heart and the hands of this great Republican Party.
This is not the rhetoric, or the conviction, of former President Donald Trump, who doesn’t possess the humility or historical perspective to recognize that no party — not even the Democrats of Bryan, nominated three times for the presidency, nor of FDR, nominated four times — is the wholly owned subsidiary of one individual.
Tonight there is violence in our streets, corruption in our highest offices, aimlessness among our youth, anxiety among our elders, and there is a virtual despair among the many who look beyond material success for the inner meaning of their lives. Where examples of morality should be set, the opposite is seen.
This is a call from the presidential nominee of the party of capitalism for the rejection of the materialism inherent in the Great Society programs offered by his rival, President Lyndon Johnson. “Here we see that the emerging new American right wing shares values with the counterculture of the left,” said Frank Towers, a University of Calgary historian. “They’re against institutions.”
Those who seek to live your lives for you, to take your liberties in return for relieving you of yours, those who elevate the state and downgrade the citizen must see ultimately a world in which earthly power can be substituted for divine will.
Here is another set-piece remark of modern Republican candidates, a celebration of individualism combined with a bow toward God, an early example of religion as a GOP theme. Ronald Reagan used this combination to win the White House. Republicans for two generations have employed what is perhaps Goldwater’s most enduring legacy.
Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on Earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.
This is a Goldwater passage that could be inserted seamlessly into a Democratic convention speech in August. Watch for it, and forgive its author for plagiarism.
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.
Here, in lines Goldwater underlined in his text, is the crux of the controversy. The New York Times branded the speech, written in large measure by the Lincoln scholar and philosopher Harry Jaffa, as a “challenge” to the delegates and the nation at large. The moderate Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, Goldwater’s chief rival, said the remark was “dangerous, irresponsible, and frightening.”
But this passage, regarded at the time as the end of Republican pragmatism, looks markedly different from the perspective of two-thirds of a century. The Capitol rioters surely believed extremism, in the form of the Jan. 6, 2021, violent assault, was in some sense a defense of liberty — though myriad court cases and the preliminary judgment of history come down against that conclusion. Those pursuing legal action against Trump, rejecting the notion that the final verdict should come from the voters and not the courts, believe “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
Lee Edwards, a Goldwater biographer and historian of the conservative movement, argued the Goldwater remarks should be viewed in the perspective of other “prominent Americans who have counseled extremism throughout our history,” including Patrick Henry (“Give me liberty or give me death!”) and Abraham Lincoln (who said in his “House Divided” speech that “this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free … It will become all one thing or all the other”).
It is forgotten today that two sentences after his “extremism” comments, Goldwater urged his listeners to heed this cautionary warning:
We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and through our Constitution.
Today, when our differences of opinion are so great, Americans see malice in their opponents and cannot agree on the meaning of the pledges inherent in the Constitution. Where have you gone, Barry Goldwater? The great irony is that, for this passage alone, if not for the others, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
A Swampscott High School Class of 1972 member, David M. Shribman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
