The Conscience of a Conservative

By Barry Goldwater

Published in 1960 under the name of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, “The Conscience of a Conservative” is a widely influential and important book on the American conservative political movement. While the book was published under Goldwater’s name, it was ghostwritten by L. Brent Bozell Jr., the brother-in-law of William F. Buckley and Goldwater’s speech writer in the 1950s. The book was instantly popular and catapulted Goldwater, a Senator from Arizona when the book was published, into the national spotlight and helped him became the Republican nominee for President in 1964. Bozell’s concise and thorough work details the conservative social and political positions on topics including education, labor unions, taxation, farming and agriculture policies, and civil rights. The book reignited the conservative movement and led to the rise of Reagan-style Republicanism in the 1980s. “The Conscience of a Conservative” defines what it means to be a modern political conservative in a way that is very accessible and understandable and continues to influence American political writers to this day. It remains an essential read for any student of political science and post-war American political history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Jan 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781420972580

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THE CONSCIENCE OF A CONSERVATIVE

By BARRY GOLDWATER

The Conscience of a Conservative

By Barry Goldwater

Ghostwritten by L. Brent Bozell Jr.

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-7258-0

This edition copyright © 2021. Digireads.com Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Chapter One. The Conscience of a Conservative

Chapter Two. The Perils of Power

Chapter Three. States’ Rights

Chapter Four. And Civil Rights

Chapter Five. Freedom for the Farmer

Chapter Six. Freedom for Labor

Chapter Seven. Taxes and Spending

Chapter Eight. The Welfare State

Chapter Nine. Some Notes on Education

Chapter Ten. The Soviet Menace

Foreword

This book is not written with the idea of adding to or improving on the Conservative philosophy. Or of bringing it up to date. The ancient and tested truths that guided our Republic through its early days will do equally well for us. The challenge to Conservatives today is quite simply to demonstrate the bearing of a proven philosophy on the problems of our own time.

I should explain the considerations that led me to join in this effort. I am a politician, a United States Senator. As such, I have had an opportunity to learn something about the political instincts of the American people, I have crossed the length and breadth of this great land hundreds of times and talked with tens of thousands of people, with Democrats and Republicans, with farmers and laborers and businessmen. I find that America is fundamentally a Conservative nation. The preponderant judgment of the American people, especially of the young people, is that the radical, or Liberal, approach has not worked and is not working. They yearn for a return to Conservative principles.

At the same time, I have been in a position to observe first hand how Conservatism is faring in Washington. And it is all too clear that in spite of a Conservative revival among the people the radical ideas that were promoted by the New and Fair Deals under the guise of Liberalism still dominate the councils of our national government.

In a country where it is now generally understood and proclaimed that the people’s welfare depends on individual self reliance rather than on state paternalism. Congress annually deliberates over whether the increase in government welfarism should be small or large.

In a country where it is now generally understood and proclaimed that the federal government spends too much, Congress annually deliberates over whether to raise the federal budget by a few billion dollars or by many billion.

In a country where it is now generally understood and proclaimed that individual liberty depends on decentralized government, Congress annually deliberates over whether vigorous or halting steps should be taken to bring state government into line with federal policy.

In a country where it is now generally understood and proclaimed that Communism is an enemy bound to destroy us, Congress annually deliberates over means of co-existing with the Soviet Union.

And so the question arises: Why have American people been unable to translate their views into appropriate political action? Why should the nation’s underlying allegiance to Conservative principles have failed to produce deeds in Washington?

I do not blame my brethren in government, all of whom work hard and conscientiously at their jobs. I blame Conservatives—ourselves—myself. Our failure, as one Conservative writer has put it, in the failure of the Conservative demonstration. 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.

Perhaps we suffer from an over-sensitivity to the judgments of those who rule the mass communications media. We are daily consigned by enlightened commentators to political oblivion: Conservatism, we are told, is out-of-date. The charge is preposterous and we ought boldly to say so. The laws of God, and of nature, have no date-line. The principles on which the Conservative political position is based have been established by a process that has nothing to do with the social, economic and political landscape that changes from decade to decade and from century to century. These principles are derived from the nature of man, and from the truths that God has revealed about His creation. Circumstances do change. So do the problems that are shaped by circumstances. But the principles that govern the solution of the problems do not. To suggest that the Conservative philosophy is out of date is akin to saying that the Golden Rule, or the Ten Commandments or Aristotle’s Politics are out of date. The Conservative approach is nothing more or less than an attempt to apply the wisdom and experience and the revealed truths of the past to the problems of today. The challenge is not to find new or different truths, but to learn how to apply established truths to the problems of the contemporary world. My hope is that one more Conservative voice will be helpful in meeting this challenge.

This book is an attempt to bridge the gap between theory and practice. I shall draw upon my speeches, the radio and television broadcasts and the notes I have made over the years in the hope of doing what one is often unable to do in the course of a harried day’s work on the Senate floor: to show the connection between Conservative principles so widely espoused, and Conservative action, so generally neglected.

Chapter One. The Conscience of a Conservative

I have been much concerned that so many people today with Conservative instincts feel compelled to apologize for them. Or if not to apologize directly, to qualify their commitment in a way that amounts to breast-beating. Republican candidates, Vice President Nixon has said, should be economic conservatives, but conservatives with a heart. President Eisenhower announced during his first term, I am conservative when it comes to economic problems but liberal when it comes to human problems. Still other Republican leaders have insisted on calling themselves progressive Conservatives.{1}* These formulations are tantamount to an admission that Conservatism is a narrow, mechanistic economic theory that may work very well as a bookkeeper’s guide, but cannot be relied upon as a comprehensive political philosophy.

The same judgment, though in the form of an attack rather than an admission, is advanced by the radical camp. We liberals, they say, "are interested in people. Our concern is with human beings, while you Conservatives are preoccupied with the preservation of economic privilege and status. Take them a step further, and the Liberals will turn the accusations into a class argument: it is the little people that concern us, not the malefactors of great wealth."

Such statements, from friend and foe alike, do great injustice to the Conservative point of view. Conservatism is not an economic theory, though it has economic implications. The shoe is precisely on the other foot: it is Socialism that subordinates all other considerations to man’s material well-being. It is Conservatism that puts material things in their proper place—that has a structured view of the human being and of human society, in which economics plays only a subsidiary role.

The root difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals of today is that Conservatives take account of the whole man, while the Liberals tend to look only at the material side of man’s nature. The Conservative believes that man is, in part, an

Reviews for The Conscience of a Conservative

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A very interesting and somewhat unsettling look at the philosophy (not sure what "conscience" really has to do with it) of a man who had hopes of occupying the White House. His view of the world, and the United States' place in it, could have taken us in a very different direction domestically and globally. He advocated the withdrawal of federal involvement in a "whole series of programs that are outside its constitutional mandate" including education, agriculture, public power and urban renewal; he favored a flat rate for income tax, and the development of a "variety of small, clean nuclear weapons" with which to meet the threat of Communism. (If anyone knows what those weapons would be, you're one up on this kid.) He proposed making participation in Social Security voluntary, and opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which he viewed as an intrusion of the federal government into matters properly left to the individual states. (Despite this position, he later became a proponent of legalized abortion and gay rights, and took great exception to the growing influence of the religious right on the Republican Party.) In 1964, the electorate found Senator Goldwater too right-wing and/or too immoderate for its taste, and Lyndon Johnson soundly defeated him. Goldwater is a fascinating historical figure, and I'd love to read a biography of him written by someone like David McCullough.

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This Arizona Senator was a fixture in Washington D.C. for decades, and a presidential candidate. But, he did not seem a friendly presence on the scene at the time. His brand of conservatism was considered rather right-wing, and is now probably deeply centrist now-a-days in the post Trumpian era. Rather measured, and quite civilized for a Republican. A useful book for the student of the times.

[14geronimo_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An important little book. The cold warmonger pages (last section only) are outdated, but the rest of the book is a refreshing discourse, whether you agree or not is hardly the question. You just don't hear politicians speak like that anymore - and you won't be able to listen to them in the same way anymore either...