According to this article, [1] Barry Goldwater’s book, The Conscience of a Conservative, is being reissued. Timely reading? Depends on what audience at which this is aimed.
I seriously doubt conservatives of the Rove/Norquist stripe will have much sympathy with Goldwater, who now seems admirable and even iconic compared to the dunces dancing to the tune of the Far Right today.
It might be well to remember that traditional conservatism bears little substantive resemblance to what passes as popular conservatism today. Since Reagan, the Right has taken up the gauntlet of attack as its primary ethic, and this is now costing them.
It has been asked in recent decades just what Liberals stand for, but I think the question is better applied to Conservatives. A quick glance at the Right’s c.v.s suggests they stand for fewer taxes, more rigid controls on judicial interference with private business, fewer taxes, banning sex, fewer taxes, weakening environmental conservation, fewer taxes, more expensive health care, fewer taxes…
Not an impressive list. They have become reactive, even when they clearly had won the field in popular support, shouting back at the Left as if people still weren’t listening, and it has become all they seem to do. Goldwater’s considered conservatism is almost balm-like in its relative rationalism.
Conservatism itself has never been a bad thing. Harkening back to an earlier time, all it meant was being more cautious, being less willing to spend public money on “What if?” proposals, and being averse to change for change’s sake. It meant relying on the vast resource of the private sector to solve most problems instead of assuming that corporations automatically meant bad things about to happen.
Liberalism, on the other hand, was once all about Free Markets. Laissez-faire capitalism is a liberal invention. It meant, in this formulation, opening up opportunities for those kept artificially out by a staid and traditional set of procedures.
Things change. We have now devolved in politics to what amounts to screaming matches, cut fights, and ritual playground games, with both sides lining up on opposite sides to denounce anything the other side offers. It has perverted the discourse.
Consider: birth control is a privacy issue. It ought to be the most conservative issue we have. Conservatives who traditionally would denounce any invasion of privacy as an infringement on fundamental rights should embrace the notion of a right to choose almost reflexively.
Consider: Barry Goldwater became a mighty advocate of environmentalism. Preserving the land, nurturing natural resources, ought to be a seedbed for conservative activism.
Consider: Involvement in foreign wars has been the legacy of our most progressive and (in a contemporary sense) Liberal presidents. Conservatives have generally been averse to what amounts to gunpowder diplomacy, yet that situation has now reversed itself profoundly.
Since the end of WWII, a brand of conservatism has evolved, exemplified early on by writers like Phyllis Schlafly, that has less to do with authentic conservatism and mostly to do with the creation of an established order wherein public policy amounts to little more than protectionism of the privileges of an elite. The desire for a preconceived social order, supportive of the self-selected “natural” rights of those on the top end of private money, has predominated this strain of rightwing thought. Fewer taxes, to these folks, does not so much equate with less public service as it does to less government oversight. Environmental policy ends with what one of these folks can see from the front porch of his or her mansion in the midst of a vast estate. Denial of birth control has less to do with any moral right than it is a method of keeping the lower incomes population bound to a cycle of child-rearing that makes it virtually impossible for most of them ever to rise up economically–or intellectually–to challenge the status quo. (When I say intellectually, what I mean is this: how many people have the time or resource to continue an education when they have children to raise and more children to raise? Some can manage, but without a viable method of child care, this becomes categorically impossible—and what is one of the chief failures of the welfare and antipoverty programs of the past four decades? No child care.)
Rove, Norquist, Reed, Schalfly, Coulter, Riley, Limbaugh, Lott….these folks would not be recognized by Barry Goldwater as conservatives. They are wanna-be aristos.
But this just makes the response of the Left even more problematic. Not all aspects of conservatism are repugnant, and not all conservatives are fascists. It is a mistake to shut out their voices simply because they’re on the other side of the playground.
Maybe checking out Goldwater’s book would be a good place to start over. We might discover, under the detritus of 27 years of ugly schoolyard rumbles, that we have more in common than we think.
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