Canthook

"He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative." - G. K. Chesterton.

It seems odd, but it's true. A conservative finds himself in the back seat of the car, urging caution, as the bus careens down the side of the mountain at breakneck speed. Sometimes, things will go OK, but the slightest problem, be it another vehicle coming the other way around those blind curves, a grease spot on the road, or a mechanical failure, will send the bus to the bottom of the mountain far more rapidly than anyone desires.

My mother was a Republican, having come by it honestly. Her father died of rheumatic fever when she was 13, but as a staunch Republican he wouldn't allow any newspaper in the house but the Republican stronghold, the Chicago Tribune. Since he lived far distant from Chicago, the grocery ads would have been of no value, but no matter. Her mother was a staunch Republican, as well, and died in the late 1980s, still swearing that Nixon had been railroaded.

When her brother worked as a reporter, it was for the News-Sentinel of Fort Wayne, nominally a Republican newspaper, but impure of heart. William J. Hosey served as Mayor from 1905–1909, 1913–1917, 1921–1925, and 1929–1934, and the News-Sentinel had been imprudent enough to credit Hosey with being popular because he was not the worst mayor a city ever had. Ooh, perfidious albion!

Winston Churchill is credited as saying that "If you're not a liberal when you're 20, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative when you're 40, you have no head." That's highly unlikely; Churchill was a conservative in his early 20s, switching to the liberal party before he was 40. The original quote appears to be in French, by Francois Guisot (1787-1874).

And neo-cons like to quote that, asserting that liberals are soft-headed. For instance, Ann Coulter recently titled a book, "If Democrats had any brains, they'd be Republicans". (With a title like that, you'd think it would be a funny book, but in fact, it's terrible, not because of its political viewpoint, but because it's just not very readable.)

The gist of the quotation, however, is that conservatives are greedy and hard-hearted. That's not the truth at all. Statistics show that conservatives are far quicker to pull out their wallets to support both registered charities and private philanthropies, possibly because many conservatives belong to churches which emphasize tithing.

The first time I gave blood, I phoned my mother, and told her I was surprised how good it made me feel. She said that some people get headaches, and others get a physical rush when they give blood. Oh, I got a headache, I said, but I meant something else. At the time, I was barely scraping by at a minimum-wage job. When I went to church, I always put my offering in an envelope, sometimes to keep it from clinking, always because I was embarrassed to give so little.

But even if I was broke, I could give blood. At the time, blood went for $35 a pint, about half a week's pay for me, and when I could make a contribution, it invariably was a buck, whether I thought the cause was highly deserving or not. Giving a $35 donation made me feel like I was bettering the world. And people who would need the blood? They were obviously in need.

“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.” -- Barry Goldwater

Barry Goldwater's book, the Conscience of a Conservative, was highly popular in 1964 when he ran for president. "For a man who proudly described himself as "simple," Barry Goldwater remains a historical puzzle," wrote Angus Burgin, in a New York Sun review of the book.

Goldwater didn't come close to being elected. He promised "a choice and not an echo," and said that it wasn't unreasonable to use tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Boy, was that a mistake; to a military man, a "tactical" nuclear weapons is extremely limited in capability, something an infantrymen might use at close range, but to the general population, a nuclear weapon was a super-bomb dropped from an airplane on civilian populations. LBJ was the peace candidate, telling students at the University of Akron that he wasn't about to send american boys 9-10,000 miles to do a job that asians ought to be doing for themselves. It didn't work out that way, of course; LBJ escalated the war to a point where over two million people died.

And there were many jokes about the book. "Hmmm. Must be a thin book," was the most common, implying that a conservative is without a conscience. Actually, it is a thin book, but that's because it's pretty simple to understand the conservative movement. It's exactly the same thing as the conservation movement, only applied to political science instead of wildlife. You recognize the value of what you already have, and avoid recklessly throwing it away in a hare-brained scheme.

One of those things is freedom. A conservative treasures the Bill of Rights, all ten of them, and especially values the 10th Amendment: it's the one that says, "Oh, by the way, although we've listed a bunch of rights here, that's not all of them; unless we've expressly given government a power, the government can't step on your toes."

I remember the debates Mom had with her sister, and her sister's husband. Sis was a good Republican, as was her husband, but Mom was about to vote for a Democratic candidate for president for the first time in her life. She wasn't alone. Goldwater barely won his native state of Arizona with 50.4% of the vote, and he carried five other states: Louisiana (56.8%), Mississippi (87.1%), Alabama (69.5%), Georgia (54.1%), and South Carolina (58.9%).

He shouldn't have carried those other five states. He got those states because LBJ's campaign made him look like a segregationist. He didn't oppose civil rights, per se; he was a strong supporter of the Arizona NAACP and he was involved in desegregating the Arizona National Guard. On the other hand, he thought desegregation should be handled by state law, not by federal law. It didn't help when a reporter asked him about the KKK supporting him. He tried to laugh it off, saying that he welcomed any votes he could get. The humor didn't travel well; his opponents made it look like he was endorsing the KKK instead of them endorsing him.

Barry Goldwater served in the Senate until 1987, and was highly critical of the Christian Right who gained power when Reagan took office. He found their actions highly offensive, because they seemed to have no respect for the First Amendment's religious freedoms. “I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass,” he said.

He had little tolerance for ineptitude by public officials. When Kennedy decided at the last minute to withhold air support for the Bay of Pigs invasion, leading to a massacre, Goldwater called JFK a "rather gutless character". He had no use for LBJ, as "not honest enough to be a good president." He was one of three GOP leaders that told Nixon on August 7, 1974, to resign or else he would be impeached. He later said, “Nixon was the most dishonest individual I have ever met in my life. He lied to his wife, his family, his friends, his colleagues in the Congress, lifetime members of his own political party, the American people and the world.”

With other politicians, he could appreciate their dedication even if they had differing philosophies. His jibe at a later presidential candidate, for instance, was funny but not mean-spirited: “Hubert Humphrey talks so fast that listening to him is like trying to read Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages.”

Unlike modern Republicans, he believed that "borrow and spend" was worse than "tax and spend", because one ought to pay his bills. He supported gay rights (“You don't have to be 'straight' to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.”) and abortion rights, because he believed government should stay out of people's bedrooms as well as out of the corporate boardroom - that 10th amendment thing, you know. He was a Major General in the Air Force Reserves, and he believed in a strong military - because he wanted to keep other countries from attacking us. “To insist on strength is not war-mongering. It is peace-mongering,” he said. He couldn't imagine the US attacking someone without provocation, as we did with Iraq.

Mom didn't want to vote for Goldwater because she was scared of him. She favored integration, favored peace, and thought we should help those less fortunate. If she'd talked quietly with Goldwater, she might have gotten over the first two items, for Goldwater agreed with her. They agreed on the last item as well, but Mom thought government entitlements for the needy might reach people too proud to ask for charity.

I remember Mom commenting that Goldwater believed everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps the same way Goldwater did - by inheriting a big department store. She wasn't the only one who felt that way; a "Herblock" cartoon making that same point was widely published.

You'd have to be 65 or older to have voted in the election between Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson, and at least in your 50s to have understood those times. Many neo-cons, however, would do well to read up on Goldwater.

He wasn't right about everything; nobody ever is. But he was called "Mr. Conservative" for a reason. You don't have to be without conscience to be a conservative, without a heart, without integrity. Today's neo-cons need to have someone of Goldwater's integrity to look up to.

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