 This is Classics of Liberty from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute, narrated by Caleb Brown. Today's classic is Barry Goldwater's 1964 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. In mid-July 1964, the Republican Party descended upon the Cow Palace Arena in Daly City, California. At the party's National Convention, a click of traditionalist conservatives surrounding Senator Barry Goldwater fulfilled their long-laid plans to overtake the GOP. After Goldwater's surprisingly energizing campaign for the Senate in 1958, a year of sweeping Democratic victories, conservative talk show host and activist Clarence Mannion commissioned Leo Brent-Bosell to author the conscience of a conservative. Mannion and Bosell agreed with Goldwater to publish the small volume under the senator's name in 1960 during that year's Nixon Convention. The conscience of a conservative launched a grassroots ultra-conservative Goldwater movement culminating in the senator's primary victories in 1964. Through a difficult and often dirty primary season, Goldwater emerged with enough delegates to handily rest the convention from Nelson Rockefeller's liberal establishment wing of the party. Goldwater delegates won their candidate and wrote the party's hardline Cold Warrior platform. In his acceptance speech, Barry Goldwater echoed the ideas from his book and magnified his vision for the Republican Party's role in world history. His bold and enduring declaration on the virtues of extremism and the vices of moderation inspired generations of conservative advocates for American imperialism. Goldwater believed deeply that America was inherently virtuous and so thought it historically necessary that Americans act to defend liberty against the evils of communism. Goldwater temporarily conquered the GOP but his loss to Lyndon Johnson was historic in its own right. Though scorned by history as an epic loser, in the decade since his convention speech virtually no one has been more important to conservative ideas and activism than Barry Goldwater. Good friend and great Republican Dick Nixon and your charming wife Pat, my running mate that wonderful Republican who has served us so well for so long, Bill Miller and his wife Stephanie to Tristan Morton who's done such a commendable job in chairing this convention, to Mr. Herbert Hoover, whom I hope is watching and to that great American and his wife, General and Mrs. Eisenhower, to my family and to all of my fellow Republicans here assembled and Americans across this great nation. From this moment, united and determined, we will go forward together, dedicated to the ultimate and undeniable greatness of the whole man. Together, together we will win. Accept your nomination with a deep sense of humility. I accept too the responsibility that goes with it and I seek your continued help and your continued guidance. 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 hearts and the hands of this great Republican Party? And I promise you tonight that every fiber of my being is consecrated to our cause, that nothing shall be lacking from the struggle that can be brought to it by enthusiasm, by devotion and plain hard work. In this world, no person, no party can guarantee anything. But what we can do and what we shall do is to deserve victory, and victory will be ours. The good Lord raised this mighty Republican Republic to be a home for the brave and to flourish as the land of the free, not to stagnate in the swamp land of collectivism, not to cringe before the bullying of communism. Running against freedom, our people have followed false profit. We must and we shall return to proven ways, not because they are old, but because they are true. We must and we shall set the tides running again in the cause of freedom. This party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom. Freedom made orderly for this nation by our constitutional government. Freedom under a government limited by the laws of nature and of nature's God. Freedom balanced so that order lacking liberty will not become the slavery of the prison shell. Balanced so that liberty lacking order will not become the license of the mob and of the jungle. Americans understand freedom. We have earned it, we have lived for it, and we have died for it. This nation and its people are freedom's model in a searching world. We can be freedom's missionaries in a doubting world. But, ladies and gentlemen, first we must renew freedom's vision in our own hearts and in our own, the administration which we shall replace has distorted and lost that vision. It has talked and talked and talked and talked the words of freedom, but it has failed and failed and failed in the works of freedom. Failures cement the wall of shame in Berlin. Failures block the sands of shame at the Bay of Pigs. Failures mark the slow death of freedom in Laos. Failures infest the jungles of Vietnam. Failures haunt the houses of our once great alliances and undermine the greatest bulwark ever erected by free nations, the NATO community. Lost leadership, obscure purpose, weakening will and the risk of inciting our sworn enemies to new aggressions and to new excesses. And because of this administration, we are tonight a world divided. We are a nation become. We have lost the brisk pace of diversity and the genius of individual creativity. We are plodding along at a pace set by centralized planning, red tape, rules without responsibility, and regimentation without recourse. Useful jobs in our country, our people have been offered bureaucratic make-work. Rather than moral leadership, they have been given bread and circuses. They have been given spectacles, and yes, they've even been given scandals. Tonight, there is violence in our streets, corruption in our highest offices, aimlessness amongst our youth, anxiety among our elders, and there's a virtual despair among the many who look beyond material success for the inner meaning of their lives. And where examples of morality should be set, the opposite is seen. Small men seeking great wealth or power have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity. Certainly simple honesty is not too much to demand of men in government. We find it in most. Republicans demand it from everyone. They demand it from everyone, no matter how exalted or protected his position might be. The growing menace in our country tonight, to personal safety, to life, to limb and property, in homes, in churches, on the playgrounds and places of business, particularly in our great cities, is the mounting concern or should be of every thoughtful citizen in the United States. Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign aggression, is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any government. And a government that cannot fulfill this purpose is one that cannot long command the loyalty of its citizens. History shows us, it demonstrates that nothing, nothing prepares the way for tyranny, more than the failure of public officials to keep the streets safe from bullies and mortars. We Republicans see all this as more, much more than the result of mere political differences or mere political mistakes. We see this as the result of a fundamentally and absolutely wrong view of man, his nature and his destiny. 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. And this nation was founded upon the rejection of that notion and upon the acceptance of God as the author of freedom. Now 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. Their mistaken course stems from false notions, ladies and gentlemen, of equality. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism. It is the cause of republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people. And to help us God, that is exactly what a republican president will do with the help of a republican Congress. It is further the cause of republicanism to restore a clear understanding of the tyranny of man over man in the world at large. It is our cause to dispel the foggy thinking which avoids hard decisions in the delusion that a world of conflict will somehow mysteriously resolve itself into a world of harmony if we just don't rock the boat or irritate the forces of aggression, and this is always wrong. A strong can remain free, that only the strong can keep the peace. It reminds you, or my fellow Americans, regardless of party, that republicans have shouldered this hard responsibility and marched in this cause before. It was republican leadership under Dwight Eisenhower that kept the peace and passed along to this administration the mightiest arsenal for defense the world has ever known. It reminds you that it was the strength and the believable will that kept the peace by using our strength, by using it in the Formosa Straits and in Lebanon, and by showing it courageously at all times. During those republican years that the thrust of communist imperialism was blunted. It was during those years of republican leadership that this world moved closer, not to war, but closer to peace than at any other time in the last three decades. And I needn't remind you, but I will, that it's been during democratic years that our strength to deter war has stood still and even gone into a planned decline. It has been during democratic years that we have weakly stumbled into conflict, timidly refusing to draw our own lines against aggression, deceitfully refusing to tell even our own people of our full participation, and tragically letting our finest men die on battlefields unmarked by purpose, unmarked by pride, or the prospect of victory. Yes, yesterday that was coming up. Tonight it is Vietnam. Make no bones to this. Don't try to sweep fish under the rug. We are at war in Vietnam. Who is the commander-in-chief of our forces refuses to say, refuses to say, mind you, whether or not the objective over there is victory. And his secretary of defense continues to mislead and misinform the American people, and enough of it's gone by. I needn't remind you, but I will. It has been during that a billion persons were cast into communist captivity and their fates cynically sealed. Today, today in our beloved country, we have an administration which seems eager to deal with communism in every coin known, from goal to weak, from consulates to confidences, and even human freedom itself. The American cause demands that we brand communism as the principal disturber of peace in the world today. We should brand it as the only significant disturber of the peace, and we must make clear that until its goals of conquest are absolutely renounced and its relations with all nations tempered, communism, and the governments it now controls, our enemies of every man on earth who is or wants to be free can keep the peace. And only if we remain strong, only if we keep our eyes open and keep our guard up can we prevent war. Take this abundantly clear. I don't intend to let peace or freedom be torn from our grasp because of lack of strength or lack of will, and that I promise you Americans, we must look beyond the defense of freedom today to its extension tomorrow. The communism which boasts it will bury us will instead give way to the forces of freedom. I can see in the distant and yet recognizable future the outlines of a world worthy of our dedication, our every risk, our every effort, our every sacrifice along the way. Yes, a world that will redeem the suffering of those who will be liberated from tyranny. I can see and I suggest that all thoughtful men must contemplate the flowering of an Atlantic civilization, the whole of Europe reunified and freed, trading openly across its borders, communicating openly across the world. Now, this is a goal or it's a truly inspiring goal for all free men to set for themselves during the latter half of the 20th century. I can see and must thrill to the advance of this Atlantic civilization joined by its great ocean highway to the United States. What a destiny, what a destiny can be ours to stand as a great central pillar linking Europe, the Americas and the venerable and vital peoples and cultures of the Pacific. I can see a day when all the Americas north and south will be linked in a mighty system, a system in which the errors and misunderstandings of the past will be submerged one by one in a rising tide of prosperity and interdependence. We know that the misunderstandings of centuries are not to be wiped away in a day or wiped away in an hour, but we pledge, we pledge at human sympathy what our neighbors to the South call an attitude of simpatico. No less than enlightened self-interest will be our guide. I can see this Atlantic civilization galvanizing and guiding emergent nations everywhere. Now I know that freedom is not the fruit of every soil. I know that our own freedom was achieved through centuries by unremitting efforts of brave and wise men. And I know that the road to freedom is a long and a challenging road. And I know also that some men may walk away from it, that some men resist challenge, accepting the false security of governmental paternalism. And I pledge that the America will extend its hand in help in teaching and in cultivation so that all new nations will be at least encouraged, encouraged to go our way so that they will not wander down the dark alleys of tyranny or the dead-end streets of collectivism. My fellow Republicans, we do no man a service being freedom's light under a bushel of mistaken humility. I seek an America out of its ways, out of its dreams, and determined actively to proclaim them. Our example to the world must, like charity, begin at home. In our vision of a good and decent future, free and peaceful, there must be room, room for the liberation of the energy and the talent of the individual. Otherwise, our vision is blind at the outset. We must assure a society here, which while never abandoning the needy or forsaking the helpless, nurtures incentives and opportunities for the creative and the productive. We must know the whole good is the product of many single contributions. And I cherish a day when our children once again will restore as heroes to sort of men and women who, unafraid and undaunted, pursue the truth, strive to cure disease, subdue and make truthful our natural environment, and produce the embedded engines of production, science and technology. This nation, whose creative people have enhanced this entire span of history, should again thrive upon the greatness of all those things which we, we as individual citizens, can and should do. And during Republican years, this again will be a nation of men and women, of families proud of their roles, jealous of their responsibilities, unlimited in their aspirations, a nation where all who can will be self-reliant. We can see in our constitutional form of government the great framework which assures the orderly but dynamic fulfillment of the whole man. And we see the whole man as the great reason for instituting orderly government in the first place. We see, we see in private property and in economy based upon and fostering private property, the one way to make government a durable ally of the whole man rather than his determined enemy. We see in the sanctity of private property the only durable foundation for constitutional government in a free society. And beyond that, we see in cherished diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts, of motives and accomplishments. We don't seek to live anyone's life for him. We only seek to secure his rights, guarantee him opportunity, guarantee him opportunity to strive. With government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwise be performed, Republicans seek a government that attends to its inherent responsibilities of maintaining a stable monetary and fiscal climate, encouraging a free and a competitive economy, and enforcing law. Do we seek inventiveness, diversity and creative difference within a stable order? For we Republicans define government's role where needed at many, many levels. Preferably though, the one closest to the people involved. Counts in our cities, in our counties, in our states, in our regional compacts, and the national government. Let me remind you is the ladder of liberty built by decentralized power. On it also we must have balance between the branches of government at every level. Balance, diversity, creative difference. These are the elements of the Republican equation. Republicans agree, Republicans agree hardly to disagree on many, many of their applications. But we have never disagreed on the basic fundamental issues of why you and I are Republicans. This is a party. This Republican party is a party for free men, not for blind followers, and not for conformists. In 1858 Abraham Lincoln said this was a Republican party, and I quote him because he probably could have said it during the last week or so. It was composed of strange, discordant and even hostile elements, end of the quote in 1958. Yet all of these elements agreed on one paramount objective, to arrest the progress of slavery and place it in the course of ultimate extinction. Today as then, but more urgently and more broadly than then, the task of preserving and enlarging freedom at home and of safeguarding it from the forces of tyranny abroad is great enough to challenge all our resources and to require all our strength. Who joins us in all sincerity, we welcome. Those we don't expect to enter our ranks in any, let our Republicanism so focused and so dedicated not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels. I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. That moderating the pursuit of justice is no virtue. The beauty of the very system we Republicans are pledged to restore and revitalize. The beauty of this federal system of ours is in its reconciliation of diversity with unity. We must not seem, Alice, 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 is not to level out the world or make its people conform in computer regimented sameness. Our Republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty throughout the world. It is a very human cause for very human. This party, its good people and its unquenchable devotion to freedom will not fulfill the purposes of this campaign which we launch here now until our cause has won the day. Inspired and shown the way to a tomorrow, I repeat, I accept your nomination with humbleness, with pride, and you and I are going to fight for the goodness of our land. That was Barry Goldwater's 1964 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. Find more classics of liberty at libertarianism.org.