 This is Classics of Liberty from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute, narrated by Caleb Brown. Today's classic is Barry Goldwater's 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, Part II. In this second of three episodes exploring Barry Goldwater's foundational book, we examined the topics of states' rights, civil rights, taxation, and government spending. These are some of the most important chapters for determining the historical role of conscience of a conservative in forming Nixon's silent majority and Reagan's later moral majority. Here, Goldwater attempts to thread the philosophical and political needle of segregation, and though he personally found the practice deplorable, he maintained that the national government possessed no integrative powers over the states. While Democrats claimed the civil rights mantle, segregationists, traditionalist conservatives, and Libertarian Republicans gradually coalesced behind the Goldwater argument. The conscience of a conservative argues that when one's rights are properly construed and compared with the properly limited realms of governance, there can be literally no conflict between states and individuals. States could justly violate individual rights no more than the national government could justly encroach upon state powers. In either case, Goldwater believed the proper recourse should be orderly and legal rather than revolutionary or autocratic. This message appealed to segregationists and traditionalists from both parties, but most importantly drew a red cultural line across the Republican Party separating the liberalizing Eisenhower's from the law and order Nixon's. When combined with his almost unimpeachably Libertarian treatment of taxes and spending, we here see Goldwater deftly sketching the outlines of the modern conservative movement. Though contemporary Libertarians will no doubt find much to criticize in Goldwater's discussions of state power and cultural conservatism, time and politics both did much to merge conservatism and libertarianism. For better or worse, this best-selling book continues to define much of the content and course of libertarianism and libertarian activism within the Republican Party. For that reason alone, the conscience of a conservative deserves to be reckoned with and understood in the context of its time and hours. The Conscience of a Conservative, Chapter 3, States' Rights Franklin Roosevelt's rapid conversion from constitutionalism to the doctrine of unlimited government is an oft-told story. But I am here concerned not so much with the abandonment of states' rights by the National Democratic Party, an event that occurred some years ago when that party was captured by the socialist ideologues in and about the labor movement, as by the unmistakable tendency of the Republican Party to adopt the same course. The result is that today neither of our two parties maintains a meaningful commitment to the principles of states' rights. Thus, the cornerstone of the Republic, our chief bulwark against the encroachment of individual freedom by big government, is fast disappearing under the piling sands of absolutism. The Republican Party to be sure gives lip service to states' rights. We often talk about returning to the states their rightful powers. The administration has even gone so far as to sponsor a federal state conference on the problem. But deeds are what count, and I regret to say that in actual practice, the Republican Party, like the Democratic Party, summons the coercive power of the federal government whenever national leaders conclude that the states are not performing satisfactorily. The trouble with this approach is that it treats the Constitution of the United States as a kind of handbook in political theory to be heeded or ignored depending on how it fits the plans of contemporary federal officials. The 10th Amendment is not a general assumption, but a prohibitory rule of law. The 10th Amendment recognizes the state's jurisdiction in certain areas. States' rights means that the states have a right to act or not to act as they see fit in the areas reserved to them. The Constitution, I repeat, draws a sharp and clear line between federal jurisdiction and state jurisdiction. The federal government's failure to recognize that line has been a crushing blow to the principle of limited government. There is a reason for its reservation of states' rights. Not only does it prevent the accumulation of power in a central government that is remote from the people and relatively immune from popular restraints, it also recognizes the principle that essentially local problems are best dealt with by the people most directly concerned. Who knows better than New Yorkers how much and what kind of publicly financed slum clearance in New York City is needed and can be afforded? Who knows better than Nebraskans whether that state has an adequate nursing program? Who knows better than Arizonans the kind of school program that is needed to educate their children? The people of my own state, and I am confident that I speak for the majority of them, have long since seen through the spurious suggestion that federal aid comes free. They know that the money comes out of their own pockets and that it is returned to them minus a broker's fee taken by the federal bureaucracy. They know too that the power to decide how that money shall be spent is withdrawn from them and exercised by some planning board deep in the caverns of one of the federal agencies. They understand this represents a great and perhaps irreparable loss, not only to their wealth, but in their priceless liberty. Nothing could so far advance the cause of freedom as for state officials throughout the land to assert their rightful claims to lost state power and for the federal government to withdraw promptly and totally from every jurisdiction which the Constitution reserved to the states. Chapter 4 and Civil Rights An attempt has been made in recent years to disparage the principle of states' rights by equating it with the defense of the South's position on racial integration. I have already indicated that the reach of states' rights is much broader than that, that it affects northerners as well as southerners and concerns many matters that have nothing to do with the race question. Still, it is quite true that the integration issue is affected by the states' rights principle and that the South's position on the issue is today the most conspicuous expression of the principle. So much so that the country is now in the grips of a spirited and sometimes ugly controversy over an imagined conflict between states' rights on the one hand and what are called civil rights on the other. If states' rights are so asserted as to encroach upon individual rights that are protected by valid federal laws, then the exercise of state power is a nullity. Conversely, if individual rights are so asserted as to infringe upon valid state power, then the assertion of those rights is a nullity. The rights themselves do not clash. The conflict arises from a failure to define the two categories of rights correctly and to assert them lawfully. States' rights are easy enough to define. The Tenth Amendment does it succinctly. The power is not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people. Civil rights should be no harder. In fact, however, it is one of the most badly understood concepts in modern political usage. Civil rights is frequently used synonymously with human rights or with natural rights. As often as not, it is simply a name for describing an activity that someone deems politically or socially desirable. A sociologist writes a paper proposing to abolish some inequity where a politician makes a speech about it and behold, a new civil right is born. The Supreme Court has displayed the same creative powers. A civil right is a right that is asserted and is therefore protected by some valid law. It may be asserted by the common law or by local or federal statutes or by the Constitution. But unless a right is incorporated in the law, it is not a civil right and is not enforceable by the instruments of the civil law. There may be some rights, natural, human, or otherwise, that should also be civil rights. But if we desire to give such rights the protection of the law, our recourse is to a legislature or to the amendment procedures of the Constitution. We must not look to politicians or sociologists or the courts to correct the deficiency. In the field of racial relations, there are some rights that are clearly protected by the valid laws and are therefore civil rights. One of them is the right to vote. The 15th Amendment provides that no one shall be denied the franchise on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, similarly with certain legal privileges enforced by the 14th Amendment. The legislative history of that amendment makes it clear, I quote from the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which the amendment was designed to legitimize, that people of all races shall be equally entitled to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, to purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property. After the passage of that act and the amendment, all persons, Negroes included, had a civil right to these protections. It is otherwise, let us note, with education. For the federal constitution does not require the states to maintain racially mixed schools. Despite the recent holding of the Supreme Court, I am firmly convinced, not only that integrated schools are not required, but that the constitution does not permit any interference whatsoever by the federal government in the field of education. It may be just or wise or expedient for Negro children to attend the same schools as white children, but they do not have a civil right to do so, which is protected by the federal constitution, or which is enforceable by the federal government. The intentions of the founding fathers in this matter are beyond any doubt. No powers regarding education were given the federal government. Consequently, under the 10th amendment, jurisdiction over the entire field was reserved to the states. The remaining question is whether the 14th amendment, concretely, that amendments equal protection clause, modify the original prohibition against federal intervention. To my knowledge, it has never been seriously argued. The argument certainly was not made by the Supreme Court that the authors of the 14th amendment intended to alter the constitutional scheme with regard to education. Indeed, in the famous school integration decision, Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court justices expressly acknowledged that they were not being guided by the intentions of the amendment's authors. In approaching this problem, Chief Justice Warren said, we cannot turn the clock back to 1868 when the amendment was adopted. We must consider public education in the light of its full development and in its present place in American life throughout the nation. In effect, the Court said what matters is not the ideas of the men who wrote the Constitution, but the Court's ideas. It was only by engrafting its own views onto the established law of the land that the Court was able to reach the decision it did. I am therefore not impressed by the claim that the Supreme Court's decision on school integration is the law of the land. The Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof are the supreme law of the land. The Constitution is what its authors intended it to be and said it was, not what the Supreme Court says it is. If we condone the practice of substituting our own intentions for those of the Constitution's framers, we reject, in effect, the principle of constitutional government. We endorse a rule of men, not of laws. It so happens that I am in agreement with the objectives of the Supreme Court as stated in the Brown decision. I believe that it is both wise and just for Negro children to attend the same schools as whites and that to deny them this opportunity carries with it strong implications of inferiority. I am not prepared, however, to impose that judgment of mine on the people of Mississippi or South Carolina or to tell them what methods should be adopted and what pace should be kept in striving toward that goal. That is their business, not mine. I believe that the problem of race relations, like all social and cultural problems, is best handled by the people directly concerned. Social and cultural change, however desirable, should not be affected by the engines of national power. Let us, through persuasion and education, seek to improve institutions we deem defective. But let us, in doing so, respect the orderly processes of the law, any other course enthrones tyrants and dooms freedom. Chapter 7 Taxes and spending We have all heard much throughout our lifetimes and seen little happen on the subject of high taxes. Where is the politician who has not promised his constituents a fight to the death for lower taxes and who has not proceeded to vote for the very spending projects and tax cuts impossible? Talk of tax reduction has thus come to have a hollow ring. The people listen but do not believe. And worse, as the public grows more and more cynical, the politician feels less and less compelled to take his promises seriously. I submit that government does not have an unlimited claim on the earnings of individuals. One of the foremost precepts of the natural law is man's right to the possession and use of his property, and a man's earnings are his property as much as his land and the house in which he lives. Indeed, in the industrial age, earnings are probably the most prevalent form of property. It has been the fashion in recent years to disparage property rights, to associate them with greed and materialism. This attack on property rights is actually an attack on freedom. It is another instance of the modern failure to take into account the whole man. Property and freedom are inseparable. To the extent government takes the one in the form of taxes, it intrudes on the other. That having said that each man has an inalienable right to his property, it must also be said that every citizen has an obligation to contribute his fair share to the legitimate functions of government. Government, in other words, has some claim on our wealth, and the problem is to define that claim in a way that gives due consideration to the property rights of the individual. The size of the government's rightful claim, that is the total amount it may take in taxes, will be determined by how we define the legitimate functions of government. With regard to the federal government, the Constitution is the proper standard of legitimacy. Its legitimate powers, as we have seen, are those the Constitution has delegated to it. Therefore, if we adhere to the Constitution, the federal government's total tax bill will be the cost of exercising such of its delegated powers as our representatives deem necessary in the national interest. But conversely, when the federal government enacts programs that are not authorized by its delegated powers, the taxes needed to pay for such programs exceed the government's rightful claim on our wealth. The idea that a man who makes $100,000 a year should be forced to contribute 90% of his income to the cost of government, while the man who makes $10,000 is made to pay 20%, is repugnant to my notions of justice. I do not believe in punishing success. To put it more broadly, I believe it is contrary to the natural right of property to which we have just alluded, and is therefore immoral to deny to the man whose labor has produced more abundant fruit than that of his neighbor the opportunity of enjoying the abundance he has created. As for the claim that the government needs the graduated tax for revenue purposes, the facts are to the contrary. The total revenue collected from income taxes beyond the 20% level amounts to less than $5 billion, less than the federal government now spends on one item of agriculture. The graduated tax is a confiscatory tax. Its effect, and to a large extent its aim, is to bring down all men to a common level. Many of the leading proponents of the graduated tax frankly admit that their purpose is to redistribute the nation's wealth. Their aim is an egalitarian society, an objective that does violence both to the charter of the Republic and the laws of nature. We are all equal in the eyes of God, but we are equal in no other respect. Artificial devices for enforcing equality among unequal men must be rejected if we would restore the charter and honor to those laws. One problem with regard to taxes then is to enforce justice to abolish the graduated features of our tax laws, and the sooner we get at the job the better. The other, and the one that has the greatest impact on our daily lives, is to reduce the volume of taxes. And this takes us to the question of government spending. While there is something to be said for the proposition that spending will never be reduced so long as there is money in the federal treasury, I believe that as a practical matter, spending cuts must come before tax cuts. If we reduce taxes before firm, principled decisions are made about expenditures, we will court deficit spending and the inflationary effects that invariably follow. It is in the area of spending that the Republican Party's performance in its seven years of power has been most disappointing. I do not mean to suggest, of course, that things would have been different under a Democratic administration. Every year the Democratic National Leadership demands that the federal government spend more than it is spending and that Republicans propose to spend. The root evil is that the government is engaged in activities in which it has no legitimate business, the only way to curtail spending substantially is to eliminate the programs on which excess spending is consumed. The government must begin to withdraw from a whole series of programs that are outside its constitutional mandate, from social welfare programs, education, public power, agriculture, public housing, urban renewal and all the other activities that can be better performed by lower levels of government or by private institutions or by individuals. And let us, by all means, remember the nation's interest in reducing taxes and spending. The need for economic growth that we hear so much about these days will be achieved not by the government harnessing the nation's economic forces, but by emancipating them. By reducing taxes and spending we will not only return to the individual the means with which he can assert his freedom and dignity, but also guarantee the nation the economic strength that will always be its ultimate defense against foreign foes. That was Barry Goldwater's 1960 book The Conscience of a Conservative, Part 2. Find more classics of liberty at libertarianism.org