Barry Goldwater on the couch
In his speech this week (July 16) in 1964, accepting the Republican Party nomination for president, Barry Goldwater uttered one of the most controversial lines ever spoken by a presidential candidate when he stated, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
It was fuel for the fire to those numerous critics, including many in the Republican Party, who thought Goldwater was himself an “extremist,” and therefore doomed to lose to the incumbent President Lyndon Johnson in a landslide. There was even a last-minute attempt to replace Goldwater with the moderate Republican Pennsylvania governor, William Scranton, but Goldwater prevailed.
Undoubtedly Goldwater held some beliefs that were far from the mainstream, and his near nonchalant talk of using nuclear weapons against America’s enemies scared people. He also opposed civil rights legislation at a time, the early 1960s, when the justification for equal rights for African-americans was increasingly self-evident.
Still, speaking of extremism, a group representing more than 1,000 psychiatrists nationwide, most of them Republicans, caused a stir by contributing to the “extremist” impression of Goldwater. They publicly stated that Goldwater was “paranoid,” a “dangerous lunatic,” “unfit to be president,” and had “a Godlike self-image,” even though not one of those psychiatrists ever sat down and talked with him, let alone clinically diagnosed him.
Still, with or without this literal psycho-babble regarding Goldwater’s sanity, Goldwater’s landslide defeat was indeed inevitable, but there was such a backlash against this group of arrogant, knowit-all shrinks that the American Psychiatric Association, realizing it faced a public relations disaster, established what is called “The Goldwater Rule.” Today it is unethical for a psychiatrist to publicly opine on the mental condition of a public figure without a clinical examination and proper authorization.
As well it should be. Acknowledging Goldwater’s many character flaws, there is, depending on your definition of “extremism,” nothing overly inflammatory about saying that it’s okay to be extreme – extra zealous – in our defense of liberty, and not okay to be blasé about our pursuit of justice.
Also, a passage many ignored in Goldwater’s speech, including, apparently, those smug shrinks, was the following: “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.”
That doesn’t sound at all extreme to me. Bruce G. Kauffmann Email author Bruce G. Kauffmann at bruce@history lessons.net.