Comments on: Barry Goldwater, Liberty Hero

By: Mike Huckabee Truly Ignorant of Republican Principles | Policy In Action

Mike Huckabee Truly Ignorant of Republican Principles | Policy In Action — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:57:58 +0000

[...] the first Planned Parenthood branch in Phoenix). He was pro-equality for gays. He believed that morality had no place in government, even once remarking that: “I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this [...]

By: RBurnett

RBurnett — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:52:19 +0000

Liberty heroes:
Aristotle, Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, (even Martin Luther), AlFarabi (the Moslem political thinker), Marsislius of Padua, Moses Maimonides, Machiavelli (even with warts and all), Hobbes, Locke, Adam Smith, Rousseau, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Goldwater, Reagan–all great minds or statesmen, all mindfull of the whole picture
Not on the list: Ayn Rand, von Mises, Hayek, Milton Friedman, Rothbard
And finally, on the list of liberty heroes: Leo Strauss, Harry Jaffa, Harvey Mansfield, Joseph Cropsey Herbert Storing and Martin Diamond.
My condemnation, as you would call it, of what Reagan did, which was the right things to do, is justified because Reagan himself used Goldwater as one of his heroes, and stated that he was following in Goldwater’s path.
You imagine in error, yet again.

By: Marc Gallagher

Marc Gallagher — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:54:18 +0000

RBurnett,

Wow. I can’t wait to read your reaction to the future liberty heroes we have planned if you react this way to Goldwater.

Also, you are condemning Goldwater for what Reagan ended up doing. I think that is unfair and unrealistic.

Could you post your own list of liberty heroes? I’m curious who, in your eyes, has risen to the level of your perfection.

I imagine your own name may be the only one on your list.

Enjoy,
Marc

By: RBurnett

RBurnett — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:30:50 +0000

Well, Gallagher, it’s like this:
According to your definitions and bias, no neocon is any friend of liberty.
Leo Strauss, the author of Natural Right and History, The City and Man, Liberalism:Ancient and Modern and many other works, was the founding Father of the neocons, with his followers such as Wolfowitz, Yoo, and many others in the Bush II administration.
But there’s another more senior so-called student of Strauss’. He’s the author of The Crisi of the HOuse Divided, that little work that made the other neocons, the neoConfederates, howl, along with his more recent A New Birth of Freedom.
But he’s also the author of the first of the quotes you put up in your article above–indeed, it is rumored that he wrote much more of Goldwater’s famous 1964 acceptance speech from which this quote is taken.
Now how can a friend of liberty have a neocon writin his speeches and also, giving him advice (Jaffa was also a close advisor to Reagan)

In a word, Goldwater may have been a friend of liberty, as long as you ignore many of his positions that were not so libertarian–which is the same treatment you mete out to other so-called libertarians from Jefferson onwards.
We do not have a record of what Goldwater would have done as President, but we do have what Reagan did, and if nothing else, he expanded and increased the power of the federal government, for all of his talk about states rights–just like Jefferson.
When are you going to stop making libertarians out of realistic and wise statesmen like Jefferson, Reagan and Goldwater who all knew that the libertarian stuff was but only a small part of the whole enterprise of statesmanship and politics?
No, I do not think that you will ever learn.