Since the inception of the GOP, ideals have mattered to Republicans. The second plank of the Republican Platform of 1860 stated the following:
…[M]aintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal Constitution, “That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” is essential to the preservation of our Republican institutions; and that the Federal Constitution, the Rights of the States, and the Union of the States, must and shall be preserved.
To these important ideals, let me add the following admonition: the words we choose to express our ideals matter as much—and often, more—than the ideals themselves.
The Republican Party always has faced a paradox: the GOP was created to preserve the principles, society and government formed by our Settlers and Founders, and to make them apply to, and include, all men (and, eventually, all women); but, this conservative mission to preserve the Founders’ ideals actually sought to preserve the most liberating ideal man has ever pursued—a society based on the acceptance of universal liberty, and the admonition to love our neighbor. This paradox creates a natural tension within each of us between the conservative temperament of statesman, and the radical temperament of a reformer.
Unfortunately, while pursuing our quest to preserve the radical ideal of a society formed upon individual liberty, we too often have abandoned our conservative temperament. As a result, we have said and done things that damage people’s perception of our commitment to live by the admonition to love our neighbor. The seeds of those words and deeds have, over the last 50 years, grown into a distrust of our party among segments of our neighbors; and those neighbors no longer listen to us, let alone vote for our candidates. In fact, the current Zeitgeist taught in our schools and echoed in millions of conversations each day, portrays us not as liberty-preserving neighbors who seek to build our communities, but as the exact opposite—people who are willing to hate, lie, cheat, steal, and discriminate to maintain a perceived status quo of racial, sexual and economic power.
How did this happen? Fifty-five years ago, Richard Nixon still received 32{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the African-American vote for President, but eight years later he received just 8{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of that vote—and except for two unique landslide elections in 1972 and 1984, the GOP has not done much better since 1968. What changed in between those elections was the planting of unintended bad-seed in 1964. Just as Everett Dirksen and Gerald Ford were corralling Republicans in the House and the Senate to pass landmark civil rights legislation over the firm opposition of Southern Democrats, another voice uttered words that at once invigorated the young conservative-movement activists within the GOP, while they scared many other voters. The seed planted by those words now haunt us—for while we conservatives still admire the stirring defense of liberty in those phrases, the perceived immorality imbedded in those words have created a wall of distrust that we must breakdown.
What I am talking about is the famous line from the acceptance speech given by Barry Goldwater at the Cow Palace in San Francisco at the end of the 1964 Republican Convention.
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.
To a generation who had lived through the horrific effects of Fascist and Communist extremism that led to the devastation of World War II and the genocides committed by Hitler and Stalin, and to a public who had grieved through the recent murder of their President and who was seeing the violence committed upon civil rights protesters on the nightly news programs, these were not the words of a man who had:
- supported the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960;
- commanded an all-African-American unit during World War II;
- desegregated the Arizona National Guard;
- supported the Arizona NAACP; and
- counted Martin Luther King, Jr., as a friend and political ally.
Instead they were heard and perceived by many as a call to immoderation and extremism, which made the country collectively gasp. For instance, had Goldwater used the word “vigilance” in place of “extremism”, his intended meaning would have been the same, but much of the damage he wrought would never have occurred. William F. Buckley, Jr., noted the unintended impact of Goldwater’s words in one of his last books, Flying High—his personal memoir of his relationship with Goldwater and the 1964 campaign—and made the following observation about such rhetoric:
Goldwater had learned too late the lesson that one must guard against any use of the word which, for many, amounted to immoral ends …. It was so in 1964 with the word “extremism.” It could not be hygienically used in any affirmative context.
What is so sad about this seed planted by Goldwater in 1964, is that it did not even reflect the thinking of our Founders, whose ideals we are committed to preserve. Remember that it was Patrick Henry who famously said, “Give me Liberty, or give me death!” But Henry also helped author the last two paragraphs of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which included these instructions to his countrymen and posterity:
… no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
And,
… it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.
By ignoring Henry’s ideals, Goldwater’s well-intentioned words sowed a distrust that now runs very deep into certain segments of our society. So, deep that we have little or no impact on what is happening in communities like Ferguson and Baltimore, and on society’s evolving acceptance of extending civil rights and privileges to same-sex couples. Our inability to be involved in a credible way in the debates over these issues, and in finding and guiding solutions, is having, and will continue to have, negative consequences for our society—let alone for our party.
For instance, how can we promote returning power to local and State governments, when too many citizens in communities like Ferguson and Baltimore distrust local government; and how can we rebuild that trust when no one in those communities will listen to, or trust us, because we are perceived as “extreme”? Moreover, how can we restore the centrality of the family unit in our system of self- and local-governance, when we immoderately condemn certain families who already exist in our neighborhoods? We can belly-ache all we want about how the media and our schools portray us, but our own words created, and continue to exacerbate, this problem.
In this environment, we cannot meet one of the core obligations of conservatives, which the historian and U.S. Senator, Albert Beveridge, described over 100 years ago:
Conservatism means clear common sense, which equally rejects the fanaticism of precedent and the fanaticism of change. It would not have midnight last just because it exists; and yet it knows that dawn comes not in a flash, but gradually–comes with a grand and beautiful moderation. So the conservative is the real statesman. He brings things to pass in a way that lasts and does good.
We must be statesmen again: while we remain vigilant in our preservation of the ideals of liberty and justice expressed by both Henry and Goldwater, we must embrace the approach to temperament and values advocated by Henry. We must take our formula of local statesmanship that depends on defending liberty and promoting self-governance through our love of neighbors, which has worked for us in rural and suburban communities, and bring it to our urban and metropolitan neighbors. Only then will we be able to engage with African-American communities, LGBT communities—and all urban and metropolitan neighborhoods—to build trust, so that we can work with them to build lasting local institutions and find lasting local solutions to empower all of our neighbors to live a better life.
The last two Presidential Elections have shown us that the country is becoming more, not less, urban and metropolitan; and the issues faced by urban and metropolitan communities will drive national and state elections for the foreseeable future. Unless we re-engage our neighbors in these communities in a manner that is true to our Founders’ ideals, our goal of re-establishing a Madisonian federal republic for the 21st Century—Reagan’s “Shining City on a Hill”—will never be realized.
