Extremism, Government, and Liberty

By John T. Harding

  Politics and government cannot be separated, since -- in a democracy at least -- those in government can't get anything done without first getting elected.
   Problems arise, however, when the desire to get elected (and re-elected) overwhelms the desire to get things done, for the benefit of all, not just the few who support the candidates. And when the imbalance is extreme, the result can be either chaos or dictatorship.
   Too much politics causes chaos, and too much government brings oppression. As the political pendulum swings, a nation can find itself leaning to either extreme.
   With awareness and some luck, however, society can slow or reverse a trend to extremism and restore the social and political, as well the governmental, balance.
   Barry Goldwater, leader of the modern conservative movement, knew this. In his acceptance speech for the 1964 Republican nomination for president, he noted that freedom needs to be "balanced so that liberty lacking order will not become the slavery of the prison cell; balanced so that liberty lacking order will not become the license of the mob and of the jungle."
   But unlike many in today's Republican Party -- especially the radical right-wing Tea Party movement -- Goldwater knew that "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."
   Moreover, equality, "rightly understood, ... leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, ... it leads first to conformity and then to despotism," he said.
   And in a phrase that should be remembered by today's Radical Righteous, the founder of the modern conservative movement pointed out that "it is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism."
   And unlike many ultraconservatives today, Goldwater insisted that the Republican Party should be "a party for free men, not for blind followers, and not for conformists."
   It's time for today's conservatives to remember the words of their founder, and make room in their ranks for disagreement. "We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion," Goldwater told the nominating convention 48 years ago. "Our Republican cause," he added, is not to level out the world or make its people conform in computer regimented sameness."
   Unfortunately, one sentence in an otherwise thoughtful acceptance speech is the one most remembered: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." And that line alone may well have frightened many voters and cost him the election, even though the sentence was followed by what, to some, was an even more important thought: "Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."