Matt Welch on Barry Goldwater: ‘He may not recognize our world, but we can recognize his fingerprints all over it’

This Thursday, June 5, Zócalo Public Square and
Arizona State University are co-hosting a debate event in
Scottsdale (featuring former Reasoner Dave Weigel, among
others) on the topic “Is
Goldwater Libertarianism Dead?” In advance of the
discussion, the public-affairs website has published a
mini-symposium on “What
Did Barry Goldwater Leave Us?“

My contribution is headlined “Believing in the potential of
individual pursuits free of government meddling,” and begins this
way:

For a charismatic, larger-than-life sonofabitch, Barry Goldwater
had a pretty humble view of his impact on politics and the world.
“I don’t think I’ve had the great influence that is attributed to
me,” Mr. Conservative told The
Phoenix Gazette just after stepping down
from his fifth and final term in Congress. If pressed, he might
cough up a regional intra-party success: helping tilt the GOP away
from the stuffy northeastern establishment, and toward the
wide-open Sun Belt.

So it’s left to us to chart the legacy strains of Goldwaterism.
Start here with the obvious: In 2014, a half-century after
Goldwater helped galvanize a new generation of self-consciously
ideological young conservatives and libertarians into winning the
GOP presidential nomination, another attractive upstart senator in
his early 50s has vaulted himself near the top of the Republican
field, on a message of constitutionalism, limited government, and
fiercely independent thinking.

Go to
the link for the full piece and others, including one from The
Heritage Foundation’s Lee Edwards, who writes in part:

Goldwater’s greatest legacy is that, despite 80 years of
progressivism, a majority of Americans still want less, not more,
government. They still understand the senator’s famous maxim that
any government big enough to give you everything you want is big
enough to take away everything you have.

The intrinsic libertarianism of most Americans is confirmed in

Gallup and other polls, in the election of small
government senators like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and governors like
Scott Walker and Mike Pence, and in the Tea Party that has not
faded away but continues to play an influential role in electoral
politics.

Reason on Barry
Goldwater here.