If you will not bend, you are to be smitten.

Republicans are doing Gawud's Work.

Submit, or be demonized.

that "these preachers", these "religious" people, have taken over the party that is run by Rush Limbaugh.

But, if it were the actual teachings of God (love thy neighbor, wealth is sinful, etc..) it would not bad as a religion.. These evangelists twist the real meaning of christianity. For instance, homosexuality was very prevalent before and during Jesus' life-time, he never mentioned it. According to man, J.C. condemned it...B.S.

r

he's not the first person to be scared by politicians

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!

his conflict with christian preachers was rooted in his being jewish, more than anything else

how can you people ignore his wanting to give 'bombs away Lemay' carte blanche, and getting us WWIII?

i'd take obnoxious preachers over a blinding flash of nuclear light any day of the week

Goldwater was Episcopalian, and his running mate was Miller, not LeMay, who was Wallace's running mate.

be talking about? Religious freedom to bend to your will those who don't believe the way you do?

The more they seek to grind America under the jackboot of theocratic Fascism, the more they talk about liberty, just like Uncle Karl taught them.

and was taken in the context of cold war/communism - the quote also sank him

and lemay had been air force chief of staff, he hadnt retured yet (that's what i mean by carte blanche, he was more dangerous in the air force (under a president goldwater) than he would have been as wallaces vp in 1968 (which had no chance of winning)

consider yourself one of us. Pepperoni or Canadian Bacon???

Ironically, William Miller's daughter (grandaughter?) is the wonderful liberal talkshow host Stephanie Miller. I heard that Stephanie Miller and Goldwater's daughter (grandaughter?) ran a tounge-in-cheek campaigne for president in 2008: as, natch, Goldwater/Miller.

Other DUers might have better info on that.


Stephanie Miller

And her Mom is still around, William's widow.

I don't think they did much with it though.

How absolutely predictive of current events. Despite his 64 run, Goldwater did become reasonable as he aged. The quote was likely made by a wiser Goldwater.

John Dean, John Danforth, Craig Paul Roberts, David Stockman, and many more have no use for the current obnoxious zealots who have hijacked the party.

Goldwater moderated his views in his later years, certainly from a social standpoint, helped along by the fact that he had a gay grandson.

Stephanie Miller is indeed Bill Miller's daughter. It seems like that family is pretty split these days, I know she talks of a wingnut brother and her mom is still an R. I love Stephie but it is maddening that she is 100% in the tank for Obama, she just will not speak ill of anything he does. Fortunately her producer and even more her voice guy will tee off on Obama's misguided actions/non actions and decisions.

Santorum and many others are so wrong in their assertions of a religious foundation for the US, all the founding fathers made it clear that was not the case. Good grief our nation was largely populated by people wanting free of religious persecution.

I'm not sure what drives people to go ultra holy roller. I missed that ride as religion was not brainwashed into me in my youth. I think about the only rational thing to be is agnostic, who on earth really knows. I just know that the truth has to be pretty weird, looking at it ftom an egghead view, it should be impossible for something to spring out of nothing and there had to be nothing, whatever that is, at some point.

Sounds as if you were raised much the same as I was. I couldn't agree with you more.

The only reason you, or anyone else, thinks this is because of religious stories of creation.

All of the matter and energy that ever was and ever will be has always been around - at least that's the accepted science.

...he was considered something of a nutball in the 50s and 60s. Many feared that he would start nuclear war. He was aggressively anti-union and hostile to federal regulation of business. His presidential campaign in 1964 pioneered the use of appeals to "law and order" and "moral values" that were often coded with racist undertones to speak to the anxieties of white middle-class Americans. He was the first Republican to win the deep South. He was the first Republican presidential candidate to be nominated as a distinctly modern and aggressively active or "movement" conservative. And his nomination and campaign marked the first experience where the "New Right" provided much of the intellectual and organizational backing of the Republican candidate.

If you look at the Republican candidates from Goldwater on, ever since they've had to answer to a much more right-wing Republican Party. Nixon and Ford, though rather centrist by comparison, pandered to the New Right. Reagan was their lionized hero, and Bush Sr and Dole pandered to an even more aggressively right-wing GOP. And then came George W Bush, who by the time he was nominated, was running in a Republican Party that was dominated by the Religious Right.

Post-Bush, the Republicans have gone off the deep end for good this time, it seems. A lot of them are looking to inspiration in Ronald Reagan's example, but not Reagan the real President-no, they are looking at Ronald Reagan, The Conservative Idealized Hero. They just aren't dealing with the real world anymore.

There have always been fantastical, conspiratorial elements to the GOP (see the John Birch Society). The difference today, is that the Republicans are now almost ALL Birchers or sympathetic to those views. Crazy is the new normal.

Sorry about the pedantry, but may as well be grammatically correct.

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!

in their race back to the past. Why, Goldwater was probably OK with women voting.

Today's Republican Party and their supporters prove this every day. I think Senator Goldwater realized this late in life and said what he said here.

should make this into a newspaper ad, TV ad, web ad... and raise $$ to spread it everywhere...

On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.
I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?
And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."
Speech in the US Senate (16 September 1981)

It is more relevant today than ever.

We seem to have a plethora of religious nut jobs, who believe it is their job to convert everyone to their way of thinking. They will not bend and promote their version of their beliefs continuously.

The Supreme Being must have declared this earth a failure and moved on.

The man supported segregation and McCarthyism. He's no saint, nor should he be considered an authority of what a "good Republican" should be.

You want to know what a good Republican should be? Try Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt.

say from the 1970s on, was a rather different man than he was in his earlier life. He was no saint, but he had a willingness to think and modify his views over the years. He also famously said "you don't have to be straight to shoot straight" in defense of gays being allowed to serve in the military.

Republic....spelled that way on purpose

by the nuts.

He said something like "the RW Christians are the biggest threat to this country," and he was a lifelong Republican at that point! The W years finally made him come to his senses and now identifies as a progressive.

He was a RINO!
Today he would be too far left to be a member of the Democratic Party.

I'm sure former VP Nelson Rockefeller felt the same way. He was a damn NY RepubliCON, and ran on the Liberal ticket when he was governor! He even vetoed a bill to make abortion illegal in NY.

Though I would have disagreed with Republicans like Rockefeller and Goldwater, they still had a better sense of the way our country should be run than the three clowns of their party who are running for President have today.

Phyllis Schlafley, for example, came to prominence in 1964 for writing A Choice, not an Echo, a book in in support of Goldwater's candidacy.

That's too bad. He deserved better than to be thought of the candidate of the far right.

Although I believe Goldwater was wrong about more things than he was right, he was an honest, straightforward man who could be relied on to tell anybody who would listen exactly what he thought. During the Watergate crisis, all eyes and ears were on Goldwater; everybody knew that once Senator Goldwater turned against Nixon the game was over. Few others in either house of Congress at that time -- and perhaps none today -- had that kind of integrity.

I once worked with a man who lived in Phoenix when he was younger. He had a job at a gas station. One day, his partner decided to go for dinner as scheduled. Within minutes it seemed as though every car in Phoenix was pulling into the station, overwhelming the young man. Then the young man saw getting out his car none other than Barry Goldwater. Goldwater looked around for a few seconds and saw that he wasn't likely to get a lot of individual attention under the circumstances. So, what did the richest man in Phoenix, a United States senator who was almost president of the United States, do about it? He started pumping his own gas. Soon everybody was pumping their own gas. The young man checked Goldwater out at the register and thanked him. Goldwater said that the he could see the spot the young man was in and decided it was up to him to provide relief.

How many members of Congress could you imagine doing that today?