Cobb

I don't have an answer to this question yet, and I am being Socratic as usual, but it appears that there is a reasonable possibility that some principle stands from the tree of Goldwater which is pro-Civil Rights and anti-Affirmative Action and that's about as 'racist' as it gets.

This hasn't been a secret. I've known about this for some time.

When it is presented, I always follow up by asking what difference does it make that he was against the civil rights act on principle vs. being racist? The result is still the same.

I have older relatives who have bad first hand memories of things that have happened while the confederate flag was on the scene. Does the idea that the confederate flag was about "states rights" make a difference to them? The result is still the same.

DarkStar, you probably ought to think again about principles v. results. If the police find evidence of a crime during an illegal search, the principle of upholding our Fourth Amendment rights trumps the result of letting a criminal go, and that's as it should be. You might need somebody in government to have those libertarian principles someday.

I'm with you on the flag, though.

I understand your point and I see where it breaks down, but I still believe the point is valid.

In the end, those who were greatly damaged by the system, don't care why the person who didn't support a means of ending that system, they just know he didn't.

It's like Mandela sticking up for Cuba because Cuba supported ending apartheid. He didn't care that they were communists.

I've done a little reading, and it seems to me that laying the current schemes of the Republican Party at the feet of Barry Goldwater is an idea frought with contradictions.

"A lot of so-called conservatives today don't know what the word means," he told the Los Angeles Times in a 1994 interview. "They think I've turned liberal because I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the religious right. It's not a conservative issue at all."

Goldwater opposed the CRA of 64 on a States Rights basis which was not a codeword for anything. Goldwater didn't speak in codewords, that was one of his weaknesses as an 'electable' figure.

He fell out notably with Falwell and Robertson, supported gays in the military and had ended racial discrimination in his own businesses.

Overall, however Goldwater appears to me to be an instinctual ideologue, which explains why he would clash with men such as William F. Buckley.

Reading his acceptance speech at the 64 GOP convention, he seems not to give a whit about domestic affairs in any particular way. Of course I lack a lot of context, but like most Neocons, he wanted to be engaged with the world and his views of liberty and freedom were paramount. The business of government was to keep the house in running order. It could be said that he spoke of a domestic moral decay that resulted in bullies running the streets, but I can't find anything which suggests that he wanted anything to do with Jim Crow or segregationist politics.

I'm not particularly convinced that he was a leader in the way people gush and attribute him. If it weren't for Reagan, I think Goldwater would be just another character. Imagine that GWBush wins next term and passes a flat tax. Does that make Steve Forbes the new architect of the Repulican Party? If Goldwater did anything, it was to inject plainspoken rhetoric into the party and break ranks with the Eastern Establishment - he made it OK for Joe Sixpack to be a Republican. Joe Sixpack happened to watch Falwell on TV, but that wasn't Goldwater's idea.

"It's like Mandela sticking up for Cuba because Cuba supported ending apartheid. He didn't care that they were communists."

Well, let's look at your example here, DarkStar.

Mandela languished in the prisons of South Africa because he was a political dissident. I know the struggle against apartheid went beyond that, but the gov't put him in prison because he dissented.

The Cuban prisons are full of political dissidents who wanted to free Cuba from the yoke of dictatorship and communism.

If Mandela overlooked Castro's human rights violations because Castro supported Mandela, isn't that a bit ironic? Does that open up the possibility that Mandela allowed himself to be manipulated by Castro into not applying the principles of human rights to Cuba b/c Castro said he was his friend?

I think, and this is just my opinion, that for a person to say he is a person of principles, he has to look beyond what benefits him personally in a situation; or what benefits his race, his sex, his geographic region, country, whatever. It's why we don't like politicians grabbing money for their districts (can't remember what the word for that is) although our fallible human natures cause us not always to object when our own elected officials do that.

The unity between Mandela and Cuba is interesting. In my rebuttal, I was going to note (and now I make the case, weakly) that Ralph Bunche was opposed to the Civil Rights act of 1957. What did that make him? I also read Malcolm's 'Ballot or the Bullet' speech of 1964, and there's not much in there to suggest that he cared much for the legislation coming out of Washington either.

I came out wishing that Malcolm and Goldwater had been more specific, but grandstanding is grandstanding.

But what struck me particularly about Malcolm's speech which shows a world of difference between his thinking of 1963, is how much he wanted people to put away their differences. He had been to Bandung in 63 and felt strongly that a black revolution was afoot. But in making the case for black nationalism in 'Ballot or the Bullet' he was much more specifically talking economics and property ownership - specifically land. (Which I will try to remember when people talk about a 'divide' wrt black vs white participation in Wall Street).

I think that Malcolm, as a black nationalist, misjudged free market economics and may have assumed that socialist and marxist aims were compatible with his economic program. It's not the point of this comment but an interesting tangent in and of itself. My point is that this seemed to be a common mistake among pan-africanists. Their perception was that racism was so bad that communist comradeship would be superior to white supremacist capitalism. Which means somebody wasn't able to convince them of some fundamentals. From that perspective, however, it makes sense that Mandela would make the mistake of supporting Castro's Cuba.

This also makes for a good tangent into the role of Cuban mercs in Southern African wars in the post-colonial period.

Okay, I can see conflating a kind of vague, benign-sounding socialism with Communism if you aren't in possession of all the facts; which after decades in a TB-ridden prison I guess would be understandable in Mandela. That makes sense.

The Cuban mercenary thing, however, is another weird tangent, and I thought about it when I read DarkStar's post. This was in Angola, right? I don't think I was ever very straight on how that came about.

"Pork barrel" is the term I couldn't think of.

I live in Az-Goldwater's home state-The old media has buried many things he has accomplished for all minorities--What the Calif fog has done to you is to prevent easy research--He wasn't fighting rights-he was fighting Federal control-He, like most believe the local school board knows what it needs more than a career bureaucrat in DC. The folks in the south have always been skeptical of the Feds. Every speech he ever made always mentioned the maximum importance of individual freedom--This is what he used to convert Ronald Reagan to conservatism

I'll ask again, to those who were oppressed, what's the real difference?

The oppressed don't make intellectual distinctions. Nobody expects them to. They just get their pitchforks and torches every 20 years or so and get beat down by the Knights of the Republic. Nothing at all to get excited about. After all, they're just peasants.

Every once in a while they do make intellectual distictions and even contributions to society - those guys have names like Malcolm and Martin and Che. We listen to them, not the mobs.

So when we talk about stuff like political strategies and leaders of principled debates, we are really not interested in what the mob thinks or what soundbites they appropriate for their spray painted signs, bumperstickers and t-shirts. We're just trying to get a more accurate grasp on history.

I may have misunderstood your Mandela/Castro remark, DarkStar, but why would the oppressed of South Africa be more worthy of relief than the oppressed of Cuba?

As to Goldwater and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as you probably know, Sen. Albert Gore Sr. voted against it, too. I'm guessing that for him it was a political reality - perhaps he couldn't get re-elected if he voted for; but if you remember the story that came out 4 years ago about the family maid, I'm not sure he thought it was a positive thing anyway. As to Goldwater, in his personal life he wasn't a racist, so that lends some credibility to the idea that he voted against the act, not to keep black people down, but to keep the government from getting more powerful. Maybe he had an alternative to the CA; I wouldn't know.

So if Goldwater voted against to keep gov't small, in keeping with his liberatarian principles, and Gore voted against to get re-elected, do you not draw a distinction there? I do. I naively think that elected officials should do what they believe to be best for the U.S.A. and let the chips fall where they may.

why would the oppressed of South Africa be more worthy of relief than the oppressed of Cuba?

I was referring to Blacks seeing the actions of Goldwater as racist, with no distinction that he may have objected to the Civil Rights Act because of federal government encroachment issues.

Sen. Albert Gore Sr. voted against it, too.

If you state that, then you have to state that Gore, Jr. said that his father voted for the final version. It was previous revisions that he did not support.

So, if you want to give Goldwater a pass, then you have to give Gore, Sr. a pass.

So if Goldwater voted against to keep gov't small, in keeping with his liberatarian principles, and Gore voted against to get re-elected, do you not draw a distinction there?

No I don't. The end result for my family, if he got his way, would have been the same: deterred economic and human progress of my family.

We're just trying to get a more accurate grasp on history.

In the end, did it matter to the Black people then that he wanted limited government? Or did it matter that the bill get past and signed into law?

Rubber meet road.

DarkStar, every source I see says Gore Sr. voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He voted for the Voting Rights Act of 1965; maybe that's what Al Jr. was talking about.