Skylar Burris's Reviews > The Conscience of a Conservative

When George W. Bush ran for the Republican presidential nomination as a “compassionate conservative,” I knew, without ever having read Conscience of a Conservative, that he did not understand conservatism as “a comprehensive political philosophy” (to use Barry Goldwater’s words). I suspected then that Bush’s so-called “compassionate” conservatism would bear little resemblance to the political philosophy I associate with conservatism. It is timely that this edition of Conscience of a Conservative should have been reprinted on the heels of the Bush administration. Under a Republican-controlled congress and the presumably “conservative” President Bush there occurred what George Will refers to in the introduction of this book as “the largest federal intervention in primary and secondary education in American history…the largest farm subsidies..the largest expansion of the welfare state…since Lyndon Johnson,” who, ironically, defeated Goldwater for the presidency in 1964.

This book is, unfortunately, a bit outdated. I had hoped for a concise overview of the philosophy, principles, and concerns of conservatives, and although I somewhat got that here, this analysis was a little too tied to the specific policy concerns of 1960, and thus it read more like a campaign tract than a philosophical apologetic. Nevertheless, the concerns Goldwater expresses in these pages still apply today, only, one might say…more so. Goldwater’s primary concern was to arrest the amassing of power in the hands of the federal government, a threat against which the Constitution was created to protect us, but which began to occur in the 20th century and has only increased since “The Conscience of a Conservative” was first published. Goldwater’s other primary concern was to win the Cold War, which has come and gone; but at least some of what he has to say on the matter could apply to today’s ideological and political war against jihadism.

Goldwater does give us a look at conservatism in a nutshell, however. He argues that political philosophy should not be concerned only with the material well being of men: “The root difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals of today is that Conservatives take account of the whole man, while the Liberals tend to look only at the material side of man’s nature... The Conservative believes that man is, in part, an economic, an animal creature; but that he is also a spiritual creature with spiritual needs and spiritual desires…Liberals, on the other hand…regard the satisfaction of economic wants as the dominant mission of society. They are, moreover, in a hurry. So that their characteristic approach is to harness the society’s political and economic forces into a collective effort to [i:]compel[/i:] ‘progress’ In this approach, I believe they fight against Nature.”

In speaking of spiritual man, Goldwater is by no means speaking as a religious conservative. Indeed, he loathed the so-called “religious right” that rose to power within the Republican party in the 1980’s. When asked if he thought we should allow gays in the military, Barry Goldwater, in characteristic glib fashion, replied, “You don't need to be straight to fight and die for your country; you just need to shoot straight.” Goldwater’s conservatism was of the libertarian republican variety, a small-government conservatism (very much unlike that of George W. Bush) that focused on individual liberty (“government governs best when it governs least -- and stays out of the impossible task of legislating morality”), individual responsibility, national sovereignty, and national interest.

Though Goldwater lost the presidential election, he did so in what George Will describes as a “spectacularly creative failure.” For a time, at least, the conservatives did seize the Republican party apparatus, and as a consequence, conservatism was not without its successes. The top income tax rate is no longer 91%, and likely never will be again. The Cold War has been won, and welfare (not the medical variety, which was expanded under Bush) is no longer quite the system of life-long, poverty-perpetuating entitlement it once was. However, today, despite these handful of successes, the Goldwater brand of conservatism has once again been relegated to a back corner of the Republican party.