ACCEPTANCE ADDRESS BY BARRY M. GOLDWATER

1964 Republican National Convention

Cow Palace, Daly City, California

Thursday, July 16, 1964

To my good friend and great Republican, Dick Nixon, and your charming wife Pat; my running mate and that wonderful Republican who has served us so well for so long, Bill Miller and his wife Stephanie; to Thruston Morton who has done such a commendable job in chairmaning this Convention; to Mr. Herbert Hoover, who I hope is watching; and to that great American and his wife, General and Mrs. Eisenhower; to my own wife, my family, and to all of my fellow Republicans here assembled, and Americans across this great Nation:

From this moment, united and determined, we will go forward together, dedicated to the ultimate and undeniable greatness of the whole man. Together, we will win.

I accept your nomination with a deep sense of humility. I accept, too, the responsibility that goes with it, and I seek your continued help and your continued guidance. My fellow Republicans, our cause is too great for a man to feel worthy of it. Our task would be too great for any man, did he not have with him the hearts and the hands of this great Republican Party, and I promise you tonight that every fiber of my being is consecrated to our cause, that nothing shall be lacking from the struggle, that can be brought to it by enthusiasm, by devotion and plain hard work. In this world no person, no party, can guarantee anything, but what we can do, and we shall do, is to deserve victory, and victory will be ours.

The good Lord raised this mighty Republic to be a home for the brave, and to flourish as the land of the free-- not to stagnate in the swampland of collectivism, not to cringe before the bullying of Communism.

Now, my fellow Americans, the tide has been running against freedom. Our people have followed false profits. We must and we shall return to proven ways -- not because they are old, but because they are true. We must, and we shall, set the tides running again in the cause of freedom. And this Party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom, freedom made orderly for this Nation by our constitutional government; freedom under a government limited by the laws of nature, and of nature's God; freedom -- balanced so that order, lacking liberty, will not become a slavery of the prison cell; balanced so that liberty, lacking order, will not become the license of the mob and the jungle.

Now, we Americans understand freedom. We have earned it, lived for it, and died for it. This nation and its people are freedom's model in a searching world. We can be freedom's missionaries in a doubting world. But, ladies and gentlemen, first we must renew freedom's vision in our own hearts and in our own homes.

During four futile years, the Administration which we shall replace has distorted and lost that vision. It has talked and talked and talked and talked the words of freedom. Now, failures cement the wall of shame in Berlin. Failures blot the sands of shame at the Bay of Pigs. Failures mark the slow death of freedom in Laos. Failures infest the jungles of Vietnam. And failures haunt the houses of our once great alliances, and undermine the greatest bulwark ever erected by free nations -- the NATO community. Failures proclaim lost leadership, obscure purpose, weakening will, and the risk of inciting our sworn enemies to new aggressions and new excesses. Because of this Administration, we are a world divided -- we are a nation becalmed. We have lost the brisk pace of diversity and the genius of individual creativity. We are plodding at a pace set by centralized planning, red tape, rules without responsibility, and regimentation without recourse. Rather than useful jobs in our country, would your people have been offered bureaucratic "make work," rather than moral leadership. They have been given bread and circuses, spectacles, and yes they have even been given scandals. Tonight there is violence in our streets, corruption in our highest offices, aimlessness among our youth, anxiety among our elders, and there is a virtual despair among the many who look beyond material success for the inner meaning of their lives, and where examples of morality should be set, the opposite is seen. Small men, seeking great wealth or power, have too often, and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity.

Now, certainly, simple honesty is not too much to demand of men in government. We find it in most. Republicans demand it from every one. They demand it from everyone, no matter how exalted or protected his position might be. The growing menace in our country tonight, to personal safety, to life, to limb and property, in homes, in churches, on the playgrounds, and places of businesses, particularly in our great cities, is the mounting concern, or should be, of every thoughtful citizen in the United States.

Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign aggression is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any government, and a government that cannot fulfill their purpose is one that cannot long command the loyalty of its citizens. History shows us, demonstrates, that nothing -- nothing prepares the way for tyranny, more than the failure of public offices to keep the streets safe from bullies and marauders.

Now, we Republicans see all this as more, much more than the result of mere political differences or mere political mistakes. We see this as the result of a fundamentally and absolutely wrong view of man, his nature and his destiny.

Those who seek to live your lives for you, to take your liberties in return for relieving you of yours, those who elevate the state and downgrade the citizen, must see ultimately a world in which earthly power can be substituted for Divine Will, and this nation and this Nation was founded upon the rejection of that notion, and upon the acceptance of God as the author of freedom.

Now 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.

And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies.

Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect, and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality. Ladies and Gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

Fellow Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power -- private or public -- which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to insure that power remains in the hands of the people -- and so help us God, that is exactly what a Republican President will do with the help of a Republican Congress.

It is further the cause of Republicanism to restore a clear understanding of the tyranny of man over man in the world at large. It is our cause to dispel the foggy thinking, which avoids hard decisions in the dillusion that a world of conflict will somehow mysteriously resolve itself into a world of harmony, if we just don't rock the boat or irritate the forces of aggression -- and this is "hog wash."

It is further the cause of Republicanism to remind ourselves and the world, that only the strong can remain free, that only the strong can keep the peace.

Now I needn't remind you, or my fellow Americans, regardless of party, that Republicans have shouldered this hard responsibility and marched in this cause before. It was Republican leadership under Dwight Eisenhower that kept the peace, and passed along to this Administration the mightiest arsenal for defense the world has ever known.

And I needn't remind you that was the strength, and the believable will of the Eisenhower years, that kept the peace by using our strength, by using it in the Formosa Straits, and in Lebanon, and by showing it courageously, at all times.

It was during those Republican years that the thrust of Communism, imperialism was blunted. It was during those years of Republican leadership that this world moved closer not to war, but closer to peace, than at any other time in the three decades just passed.

And I needn't remind you -- but I will -- that it has been during Democratic years that our strength to deter war has stood still, and even gone into a planned decline. It has been during Democratic years that we have weakly stumbled into conflict, timidly refusing to draw our own lines against aggression, deceitfully refusing to tell even our own people of our full participation, and tragically, letting our finest men die on battlefields unmarked by purpose, unmarked by pride, or the prospect of victory.

Yesterday it was Korea. Tonight it is Vietnam. Make no bones of this. Don't try to sweep this under the rug. We are at war in Vietnam. And yet the President, who is Commander-in-Chief of our forces, refuses to say -- refuses to say, mind you, whether or not the objective over there is victory. And his Secretary of Defense continues to mislead and misinform the American people, and enough of it has gone by.

I needn't remind you, but I will; it has been during Democratic years, that a billion persons were cast into Communist captivity and their fate cynically sealed.

Today in our beloved country we have an administration which seems eager to deal with Communism coin known, from gold to wheat, from consulates to confidences, and even human freedom itself.

Now the Republican cause demands that we brand Communism as a principle disturber of peace in the world today.

Indeed, we should brand it as the only significant disturber of the peace, and we must make clear that until its goals of conquest are absolutely renounced and its relations with all nations tempered, Communism and the governments it now controls are enemies of every man on earth who is or wants to be free.

Now, we here in America can keep the peace only if we remain vigilant and only if we remain strong. Only if we keep our eyes open and keep our guard up can we prevent war.

And I want to make this abundantly clear -- I don't intend to let peace or freedom be torn from our grasp because of lack of strength, or lack of will, and that I promise you Americans.

I believe that we must look beyond the defense of freedom today to its extension tomorrow. I believe that the Communism which boasts it will bury us will instead give way to the forces of freedom.

And I can see in the distant, and yet recognizable future, the outlines of a world worthy of our dedication, our every risk, our every effort, our every sacrifice along the way. Yes, sir, a world that will redeem the suffering of those who will be liberated from tyranny. I can see and I suggest that all thoughtful men must contemplate the flowering of an Atlantic civilization, the whole of Europe unified and freed, trading openly across its borders, communicating openly across the world.

This is a goal far, far more meaningful than a moon shot.

It is a truly inspiring goal for all free men to set for themselves during the latter half of the 20th Century. I can see -- and all free men must  thrill to -- the advance of this Atlantic civilization joined by its great ocean highway to the United States -- what a destiny, what a destiny can be ours to stand as a great central pillar, leading Europe, the Americas, and the venerable and vital peoples and cultures of the Pacific. I can see a day when all the Americas, North and South, will be linked in a mighty system, a system in which the errors and misunderstandings of the past will be submerged one by one in a rising tide of prosperity and interdependence. We know that the misunderstandings of centuries are not to be wiped away in a day, or wiped away in an hour, but we pledge -- we pledge that human sympathy -- what our neighbors to the South call that attitude of "sympatico" -- no less than enlightened self-interest will be our guide.

And I can see this Atlantic civilization galvanizing and guiding emergent nations everywhere.

Now I know that freedom is not the fruit of every soil. I know that our own freedom was achieved through centuries, by unremitting efforts of brave and wise men, and I know that the road to freedom is along and a challenging road, and I know also that some men may walk away from it, that some men resist challenge, accepting the false security of governmentalism.

And I pledge that the America I envision in the years ahead will extend its hand in health, in teaching and in cultivation, so that all new nations will be at least encouraged to go our way, so that they will not wander down the dark alleys of tyranny, or the dead-end streets of collectivism.

My fellow Republicans, we do no man a service by hiding freedom's light under a bushel of mistaken humility. 

I seek an America proud of its past, proud of its ways, proud of its dreams, and determined actively to proclaim them. But our example to the world must, like Charity, begin at home.

In our vision of a good and decent future, free and peaceful, there must be room for deliberation of the energy and talent of the individual, otherwise our vision is blind at the outset.

We must assure a society here which, while never abandoning the needy, or forsaking the helpless, nurtures incentives and opportunities for the creative and the productive.

We must know the whole good is the product of many single contributions, and I cherish a day when our children once again will restore as heroes the sort of men and women who, unafraid and undaunted, pursue the truth, strive to cure diseases, subdue and make fruitful our natural environment, and produce the inventive engines of production, science, and technology.

This nation, whose creative people have enhanced this entire span of history, should again thrive upon the greatness of all those things which we -- we as individual citizens can and should do, and during Republican years, this again will be a nation of men and women, of families proud of their roles, jealous of their responsibilities, unlimited in their aspirations, a nation where all who can will be self-reliant.

We Republicans see in our constitutional form of government the great framework which assures the orderly but dynamic fulfillment of the whole man, and we see the whole man as the great reason for instituting orderly government in the first place. We see, in private property and in economy based upon and fostering private property, the one way to make government a durable ally of the whole man, rather than his determined enemy. We see, in the sanctity of private property, the only durable foundation for constitutional government in a free society. And beyond that, we see, in cherished diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts, of motives and accomplishments -- we don't seek to lead anyone's life for him, we only seek to secure his rights, and to guarantee him opportunity to strive, with government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which could not otherwise be performed.

We Republicans seek a government that attends to its inherent responsibilities of maintaining a stable monetary and fiscal climate, encouraging a free and a competitive economy, and enforcing law and order. Thus do we seek inventiveness, diversity, and creativity, within a stable order, for we Republicans define government's role where needed at many, many levels, preferably though the one close to the people involved. Our towns and our cities, then our counties, then our states, then our regional compacts, and only then, the national government. That, let me remind you, is the ladder of liberty, built by decentralized power. On it also we must have balance between the branches of government at every level.

Balance, diversity, creativity -- these are the elements of the Republican equation. Republicans agree, Republicans agree heartily to disagree on many, many of their applications, but we have never disagreed on the basic, fundamental issues of why you and I are Republicans.

This is a Party, this Republican Party, a Party for free men, not for blind followers, and not for conformists. Back in 1858, Abraham Lincoln said this was the Republican Party -- and I quote him, because he probably could have said it during the last week or so: "It was composed of strange, discordant and even hostile elements" in 1858. Yet all of these elements agreed on one paramount objective: To arrest the progress of slavery and place it in the course of ultimate extinction. Today, as then, but more urgently and more broadly than then, the task of preserving and enlarging freedom at home and of safeguarding it from the forces of tyranny abroad, is great enough to challenge all our resources and to refire all our strength. Anyone who joins us in all sincerity, we welcome. Those who do not care for our cause, we don't expect to enter our ranks in any case. And let our Republicanism, so focused and so dedicated, not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels. 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.

The beauty of the very system we Republicans are pledged to restore and revitalize, the beauty of this federal system of ours is in its reconciliation of diversity with unity. We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and through our Constitution.

Our Republican cause is not to level out the world or make its people conform to computer regimented sameness. Our Republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty throughout the world.

Ours is a very human cause for very humane goals. This Party, its good people and its unquenchable devotion to freedom, will not fulfill the purposes of this campaign which we launch here now until our cause has won the day, inspired the world, and shown the way to a tomorrow worthy of all our yesteryears.

I repeat, I accept your nomination with humbleness, with pride, and you and I are going to fight for the goodness of our land. Thank you.

Source: 'Acceptance Address by Barry M. Goldwater' Brochure, 1964 Republican National Committee Publication