The Conscience of a Conservative

Written by United States Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona and published in 1960, this political manifesto argues that America is a fundamentally conservative nation whose government has been captured by liberal ideas, and it attempts to demonstrate the practical relevance of conservative principles to the major policy challenges of the day.

Goldwater opens by observing that conservatives have failed not in their philosophy but in their demonstration of it. Drawing on years of travel and conversations with Americans across the country, he asserts that the preponderant judgment of the people is that the liberal approach has not worked. Yet the ideas promoted by the New Deal (President Franklin Roosevelt's expansion of federal domestic programs in the 1930s) and Fair Deal (President Harry Truman's continuation of those programs) still dominate national government. Congress debates not whether to expand federal welfare, spending, and power, but only by how much. He blames conservatives themselves for this gap between popular belief and political action.

Goldwater defines conservatism as a comprehensive philosophy rooted in human nature rather than a narrow economic theory. He criticizes prominent Republicans, including Vice President Richard Nixon and President Dwight Eisenhower, for reducing conservatism to a bookkeeper's guide. Conservatism, he argues, recognizes man as both an economic and a spiritual creature, with spiritual needs taking precedence. Politics, for the conservative, is the art of maximizing individual freedom consistent with social order, and the overriding challenge of the era is to preserve that freedom.

He then argues that both major parties have abandoned the constitutional principle of limited government. The Constitution, he insists, is an instrument for limiting government through four structural restraints: delegation of specific powers, reservation of remaining powers to the states under the Tenth Amendment, separation of powers among three branches, and demanding amendment procedures. All have fallen into disrepair. He measures the resulting growth of federal power by its financial operations (approaching $100 billion in annual spending) and its claim on citizens' earnings (nearly one-third taken in taxes), invoking the French political observer Alexis de Tocqueville's warning that democratic societies might produce not tyrants but "guardians" under whom citizens choose their own chains.

On states' rights, Goldwater argues that federal grants-in-aid function as a mixture of blackmail and bribery, compelling states to accept federal money or forfeit revenue collected from their own citizens. The Tenth Amendment, he counters, is a prohibitory rule of law: States' duties are owed to their own people, not to the federal government, and the proper recourse when states underperform is democratic action at the state level.

Addressing civil rights, Goldwater rejects the framing of states' rights and civil rights as inherently conflicting. He defines a civil right narrowly as a right incorporated into law through legislation or constitutional amendment. He affirms that the Fifteenth Amendment guarantees voting rights regardless of race and that the Fourteenth Amendment protects legal privileges such as property ownership and equal legal proceedings. However, he argues that the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which declared racially segregated public schools unconstitutional, exceeded the Court's authority, marshaling historical evidence that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment never intended it to outlaw segregated schools. He states that he personally believes it is wise and just for Black and white children to attend the same schools but opposes imposing that judgment through federal power, arguing that social change should come through persuasion and education.

On agriculture, Goldwater calls for the prompt termination of federal farm subsidies, tracing their constitutional history through United States v. Butler (1936), in which the Supreme Court struck down the first Agricultural Adjustment Act, and Wickard v. Filburn (1942), in which the Court upheld a replacement law under political pressure. Federal intervention, he argues, has failed to solve low farm incomes while creating production controls, high consumer prices, enormous surpluses, and a tax burden approaching $6 billion annually. Farm production, he contends, is best regulated by the free market's law of supply and demand.

In his chapter on labor, Goldwater identifies the concentration of power in union leadership as the central problem and proposes three remedies: state right-to-work laws forbidding compulsory union membership, a complete ban on union political activity funded by members' dues without their consent, and an end to industry-wide bargaining in favor of negotiations confined to individual employers and their employees.

Goldwater devotes a chapter to taxation, arguing that the debate has been stripped of its moral dimension. Earnings are property, property rights and freedom are inseparable, and taxation intrudes on individual liberty. He calls the graduated income tax confiscatory and advocates a flat percentage applied equally to all earners. He proposes a rigid timetable for staged withdrawal from programs he considers unconstitutional, including social welfare, education, public power, agriculture, public housing, and urban renewal, with a suggested 10% annual spending reduction in each field as the only path to meaningful tax relief.

On the welfare state, Goldwater argues that welfarism has replaced nationalization as the primary instrument of collectivism and is more dangerous precisely because its effects are veiled and postponed. Government welfare erodes personal responsibility and creates dependence, while offering donors no moral virtue in voting to confiscate one person's earnings for another. He contrasts this with private charity, which preserves both the humanitarian character of giving and the dignity of receiving, and calls for welfare to become a private concern handled by individuals, families, churches, and community organizations.

On education, Goldwater presents four objections to federal aid: It is unconstitutional; the need has never been demonstrated, with only about 230 of the nation's roughly 42,000 school districts in actual financial distress; federal money is not "free" but taxpayers' money returned minus a bureaucratic fee; and aid inevitably leads to control. He argues that the real crisis is qualitative, stemming from the adoption of educator John Dewey's "progressive education" philosophy, which prioritized social adjustment over academic mastery. Schools, he contends, should train individual minds through rigorous academic disciplines rather than serve as laboratories for social change.

Goldwater's longest chapter addresses the Cold War. He argues that America's position has deteriorated because its leaders have pursued "peace" rather than victory while the Communists wage war for world domination. He critiques defensive alliances as unable to counter internal subversion, citing Iraq's fall to a pro-Communist coup and Cuba's entrenchment of a pro-Communist regime through internal subversion. He dismisses the foreign aid program's "stomach theory of Communism" and argues that diplomatic negotiations hand the Soviets propaganda victories. He questions American participation in the United Nations as subordinating national interests to a body partly controlled by Communist members and opposes disarmament proposals that would undermine America's tactical nuclear capability.

He concludes with a 10-point program for victory, calling for an offensive strategy, military superiority, withdrawal of diplomatic recognition from Communist governments, encouragement of captive peoples to revolt by furnishing them with weapons and other tools of resistance, and preparedness for direct military operations against vulnerable Communist regimes. He presents two possible futures: one in which the Communists retain the offensive and force incremental American retreat ending in surrender, and another in which America seizes the initiative and wages a war of attrition aimed at the internal disintegration of the Communist empire. Acknowledging the risk of war, he argues that the latter path alone holds the promise of victory.