The challenge ahead, otherwise known as: "Everything that is wrong in the world, is wrong because of Democrats."
- Collectivism is a stagnant swampland, we're told, and communism is a big ol' bully. The United States, raised by God to flourish and be free, will not stagnate or be bullied, no siree.
- And even though Americans have been led toward false freedoms as of late (false freedoms like those offered by Democrats and Eastern Republicans are what he's talking about), Goldwater knows that it's time to correct course and focus on real freedom. What is real freedom, one might ask? Well, real freedom is, first and foremost, a government that is limited by, and adheres to, the laws that surround it.
- But freedom has to be balanced, he tells us, because what is liberty without order?
- It can go one of two ways: it can be the "slavery of the prison cell," which is what happens when the government is too strong, or it can be the anarchy of "the mob and of the jungle," which is what happens when the government is too weak (14).
- We Americans know what freedom is. Why? Because we've "earned it, we have lived for it, and we have died for it" (16).
- We're so good at freedom that we're, like, the model of freedom for the rest of the world. And we could even spread the word about freedom's awesomeness to those that maybe aren't so sure.
- But first, we need to remember what freedom is supposed to be. We need to "renew freedom's mission in our own hearts and in our own homes" (19).
- The next paragraph talks about how badly the current Democratic administration has screwed up the freedom thing.
- Barry brings up international head-shakes like the Berlin Wall, the embarrassing Bay of Pigs Invasion, and the current tensions in Laos and Vietnam.
- He pretty much lays the blame for all of it at the feet of JFK and LBJ.
- He even blames them for tensions among NATO members and straight calls them out for dividing the world and becalming—yes, becalming—the nation.
- And as if that wasn't enough, he also blames them for crushing the "genius of individual creativity" under a mountain of "centralized planning, red tape, rules without responsibility, and regimentation without discourse" (29, 30).
- Now, thanks to the Democrats, people can't find meaningful work. It's all "bureaucratic 'make-work,'" devoid of moral leadership and full of spectacles and scandals (31).
- There's all this violence, corruption, aimlessness, despair, and it's bad news. It's bad, bad news.
- Republicans, the senator reminds his audience, are honest people, and they demand honesty from everyone around them.
- And honestly, people need to be more concerned about the "growing menace in our country:" America's ever-increasing crime problem (39).
- The whole point of having a government is so that it can protect its citizens from domestic violence as well as foreign aggression, Barry says, and the government that can't do that? It ain't gonna last long. It's probably going to give way to some kind of awful tyranny.
- And if it does, it'll be the liberals' fault, because they have, as Republicans understand, a totally flawed view of humanity and human nature, and that's what's gotten the country into the pickle it's in.
- Liberals take freedom away. They see the government as more valuable than the individual citizen.
- They deny that freedom is a God-given right, which is one of the principles on which the United States was founded.
- People who try to impose their vision of utopia on a society always end up destroying people's liberties and becoming the worst tyrants. Anyone who's looking for that kind of power should immediately be taken down.
- Their notion of equality is false and dangerous; while the founding fathers understood equality as the doorway to creative freedom, these would-be tyrants (otherwise known as Democrats and liberals) use the word "equality" to force people to conform to their tyrannical whims.
- Goldwater then appeals to his fellow Republicans to remember that concentrated power and enforced conformity just isn't their party's bag, baby.
- The cause of Republicanism is to make sure that the power stays with the people, far away from those liberal tyrant wannabes, and that is exactly what a Republican President and Congress would do, "so help us God" (53).
- Republicans also need to take up the cause for strong national defense.
- The "tyranny of man over man," as he puts it, can't be stopped by sitting on our hands and thinking that "a world of conflict will somehow mysteriously resolve itself into a world of harmony" without countries like the U.S. standing firm against would-be aggressors (54, 55).
- Know what else Republicanism is all about? Reminding the world that "only the strong can remain free, and that only the strong can keep the peace" (56). This is no time for the U.S. to get all weak and bashful.
- Eisenhower did it right: he didn't start any wars, and he oversaw the building of the greatest defense arsenal the world has ever known.
- Specifically, Barry brings up the Formosa Straits incidents, which resulted in the United States pledging to defend Taiwan against communist threats.
- He also mentions the conflict in Beirut, Lebanon, which was the first real invocation of the Eisenhower Doctrine.
- (The Eisenhower Doctrine basically said that the U.S. would come to the aid of any country looking to defend itself against external threats; all it had to do was ask. Lebanon asked.)
- It was during those years, Goldwater continues, that the spread of communism was stopped and the world became a more peaceful place.
- And it was during the Democratic years that the U.S.'s ability to keep the peace (i.e., build up its arsenals) declined.
- It's like America's just been stumbling around blindly, making bad military decisions, causing all kinds of unnecessary death and destruction, and hiding it all from the American people.
- "Yesterday it was Korea," he says, and "[t]onight it is Vietnam" (64, 65). He's beat this drum before: President Truman's strategy during the Korean War was what Barry had called a 'no-win' strategy, and he saw Presidents Kennedy and Johnson heading down the same fruitless path with the new conflict in Vietnam.
- The Vietnam War was a sticky subject in the 1964 election. Although the U.S. started sending "advisors" to Vietnam as early as the 1950s, and combat troops were officially sent starting in 1965 (a year after this speech), the United States never actually declared war on Vietnam.
- Let's call it like it was. We were at war with Korea before, and we're at war with Vietnam now.
- Oh, and BTW, it's the Democrats who were in charge when a billion people were turned into communist prisoners, Barry adds. He's talking about the descending of the Iron Curtain and the repressive ways of communist regimes around the world.
- Today, and this really gets his goat, the Johnson Administration seems like it's willing to make all kinds of deals with communists to avoid armed conflict: money deals, food deals, political deals, even deals involving the freedom of human beings.
- We have to call an evil an evil, and brand communism as "the only significant disturber of the peace" (73).
- More, we need to make it clear that communist governments are the enemy of anyone anywhere who wants to call themselves free.
- But holding to that and keeping the peace is only possible if the U.S. remains strong and keeps its eyes and ears open. Goldwater's not gonna let peace or freedom "be torn from our grasp because of lack of strength or will," and that's a promise (77).