Whither the Conservative Movement pg. 4

with other research judgments, further study is necessary to determine the validity of the data set used.

Barry Goldwater

Senator Goldwater was an ideological man, and sought to implement his ideology through the policy actions he advocated. Even when his choices were unpopular, he stood firmly on his conservative ideology and the belief in a severely limited federal government (Goldberg, 1995). He was also a fairly articulate public speaker and able to make direct connections between his current actions and his overarching beliefs.

For Goldwater, the issue of taxation revolved around the issue of personal liberty (Goldwater, 1957, quote I.A.1, I.A.6). The link was simple and irrefutable (Goldwater, 1957, quote I.A.7, I.A.8). In a truly free society, men and women are able to do whatever they so desire. This includes spending their money in any way they choose (Goldwater, 1957, quote I.A.12). This approach did not, however, attack all taxation, or the power of the government to lay and collect taxes for legitimate purposes (Goldwater, 1964a, quote I.C.2). In fact, it did not even attack the necessity of deficits for legitimate purposes (Goldwater, 1961, quote I.B.2).

This was an ideology that primarily focused on taxation as a subfield of fiscal responsibility. As such, out of balance spending was even more of a concern than was taxation (Goldwater, 1961, quote I.B.1). High taxation was a problem, but necessary, because it was a function of out of control spending, which was caused by government reaching beyond its legitimate boundaries (Goldwater, 1957, quote I.A.9, I.A.11;

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