Who Is Barry Goldwater Scrutinize The Conscience Of A Conservative?

In Barry Goldwater’s The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater criticized President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s various liberal solutions during the New Deal for their unconstitutional and frequent government involvement. Goldwater believed that the conservative’s greatest challenge was to “preserve and extend freedom” to the fullest, but Roosevelt’s seemingly invasive policies in agriculture, labor, and welfare opposed that goal in Goldwater’s eyes (13). Goldwater’s core goals were to enforce the Constitution, reduce the size of government, restore the Republic, and, most importantly, to maximize freedom. Roosevelt’s strategies during the New Deal conflicted with Goldwater’s ideals greatly, since most of the President’s programs emphasized larger

There were a number of reasons why Goldwater scrutinized this act. For example, Goldwater said that this intervention in agriculture neglected the Constitution’s limitations on government, since “No power over agriculture was given to any branch of the national government” (29). He explained how the first Agricultural Adjustment Act was denied by the Supreme Court, but the second was passed under the justification of “regulation of interstate commerce” (30). This justification in and of itself seemed objectionable to Goldwater, who called this misinterpretation of the Constitution “the most flagrant on record” (30). Through this legislation, Goldwater claimed that the jurisdiction of agriculture had been handed over to the federal government instead of the states, and also made the commerce clause exceptionally broad. Regardless of his issues with the legislation’s acceptance, he also thought that it still did not solve the farming crisis after all. To Goldwater, it only provided additional issues such as “production

The Social Security Act was the foundation of America’s welfare system, as it created unemployment insurance, created a retirement benefits program for the elderly, and created Aid to Dependent Children. These programs, however, required funding that came from every American’s paycheck. This did not sit well with Goldwater, who thought that people should “be free throughout their lives to spend their earnings when and as they see fit,” and believed that if the government was going to create programs that did not meet the Constitution’s standards, then they were not entitled to the taxes they need from the American people (12). Goldwater saw taxation as a burden on the individual American citizen, and therefore did not support the welfare acts, like Social Security, that required it. Consequently, he emphasized that “the current results of New Deal legislation,” or the “Federal disbursements for human welfare,” were “second only to national defense” in amount of money spent (48). Goldwater predicted that if the trend were to continue, the American people would only grumble on about extra government spending, and then eventually have to face the consequences of the people's increased dependence on government in the future. He compared this dependence to “bondage”, and pointed out the permanent effects of Welfarism on the individual (49). With the federal