Goldwater got it wrong

In 1964 Barry Goldwater won the Republican nomination for the presidency – much to the weeping and wailing of the ‘liberal’ press.

Goldwater was an old-fashioned American conservative: patriotic, fiscally sound, anti-Communist, anti-New Deal. Naturally, the lefties hated him with unmitigated passion.

An indelible tag of ‘extremist’ was attached to Barry. Cartoonists were drawing him against the backdrop of nuclear mushrooms. The Soviets, in addition to all that, highlighted the original name of the Goldwater clan, Goldwasser.

He was Jewish on his father’s side, a fact of paramount importance in Russia. Never mind that, when his paternal grandfather emigrated to England and then the US in the mid-19^th century, the family name was immediately translated into English. A century wasn’t enough time to destigmatise a Jew in Russia – this though Barry had a gentile mother and was raised as an Episcopalian.

The US media didn’t make a big deal out of Barry’s ethnic mix. ‘Extremist’ gave them enough of a weapon, and they were proved right in the subsequent election, which Goldwater lost in a landslide. No one liked Lyndon Johnson very much, but the prospect of nuclear holocaust, so vividly depicted in the press, put people off Goldwater.

But that came later. Meanwhile, delivering his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention, Barry decided to attack the extremism tag head on. His speechwriter, probably Harry Jaffa, put spiffy words into his mouth:

“I would remind you that extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

The trick didn’t work. All that the ‘liberal’ press chose to hear was the words “extremism is no vice”. They took that as an admission and pounced on Barry with renewed energy. His presidential bid was doomed.

It’s against that historical background, if outside that historical context, that I can say I disagree with Goldwater. Any extremism, whatever it’s in defence or pursuit of, is a vice.

Extremism is closely related to fanaticism, zealotry and violence. It dims the mind, dulls reason and replaces decisive action based on nuanced thought with spittle-sputtering emotional incontinence.

Extremism compromises any idea, even one as sound as defence of liberty, by, if nothing else, presenting an easy target to the opponents. It also sets the scene for semantic muddle. Its practitioners use it – wrongly – as a synonym of fortitude, courage and resolve. Their adversaries use it as a synonym of hysteria – and they are right, whatever the inspiration of extremism.

Extremism relates to fortitude as jingoism relates to patriotism. It’s an emotional cloud so thick that it obscures the idea behind it, if any. Or else it’s a squatter ousting the original idea. Before long the idea flees and extremism has the whole place to itself.

This brings me to Israeli extremists attacking Christians who come to worship at the holy sites. Pilgrims are assaulted, cemeteries are desecrated, property is damaged. A few months ago, for example, an extremist mob trashed an Armenian restaurant in Jerusalem, screaming “Death to Arabs, death to Christians!”. There were incidents of attacks on the pilgrims during the Orthodox Holy Week.

Now, though extremism is never excusable, sometimes it’s understandable. Israeli Jews have lived with the dire threat of annihilation their whole lives. The country exists on a knife’s edge, always in a state of emergency. That has to jangle people’s nerves, tighten them like a rope on a winch. When that happens, nerves can snap.

The restraining mechanisms often fail, especially in young people bursting with hormones. Those young Israelis have all served in the army, many have seen action in battles and skirmishes. That sort of thing doesn’t promote a moderate, balanced outlook on life.

That, as I said, may be an explanation. But it’s not an excuse. A Jewish mob baying “Death to Christians!” is as reprehensible as a Christian mob baying “Death to Jews!”, although the latter battle cry has been heard much more often throughout history.

Correction: though anti-Semitic murderers have often called themselves Christians, they had no right to that appellation. Launching a pogrom out of tribal hatred isn’t what real Christians do. I know dozens of true Christians, some of them priests, and there isn’t an anti-Semite among them (admittedly, my friends are a preselected group).

Moreover, they are all friends of Israel, that oasis of Western civility in a sea of obscurantist barbarism and the only reliable ally of the West in that region. It takes a true fanatic to express anti-Israeli sentiments in the West – and an equally objectional one to scream anti-Christian slogans in Israel.

I wonder if those Israeli yobs realise how much damage they can do to their country. After all, Israel depends for its survival on support from countries that are at least nominally Christian, the US prime among them. And support of Israel is by no means monolithic there.

In America specifically, strong anti-Israeli (not always anti-Semitic) sentiments can be found both on the right, among America First types, and on the left, where affection for Third World barbarism, in this case Palestinian, is an article of faith.

There is also a broad swathe of indifferent opinion, people who can’t be bothered. Many of them are Christians who vote for pro-Israeli candidates. If anti-Christian attacks multiply in Israel, it will be the easiest thing in the world to destroy any kind of consensus behind such candidates.

In addition to being morally wrong and aesthetically unappealing, extremism in word or deed is also counterproductive. Just look at how Russian imperial extremism unified Nato countries more than they have been unified for a generation – and how Nato has added two valuable members, Finland and (soon) Sweden, neither of which had ever wanted to join before last year.

Anti-Christian sentiments and actions can similarly galvanise anti-Israeli opinion in the West – that much is obvious. But perhaps the most significant damage extremism does is the warping effect it has on the soul of the extremist.

I hope the Israeli government steps down hard on its anti-Christian extremists, as I hope our government stamps out our own eco-yobs, and the US government puts an end to BLM extremism. For Barry Goldwater was wrong, in his choice of words if not the sentiment behind them.

His mistake also illustrates the danger of overfondness for epigrammatic aphorisms (he who is without that sin…). Had he said something like “strength in the defence of liberty is no vice; weakness in the pursuit of justice is no virtue”, rhetoric would have suffered, but truth would have gained.