re: #482 ihateronpaul

the barry goldwater that voted against the civil rights act of 1964? what a guy! oh wait, that sounds like the position of the JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY. hmm

Hmmm, indeed. Are you aware that a larger percentage of Republicans voted for this act, than did Democrats. As a matter of fact, Al Gore Sr., voted against it, as did most of the Democrat Southern segregationists.

Equating Barry Goldwater with the John Birch Society and implying he was a racist is to misunderstand history and its nuances:

“Most of the twenty-seven senators who voted against the Civil Rights Act were Southern segregationists. Goldwater was not a segregationist, nor was he any kind of racist. He was, in fact, a lifelong opponent of racial discrimination. At the beginning of his political career, as a city councilman, he had led the fight to end segregation in the Phoenix public schools; his first staff assistant when he went to the Senate, as Perlstein tells us, was a black woman; he was a member of the N.A.A.C.P. Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act because he believed, as a conservative, that the federal government did not have the power to compel states to conform to its idea of racial equality, or to dictate to individuals whom they must associate with.

The decision tormented him. Before the vote, he asked for advice from a political ally and speechwriter for his campaign, William Rehnquist, then a Phoenix attorney. Rehnquist assured him that the bill was unconstitutional. Goldwater sought a second opinion from another member of his brain trust, Robert Bork, then a law professor at Yale. Bork wrote a seventy-five-page concurrence. It was with a heavy heart (to borrow a phrase of L.B.J.’s) that Goldwater cast his vote on civil rights. He was, Perlstein says, “a shaken man afraid he was signing his political death warrant, convinced that the Constitution offered him no other honorable choice.”

The fact is that Barry Goldwater had honor, principles and an undying belief in the constitution and even knowing what his vote would do to his political career, he cast it anyway. To tar him with the label of “racist” is ridiculous and completely unfair. If you read a little about the man’s history, rather than cherry-picking a single fact out of his long political career, you may understand that.

Knowing history is one thing, understanding it is another.