The Conservative Movement and the Vietnam War

The Other Side of Vietnam

Seth Offenbach

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367209544
• eBook ISBN: 9780429559419
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

The Vietnam War was the central political issue of the 1960s and 1970s. This study by Seth Offenbach explains how the conflict shaped modern conservatism. The war caused disputes between the pro-war anti-communists right and libertarian conservatives who opposed the war. At the same time, Christian evangelicals supported the war and began forming alliances with the mainstream, pro-war right. This enabled the formation of the New Right movement which came to dominate U.S. politics at the end of the twentieth century. The Conservative Movement and the Vietnam War explains the right's changes between Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

Section II
Problems

3
Dissent of the Libertarians

There are many reasons why Barry Goldwater should not have been the face of a political movement. His silver, thinning hair and trademark thick-rimmed glasses helped him look nearly a decade older than he was (he was only 55 years old when he ran for president). Additionally, Goldwater was often photographed with lips that pursed, as though he was gritting his teeth, barely tolerating those around him. When he did smile in photos, you barely see his teeth. Goldwater’s cadence was also that of an angry old man. When he delivered his now-infamous line at the 1964 Republican convention, “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice,” he sounded like he was scolding the crowd. Goldwater’s speaking pattern was often monotonous, with random fits and starts that did not always match the content. Unlike the grace displayed by Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the faces of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, Goldwater often sounded cranky and failed to pause appropriately for applause. Compounding his problems, he rarely seemed happy or optimistic, a marked difference compared to later conservative Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, with his Morning in America campaign, and George W. Bush, with his compassionate conservatism slogan. Despite these setbacks, Goldwater’s ideology made him an incredibly important politician as he helped integrate libertarians into the mainstream conservative movement. Through his campaign, Goldwater promoted the idea that politicians should focus their energies on reducing the size of the federal government, not finding ways to offer assistance to those in need.

Goldwater often told voters that he wanted to destroy, not strengthen, anti-poverty programs. This was the opposite of what they wanted to hear, and his anti-government message helped to cement a legend (among conservatives) about him as an honest politician focused solely on his principles. Part of this legend sprang from anecdotes about campaign mishaps which were converted into Honest Abe-type fables. For instance, when Goldwater told an audience in West Virginia that the War on Poverty was “as phony as a three-dollar bill,” it was a tactical mistake since the War on Poverty brought badly needed federal money to the region. Another mishap occurred when he told people in Tennessee that the government should sell the Tennessee Valley Authority, despite the fact that the Authority helped electrify the region and provided jobs to thousands. These moves amounted to political suicide. However, instead of portraying them as proof that he was not ready for a presidential campaign, his supporters referred to these incidents to demonstrate that Goldwater had “courage and candor” and that “his ideology was more important to him than winning the election.”¹ These stories of Goldwater’s ideological purity helped millions of supporters fall in love with the small government Mr. Conservative.

Even today, nearly 50 years after his presidential defeat, Goldwater can excite many. For example, Michael Thompson, whom I interviewed in 2012 for this project and who volunteered for Goldwater’s campaign, became animated when describing the summer of 1964 when he volunteered on behalf of Goldwater. While talking about Goldwater, Thompson’s cadence literally quickened with excitement. Thompson, who also worked on Reagan’s campaign in 1976 and started the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, has spent a lifetime in politics, understanding the flaws of politics and politicians, but he describes Goldwater as his “political hero” and his time working for Goldwater as a “something out of a dream.”²

Goldwater’s career took off after the publication of Conscience of a Conservative in 1960. The book was ghost-written by National Review contributor L. Brent Bozell, published by Clarence Manion’s Victor Publishing Company, and bulk purchased by wealthy individuals and corporations that widely distributed it. Despite the fact that Goldwater needed this institutional help to write, publish, and distribute the book, his manifesto still made a dramatic impact on the grassroots. Every 1960s conservative activist who was interviewed for this project noted that Conscience changed their lives. Many other historians who study this era agree with the book’s significance.³ The idea of Barry Goldwater—what he stood for in the minds of his followers—was truly inspirational.

In addition to his anti-politician identity, another of Goldwater’s main appeals was his strong support for a small government. Goldwater’s political ideology developed from anti-statist views stretching back to anti-New Deal Republican politics. Individuals such as author Albert Jay Nock and Senator Robert Taft helped popularize the idea that the best government is the smallest government. Fifteen years after Nock and Taft’s heyday, in the heart of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, when the United States government appeared to be fighting the War on Poverty with as much zeal as it was fighting the Cold War, the idea that the government should stop interfering with the private marketplace was a powerful one. This view was spurred on partially by the success of libertarian/objectivist author Ayn Rand.

Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, which was published three years before Conscience of a Conservative, represented rugged individualism and fear of an encroaching government bureaucracy. Although Rand, Taft, and Nock had different conceptions of small government, all captivated a similar group known as libertarians. The central philosophy which ran through Goldwater’s Conscience was a libertarian belief that the federal government was becoming too powerful. In diverse areas such as civil rights, education, agriculture, taxes, labor relations, and welfare programs, Goldwater wrote that the federal government was doing more harm to the nation than good. The solution to the nation’s problems, according to Conscience, was less government coupled with more hard work and individual efforts. The world, according to this libertarian philosophy, needed more John Galts—the fictional inventor and philosopher from Atlas Shrugged who worked hard—and fewer ‘looters’ who confiscate from the producers. This libertarianism, which had a long and historic streak throughout the conservative movement, was especially relevant in the early 1960s as conservatives tried to stop what they saw as the onslaught of the New Frontier and Great Society.⁴

With the rise of Great Society legislation, debates raged nationally about the role of government in society. The Great Society program, proposed by Johnson in 1964, included using the power of the federal government to combat poverty, enhance national civil rights laws, increase funding for education, and provide access to healthcare for the poor and elderly. In order to effectively oppose these programs, and the greater role for the federal government in affecting local issues, the right needed a strong dose of libertarian philosophy. An example of this can be seen in John Sainsbury’s conversion to conservatism. Sainsbury was an undergraduate student at Marist College in New York when he undertook research for an upcoming debate. Sainsbury was a Democrat who volunteered for Kennedy in 1960 and he was tasked with arguing that the federal government should leave education policy and funding to the states. To prepare for the debate, he read a portion of Conscience. After what he termed a “successful” debate, he decided to keep reading the book, not just the chapter about education spending. In the end, he began to realize that he agreed with many of the points Goldwater made. Sainsbury picked up Goldwater’s book and found a voice for his political beliefs. Like the millions of other Youth for Goldwater students, Sainsbury spent his last year at Marist volunteering for the Arizona senator. Today, Sainsbury’s friends describe him as a libertarian—when I was introduced to Sainsbury, it was with the promise that he was a libertarian—but as Sainsbury sees it, even though Goldwater has been dead for more than 20 years, he is still a “Goldwater conservative.”⁵ That the two philosophies can be conflated—libertarianism and Goldwater’s philosophy—reveals that although Goldwater was not a devout libertarian, his political views leaned toward the libertarian political philosophy, and Goldwater himself did much to help libertarians identify themselves as ‘conservative.’

Although Goldwater helped libertarians such as Sainsbury identify as conservatives, unity within the movement was short-lived. The debates surrounding the Vietnam War created schisms between libertarians and the rest of the movement, which realigned the conservative movement’s identity.⁶ During the war, many libertarians began moving away from the mainstream conservative movement, even Sainsbury was ‘purged’ from YAF because of his views. This chapter explains the libertarian shift and how this harmed the conservative movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Libertarian Foreign Policy

The libertarian philosophy has its roots in both New Deal anti-statist arguments and the Austrian School of Economics. The basic philosophy opposes any expansion of governmental powers and focuses on the proper role of the state in the lives of individuals. Primarily, those who self-identify as libertarians do so because they support the domestic policy that a smaller government is a better government. Popular works such as Atlas Shrugged and The Road to Serfdom helped convert many to libertarianism by promoting the idea that the sole purpose of government is to protect citizens’ property from outside encroachment, maintain basic social order, and otherwise leave citizens alone.⁷ The selling point behind libertarianism is that it promotes ‘freedom,’ a term used repeatedly in the literature. In the 1960s, libertarians frequently focused on the concept of liberty with the belief that a smaller government leads to maximum individual freedom and liberty. The more decisions the government makes in terms of the economy, they argued, the less freedom experienced by individuals. This concept is explained in Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty, published in 1960. In this work, he clearly articulated his opposition to making healthcare “compulsory” and “a single scheme of state insurance.” This is a different argument than the one he made two decades earlier in The Road to Serfdom. The reason for his change, as he explained, is that in every country that adapted universal healthcare, the systems became too unwieldy, but also too popular to claw back.⁸ Hayek’s argument that even healthcare should be privatized is an example of the libertarian philosophy which opposed government dictating choice for people in the name of promoting more individual liberty.

Unfortunately for libertarians, this philosophy barely touches upon the proper role of the United States in the world. Does a libertarian foreign policy advocate that the United States should leave every other nation alone? This idea would seem to be in line with the philosophy that a centralized power is a bad power. It would also harken back to earlier eras of isolationism. Or, does a libertarian foreign policy mean that the United States should promote libertarian values of freedom to other nations? This level of intervention could be justified because of the unique, worldwide threat posed by Soviet collectivism toward individual freedom. Individuals such as Rand and Hayek devoted little intellectual energy to the idea of an appropriate libertarian foreign policy (at least in comparison to the amount of energy spent on domestic politics). This left a vacuum of leadership among libertarians regarding the issue.

Generally speaking, leading libertarian philosophers and economists offered little clear guidance on how to fight the Cold War. While they were not silent on foreign policy matters, they kept their focus mainly on the domestic sphere. As one example, The Freeman, a monthly libertarian newsletter published by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), published six articles about foreign policy throughout the 1960s. This is remarkable, considering that the Vietnam War was a major topic of discussion in the public sphere and because The Freeman published more than 700 articles during this time. The focus for The Freeman was strengthening individual freedom. The absence of articles on foreign policy meant that the grassroots...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Other Side of Vietnam
• SECTION I Conservatives and the Vietnam War
• SECTION II Problems
• SECTION III Redemption
• Conclusion: From Goldwater to Reagan
• Index