With this presentation, the second part of the Conservatism 101 series begins.  After exploring the intellectual foundations of conservatism in our first seven classes, we now transition to the political history and influencers of the modern conservative movement.  Spearheading its leadership are two giants of the early conservative movement – Sen. Robert A. Taft (R-OH) and Sen. Barry M. Goldwater (R-AZ).  Before conservatism was a respected and legitimate adversary to liberalism, both Taft and Goldwater led this nascent movement to significant victories and consequential losses.  Their legacies are enduring as they inspired a generation of activists that would set the stage for one of conservatism’s greatest victories – the presidential election of Ronald Reagan.

In preparation for this, consider the following quotations from both Taft and Goldwater before watching the lecture.

“When I say liberty…I mean liberty of the individual to think his own thoughts and live his own life as he desires to think and live; the liberty of the family to decide how they wish to live, what they wanted to eat for breakfast and for dinner, and how they wish to spend their time; liberty of a man to develop his ideas and get other people to teach those ideas, if he can convince them that they have some value to the world…” ― Robert Taft

“Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism. Fellow Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people. ”  ― Barry M. Goldwater

The Presenter

To lead this lesson, the Leadership Institute has recruited Dr. Lee Edwards, PhD of the Heritage Foundation who serves as the Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought.  Dr. Edwards is Heritage’s in-house authority on the U.S. conservative movement.  A leading historian of American conservatism, Edwards is the author or editor of 20 books, including biographies of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and Edwin Meese III, as well as histories of The Heritage Foundation and the movement as a whole.  He is also chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which dedicated the Victims of Communism Memorial in 2007 and launched the online Global Museum on Communism in 2009.  Edwards is an adjunct professor of politics at The Catholic University of America.  He was the founding director of the Institute of Political Journalism at Georgetown University and a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Picture Sources: Taft, Goldwater, Edwards

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