Goldwater's principled opposition to the 64 civil rights act

[renard_ruse]

Goldwater was strongly criticized at the time and has historically been attacked for voting against the 1964 civil rights act.

However, the 64 civil rights act was different from previous civil rights questions because it wasn't about getting rid of government discrimination or a state requiring a private entity to discriminate, but rather taking freedom away from a private business to operate the way it wishes.

When civil rights went from ending government mandated discrimination, which of course, was a horrible thing, to intruding on the rights of the individual to operate a business in the way they wish, it went from being about expanding freedom to taking freedom.

Goldwater was right in 1964, and his vote would still be right today.

 

[Hypoxia]

Should private businesses (which incorporate under state and federal laws) be above the laws enacted by a government installed by the electorate? Sen Goldwater would likely have opposed the Pure Food and Drug act in TR's term because it punished businesses for selling fake and spoiled foods and drugs. Have you eaten any rotten meat lately?

Sorry, the Constitution was specifically ordained to "...establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility... promote the general Welfare..." Our representative government occasionally decides that fucking people over because of their ethnicity, religion, sexuality, etc does not insure domestic Tranquility and promote the general Welfare. Aw, poor babies...

You want to stand on principles? I recall a past Supe writing, "Freedom of speech does not protect shouting FIRE! in a crowded theater." Society, acting through its elected government, may decide that your particular practices suck. Fuck, they won't let me set fire to cats any more! My rights are infringed! It's time for insurrection.

Right.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

The real question is: Are blacks any better off 52 years later?

All the civil rights laws did was create a legion of nigger counters in government, and make work for 3rd rate lawyers. And to create enough nigger contestants standards hadda be lowered for all. Your high school diploma and college degree are worth shit.

 

[Tigersman]

Should private businesses (which incorporate under state and federal laws) be above the laws enacted by a government installed by the electorate? Sen Goldwater would likely have opposed the Pure Food and Drug act in TR's term because it punished businesses for selling fake and spoiled foods and drugs. Have you eaten any rotten meat lately?

Sorry, the Constitution was specifically ordained to "...establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility... promote the general Welfare..." Our representative government occasionally decides that fucking people over because of their ethnicity, religion, sexuality, etc does not insure domestic Tranquility and promote the general Welfare. Aw, poor babies...

You want to stand on principles? I recall a past Supe writing, "Freedom of speech does not protect shouting FIRE! in a crowded theater." Society, acting through its elected government, may decide that your particular practices suck. Fuck, they won't let me set fire to cats any more! My rights are infringed! It's time for insurrection.

Right.

Yelling "Fire" in a crowded building where there is no "Fire" can have deadly results with people being stomped to death, so in this case it's not an infringement of Freedom of Speech. What it is doing is making sure someone like me does not beat the person who yelled "Fire" into a bloody pulp.

As for Goldwater, he was defeated by a liar and murderer, LBJ. LBJ lied to the American people about the Gulf of Tonkin incident which his Secretary of Defense admitted to decades later. LBJ and Bill Moyer came up with the Daisy Commercial which pictured Goldwater getting us in a nuclear war with China, another lie. LBJ damn near bankrupted our country during his term in office. The Vietnam Memorial in DC where 58,000 plus names are engraved is a testament to how LBJ cred less about human life. Those names represent the number of men and women LBJ murdered due to greed for power and wealth. LBJ was a coward.

 

[trysail]

...There had been speculation for years about Johnson's relationship to that company [the "LBJ Company"]. Lady Bird had purchased one small radio station in 1943 for $17,500. Since then, thanks in part to a twenty-year-long string of strikingly favorable rulings by the Federal Communications Commission (which, among other aspects, had left Austin as one of the few metropolitan areas with only a single commercial television station), the company had burgeoned into a chain of immensely profitable radio and television stations the length of Texas, and by 1963 it owned as well 11,000 acres of ranchland and major shareholdings in nine Texas banks. Johnson had quieted the speculations by his unequivocal denials that there was any relationship. He had said, over and over, for twenty years, that the LBJ Company was entirely his wife's business and he had nothing to do with it; that, as he claimed in one of his many statements, "All that is owned by Mrs. Johnson....I don't have any interest in government-regulated industries and I never have had." But if Lyndon Johnson had no interest in the LBJ Company, why was it taking out insurance on his life? And, of course, his denials had omitted the salient fact. Texas was a community property state, and therefore since Lyndon Johnson had an interest— a half interest— in all the company's income, he had become rich. If Reynolds' statements became public, it would cast doubt on Johnson's claim that there was no connection between LBJ and the LBJ Company— and once that connection was established, the company's financial dealings would become a subject of journalistic inquiry. Johnson had arrived in Congress poor, and during his career had ostensibly had no source of income other than his government salary. He had been boasting to friends for years that he was a millionaire. By 1963, he, a man who had never held any job but his government positions— whose salary had never been more than $35,000 per year— was not merely a millionaire but a millionaire many times over...


..." 'Millionaire'— this was perhaps the first time that Johnson had ever been identified as such in print, at least in a national publication; he had perhaps never been identified in a national publication as a wealthy man, let alone a very wealthy man; for Life to do so, it must know something about his personal fortune that he had previously been able to keep hidden.

And, in fact, it did.

The magazine's investigative team had been working since the end of October [1963], and, during that time, say its leader, Associate Editor William Lambert, 'I began to pick up all these hints' about Lyndon Johnson, not merely about Johnson and his relationship with the newly rich Bobby Baker, but about Lyndon Johnson 'and the acquisition of his fortune.' Following up on hints, the team had found, in the words of Russell Sackett, one of its members and also an associate editor, that 'The deeper you got, the more serious they were; he was far richer than anyone had expected,' that he was, in fact, very rich indeed.

'I was very indignant,' Lambert said, and during the week of November 11 [1963], he had gone to the office of George P. Hunt, Life's managing editor, and said of Lyndon Johnson, 'This guy looks like a bandit to me.' Although 'bandit' is, of course, a synonym for 'robber' or 'thief,' Lambert didn't feel he was misusing the word. 'I felt that he had used public office to enhance his private wealth.' 'We're going to have to spend some money [to investigate]. I need some people, and a lot of time.' Johnson's entire financial picture should be looked into, he said. 'It was almost a net worth job, and you know that takes an enormous amount of time. I told Hunt, 'He's got a fortune, and he's been on the [public] payroll ever since he got out of college. And I don't know how he got it, but it's there.' By the time he went to see Hunt, Lambert was to recall, 'We knew he was a millionaire many times over."...​

-Robert A. Caro
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power
New York, N.Y. 2012.​

​

This is another excerpt from the fourth volume of Robert A. Caro's monumental biography of the 36th President of the U.S.

I have read each volume as they have emerged. With each and every volume, I have been more and more sickened and disgusted by Caro's revelations of Johnson's profound dishonesty.

The inescapable fact is that Lyndon Baines Johnson was a crook, a liar, a cheat, a thief and a blackmailer.

He cheated in every single election he ever entered— beginning as a student at obscure Southwest Texas State Teachers College— and he never stopped.




​

​

 

[about_average]

LBJ and Bill Moyer came up with the Daisy Commercial which pictured Goldwater getting us in a nuclear war with China, another lie.

I'm not sure why you say China. China was never mentioned.
Even though Moyers wasn't involved in producing the ad, he did approve it, and also later regretted that it ever aired.

But apparently you've forgotten that that ad came from Goldwater's comments “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” and his suggestion during the primary that the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam should be considered.

Goldwater would very likely have pressed the war forward if he'd been elected. There's also a good chance he'd have authorized the use of nuclear weapons.
Nixon certainly did, invading and destabilizing two more countries in SE Asia.