Barry Goldwater Quotes
You know, I think we ought to sell TVA.
Barry Goldwater, 1909-1998, U. S. Senator (Republican, AZ), Republican Nominee for President, Quoted in The Saturday Evening Post, August 31, 1963
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
California deregulated it’s electrical utilities who sold their generating capacity to others. As power consumption grew, there was not enough generating capacity in California and the state had to buy on the open market where they were gouged. The cost of electricity soared by 450 percent in the first year alone.
Brandeis was U. S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1856-1941, who wrote that competition would control prices if only healthy competition could be maintained—the problem was resolved by both increasing competition and much more stringent regulation of corporations.
The founder was Charles E. Coughlin, 1891-1979, a demagogic Catholic Priest who drafted the principles and invited others to join him. Hundreds of thousands did in this organization which began in idealism, and ended in scandal and hate mongering, so much so that Father Coughlin was ordered off the radio and out of politics by the Catholic Church. The National Union in 1936 had morphed into the Union Party which ran Presidential candidates in the 1936 election. The Coughlin and the Union were a mixture of Fascist and Socialist principles. The prohibition of private ownership of banks and utilities was one of the radical socialist notions.
The first part of this quotation has defined the attitude of most Americans towards private enterprise and government since then. The second part of the quotation—the undesirability of public ownership of railroads has given way to the modern problem that no passenger railroad can be operated profitably by anyone—private or public. So Roosevelt’s “far-reaching disaster” was finally complete with the Federal Government taking over responsibility for Amtrack.
The then Secretary of State instructed his agent to attempt to purchase New Mexico and part California from Mexico:
Collection of Spoken Words of the Prophet. Ironically, despite the reverence with which words of the Hadith are accorded in Islam, from time to time Muslim theologians and authorities have attempted to establish “fair prices” despite this free market view of the Prophet.
Some economic conservatives see little or no role for government. For many of them, in a free market there is no role for government. This quotation, from one of the economic heroes of the conservatives, shows that he not only saw a role for government, but believed that government was essential to the operation of a free market.
This Republican mantra has been central for the Republicans for the entire century after Theodore Roosevelt who thought that business had to be regulated and controlled. The same basic speech has been given by conservative Republicans ever since.
Barry Morris Goldwater was an American politician, statesman, businessman, United States Air Force officer, and author who was a five-term Senator from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–1987) and the Republican Party nominee for president of the United States in 1964. Goldwater is the politician most often credited with having sparked the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s. Despite his loss of the 1964 presidential election in a landslide, many political pundits and historians believe he laid the foundation for the conservative revolution to follow, as the grassroots organization and conservative takeover of the Republican party began a long-term realignment in American politics helped to bring about the "Reagan Revolution" of the 1980s. He also had a substantial impact on the libertarian movement.
