Notable Quote - Barry Goldwater - Granite Grok

Notable Quote – Barry Goldwater

“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”

“Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

– US Senator Barry Goldwater, GOP nomination for President, 1964

50th anniversary of their use upon accepting the GOP nomination for President in 1964 (7/16/14).  (H/T: Instapundit).  Ann Althouse has 10 of the best lines of that speech after the jump – such prescient with today’s Administration and Progressive aggression (emphasis mine):

10. “We must, and we shall, return to proven ways — not because they are old, but because they are true.”

9. “Rather than useful jobs in our country, people have been offered bureaucratic ‘make work,’ rather than moral leadership, they have been given bread and circuses, spectacles, and, yes, they have even been given scandals.”

8. “[I]t has been during Democratic years that a billion persons were cast into Communist captivity and their fate cynically sealed.”

7. “The good Lord raised this mighty Republic to be a home for the brave and to flourish as the land of the free — not to stagnate in the swampland of collectivism, not to cringe before the bully of communism.”

6. “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.”

5. “We do not seek to lead anyone’s life for him — we seek only to secure his rights and to guarantee him opportunity to strive, with government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwise be performed.”

Contrast that with DC’s emphasis on making as many decisions for us as fast as they can, instead of just leaving us to make them for ourselves.

4. “History shows us — demonstrates that nothing — nothing prepares the way for tyranny more than the failure of public officials to keep the streets from bullies and marauders.”

Or when those public official become the public’s Master, making them the bullies.

3. “Those who seek to live your lives for you, to take your liberties in return for relieving you of yours, those who elevate the state and downgrade the citizen must see ultimately a world in which earthly power can be substituted for divine will, and this Nation was founded upon the rejection of that notion and upon the acceptance of God as the author of freedom.”

This IS the encapsulation of the Progressive ideal – and they lie when they tell you otherwise.

2. “Our Republican cause is not to level out the world or make its people conform in computer regimented sameness.”

1. “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

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