In memoriam: Barry Goldwater.

• Author: Poole, Robert W., Jr.

Barry Goldwater was 20th-century America's first libertarian politician.

Had it not been for him, the magazine you are reading - and its parent organization-might not exist. I read Goldwater's book, The Conscience of a Conservative, in high school, just as I was becoming politically aware. Its powerful message of individual liberty, economic freedom, and anti-communism struck a chord with me, launching an intellectual journey that went on to Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and many others. Ultimately, this process generated the idea that I would make a career out of defending rationality and liberty.

Over the years I have returned again and again to these lines in Goldwater's book, in which he set forth the credo of a new breed of politician, dedicated to reclaiming liberty: "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents"interests,' I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause, I am doing the very best I can."

To budding libertarian and conservative activists of the early '60s, these words were electrifying. Thousands of us got our first political experience going door to door, staffing literature tables, and even serving as poll watchers in Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. Many of us knew he would lose that battle, but we saw it as but the first engagement of a long war. And though he chose not to run for president again, by inspiring Ronald Reagan to run, Goldwater achieved something of a belated victory in 1980.

What Goldwater did was to make it acceptable to question the legitimacy of an all-powerful national government. Though widely denounced as extremist in 1964, his ideas had become almost mainstream by the time of Reagan's election. A proliferation of conservative and libertarian think tanks arose in Goldwater's wake, including the Reason Foundation, to lay the basis for...