1964 RNC Presidential Acceptance
San Francisco, CA, July 17, 1964
Barry Goldwater

I accept your nomination with a deep sense of humility.  I accept, too, the responsibility that goes with it, and I seek your continued help and your continued guidance.

In this world no person, no party can guarantee anything, but what we can do and what we shall do is to deserve victory and victory will be ours.  The good Lord raised this mighty Republican-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.

Now my fellow Americans, the tide has been running against freedom.  Our people have followed false prophets.  We must, and we shall, return to proven ways--not because they are old, but because they are true.

During four futile years, the Administration which we shall replace has distorted and lost that faith.  It has talked and talked and talked and talked the words of freedom, but it has failed and failed and failed in the works of freedom.

Now failure cements the wall of shame in Berlin; failures blot the sands of shame at the Bay of Pigs; failures marked the slow death of freedom in Laos; failures infest the jungles of Vietnam, and failures haunt the houses of our once great alliances and undermine the greatest bulwark ever erected by free nations, the NATO community.

Failures proclaim lost leadership, obscure purpose, weakening wills and the risk of inciting our sworn enemies to new aggressions and to new excesses.

Tonight there is violence in our streets, corruption in our highest offices, aimlessness among our youth, anxiety among our elderly, and there's a virtual despair among the many who look beyond material success toward the inner meaning of their lives.  And where examples of morality should be set, the opposite is seen.  Small men seeking great wealth or power have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity.

Now, certainly simple honesty is not too much to demand of men in government.  We find it in most.  Republicans demand it from everyone.

They demand it from everyone, no matter how exalted or protected his position might be.

The growing menace in our country tonight, to personal safety, to life, to limb and property, in homes, in churches, on the playgrounds and places of business, particularly in our great cities, is the mounting concern, or should be, of every thoughtful citizen in the United States.  Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign aggression, is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any government, and a government that cannot fulfill this purpose is one that cannot long command the loyalty of its citizens.

History shows us, demonstrates that nothing-- nothing-- prepares the way for tyranny more than the failure of public officials to keep the streets safe from bullies and marauders.

Now, we Republicans see all this as more--much more--than the result of mere political differences, or mere political mistakes.  We see this as the result of a fundamentally and absolutely wrong view of man, his nature, and his destiny.

Their mistaken course stems from false notions, ladies and gentlemen, of equality.  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.

It is, further, the cause of Republicanism to restore a clear understanding of the tyranny of man over man in the world at large.  It is our cause to dispel the foggy thinking which avoids hard decisions in the delusion that a world of conflict will somehow resolve itself into a world of harmony, if we just don't rock the boat or irritate the forces of aggression--and this is hogwash.

It is, further, the cause of Republicanism to remind ourselves, and the world, that only the strong can remain free; that only the strong can keep the peace.

I needn't remind you, but I will, that it's been during Democratic years that our strength to deter war has been stilled and even gone into a planned decline.  It has been during Democratic years that we have weakly stumbled into conflicts, timidly refusing to draw our own lines against aggression, deceitfully refusing to tell even our own people of our full participation and tragically letting our finest men die on battlefields unmarked by purpose, unmarked by pride or the prospect of victory.

Yesterday it was Korea; tonight it is Vietnam.  Make no bones of this.  Don't try to sweep this under the rug.

And I needn't remind you, but I will, it has been during Democratic years that a billion persons were cast into Communist captivity and their fate cynically sealed.

Now the Republican cause demands that we brand communism as the principal disturber of peace in the world today.  Indeed, we should brand it as the only significant disturber of the peace.

I pledge that the America I envision in the years ahead will extend its hand in help, in teaching and in cultivation, so that all new nations will be at least encouraged to go our way; so that they will not wander down the dark alleys of tyranny or to the dead-end streets of collectivism.

My fellow Republicans, we do no man a service by hiding freedom's light under a bushel of mistaken humility.

I seek an America proud of its past, proud of its ways, proud of its dreams and determined actively to proclaim them.

We Republicans seek a government that attends to its inherent responsibilities of maintaining a stable monetary and fiscal climate, encouraging a free and competitive economy, and enforcing law and order.

Thus do we seek inventiveness, diversity and creative difference within a stable order.

Back in 1858, Abraham Lincoln said this of the Republican party, and I quote him because he probably could have said it during the last week or so:  "It was composed of strained, discordant, and even hostile elements."  End of the quote, in 1958 [sic].

Yet all of these elements agreed on one paramount objective:  to arrest the progress of slavery, and place it in the course of ultimate extinction.

Today, as then, but more urgently and more broadly than then, the task of preserving and enlarging freedom at home and of safeguarding it from the forces of tyranny abroad is great enough to challenge all our resources and to require all our strength.

Anyone who joins us, in all sincerity, we welcome.  Those, those who do not care for our cause, we don't expect to enter our ranks in any case.  And let our Republicanism so focused and so dedicated not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.

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!