REMOCIÓN EN MASA

Goldwater’s misattribution of the ideology of the antifederalists to the framers of the Constitution helps him achieve one of his key goals, which is to invite southern conservative

Democrats to the movement. This text represents an early effort, which would begin to come to fruition in the 1964 campaign, at building a new conservative majority within the GOP by convincing such southerners to switch parties, in order to form a powerful conservative majority within the Republican Party. Farber explains, “Goldwater, as he had intended, helped teach millions, including anticommunist militants, committed anti-secularists, pro-states’ rightists, and dedicated segregationists, that they were, overarchingly, political conservatives—Republican Party conservatives…Not least, Goldwater brought millions of southern whites to the conservative cause and unified and nationalized a grassroots right-wing movement.” (79) While Goldwater’s later vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on the basis of states’ rights would come to represent this strategy, his reading of antifederalist concerns into the Constitution in this text lays this groundwork.

The notion that the founders sought to limit the power of the federal government, not to prevent the accumulation of government power at all, but to preserve this power for state governments, helped to bring southern conservative Democrats into the fold while not offending the beliefs of northern liberal Republicans. Goldwater was not the originator of this argument; it had been used as a warrant for nullification by John C. Calhoun, by secessionists leading up to the Civil War, and by Strom Thurmond’s States’ Rights Democratic Party, known better as the Dixiecrats, in the 1948 election. Goldwater must walk through a minefield in his use of this appeal, given its strong and sordid associations with slavery and subsequent civil rights abuses, but also simply because he’s importing a concept long championed by the Democrats into Republican politics. This was not simply a matter of appealing to the sentiments of Southern conservatives: Jim Crow laws were still alive and well, and Goldwater must find some way to demonstrate that each of his potential constituencies would find him an acceptable candidate.

Despite his devotion of an entire chapter to explaining this principle, the fact that the following chapter is entitled “And Civil Rights” is quite telling. These doctrines are deeply intertwined in American history, and one cannot be invoked without a discussion of the other. The balance he creates with these two chapters indicates his desire to placate two very different constituencies. He begins this second chapter by reminding his readers that the term “civil rights” is often used incorrectly—that it can refer only to rights already established by law. He explains, “Civil rights is frequently used synonymously with ‘human rights’—or with ‘natural rights.’ As often as not, it is simply a name for describing an activity that someone deems politically or socially desirable. A sociologist writes a paper proposing to abolish some inequity, or a politician make a speech about it—and, behold, a new ‘civil right’ is born! The Supreme Court has displayed the same creative powers” (26). The tone and substance of this quote reveal his fundamentally conservative approach to civil rights—that they only exist when recognized by law, and we should be very cautious about expanding the law to recognize new ones. He cites as his example the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education, which desegregated the nation’s public schools and ignited a massive, often violent backlash: “It may be just or wise or expedient for negro children to attend the same schools as white children, but they do not have a civil right to do so which is protected by the federal constitution, or which is enforceable by the federal government” (28). It would be easy to read Goldwater as implying here that he does not support the goal of integrating the nation’s schools—that his objection to the Court’s procedure entails a corollary objection to the social outcomes it brought about.

However, Goldwater later makes clear that this is not the case (though he waits a few pages to do so). Repeating the structure of his earlier claim that “it may be just or wise,” he explains, “It so happens that I am in agreement with the objectives of the Supreme Court as

stated in the Brown decision. I believe that it is both wise and just for negro children to attend the same schools as whites, and that to deny them this opportunity carries with it strong implications of inferiority. I am not prepared, however, to impose that judgment of mine on the people of Mississippi or South Carolina…” (31; emphasis in original). This sharp distinction between his personal beliefs and what he would be prepared to use the power of the state to accomplish is crucial to bridging the gap between northern and southern racial attitudes. He is thus able to appeal to northern sensibilities on the issue of race, while assuaging southern conservatives that he would never interfere with their “right” to maintain a segregated, legally unequal society.