The other day I came upon a reference to a statement that, when first uttered, immediately became notorious: “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.”
This was, of course, part of Barry Goldwater’s speech accepting the Republican nomination for President in 1964. It was, I believe, Karl Hess [1] (rather a hero of mine) who penned Goldwater’s speech, but the line itself has a rather distinguished pedigree. Its original version was uttered by Cicero: “I must remind you, Lords, Senators, that extreme patriotism in the defense of freedom is no crime, and let me respectfully remind you that pusillanimity in the pursuit of justice is no virtue in a Roman.”
Had the Roman statesman been given credit for the remark, it might not have been so quickly and widely vilified (Hess didn’t actually learn the source until much later). Still, those who weren’t around at the time may find it hard to figure out why it was so misunderstood.
This, however, is easily explained.
Back then, Goldwater’s conservatism was widely depicted in the media as a form of extremism (is this starting to sound familiar?). Anyway, upfront guy that he was, Goldwater decided to take the charge by the horns and turn it on its head. Didn’t work.
Some have said it caused him to lose the election, but I’m not so sure about that. After all, Goldwater also favored a more aggressive policy in Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson breezed to a landslide simply by arguing that he didn’t think American boys should be fighting a war Asian boys should be fighting. (You will doubtless recall that he later changed his mind.)
Anyway, it’s hard to think of Cicero as an extremist, and the truth of what he (and Goldwater) said is actually pretty obvious. Given that the opposite of one’s freedom is one’s enslavement, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would shrink from the most extreme measures in the defense of the former. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t.
But this wasn’t what I thought of when I came upon that reference to Goldwater’s ill-fated mot. What I thought of was another epigram of sorts uttered by another politician a few years earlier. Only this guy had won the Presidential election and his remark was part of his inaugural address: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
I not only remember watching Kennedy’s inaugural on TV with my mother; I can even recall what I said to her at the time: “Why would I ask either?” What I most want from my country (by which I presume is meant its government) is to be left alone. In return for which I am perfectly willing to let it alone as well.
For some reason, these two pronouncements have always been connected in my mind. When Goldwater was pilloried for his, I remembered how much Kennedy had been praised for his. Yet Kennedy’s is servile and Goldwater’s is exhilaratingly defiant. At first I wondered why people couldn’t see that, why they just didn’t take a moment to tease out the implications of both.
But of course, as Somerset Maugham put it so succinctly in The Summing Up: “Most people think little.” Having heard the one extolled and the other denounced, most people (or mostpeople, as E.E. Cummings liked to call them) probably just put both out of their minds and never gave much thought to either one again.
The funny thing is, I suspect that if Kennedy had said what Goldwater said, and Goldwater what Kennedy had, the reaction to the respective statements in the media would have been precisely the opposite of what it was: Extremism in the defense of liberty would have been portrayed as supremely virtuous, while asking what you could do for your country would have been dismissed as a sentiment unworthy of a free citizenry, if not as a downright plea for fascism.
We sure are lucky we have a free press.
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