Just listened to it.

Sorry. The generational gap might be in play here, but I didn't hear too much that was actually funny on this clip.

Still like ol' GB, but I don't believe this was his "finest six minutes"...

Barry Goldwater is my officially designated political role model, if you look at the Indianapolis Star senate survey (question 6).

Al,

I read that. What do you propose doing to replace the department of education?

I never much agreed with Barry's politics -- save for his support of Bill Clinton and his "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which made his fellow Republicans wonder if he hadn't lost his mind -- but I've always appreciated his frankness and integrity.

Goldwater was an erratic, limelight-seeking mediocrity. Can anyone out there make a good case for his importance? Reagan surpassed him in building a movement and it is easy to have integrity if you are wealthy from the get-go.

Hope

"It is easy to have integrity if you are wealthy from the get-go."

So THAT's why rich people are pillars of decency and morality! Thanks!

Hope, you might not like what Goldwater stood for, but you cannot reasonably call him a "mediocrity" or unimportant. He was the father of the modern conservative movement. Basically, he played John the Baptist to Reagan's Jesus.

Rodney, anyone who thought Goldwater was somehow losing it when he supported gays in the military just didn't understand him in the first place. This was basic to his essentially libertarian philosophy.

Indeed, Goldwater would have gone further than don't ask, don't tell. He would have outright done away with the ban on homosexuals serving in the military. As he put it (approximate direct quote from memory), "It's none of the government's business who you're sleeping with."

Jeremy, I do not propose replacing the federal Department of Education, but simply eliminating it- and the money being spent on it.

This just kicks the issue down to the state or local level, though. If there's something useful in the federal programs, the local levels of government can do it instead. Some of those things might apply to YOUR local school, some undoubtedly will not. Education is certainly not a one-size-fits-all deal.

Besides the fact that there is absolutely no constitutional authority for federal involvement in education, it is totally bad public policy. A bunch of bureaucrats in DC are not teaching your children to read.

Note that the Department of Education only became a cabinet level department in 1980. Are children being better educated now than they were in 1980? Not as I can tell.

Hi, guys. Eric, I am getting a little lost as to which person goes with which number. That is to say in, "Comment 7 posted by Al Barger on October 7," I can't tell immediately tell which is Comment 7. Gentleman, maybe we should sign our posts to make clear who is speaking. (Don't you just love pushy women who join a site only to start remaking it to suit their tastes? Women, huh?)

Whoever said I did anything reasonably?

You are quite correct, sir, that Goldwater was important and I overshot on that. But I think it is generally agreed that his quote about extremism hurt the conservative movement. Libertarianism is a very different thing from the main strand of conservatism, which leans toward a heavy national security state and involvement in the abortion question. But I concede your point (aren't I gracious?) that Goldwater played a major historical role. But it was Reagan who had to do damage control and put things back together after the 1964 debacle.

As to wealth and virtue. I think there is a quote by GB Shaw about it being easy to be virtuous on fifty thousand a year. (Or some such comfortable income.)

Hope
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