[Adapted from the editorial in the May 1985 issue of Conservative Digest – CD’s 10^th Anniversary Issue.]

The liberals’ goal in the 1964 election was not just to defeat Goldwater, but to crush him. They wanted Lyndon Johnson to win a historic victory, not because they loved Johnson (they mocked him in 1960 and spat on him in ’68) but because Goldwater was the living symbol of conservatism in America. If they could destroy him, they could govern America for a generation.

They came close. Only the fierce determination of Goldwater and his supporters kept the conservative cause alive. In the final hopeless days of the Goldwater campaign, on of those supporters, Ronald Reagan, spoke on national television of American’s “rendezvous with destiny.”

 “We can preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth,” he said, “or we can sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.” For a long while, we followed the latter course.

In the early 1970s, liberalism was ascendant. Working people were hit with taxes at rates originally intended for the very rich leaving them little money for savings or for their children’s education. The goal of a colorblind society was abandoned in favor of a new racism or quotas, forced busing, and “set-asides” by which government contractors were awarded based on race. The courts twisted the Constitution to void the economic rights of consumers and the right to life of the unborn. Wage and price controls were imposed on an economy already burdened with over-regulation, resulting in shortages and blocks-long lines at service stations. Bureaucrats licked their chops in hopeful anticipation of gasoline rationing. The budget for the space program was slashed, but a bill to set up a Soviet-style system of “child development” passed Congress (though it was vetoed).

The Soviet Union boldly expanded its evil empire and became the most powerful nation on earth, ever as U.S./Soviet trade increased dramatically. U.S. relations with the Soviets were grounded in the idea that the West was in an irreversible decline. Cuba became a nuclear fortress. The SALT I treaty gave the Soviets a three-to-two advantage in ICBMs. Congress gutted the CIA and cut off aid to the democratic forces in Vietnam and Angola, abandoning the cause of freedom and betraying our allies. And the Helsinki agreement legitimized the Soviet occupation of Central and Eastern Europe.

1972 saw the publication of the infamous book Limits to Growth, as more and more people swallowed the fairy tale that the world’s energy sources were inherently limited and the poverty was caused by population growth. Followers of George McGovern took over the Democratic Party, which nevertheless continued to control Congress and most state offices.

For a century, liberalism had been on the rise. Now its ultimate achievement was in sight. The United States – the great experiment in democracy, the glory of the human race, a nation founded not on accident or conquest but on shared values of human liberty and justice – would soon be just another bland society where everybody talks the same and acts the same, just another place where people are cogs in machines run by bureaucrats. And with the death of the American Dream, the sun would set for a thousand years on the dream of freedom for oppressed peoples around the globe.

That is certainly not what most liberals wanted. They had the best intentions – the kind with which the road to Hell is paved. They played havoc with the traditions of American society, destroyed economic opportunity for working people, encouraged illegitimate births, and gave succor to the most privileged members of society… and their excuse was that they didn’t realize their policies would have those effects. They didn’t know the gun was loaded.

The Watergate scandal was the Big Finish for a century in which liberals dominated the public debate, achieved unchallenged supremacy in American politics, and remade this country in their image. By 1973 and 1974, they had the power first to emasculate and then to overthrow the elected president. His replacement, while conservative, was not prepared to engage in what would have been an all-out political war. Facing one of the most wild-eyed, irresponsible Congresses in history, President Ford promised “communication, conciliation, compromise, and cooperation” instead of confrontation – not exactly a surrender, but close enough. He called for “no recriminations” following the fall of Saigon, which was fine with the liberals responsible for the fall of Saigon. And he appointed as his vice president Nelson Rockefeller, an honorable fellow whom conservatives considered the personification of elitist liberalism.

Watergate gave liberalism its greatest triumph… but it contained the seeds of liberalism’s ultimate defeat.

History bounces from one improbable event to the next in ways beyond the imagination of a Rube Goldberg. No one could have guessed that a piece of tape on a door would help bring the Liberal Century to a crashing end – but it did.

For a hundred years, liberals dominated the American scene. Most of the best reporters, commentators, poets, cartoonists, and filmmakers were liberals. Most of the best judges and politicians, too. Eventually they captured the majority of offices in the country and began to use the powers of government to impose their views on others. For a long time, liberalism offered a political faith that appealed to the idealism of the young and assuaged the guilt of the old. It represented “positive change.” But after a century, liberalism began to mutate into something not quite so positive. It began to unravel the fiber of American society and rob us of the things that mad us unique in the world’s history.

Then a night watchman found a piece of tape on a door and called the police, alerting them to a burglary at the Watergate complex. It was one of those strange moments in the course of human events, when a tiny thing has a great impact. (For want of a nail, a kingdom was lost.) The Watergate scandal was like that; the perpetrators came so tantalizingly close to getting away with it. But they say the Good Lord looks after the United States, and in this case the American people won the roll of the dice.

To be sure, it didn’t seem so at the time. It seemed that the major effect of the Watergate scandal would be to increase the power of a liberal elite that was already far too powerful. But although Watergate gave liberals the opportunity to first bind and then overthrow and elected president, it also gave conservatives the impetus to change their strategy – to stop trying to win debating points and start trying to win elections.

Until that point the president of a right-to-work organization might never have met the chairman of a pro-defense group, and neither might have met the head of a right-to-life network. After Watergate demonstrated the near-total power of liberals in Washington, and after the liberal sweep of the 1974 elections, conservative leaders agreed for the first time to work together on a consistent basis. The leaders of single-issue groups came together in regular meetings to work out a common agenda – fulfilling the role that historically belonged to political parties.

However, credit for the birth of the new conservative movement must be shared with the liberals themselves, who provided us with the tools we needed to challenge and eventually topple them. They passed laws limiting the amount of money that individuals could contribute to political campaigns. They thought that, under those laws, Republicans and conservatives would have a hard time raising money for campaigns, while liberals would prosper, their coffers full of money from government grants and from union member’s involuntary contributions.

Boy, were they wrong! Liberals continued to collect money from their usual sources, but they were unable to adapt to the new rules. Using techniques developed (I am proud to say) by The Viguerie Company, conservative organizations (and the Republican Party itself) built a nationwide network of small contributors – people concerned about taxes, crime, defense, education, abortion, and scores of issues that the political establishment had been unwilling to address. While conservatives became more populist, liberals became captives of special interest groups.

Just as important as conservatives’ new emphasis on organization was the growth of conservative ideas… and the abandonment by liberals of many of their best ideas.

The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980… his reelection in 1984… and the creation of a dynamic, growing conservative movement in the mid-1980s. These were the results of seemingly unrelated events that occurred during the 1970s.

• Proposition One, a tax cut measure proposed by California Governor Ronald Reagan, was narrowly defeated in 1973. But it gave rise to the tax revolt that would sweep the country a few years later.
• Edith Efron, a contributing editor of TV Guide, wrote a book called The News Twisters, which began the conservative assault on media bias.
• Anti-McGovern Democrats founded the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, an organization intended to “save” the Democratic Party but which for many would serve as a way-station toward conservatism.
• Movies like “Dirty Harry” and “Death Wish” reflected the people’s frustration with judges more concerned about the rights of criminals than the rights of victims.
• Nobel Prizes for F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman lent credibility to conservative economics.
• In 1975, a Wall Street Journal article became the foundation of supply-side economics, and a Congressman named Jack Kemp introduced a bill called the Jobs Creation Act; Kemp-Roth would follow two years later.
• In 1976, the Apple Computer company began the technological revolution that would give the conservative movement its high-tech constituency.
• Reports of the Vietnamese boat people and of the Cambodian Holocaust helped discredit the anti-Vietnam protesters.
• Conservative books (fiction by Heinlein or Buckley, non-fiction like Free to Choose) began to appear on best-seller lists, and conservative television shows like “Little House on the Prairie” began to appear on the major networks.

While these and many other tiny rivulets joined together to form one mighty rushing river of conservatism, liberalism went dry. During the past decade, it was stripped of any rightful claim to moral superiority, and its most dynamic ideas became the property of conservatives. What remains of the once-proud liberal tradition is Leftism – that is, fear of new technology, opposition to progress, and the belief that prosperity is inherently unfair.

Hubert Humphrey exulted when FDR severed liberalism’s connection to Thomas Jefferson; Roosevelt, Humphrey wrote, “completed the transformation of American liberalism from its original anti-statism to a doctrine advocating the use of the power of the state…” Now liberalism has been purged of most of its other good ideas, such as racial equality and anti-communism and economic expansion. It’s downright pathetic; in 1981, liberals’ counter-proposal to the Kemp-Roth tax cut consisted of new tax breaks for Big Business. At the 1984 Democratic convention, party liberals blocked a resolution against anti-Semitism, and in the fall their presidential candidate campaigned in favor of the idea that the best way to prevent nuclear war was for the U.S. and USSR to hold each other’s civilian populations hostage.

While liberals jettisoned their best ideas, conservatives expanded their appeal. The conservative movement – once a tiny band led by William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater – has opened its doors to a wide range of people who work together in constantly-shifting coalitions. It includes traditionalists whose political beliefs are rooted in a deep religious faith (people like Pat Robertson)… high-tech “opportunity” conservatives (like Newt Gingrich)… libertarians who believe that the government should protect people from criminals and foreign invaders and otherwise leave them alone to manage their own affairs (Milton Friedman)… anti-communist defenders of the welfare state (George Will, Jeane Kirkpatrick)… and populists who want government to reflect the ideals of average Americans (Pat Buchanan). In small town Chambers of Commerce and at conventions of space-exploration buffs, in union halls and on high school and college campuses, at swearing-in ceremonies for new citizens, at Amway rallies and at prayer meetings, conservatism is seen in its wide variety.

Conservatives are no longer on the outside looking in. Their role has changed. They are now expected no just to be able to hold their own in the most diverse nation this planet has ever known. The First Generation of modern conservatives kept the flame alive in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The Second Generation brought conservatism to the highest levels of government. The Third Generation has the responsibility to keep conservatism political vibrant and alive for decades to come, and to govern wisely and well.

With a lot of sweat and a little luck we have come this far. Now for the hard part.