“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ ‘interests,’ I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.” — Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative
Growing up in Arizona, Barry Goldwater was my senior senator for the first two decades of my life. He was a legend here, converting what once was a Democratic stronghold into the reddest of Republican states. He still looms large, with his name on lakes, mountains, and the occasional airport terminal. He even loaned his name to the state’s leading think tank, where I had the privilege to work.
If I was asked to summarize my version of conservatism, or “conservatarianism” as it were, the quote above is perfect. It’s also a sentiment far too rare anywhere in politics.
Candidates from the right and left are always telling us what they will do for us. They will pass new laws, create new agencies, and hire better bureaucrats. What I would rather hear is what laws they would remove, which agencies they would abolish, and which bureaucrats would be sent to find work in the private sector.
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