8 00 p. M. Eastern with c span contender series. Thatll be followed by the democratic nomination acceptance speech and later road to the white house, rewind of the 1968 president ial campaign p. Coming up next, Brian Ellen Drake of conservation of environmental. The kansas city hosted this for an hour long event. Well, good evening and welcome to the kansas city of public library, i am henry fortunado. I want to thank you for participating in my Ongoing Campaign to provide speaking opportunities for all of my buds from graduate school. All the guys i went to graduate school with at the university of kansas. Tonight entrance of that category is Brian Allen Drake and up and coming environmental study historian. Now hes a lecture history teacher of the university of georgia. Let me introduce the top of his talk by an opening line that another one of our graduate students use every fall on the first day of the under graduate history classes that he taught. One hundred years from now, he would say, all of you would be dead. How is that for a wake up at 8 00 in the morning undergraduates. 100 years from now, all of you will be dead unless all of you accomplish something ordinary or doing something so evil, the odds are no one will remember you. Even if your name lives on, the odds are, it will be a caricature. Barry goldwater, 50 years ago, today, mr. Conservative accepted the republican nomination at the cal palace in san francisco. Only two things were remembered, first, a phrase from goldwaters speech which was in its mangled form goes Something Like this. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. The goldwater went onto suffer electoral defeat of land side proportions at the hands of Lyndon Johnson. But what if we are remembering Barry Goldwater for the wrong things . What if there is a different Barry Goldwater . Someone who wrestled with apparent contradictions between his intellectual beliefs and his personal attachment to the great outdoors. That is the question that brian drake is going to explore in tonights presentation. An individual lecture for us titled Barry Goldwater the conscious of a conservationist. Loving nature fearing the state, environmentalism and antegovernment politics before reagan. Its published by the university of washington press. It is for sale after this talk, and he will be signing copies. One last comment before i depart. A month from now it will be, hard to believe, 15 years since i went back to school to begin work on what i called my middleaged masters degree. Brian drake was in both of my first two classes that semester. In the early sessions i was struck by the cogency of his arguments and his unairing ability to decipher the point of the assigned readings, which many of which were rather oh page and somewhat slow going. And then when we started to write papers, which were Peer Reviewed by other class members, i was struck again by brians phenomenal talent for writing. His ability to produce scholarly work that was totally accessible. Brian had cracked the code, the first one in both classes to do so. Some people never quite figured it out, but i die gres. I have no doubt that brian will demonstrate that talent for all of you. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome brian drake. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let me begin by saying some nice things about henry, who is one of the most who is one of the smart e, wittiest people i know. And he is a treasure, and youre lucky to have him here. Thank you, henry very much for those comments. And i also want to say as well it is a thrill to be here in kansas city. I love this down, and i love this region. Being fan of the great plains what a great place it is, so thank you for that. I think it is time to cut to the chase, and i wonder if we might begin by hearing those famous words of Barry Goldwater. So if we could cue that video to begin. Or not. I must 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. And there they are in somewhat edited tomorrow. Let me tell you a little about myself. As henry mentioned, i am an environmental historian. I study the influence of nature on human history, and the reciprocal human influence on nature. What do people think about nature . How do they treat nature . How does nature respond in turn and affect us. Its sort of back and forth. One of my favorite historical topics. When i was in graduate school, i got interested in the Environmental Movement, who became an environmentist . Why . What happens when other parts of their lives intersecond with their environmentalism and particularly i got fascinated by people who became environmentalists that you would never expect, and you could kind of see where this is going. One of the things i loved about my study is when historical actors go off script, when they do things you would never expect. I like the fact that people are complicated. That is a truism i realize, but it is a truism for a reason. People are complicated, and i wanted to explore that. My true interests came together in my book and they come together in this talk today. I want toex ploer the complicated world of arizona senator and environmentalist Barry Goldwater who accepted the republican nomination for president 50 years ago today. Now, the complicated world of Barry Goldwater, if you know much about him, complicated is not a word normally associated with the senator from arizona. It might elicit a laugh. The classic image of goldwat goldwater of course, this is one of his campaign posters. The classic image looks Something Like this. He was extremely conservative. Distilled essence of conservatism, an opponent of the new deal, opponent of Lyndon Johnson and opposed to welfare and excessive taxes, a defender of traditional morality. Militant antecommunist, supporter of the military, et cetera and so forth. We could tick them off. They are put together, he emerges as a cardboard cutout, an ideology attached to a warm body, uncompromising, aggressive, perhaps even according to his critics dangerously so. And you can see that in just a couple film clips that i would like to show you now. Can we run the communism video . These are from this is from a great website called living room candidate. This is a 1964 campaign commercial from senator goldwater. Hand over your heart. Ready . Begin. I pledge allegiance to the United States of america. For which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I want American Kids to grow up americans and they will if we make our intentions clear. So clear they dont need translation, just respect for a country prepared as no country in all history ever was. In your heart you know hes right. Vote for Barry Goldwater. There is his Famous Campaign motto. Needles to say, this very intense antecommune nichl made krit ticks nervous. If we could run just another weapon, please. This is a Lyndon Johnson campaign commercial from that same year. On october 24th, 1963 Barry Goldwater set off the nuclear bomb, merely another weapon, merely another weapon. Vote for president johnson. The stakes are too high for you to stay home. And the next one, which, yeah the next one is a little bit more famous. You may remember this. This is the infamous daisy commercial of 1964. If we could run that as well, please. It is a little bit longer. One, two, three, four, five, s six, seven, six, six, eight, nine nine. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero. These are the stakes, to make a world in which all of gods children can live are to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die. Vote for president johnson on november 3rd. The stakes are too high for you to stay home. Again, maybe the most famous political cartoon in all of american history. You will needs the cold war is not mentioned by name. It is understood that you are supposed to know who it is being referred to. So Barry Goldwater scared Many Democrats and many republicans as well. I would like to finish one more commercial until we get into the meat of this. This one is less known. This is a commercial called ice cream. Used to do. They used to explode atomic bombs in the air. Now, children should have lots of vitamin a and calcium, but they shouldnt have any cz 37. These things come from atomic bombs, and they are radioactive. They could make you die. Do you know what people finally did . They got together and signed a Nuclear Test Ban treaty, and then the radioactive poison started to go away. But now there is a man who wants to be president of the United States, and he doesnt like this treaty. He fought against it. He even voted against it. He wants to go on testing more bombs. His name is Barry Goldwater, and if hes elected, they might Start Testing all over again. Vote for president johnson on november 3rd. The stakes are too high for you to stay home. All right. Now, in 1964, as in 2014, we dont expect nuance in our political ads. And ads from both sides, i think, were were misleading. Lyndon johnson was not a socialist dictator, not joseph stallen with a texas drawl and Barry Goldwater was not a warmonger. In fact, if you look at his whole life, his whole political life and his life in general, what you find is that Barry Goldwater often went off in very interesting directions. He was a very supple thinker than he was given credit for, not just by his voters but also supporters. Some examples you are probably familiar with, he broke with the Republican Party over the influence of religious right. He was not a fan of jerry fald well. He championed the right of gay people to serve in the military. Supported a democrat karen english in 1992 when she ran for congress. He was a supporter of planned parent hood for his entire life. He was also a member of the naacp, which was for white supporters of segregation maybe the most hated organization in the country. He even, of course, as you probably know, had a warm reputation with forget this picture. This is from his 1968 senator campaign. A great picture. There he is in his backyard in this photograph. It graces the book of mr. Pearl steens book. But goldwater was good friends with one of his big political rivals, and that was john f. Kennedy. They talked about campaigning together. Imagine that. Debating each other, but still remaining friends. So thats the commercial. The last one that i showed, the idea that goldwaters election would be an environmental disaster is especially el vens to this idea of goldwater being complicated because we will see the famous maverick strategic extended to environmental issues. So let me begin by telling you a little bit about Barry Goldwater. He was born in phoenix, arizona, first of january 1909, and he was the one of welltodo Department Store owner named baron goldwater. He was an add venn cher rouse kid, maybe a little wild. He ended up in military school in stanton, virginia eventually. He loved to do all the things that boys did, play pranks, run around with his buddies. He loved to camp. He loved to ride. He loved to hunt an area around Camel Back Mountain. I dont know if you have been to phoenix, but if you fly in and look to the north, you will see Camel Back Mountain. This is a picture of it in the early 1900s as Barry Goldwater would have seen it. It is covered in houses mostly now. Here is another shot. Wide open spaces. These wide open spaces had a significant influence on goldwater for the whole of his life, in fact. These youthful experiences in the desert are going to shape his environmentalism as an adult. So let me tell you a little bit about his mother, who was crucial to this. She was from nebraska and she moved to arizona because she had tuberculosis. And the idea was the air of arizona would cure you. She did not expect to live long. She ended up living for several decades. Maybe it worked. She met baron goldwater, married him, had three children, and she loved nature deeply. One of the things that she loved to do, in fact, was go on car camping trips. This is in the 1920s. This is the era we had car camps. And going to the wilderness used to be the domain of the wealthy. You got on a train and you went to yosemite. Thats what she did. And she took her kids with them. You cant see them. I believe thats Barry Goldwater at the wheel. He did a lot of driving on these trips. There they are in their automobile crossing the Colorado River on their way this is in arizona on their way to Southern California in one of these many, many trips that they took. Joe goldwater lectured her children on natural history. She pointed out the beauties of nature. She was not an intensely religious woman but she believed god was present in his creation, that the real church was the wild, and that was a lesson that Barry Goldwater took to heart. Just some really wonderful experiences. As barry got older, he continued this tradition. He picked up a camera before that, he picked up a rifle before he did that. This is Barry Goldwater on the left with a rifle in hand. That is his younger brother bob and sister carolyn. His mother is on the left next to him. The other folks are unidentified, but this is one of their many camping trips. But as he became an adult, he continued this. He got into photography. When he got married, his wife gave him in 1934 a camera and he started lugging the camera around the arizona countryside. He also learned to fly and he would take aerial pictures. And, so, he became pretty remarkable artist. This is something we didnt always appreciate. In 1940, he published the first of what would be several books of photography. She was elected to the Royal Society of photographers on the basis of this book. Got a couple of shots here. I love this one in his levis taking a picture of the arch in arizona. This is circa 1940. And take a look at some of these pictures here. These next three shots are shots that well, actually, excuse me. One more. This is later in life wearing those same levis as near as i could tell in his house in scottsdale with his camera, cactus and american flag. I thought about asking if i could get this to be my book cover, but we went with something else. But this is one of his shots. I love this one. Gorgeous. Now, he is not an sell adams, but hes not bad. He was in fact friends with adams. They shared a love for this photography. This is a wonderful shot. My favorite maybe of all is this one, money yumt valley in arizona. Look at those clean lines. This is a man that has an eye for light and shadow and an eye for that pristine adamsesque look. I love this one. One of my favorites. One more. He was also famous for photographing native peoples. And one of his most famous and most reproduced photograph. So again you can see long before he got interested in politics and before he became a politician, he was a monowho was thinking about the wilderness and thinking about nature. Briefly, goes off goes off to military school in virginia. Comes back home to go to the university of arizona. He does not finish because his father dies and he takes over the goldwater store and becomes a businessman. Gets married himself, has three children and begins in the 1930s, begins his career as a conservative. He was deeply opposed to franklin roosevelt. Did not like the new deal. Editorialized against it in the arizona republic, so on and so forth. Getting ahead of myself. Going back to this one. This will be appropriate. Right about this time, he got a chance to go on a trip through the grand canyon. Now, the grand canyon Colorado River was a different place in 1940. There was only one dam on it, and that was hoover dam. The rest of the river ran wild and not many people in 1940 had gone down. Goldwater would be a member of the 13th expedition to go down the Colorado River and the 73rd person in the nevilles expedition. He joined one and darn if he didnt make it all the way through the grand canyon. And it was an incredible experience for him. He kept a journal and took a lot of photographs, which i will get to in a second. I want to read, though, an entry from his journal on that trip. And i quote, theal spires near the rim looked as though god had reached out brushed golden paint across them. Gielding those rocks in the bright glow of setting sun, below the heights, the canyon is filled with a blue haze, not unlike smoke. The river winds lazy and brown through all this beauty and above this grandeur tinted in pastel shades of evening. Thats atonnishing. Thats not something we associate with somebody like Barry Goldwater and his love for the canyon. He loved the grand canyon above all natural features. That love comes out strongly in this. And he took his camera with him, as i mentioned. He took a Motion Picture camera and a still camera. He took hundreds and hundreds of photographs. 3,000 feet of moving picture, and he went on a speaking tour after he emerged from the canyon. He would there were times when he was showing the film and the pictures five times a day. Over 10,000 people saw it in the year or so after he went through the grand canyon. And this i would argue had something to do with his political success. He decided to run for phoenix city council. People will vote for him on issues of corruption and excessive government and pro business atmosphere and people voted for him for those reasons. But i think they also ran for him because he was the man who ran the canyon. He used to fly his aircraft to campaign stops. That was a romantic image i think was crucial. He had a canyon as a backdrop. So hes successful. He finds out he has a tall lent for politics and he decides to run for senate. And low and behold he wins. This is something of a bellwether. The democrats had always dominated the state of arizona and now we had a republican junior senate. This is portending the shifts that have brought us the current political map. He knocked off earnest mcfar land and joined car haven in washington, d. C. As a young senator he gets a lot of the dirty jobs, the ones that no one wants to do. He has to do the reelection tour, go around giving speeching and rubber chicken and that sort of thing. His agenda was typically conservative. He railed against labor unions. He was very antecommunist as you know. He was not an environmentalist as we would recognize it today yet. But we are going to get there. Which means i am going to switch gears for just a second, and i want to tell you a little bit about environmentalism because thats important as well. You need to know a little bit about that. Were going to go back a ways. I often tell my students environmentalism is a product of the 60s, the 1860s. Environmentalism is very old. If you go back 200 years, you will find what we recognize as environmentalism. You have people in new england protesting the effects, the viermal effects of textile mills and asking their governments to regulate and things like that. It is a very old movement. As the Industrial Revolution picks up steam, what you see is more environmental damage. And what we got in the turn of the century in the progressive era is emergence of conservation. It is the first organized Environmental Movement in america. And what a conservationist was was someone like this. They were a reformer, usually middle class, and they believed there are a few principals. One was that the Industrial Revolution, even regulated, unorganized Economic Growth was destroying economic resources. They were not opposed to growth. Dont interpret as an antegrowth idea. But the idea was the growth was done in an unsustainable way, as we would say today. What we need to do is have scientific experts. To conservationists said working for the government to to manage resources in a way that they didnt disappear, and we would avoid scarce citi and so on and so forth. So if you ever wonder where any kind of land management, they federal bureaucracy emerges from this period. It is very use oriented, and its very as you all notice it is very pro government. It believes the government has a duty to do what it can to manage resource development. Here is one of the big iron anies. This was an idea that was strong ere in the gop. You think of Teddy Roosevelt as the greatest example. And we could name others. It is a republican movement, and i will touch on that later. Some conservationists also said, well, we should preserve land not for economic reasons but because it is beautiful and spiritual. We should have parks. They were called preservationists. Sometimes they would fight. There were progrowth people and wilderness preservation people. It was a civil war, and they could get very angry at one another. But by the time Barry Goldwater is on the scene, conservationist is the effort in the country. This is the fill loss sophie informing everyone how they treat the natural world. So when goldwater starts out, he is a conservationist. He believes very much in Economic Growth. He was an avid champion of Economic Growth. And he was, in fact, an avid he was an intense advocate of what was called recla mags. Forgive me if this is too simple here. You were far enough west in georgia. They dont always know about recla mags, which is where i teach. Conservationists often belief that rivers that were not domed were wasted. They should be tamed. Rivers should be tamed and made to work for the good of the country. So the way we tame a river and make it work is put a dam on it. The government very early got involved in dam building starting in 1902. And this was the idea that informed the new deal. The new deal fbr and those folks loved their dams and im sure you know all about. Go to hoover dam. Think of the tva down in the south, these new deal projects because new dealers who already, of course, believed in an aggressive government, they gravitated to this naturally. Goldwater gravitated to it as well. He recognized that recla mags had to happen, even federal reclamation, and this put him in an interesting situation because it is only the government that could build these massive dams. So what you have is goldwater asking or sometime demanding that the federal government build dams in the west. He called it galloping socialism because there is creeping collecty vichl. Its on the deadrun basically. Again, he did some ied logical gym fastics to pull that off, i think. He would transform into a loose constructionist of the constitution to to to deal with that. And you look at some of the major dams of the period, and he was a big supporter. He supported the echo park dam in the 1950s. Problem with the echo park dam it was right in the middle of Dinosaur National park. It was defeated in 1956 after a pretty intense fight, much of environmental groups, the sierra club got together and fought it. He was a big champion of that dam. He said we need the water. We need the water. He was a big supporter of the Central Arizona project and the Bridge Canyon dam. I dont know if anybody knows about this, but the Central Arizona brings water from lack halve sue all the way down to phoenix and tucson some 300 miles. It is a coal generating plant that provides the power to pump that water. Originally it was going to be done by a dam called the Bridge Canyon dam built inside grand canyon park. Even then the up rour was intense. Goldwater said dont worry about it. It is going to be fine. Hes not really an environmentalist yet. The final thing he does, he votes against the wilderness act of 1964. The wilderness about created the official government wilderness designation which you see today all over the place. He was a big opponent of that, but not for the reasons that you might expect. Here is where we start to see the first flicker of Barry Goldwater the environmentalist. He stood up in 1964 and said i am opposed to the wilderness act because i love wilderness act so much. What it will do is be a fourstair rating for a hotel. Everyone will want to go there, and when they do that, they will destroy that through overuse. Better to leave it alone. It is a very interesting argument and it has merit to it. He warned thats what would happen with the wilderness act. So moving on, in 1964, as you know, he decides to run for president. I guess i got a couple of shots here. There he is. There he is giving his speech, classic kind of goldwater look here. Like this one as well. He had a blue grass band touring with him called the goldwaters, and there they are performing. As you know folk music in 1964 was not usually with conservatives. This is of course a goldwater girl. Does not appear to be hillary clinton, who was a goldwater girl, as you may know. But the results getting ahead of myself. The results, as you know, were not good for Barry Goldwater. He was beaten pretty severely, and here is the map of the results. Now just a couple of things. He funded his campaign partially through the sale of a book of photography called the face of arizona, and i have been fortunate enough to see this thing, and it is beautiful. A white leatherbound book with all kinds of photographs captioned by the senator himself, fabulous, and pictures it is a kind of book that any environmentalist would be proud to own today. I like that. I think its interesting hes funding his campaign with this. 2,500 and you got one of the first auto graphed copies. Thats quite a lot of money in those days. After he goes down to significant defeat, the only place he wins is his home state in the deep south. I always tell my students why did a jewish republican member of the naacp win the south . Because were in the middle of a very important political shift. But thats for another lecture, i suppose. What does he do with his time when hes out of office . Something very interesting. This is Camel Back Mountain today surrounded by suburban sprawl. But you notice there is no development on the mountain, and one of the reasons for that is because of Barry Goldwater. He was associated with save the Camel Back Mountain foundation i believe is the name. And they they went around collecting money, working with landowners to buy the rights in order to preserve this mountain untouched, and they were successful. One of the iron. Goldwater worked very hard to keep development off Camel Back Mountain today. It is a fabulous hike, but a wonderful view. He said this old mountain is worth the fight. So in the mid60s when he was out of the political eye, he was preserving landscape in phoenix. So lets go back to there we go. To history again. Now, after world war ii is when conservation starts to become what we would call today environmentalism. A couple things are going on. In the 1950s, we have massive and the 60s, we have massive Economic Growth. Creates a big middle class. And what do middle class people want to do . Theyve got money, and they want to spend it on things. They want to buy tvs and automobiles and they want to take that automobile and go on a road trip to nation parks. They want natural experiences as part of their middle class lifestyle, and they begin organizing and asking insisting that their government do things to protect those environments that they like, that they enjoy. And, so, you start to get in the suburbs i have a friend that wrote an interesting book about this. What you get in the suburbs is the birth of environmental it a. I wouldnt call it a radical movement, but it emerges out of the middle class, and it becomes very strong and people get interested in sprawl and clean air and clean water and so on and so forth. And liberals pick up on this. Lyndon johnson, if you read his speech, he talks about preserving the green space and preserving the natural world. Liberals see themselves defenders not just of the working class but of the middle class and the amenities of a middle class lifestyle, the afluent lifestyle. So Lyndon Johnson picks up on this. This is the origin of liberal environmentalism, that the government has a duty they argue to protect nature for peoples use and enjoyment. Then comes the protests of the late 60s, antevietnam protests and the Civil Rights Movement and so on and so forth. And those things infuse and give it new vigor and by 1970 you have things like earth day, april 22nd, 1970. You have a slew of legislation like the Clean Air Act and a little bit later the clean water act and endangers species act in 1970, on and on and on. Major pieces of environmental legislation that we are familiar today, most of them emerged from this period, and they are signed by richard nixon, arguably the secondmost important environmental president after Teddy Roosevelt. He the ended to see voters when we looked at earth day rallies, but things have changed. It is a very different world in 1970 than it is in 1964. And Barry Goldwater comes in and is influenced by this. Hes deeply influenced by all of this. Hes influenced by some of his personal experiences as well. In 1969, he was flying in the Luke Air Force base, and he couldnt see because of the smog, and he had to land on instruments, and he was freaked out by this. He wrote a letter to his friend and said i could not believe what i had to do. Our air pollution problem, he said, is getting out of hand. He also noted while he was flying that there is everywhere, everywhere he called it gauging and cutting from suburban growth. We should do something about it. Just like every american he is getting concerned about it. Hes very main strain, i would argue, when it comes to his response of the environmental problems of the period. Listen to this. I had one of these moments historians have when you think smoking gun. You have to create the smoking gun, so to speak, with the evidence. But listen to this. He wrote a book in 1970 called conscious of a majority, and he wrote it was it was the usual goldwater stuff until you got to the nexttolast chapter which was called saving the earth. Listen to this paragraph. I happen to be one who has spent much of his public life defending the business community, Free Enterprise system and local governments from har rasment and encroachment from an out sized federal bureaucracy. Thus it is my attitude on pollution seems to have caused more than customary influence. I have discussed it with newspapers, reporters, speeches. I feel very definitely that the Nixon Administration is absolutely correct in cracking down on companies and corporations and municipalities that continue to pollute the nations air and water. While i am a great believer in the free competitive enterprise system, i am an Even Stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean and pollution free environment. To this end, it is my leaf when pollution is found, it should be halted at its source, even if this requires stringent Government Action against important segments of our national economy, end quote. That sound is basically supporters going what . Wow. That was a really phenomenal example of the changes going on. Hes not frozen in time. So he goes on. Ill refer you to my book on this because there is just too many examples. He goes on to support all of nixons environmental initiatives. He urges crack downs on compromise in arizona. He pushes for federal wilderness areas, even though he voted against the legislation that made those possible. He worked toex up and down the grand Canyon National pork, to double it in size. He worked with the liberal democrat on that. He tried to limit boating down the grand canyon and on and on and on. And earth day itself as you can see here, he is at adelfi university in new york where he gives a speech castigating us for pumping smoke in the air. He says clean air is more important than a healthy economy. And then he urged people to join planned parent hood to present overpopulation, which at the time was a big environmental concern. So basically what we have is one of the most conservative members of the Senate Speaking and voting around about 1970 in ways i think it is impossible to imagine today. Final thing is the glen canyon dam. Anybody been to page, arizona . You might be familiar with lake powell. Shrinking right now because of lack of water. But goldwater had voted to approve that dam, even though it flooded one of the most scenic stretches of the cal rad doe. And by the mid70s he had changed his tune. What happens is it stops all the silt from going downstream and it ruined the beaches in the grand canyon. It reduced the temperature of the water to 47 degrees. You cant swim in the kcolorado as i once discovered when i was 17. I nearly didnt make it out. He said this was, in fact, the biggest political mistake of his life, voting against voting for the glen canyon dam, even bigger than his vote against the Civil Rights Act or vote against the wilderness act. That is astounding. Now, as i said, goldwater was a man who responded to change. He responded to the tenor of the time. What you will find as well, his environmental comes and goes. By the mid 70s and late 70s he starts to retreat a little bit. He supported the epa but he was kind of shocked when it actually began to regulate or at least regulate in a way that he thought was excessive and he began to have doubts about the epa. By the 1970s he was grumbling maybe it should be eliminated. The sear yeah club thought his proposal was not aggressive enough and he got into a fig fight and he quit of which he had been a member for many years. One of my favorite files is i have his indignant will the le rezlati rezlation. They predicted it would cause terrible Climate Change. At the time there was some concern. Goldwater that liked anything that fly, so their opposition made him mad. And then along came the reagan revolution and james watt and goldwater responded to that as well. He began to question perhaps whether he had gone too far in his environmentalism. He likes james watt. He was a notorious. Environmentalists disliked him immensely. He was very good at that job. And, so, their bummer stickers back in the 80s out dom watt. But goldwater liked him. And again, he is responding to the rise of the reagan right. But he never entirely abandons his environmentalism. If you look at career in the 1980s, you see a couple of interesting things. You see in 1984 he sponsored the arizona wilderness bill. The arizona wilderness bill provided for 28 federal wilderness areas in the state of arizona. Now, again, remember, he voted against the legislation that made that possible. In 1984, the ashes of the famous sag brush rebellion, if you know about this are still smolders. The sage brush rebellion was a movement arguing that land that was in the control of the federal government should be given back to the states. And that environmental regulations of federal land were to stringent. Even as the embers from that movement were still smoking, here is goldwater author rising the wilderness act or proposing the wilderness act. Later on he joins republicans for environmental protection, which is now called conserve america. I dont want to read too much into this, but republicans for environmental protection, their argument is essentially they still exist. Their argument is republicans have a strong environmental tradition and that we have gotten away from that and we need to get that bad. Goldwaters joining of that group in a way was sending a message that he didnt like the direction that the current Republican Party was going. And as you know, we have seen this all over in other aspects of his life. As you know, he disagreed very much with the religious right. He did he was again champion of the rights of gays to serve in the military and so on and so forth. Hes a maverick is a phrase we always here. That maverick streak has a green tint to it, and its still there in the 1980s. Let me finish by noting a couple things. He retires in 1986. He dies in 1988. And his ashes, some of them anyways, are spread over the grand canyon, which i think is an appropriate place for them to be. And i think there are a couple lessons that we could pull from this. As henry will attest, my graduate adviser told me the most important question you can answer is so what. My take on so what. We learned some things here, that environmental was a very powerful movement and it could appeal to lots of people. It could show up in the most unusual places. It wasnt just a movement. It was a change in the way people felt about the natural world. And it affects all kinds of folks. It is not a movement that belongs to one side of the political spectrum or the other. And related to that, of course, is there is a very strong republican environmental tradition. And when we look back in 2014, i think thats a really interesting question. Today you dont often associate environmentalism and certainly not federal regulation with the Republican Party. Thats a fairly recent phenomenon. I think it has a lot to do with its a complicated answer, but the Republican Party has swung to the right over the last 20 or 30 years as a result of a number of things. And you may remember reagans famous line. He said government is not the solution. Government is the problem. When you say that, you do make it difficult for something goldwaters environmentalism to exist anymore. I think that has a lot to do with why it disappeared and there are lessons for both sides. I think conservatives can look at environmentalism and not think of it as an alien ideology, that it is a legacy, kind of like civil rights of the conservative movement. Liberals can look at this as well and see it is not just them. It is everyone and that we are all in this together, especially in this area of significant environment change. Were going to need everybody. And i think we can look back to history and draw some lessons from that. So with that, ill yield the balance of my time as they say in the senate and wait for your questions. Thank you very much. Thank you. In your estimation, what current president ial candidate or potential president ial candidate or National Politician most resembles Barry Goldwater and his kind of nuanced conservatism . Well, you are asking essentially are there any environment tally minded republicans . You know, honestly not many that are springing to mind. The last one i think of are people lick olivia snow. Republicans come from new england or california, oregon, washington. They the end to be more environmental than they are from other regions of the country. Democrats can sometimes be less environmental. Thats an interesting observation, is you dont see a lot. I think thats an interesting historical puzzle. Thats another book, and icon fessed it in my own introduction. I didnt dig into it because i think its going to take more thought. Go ahead. I was fascinated to learn that the republicans really did originate environmentalism. So i learned something tonight. Okay. And then im equally astounded that they have moved so far away from something that was such a background from them. I especially think now about the state of oklahoma. They now have the same number of earth quakes due to the fraking. But it seems that consequences be dammed is their policy now, and it kind of ties back into the other question. What is it going to take for the republicans to return to their conversation, the Conservation Movement . Again, historians are really bad at predicting the future. So my chinese history professor told us three weeks for tina min square that it would never happen. But i will say again this is a useful example we could look to the past. If Barry Goldwater can do it, i think anybody can do it. That doesnt make a traitor to your ideology to embrace these things. I dont know. I lay in bed, and i think about questions like that, and i dont have a good answer for you, but i think we have some examples of the past that can maybe help us. Yes, sir . Given the fact that what you said, that he was apparently quite a bit of a hit in terms of being an environmentalist without calling himself that, do you think or did he ever indicate that he resented when the left kind of took that over . Uhhuh . And became the, you know, standard bearers of it and he had been interested in trying to do things long before they ever he did. He did. One of the things that that he didnt like is what he considered the extremism of some environmentalists. He thought that for instance, the opposition to the air pollution called by the sst was ridiculous and motivated by technology and antemodernist feeling. He was never that that he was never as direct as you, but you could kind of ip per in a lot of his comments in the late 70s and 80s he did resent. He believed in moderation in the pursuit of justice is no vice, but except for environmentalism, he was very modern in some ways. He died in 86, you said. He died in 96. It sounds like he might have actually been interested in the whole environmental change thats happening to the earth. Yes. Given what he knew. Yes. I think thats a and happened to his own state. Yes, yes. I think thats a great observation. I have thought about this a lot. I think Climate Change, for instance. He would be concerned about it. I dont have any doubt cht when you think about somebody for long enough, you feel like you can get into their head and i dont doubt he would be concerned about it. He was very concerned about resource scarcity back in the oil crisis days. He was really panicked. And the resource side of Climate Change would make him very nervous. He would also warn you against being too nervous. He would always go for that middle ground. He wouldnt like he wouldnt like he wouldnt want you to go too out there. But i have no doubt he would be concerned. You seem to have a tendency to go from one extreme to the other in this country. Thats the nature of political debate. That doesnt seem to be a word that we kind of can live with it easily. Yeah. Question in a parallel avenue. Goldwater was characterized as such a warmonger and ironically johnson took us deep into the vietnam war, being characterized as the peacemaker. Do you have any feel for what might have some of a goldwater presidency in relation to vietnam and i am going to dodge that question, if at all possible. You know, one of the things they also warn you in graduate school is counter factual. Its difficult to say. You know, the warmonger thing was overblown. I dont think he was going to nuke vietnam. I dont mean to i dont mean to dodge, but i think experts who are better versed in Foreign Policy and that sort of thing are better suited to answer that question. I dont know. I dont know. Great question for late night debate
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