Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

by Rick Perlstein

Conscience of a Conservative didn’t blame invisible Communists for America’s problems. It blamed all-too-visible liberals. Its anticommunism was not about raising nameless dreads but about fighting—hard and in the open. America, said Conscience, was not losing the Cold War because of Alger Hiss, Julius Rosenberg, or the striped-pants diplomats of the State Department. The enemy was in the mirror. “A craven fear of death is entering the American consciousness.” It ′′repudiates everything that is courageous and honorable and dignified in the human being. We must—as the first step toward saving American freedom—affirm the contrary view and make it the cornerstone of our foreign policy: that we would rather die than lose our freedom.”