Where is Barry?

"Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism."

Many American's remember Ronald Reagan as the founder of the modern conservative movement. Arizonan's know better. Barry Goldwater, who ran for president in 1964 and 1968, was the person who truly brought modern conservatism to the national stage and articulated the idea of minimal government in response to Lyndon Johnson's Great (socialist) Society. His platform became the foundation of Ronald Reagan's rise as California governor and later as president of the United States.
When we think about how to respond to Obama and the Progressive's march against our freedoms in the form of Health care mandates, deficit spending and big government, Arizonan's can be proud of our past. Obama's programs do not work because they stifle our freedoms instead of emancipating them. Goldwater understood this. In our grasp for more handouts and government solutions to the problem we have lost track of the reality so well articulated by Ronald Reagan, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."