“My Father and the Birth of Modern Conservatism”
Philip Jaffa | The Bulwark | September 30, 2021 | Essay/Memoir
Summary
A short memoir by Philip Jaffa — son of Harry V. Jaffa — about his father’s authorship of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Republican convention acceptance speech. The piece reveals details unavailable elsewhere: the speech was written in a single overnight session without reference books; the “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” line was drawn directly from Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail; and Philip states flatly that his father would not have supported Donald Trump.
Key Claims
Jaffa Wrote the Entire Speech
Jaffa wrote Goldwater’s entire acceptance speech — not merely the “ordered liberty” passage previously attributed to him in secondary sources (e.g., The Conservative Consensus). He wrote it in an overnight session on a manual Royal typewriter, from memory, with no reference books.
He had been a registered Democrat when he first became involved in the Goldwater movement but swore his son to secrecy — he did not want it known that “Mr. Republican’s acceptance speech had been written by a Democrat.”
The MLK Source of “Extremism in the Defense of Liberty”
The most historically significant revelation: the line “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue” was a literary allusion to King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which Jaffa had recently used in class and committed to memory. The specific passage from King’s letter that Jaffa had memorized:
“Was not Jesus an extremist for love… Was not Amos an extremist for justice… And Thomas Jefferson: ‘We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…’ So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.”
Jaffa also wove in the Pledge of Allegiance (“liberty and justice for all”). The effect: he placed Goldwater on King’s rhetorical shoulders at the precise moment when Goldwater had voted against the Civil Rights Act (June 10, 1964 — 36 days before the speech). The allusion was entirely invisible in Republican circles, where mentioning King “would have been mud.”
Philip’s summary: “my father slyly placed Goldwater on the shoulders of Martin Luther King and the idea that an oath of allegiance was required of Southerners.”
Goldwater Did Not Understand His Own Speech
Philip writes that Jaffa put “words into Barry Goldwater’s mouth that Goldwater never would have said if Goldwater had known what he was saying.” When conservatives attributed the “extremism” line to Cicero (a false claim Jaffa’s critics circulated), Jaffa kept silent — only saying the Cicero attribution was false, never revealing the King source.
His private comment at the end of his life: “for more than five decades he had had the pleasure of watching the left wing of the Democratic party denounce the views of Martin Luther King… while the right wing of the Republican party embraced the views of Martin Luther King, a man they loathed and despised.”
The Two Goals of the Speech
Jaffa had two distinct purposes:
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Political: Unite the fractured Republican coalition around two simple poles — fighting communism abroad and socialism at home. Philip writes this worked: the party coalesced, elected Reagan, and the Soviet Union eventually collapsed.
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Philosophical: Shift the Republican Party onto the bedrock principles of Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence — the natural law teaching of “all men are created equal.” This goal largely failed: Goldwater didn’t understand the philosophy, and after the Soviet collapse the coalition splintered.
Harry Jaffa Would Not Have Supported Trump
Philip states directly that his father would not have supported Trump. (Thomas Merrill’s review of Ellmers’s book corroborates this, noting Philip told him the same thing.)
Significance for the Wiki
This piece is the primary source for the King-connection to the “extremism” line — a fact absent from virtually all secondary accounts of the 1964 speech, including those in The Conservative Consensus and the broader wiki sources.
It deepens the irony the wiki has already noted: Jaffa’s Lincoln-and-Declaration constitutionalism was anti-racist at its core, but the institutional vehicle (Goldwater’s campaign) was the moment that drove Black Americans out of the Republican Party for a generation. The speech’s philosophical source (MLK’s Letter) and its political effect (consolidating the Deep South white vote) were in direct opposition.
It also adds a primary-family source for the Philip-Jaffa-on-Trump claim that appears secondhand in the Zerofsky NYT Magazine article (see How the Claremont Institute Became a Nerve Center).
Contradictions / Tensions with Existing Wiki Content
The existing Barry Goldwater page attributes only the “ordered liberty” passage to Jaffa (following Lee Edwards’s The Conservative Consensus). Philip’s account establishes that Jaffa wrote the entire speech, including the “extremism” line. These are not in conflict — Lee Edwards apparently only singled out the “ordered liberty” passage as Jaffa’s — but the fuller attribution changes the reading of Jaffa’s role.
Cross-References
- Harry V. Jaffa — Philip’s father; wrote the speech
- Barry Goldwater — delivered it without understanding it
- 1964 Republican National Convention — the occasion
- The American Founding as the Best Regime — Jaffa’s own statement of the philosophy behind the speech
- The Claremont Institute Harry Jaffa and the Temptation of Theory — Merrill also cites Philip’s statement about Trump
- Declarationism — the constitutional philosophy Jaffa tried to put into Goldwater’s mouth
- The Conservative Consensus — Lee Edwards’s secondary account; attributes only the “ordered liberty” passage to Jaffa