Barry Goldwater

Psychological studies and evolutionary biology show that an overconfidence and brash leadership style is both dangerous—and can work.

The Goldwater Rule has long held that mental-health professionals shouldn’t diagnose from a distance. But these experts decided to speak up before it’s too late.

Yes, Goldwater had hard-line views. But he backed alliances and understood the global order as something grander than a protection racket.

In 1964, LBJ’s campaign ran the alarming ‘Daisy’ ad tying Barry Goldwater to the threat of nuclear war. In a selection from ‘Republic of Spin,’ David Greenberg offers a play-by-play.

In the mid-’60s polar opposites Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan promised America more than they could possibly deliver. The result was decades of cynicism about government.

On the 50th anniversary of his ‘extremism in the defense of liberty’ speech to the 1964 GOP convention, it’s time to credit Goldwater as the true father of the Tea Party.

Thursday is the 50th anniversary of the Great Society and the civil rights push. But if conservative hero Barry Goldwater had had his way, government would have stayed out of it.