American Experience; 1964; Interview with Richard Viguerie, Conservative Activist, part 1 of 3

Finally, so 1964, that's what we're doing. Big year, big year politically, big year in America. Do you remember what were you doing in 1964? What was your place in the zeitgeist? In 1961, I became executive secretary of Young Americans of Freedom. I did that for a year and a half, and then in the middle of 1963, I focused entirely on marketing, fundraising, direct mail. And so I was helping market not only Young Americans of Freedom, but much of the other conservative activities there. And we were just beginning to launch the conservative movement. And I think the formation of Yaff, then a Madison Square Garden rally that we had a year or so later, really just kind of propelled the whole conservative movement forward. And we began to talk to each other. And just you could just see it bubbling up like water

beginning to bubble on a stove. The few bubbles here, then more and more bubbles. Great. Do you remember, so in 1964, what were you technically doing? You were working in marketing and direct mail? I was doing direct mail full time for Young Americans Freedom, our office. We started in New York City, but in late 1962, we moved to New York, excuse me. In late 1962, we moved to Washington DC. So we were located on Capitol Hill throughout the 63, 64 Goldwater campaign time. So I was doing direct mail, fundraising marketing for Young Americans of Freedom, for membership, for subscriptions to their magazine, the new guard. And just talking to conservative organizations about how to do fundraising, including the Goldwater campaign. So you remember State of the Union in early January of 1964,

brand new president, Lyndon Johnson steps up and lays out the war on poverty and this incredibly ambitious agenda. Do you remember what you and your fellow conservatives felt about that speech? Oh, you know, the speech itself, I don't remember, except. It was kind of, I don't know, bittersweet times for sweet and sour type for conservative. Because we were excited. We were energized. We were, there was a second generation of conservative leaders just arising. The first generation was Bill Buckley in Russell Kirk and Barry Goldwater and John Tower. Now there was a new generation of younger conservatives. And we were excited, of course, but we were also terrified because the Soviet Union loomed large on the international stage and we were terrified of what would happen there with the cause of freedom.

And not only internationally, but we could see freedom ebbing away here domestically. And we didn't have a lot of resources. You know, we could meet in the proverbial phone book, a book, a book, a good gracious Richard. Let me just start with, you know, it was kind of a bittersweet. OK, it was, we, you know, conservatives in those days could meet in the proverbial phone book. What am I doing? And conservatives in those days could meet in the proverbial phone booth, you know. We just were a handful of it. So we were, but the Goldwater campaign was bringing more and more out of the woods and we began to get critical mass. But there were just a few of us on the national scene. And we didn't have the new and alternative media now. We didn't have any ways to communicate, except through direct mail. And direct mail was the only way we had to communicate. What was energizing, trying to fill us simply about this? What was it? Yeah, you pay these guys so much money, and all they do is f**k them.

Move things around. Well, they'd have got to earn their money. If everything were smooth, I mean. It happens, especially these guys. Oh, my God. In 10 minutes, I'll be moving it back. Yeah, the way. So what was it in 64 that was energizing you? What were conservatives upset about in the country? Well, number one, but everything else was anti-communism. Almost every conservative who came of age politically in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and somewhat even into the 80s first became conservatives because of anti-communism. We were concerned about the march of the Soviet Union throughout the world. And we didn't see a serious effort to stop the Soviet Union to contain it, much less roll it back. And that was driving almost all political activities.

And in those days, that's how I got first involved. Almost every conservative that I know of in that period of time. First, we were anti-communists. Then we began to rally around this charismatic figure of Bill Buckley, of Barry Goldwater, to a lesser extent, people like John Tower and others out there. And we began to have a voice. And we didn't have a voice. We didn't have anybody speaking for us. And the Republican Party was establishment Republicans, big government Republicans, the Rockefeller wing of the party, the Hugh Scott, the Eisenhower, Nixon wing of the party. Barry Goldwater went on the floor of the Senate around 1957 and said that Dwight Eisenhower, President of the United States, leader of the Republican Party, was running a dime store new deal. Was electrifying to a concertist. Wow, somebody was stand up and speak truth to power.

The emperor had no clothes on. And then in 1960, when he came out with his book, The Conscious of a Concert, it was just electrifying. It was like somebody dying of thirst in the desert with a drink of water. I mean, you just put us on fire. What was it domestically that was the biggest bugaboo? When you say the mini-new deal, unpack that a little bit for me. What did that mean? Was it the big government program that LBJ was selling for? Oh, it was long before. Settle? Yeah. Quick, quick. Where you going? OK. Go ahead. Now, LBJ was over the top in terms of his program. But we were focused on Franklin Roosevelt's new deal. And then Truman and then Kennedy. And we could just see our freedoms eroding internationally

and domestically. And we didn't see any opposition. We certainly didn't have power. The second generation concertist and the first generation concertist had a very, very, very tiny microphone. And we just didn't have ability to communicate. So that was when I went to New York in 1961, I got an opportunity to come in contact with Bill Buckley and Bill Russia, the publisher of National View and Frank Meyer and some of the other giants out there, James Burnham and others. And so I'm just a green kid from Texas Houston. And so I just start reading everything. I think they are reading and studying. After about a year and a half, I realized I'm not making that much progress. I didn't go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton. And anyway, they're not standing still. They're going on. So I made a conscious decision around 1963 to make a study of marketing and advertising. While we didn't have enough politicians and candidates

and authors and debaters, we did have something. But we had nobody that could take the ideas and the candidates and the organizations that we have and market them to the public. So I made a major study for the next 15 years of marketing. And that was how we began to communicate with each other because we felt there was a blockage on the microphones in the United States. What was it that you felt at that time? Why were you so desperate for someone like Barry Goldwater? What did he represent? So Barry Goldwater was somebody that would speak truth to power, would stand up and say what all of us were thinking. And he said it in an exciting, charismatic way. His book of just said it all. I mean, just that finally, somebody

is saying what we've been thinking about. And when Buckley was our intellectual godfather and Goldwater was our political godfather. And when those two kind of came on the scene, about the same time in the mid to late 50s, finally, we had two people who were kind of our load star. We could look too for leadership. But we didn't have that at any prior time. Yes, great. Were the kids behind Young Americans for Freedom differ from previous generations? Oh, very. And so what was different about them? Well, I can only speak to my generation because there were no young conservative leaders before the 1960s, just a few here or there. But it wasn't until the early 1960s

that the youth came together articulating, believing, getting active politically in liberty, in freedom causes, in limited government, in constitutional government. And those young people weren't out there in the 30s, the 40s, the 50s. And it was only in the 60s and to a large extent. It was a number of things. It wasn't just Buckley and Goldwater. Of course, it was Buckley's magazine, National Review. But we had human events. We had other publications. And Russell Kirk was writing books, as well as others out there, Bozel and many others, Frank Meyer. And we began to read those things. And we began to almost just get on fire with a passion and a drive to change the world. Because we could see our world slipping away from us. And we wanted to change that.

You know, that generation, in the 50s, have been known as the silent generation. What do you think it was ultimately about you guys that made you wake up and stop being silent anymore? Your part of it was the baby boom, I think. You are the most affluent young generation, probably, to come along in the Americas. Well, because 64 is this moment when what's interesting to me is that we talk to Todd Gitlin, who is the founder of SDS. And you talk about young Americans for freedom. And what's striking to me about this year is the energy in youth on both sides of the spectrum. And I'm curious about what is fueling them. Well, some of it is being terrified of what we see. We're terrified of what we see internationally with the Soviet Union, communism in Europe, Asia. We see the left becoming very effective domestically here.

We don't see any effective opposition or effective leadership. And then the young liberals are running a muck on the campus, SDS and others. And it's interesting that just shortly after that, when the SDS was running, I remember attending an SDS meeting in Wisconsin. And, excuse me, let me just retry, I didn't attend that. But it was a young Republican meeting there. So anyway, let me just say that. Just shortly after the young liberals, the young radicals began to emerge internationally and nationally, the conservatives came right behind them as a counter force. It's very interesting that the young liberals were all the rage in the 1960s. And they were the future of America. And the media just fawned over them.

But it was actually the young conservatives that they ignored that changed America and changed much to the world. Because the young conservative movement then went on to nominate, elect, and re-elect Ronald Reagan, President of the States. And they had much, much more impact on America's future than the young radicals of the 60s. They kind of just disappeared for the most part. But it was the young conservatives that the media ignored that became much of America's future leaders. So that's an interesting lesson that you have to turn off the furnace. Do you have more to do? Do you want more? I thought you wanted a little touch. No, I think we're flakish. I'm walking around the rafters. I know what's that. Yeah. Ready? Well, let's get there in a sec. OK. But because we're sort of marching our way chronologically through the year. I don't know. Why do you think the Civil Rights Act,

which Johnson is pushing in 64, was so threatening to so many people? I'm not sure exactly what Go Water had in mind there. But it wasn't for the young conservatives. It wasn't something that we were focused on. I know it was a very controversial thing with Go Water. I think that conservatives made a mistake. Maybe it's not their ports of it. I guess that conservatives felt were unconstitutional. But there's so many other things that are unconstitutional that maybe we just need to bring healing to the country and move on. And Go Water was 10 feet tall in those days. And he had his view of issues. And when he led, many people followed along with him there.

So I think he led the conservatives in a direction that probably was not very productive. And we shouldn't have gone there. Right, right. He was a classic example of him doing a lung. Because he was very liberal in terms of his own civil rights and Arizona, but on principle, he took a very unpopular or a very controversial position in terms of... Yeah, I wouldn't say that was a liberal position to oppose segregation, but it was the right thing to do. And he was a personal, I mean, the man was exemplary in helping people and reaching out to people and doing the right thing. But he just didn't feel for his own reasons that it was the right thing for the government to be doing. What's going on in Mississippi in 1964 that poses a challenge for Go Water and for the conservatives who adopted that position on civil rights?

It's a very fine line he's walking. Because like any grassroots insurgent campaign from Go Water's running, he's attracting a pretty wide range of people, including some pretty extreme people, right? Exactly. The, you know, that was not the, there's a shame and a glory there. And the conservatives, I think, shame is that we were not more involved in the civil rights effort of the mid-1960s, early 1960s. And the same with the left, their shame is that they were not involved in opposing communists throughout the world. We both had blinders on us there and, you know, different issues at that period of time there. Right, right. What did, you know, what did Go Water see as the sort of fallout if the civil rights bill passed? He was very much a state's rights kind of,

but he took it, it was a federalism argument for him, I think, fundamentally. He just didn't feel like the federal government belonged, you know, place telling about what they should do. And in a legal case can be made for that. But the country, given the situation that we found ourselves in at that time, it was, it was something that we should just do and move on. We've, there's so much legislation has been passed before then and since then that doesn't meet many people's constitutional standards that we should not have hung our hat on that one piece of legislation. Right, right. Let's take you where to put it. One of the other things that Go Water have to struggle with sometimes was his position on nuclear weapons, which periodically got him in trouble. What was his, again, it was Barry Go Water being what I love about Barry Go Water, just calling it like he saw it.

But why did that get him in trouble sometimes? Well, it, it, conservatives always have to be extra careful about what they say. Because we don't have a media, the mainstream media that's going to protect us. Liberals can say stupid dumb things, irresponsible things all the time and they're protected. In the present United States, we see it all the time. The vice president Joe Biden, the same thing. Conservatives have to be extra special. Careful. And Go Water, remember, did not want to lead a movement. He didn't want to be the nominee. And so he's just expressing his thoughts and he's not, he's not thinking himself as the person who's leading the loyal opposition to the administration there. And so he just was being Barry Go Water. Unfortunately, it hurt him and it hurt the movement at the same time.

Right, right, yeah.