# The Conscience of a Conservative *Published 1960. Credited to [[Barry Goldwater]]. Ghostwritten by [[L. Brent Bozell Jr.]] Published by Victor Publishing Company (Shepherdsville, Kentucky) — a shell press created by [[Clarence Manion]] specifically to bypass the New York publishing establishment. 123 pages. 3.5 million copies sold.* The book that transformed movement conservatism from a scattered intellectual tendency into a presidential campaign and, ultimately, a governing coalition. It did not contain a single original idea — its arguments were commonplace among conservative intellectuals by 1960. Its genius was **packaging and distribution**: Manion's innovation of bypassing mainstream publishing, bulk-selling through ideological networks, and using owned media to amplify a short, accessible manifesto gave the conservative movement a mass-market text at precisely the moment it needed one. Without this book, Goldwater doesn't get the 1964 Republican nomination. Without that nomination, the delegate operation doesn't train the cadres who staff Reagan's 1966 gubernatorial campaign. Without Reagan's 1980 victory, the [[Heritage Foundation]] staffing model doesn't produce the conservative governing infrastructure. The line from this 123-page pamphlet to the modern Republican Party is direct. ## The Production Story The book was not written by Goldwater. [[Clarence Manion]] — the former Notre Dame Law School dean, *Manion Forum* radio broadcaster, and John Birch Society founding member — conceived the project in 1959. He approached Goldwater, who agreed to lend his name but delegated the writing to **L. Brent Bozell Jr.**, William F. Buckley's brother-in-law and *National Review* co-founder. Bozell produced the manuscript in roughly eight weeks based on Goldwater's speeches, Senate floor remarks, and general political positions. Goldwater reviewed the text and approved it without major changes. The ghostwriting was an open secret in conservative circles but not publicly acknowledged until years later. Manion's publishing innovation was the key to the book's reach. He created Victor Publishing Company in Shepherdsville, Kentucky — chosen because Manion had a business contact there willing to set up the press. The choice to bypass New York trade publishers was deliberate and ideological: Manion believed (correctly, at the time) that the mainstream publishing industry would not adequately promote a conservative manifesto. The same structural innovation [[William F. Buckley Jr.]] had used with Henry Regnery for *[[God and Man at Yale]]* nine years earlier. ## The Distribution Innovation Manion pre-sold tens of thousands of copies in bulk to conservative organizations, business groups, and college Republican chapters before the book's release — guaranteeing a first printing sell-through that created momentum for retail sales. He used the *Manion Forum* radio network (300+ stations) to promote the book directly to the conservative grassroots audience. The distribution model: ideological network → bulk pre-sales → radio promotion → grassroots word-of-mouth → retail. This is the template for every subsequent conservative publishing success, from Regnery's 1990s operation through the [[The Daily Wire]]'s current book-promotion machine. First printing: 10,000 copies. Within four years: 3.5 million sold. ## The Arguments The book is organized around ten short chapters, each addressing a policy domain. The arguments are strikingly simple and were already commonplace among conservative intellectuals: **States' rights:** The federal government has exceeded its constitutional authority. Power should return to the states. The Supreme Court's [[Brown v. Board of Education]] decision, while perhaps morally correct, was constitutionally illegitimate because education is a state matter. **Unions:** Labor unions have too much coercive power. Right-to-work laws should be expanded. Union political activity should be restricted. **Taxation and spending:** Progressive taxation is confiscatory. Government spending should be drastically reduced. The welfare state creates dependency. **Farm subsidies:** Agricultural price supports distort markets and should be eliminated. **Education:** Federal involvement in education is unconstitutional. Local control must be preserved. **Communism:** The Cold War is a struggle for civilization, not a mere geopolitical competition. The U.S. should pursue victory, not coexistence. Containment is insufficient. None of these arguments was novel. What was novel was their packaging: short, accessible, written in a senator's voice, and distributed through a network designed to reach millions of people who would never read *National Review* or attend a policy conference. ## The 1964 Campaign The book's commercial success made Goldwater's presidential campaign viable. The 3.5 million copies sold represented a distributed organizational network: each reader was a potential volunteer, donor, or delegate. The "Draft Goldwater" movement that seized the 1964 Republican nomination drew its energy directly from this readership. Goldwater lost the general election catastrophically (38.5% of the popular vote, 52 electoral votes). But the delegate operation that won him the nomination trained a generation of conservative organizers who went on to staff the Reagan campaigns, the Heritage Foundation, and the institutions that now constitute the conservative governing infrastructure. The strategic lesson: electoral defeat is irrelevant if the campaign builds lasting organizational capacity. This is the lesson [[the New Right]] has applied from Goldwater through the Tea Party to MAGA. ## The Fusionist Synthesis The book implicitly performs the **fusionist** synthesis that Frank S. Meyer was simultaneously theorizing at *National Review*: combining social/religious conservatism (traditional values, anti-communism) with economic libertarianism (anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-welfare state) into a single coherent political identity. This fusion — which is intellectually unstable but politically effective — remained the organizing principle of the Republican coalition from 1960 through at least 2016. ## Why It Matters in This KB 1. **It is the mass-market founding document of the modern conservative movement.** Not the first conservative book, but the first to reach millions of non-intellectuals. 2. **The Manion distribution model** — bypassing mainstream publishers, bulk-selling through ideological networks, using owned media to promote — is the structural template for all subsequent conservative media operations. 3. **It demonstrates the ghost-written manifesto model** that conservative politics still uses: a credentialed name (senator, president) attached to a text produced by movement intellectuals (speechwriters, think tank fellows). 4. **The line from this book to the modern GOP is direct**: Goldwater delegates → Reagan campaign → Heritage Foundation → Gingrich revolution → Tea Party → MAGA. The personnel and organizational continuity is unbroken. ## See Also - [[Clarence Manion]] — The publisher, financier, and radio promoter who made the book possible - [[William F. Buckley Jr.]] — Whose brother-in-law wrote the book - [[God and Man at Yale]] — The earlier conservative book that used the same bypass-the-establishment-press strategy - [[Heritage Foundation]] — The policy institution that grew from the movement this book catalyzed - [[Pat Buchanan]] — The later inheritor of the book's "[[America First]]" foreign policy implications [[Manifestos and Founding Documents Hub]]