"A Wave of Conservatism"

"We want Barry! We want Barry!" chanted the crowd of youthful men and women who filled New York City's Manhattan Center to the limit of the fire-department safety regulations. Over their heads, clouds of pink, blue and yellow balloons, each bearing the name "Barry Goldwater," were wafted through the spotlights. Before the police closed the doors. 3,200 people squeezed into the hall; another 1,000 (including 150 pickets) milled in the streets outside.

The occasion was the first rally of the Young Americans for Freedom, a group of college conservatives with a membership of 21,000, scattered over 115 campuses. Awards for activity in the conservative cause were handed out to an array of conservative celebrities, ranging from Editor William F. Buckley Jr. (National Review) to Wisconsin Industrialist Herbert Kohler (of Kohler). When a speaker mentioned Herbert Hoover's name, the audience roared; Ike's name got polite applause mixed with boos; Harry Truman, silence. But the lion of the evening-as he invariably is whenever conservatives gather-was Arizona's handsome, articulate junior Senator, Barry Goldwater.

When Goldwater rose to speak, the rapt young audience clotted the aisles and pressed close to the stage, waving huge Goldwater placards. "This country," said Goldwater, "is being caught up in a wave of conservatism that could easily become the phenomenon of our time. Nobody knows for sure its present strength or its future potential. But every politician, newspaperman, analyst and civic leader knows that something is afoot that could drastically alter our course as a nation." It has an anchor in the "conservative movement" among college students, he said, who "know that this thing that has gone along for 30 years and has cost $400 billion under the phony name of liberalism has not worked."

The task of his young, listeners, he continued, was to work to elect "good conservative Republicans" in 1962. In Congress the conservative mission was "not to be just obstructionist," but to return fire on the liberal programs with detailed conservative alternatives.

In the stamping, roaring ovation that followed his speech, it was clear that conservatives of all ages had found their most persuasive voice since Robert Alphonso Taft.

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