Senator, Panelists Clash

Barry M. ("I never got a diploma and I don't give a damn what they write on the Harvard diplomas.") Goldwater, who owns a department store in Phoenix, Ariz., spoke last night to an audience of intellectuals. "You can't imagine how I've looked forward to this."

Discussing Goldwater's talk, panelist Mark DeWolfe Howe termed him a "reactionary"--"If the opinions of Chief Justice Marshall, Taft, and Hughes are pronouncements of conservatism, is Goldwater fair to us and to his conscience when he describes himself as a conservative?"

To this the Senator replied, "Today the liberal is reactionary; everything he says implies bureaucratic government controls, the very thing our forefathers fled from." Denying that his view of the Constitution is inflexible, Goldwater explained the basis of his attitude: "We have to remember one thing in my conception of it, the fear of human nature. Human nature . . . [is not] right side up all the time. The situation today is no different than the conditions we found ourselves in down through the countless years of history."

Seymour E. Harris another panelist, recalled his frequent appearances before the Senator's committee, and complained that "the views of men like Goldwater" have blocked his policy proposals. To Harris's contention that a $10 billion deficit could bring the country out of its current recession, Goldwater replied:

"Mr. Harris is making what is to me a fundamental mistake--that people just don't know enough to take care of themselves."

Though the Senator proclaimed "great respect for the academic mind," he reminded the audience that academics were often mistaken. "If Harris's argument is valid, that a $10 billion deficit is good enough, why stop at $10 billion? Let's go to $25 billion, or $30 billion? Let's just print the money."

As Goldwater left Rindge Tech. Auditorium, a student told him "how much the audience had gotten out of" his speech. "That's why these speaking engagements give me so much satisfaction," said the Junior Senator from Arizona.