As the party's nominee for President of the United States, he helped ignite a movement that would elect Ronald Reagan to the Presidency sixteen years later. And while Goldwater himself went down in flames in the election of 1964, his contribution to history was far from insignificant.

Adopting a vision that saw government's role as limited in American life, Goldwater set out to protect the American people from an unhindered state. Derided as an extremist by many, his views were soon adopted by many Americans disillusioned by an ever-growing welfare state. In the late 1990s, however, the Republican Party that once embraced those beliefs, rejected them almost entirely.

With the impeachment of President Clinton and the election of President Bush, the Republican Party began to be taken over by a cabal of fundamentalist Christian zealots out to destroy the lives of all those not exactly like them. Recently, their ire has been directed at homosexuals. In the process, they have embraced spending and regulatory policies that would horrify people like Goldwater.

Today, the Republican Party is imploding from within. The Bush Administration, which won re-election last year by appealing to the worst cultural fears of the American people, is quickly losing credibility with the American people. Recently, the withdrawal of the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers and the indictment of Lewis 'Scooter' Libby for his involvement in the Valerie Plame leak has been devastating to this administration. To top it all off, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was recently indicted, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist are also under investigation.

With the Republican Party almost in tatters, the Democrats have a unique opportunity to reshape the debate in America. While I do not by the slightest means agree with the general platform of the Democratic Party, I still find it monumentally important that somebody step forward and move this country away from the politics of fear and division that has plagued us for the last several years.

The Republican Party, meanwhile, needs its own revolution. They have the opportunity to bring the party back to where it used to be, as a defender of small government principles rather than an avenue by which government can marginalize its own citizens. To not do so would be a horrible blow to the civil rights of countless Americans.

Towards the end of his life, Goldwater began to campaign actively on behalf of the civil rights of homosexual Americans. The rest of the Republican Party should do the same for all minorities.