A Veterans Day Salute to Service and Liberty

Every liberty Americans exercise—speech, conscience, property, opportunity—has been secured by veterans who accepted a life defined by duty rather than ease. They missed milestones, uprooted families, and trained for dangers most citizens can hardly imagine. Veterans Day asks us to remember those sacrifices with the seriousness they deserve and to honor them by remaining faithful to the freedoms they served to protect.

Barry Goldwater understood that truth firsthand. His years in uniform informed the constitutional commitments that continue to guide the Goldwater Institute’s work. He was one among millions who served, and his experience reflected the same discipline, sacrifice, and belief in the American ideal that define our veterans as a whole. That experience had its roots in World War II, when his commitment to the defense of liberty emerged from his service in the Army Air Forces’ Air Transport Command. After the war, he helped organize the Arizona Air National Guard and later retired from the Air Force Reserve as a major general. In uniform and out, he was the same kind of leader: mission-focused and convinced that freedom works best when people are trusted with responsibility and are held accountable for their actions.

That conviction produced a decisive act of leadership that rarely gets its due. In 1946, Senator Goldwater pressed to integrate Arizona’s Air Guard—two years President Harry Truman signed an executive order ending segregation in the military. His view was uncomplicated: a free nation flies farther when every qualified American can serve. For him, it wasn’t courtesy or symbolism; it rested on a simple claim: freedom is for everyone, and a nation committed to it should welcome all who step forward to defend it.

Those same principles anchor the Goldwater Institute’s work. We litigate and legislate to keep government within constitutional bounds, to guard free speech and due process, to defend property rights and innovation, and to protect individual liberty for every American.

As Goldwater’s Vice President for Litigation & General Counsel Jon Riches, a former JAG officer, said, “Military service — even under the best of circumstances — is difficult. But without those willing to serve and defend or constitution, the forces of statism would have conquered long ago. We are grateful to America’s veterans today and every day.”

None of that work exists without the Americans who have defended this nation in war and peace. To all who serve or have ever served: thank you for securing the freedom that makes our mission possible.