re: Was Barry Goldwater right?

This is partially true. The right embraced the "moral majority" Christian thing. These people were on the fainting couch over every little thing from rock n roll to video games. All of this left a bad taste in the mouth of many Gen Xers who then rejected the right and therefore raised the following generations to go even further left. It's certainly part of how we ended up on the losing end of the culture war.