"The Speech"

This is the last 1/3 of speech. This is the part that reveals Reagan's vision and his clarity. The entire speech is worth reading, but this is the beginning rumblings of a man who would ultimately win the war some Democrats of that era wanted to surrender.

Ronald Reagan "Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer--not an easy answer--but simple.

If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have it in the next second--surrender.

Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand--the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us.

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits--not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Ronald Reagan In His Own Words-
A collection of some classic Reaganisms:

• "Government growing beyond our consent had become a lumbering giant, slamming shut the gates of opportunity, threatening to crush the very roots of our freedom."

• "A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist."

• During a 1984 debate with Walter Mondale: "I'm not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

• "You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans."

• "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."

• In testing the microphone for his weekly radio address, Reagan declared, ''My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today I've just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.''

• "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

• "Mr. President," TV reporter Sam Donaldson yelled out at Reagan after a 1982 press conference, "In talking about the continuing recession tonight, you have blamed the mistakes of the past and you've blamed Congress. Does any of the blame belong to you?" Reagan responded, "Yes, because for many years I was a Democrat."

• "Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it's not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work -- work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it."

• "Well, this administration's objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunity for all Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination."

• "Above all we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women."

• To wife Nancy after John Hinckley, Jr.'s 1981 assassination attempt: "Honey, I forgot to duck."

• "I hope you're all Republicans," he told doctors who were about to operate on his bullet wounds.

• "Did we forget that government is the people's business, and every man, woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of taxes paid?"

• "We do not have a trillion dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough. We have a trillion dollar debt because we spend too much."

• "But with these considerations firmly in mind, I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."

• "Abortion is advocated only by persons who themselves have been born."

• "Politics is a very rewarding profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book."

• "America is too great for small dreams."

• "We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we can always be free."

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