Posted on 09/29/2002 6:08:43 PM PDT by nicmarlo
LOS ANGELES - I am going to talk of controversial things. I make no apology for this. It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government."
This idea? that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits."
The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.
Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.
Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always "against," never "for" anything.
We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem. However, we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments....
We are for aiding our allies by sharing our material blessings with nations which share our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world.
We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward I restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him.... But we can not have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure....
Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation? . . . Today in our country the tax collector's share is 37 cents of -very dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp.
Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last.
If all of this seems like a great deal of trouble, think what's at stake. We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation.
They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. 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 first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.
[Editor's Note: As president of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan became embroiled in disputes over the issue of Communism in the film industry; his political views shifted from liberal to conservative. He toured the country as a television host, becoming a spokesman for Conservatism. The above speech was his endorsement of Barry Goldwater's Presidential campaign in 1964.]
Copyright © 1964 The Daily Republican Newspaper Co. All rights reserved.
It is sad the way this has been co-opted by the left and morphed into the most brutal of all tyrannies: the Democratization by which truth is determined by majority rule and the revolutionary precepts of the terroist Narodnaya Volya ("The People's Will" who birthed the Bolsheviks), increasingly are a part of our perpetual appealing to "the will of the people".
Government is not so much beholden to people as it is subject to those Self-Evident truths and God-given rights of man which are the only foundation of true liberty and a just state.
After all, the State is people.
Win one for the Gipper! God Bless You Reagan, We Will Never Forget Your Great Service and Leadership - We here on FR will carry on your great work with diligence. Thanks for the Memories and Inspiration!
I agree with you. 'Tis very sad, but, to quote Reagan:
The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing. Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.
The Rats want nothing more than to control those who they were elected to represent. Look this week, again, to Gore, to Daschole, to any number of the idiots who must ask "questions" about defending us from terrorists before they act, who have "grave concerns" about going after Iraq, because the UN might be displeased. They care nothing about our safety, only their power, their money. They are shameful and despicable creatures, always going to and fro in an attempt to seek or retain their power(s). But those powers come from us, the people. They are OUR SERVANTS, to do as WE wish, not as they choose.
God bless President Bush as he goes against a greater enemy than Saddam: he must defend himself and his righteous goals from within his own house.
(My Dad still has a poster of Goldwater in his closet that's been there my entire life. =)
I have always believed that this land was placed here between the two great oceans by some divine plan. It was placed here to be found by a special kind of people--people who had a special love for freedom and who had the courage to uproot themselves and leave hearth and homeland and come to what in the beginning was the most undeveloped wilderness possible. We spoke a multitude of tongues--landed on this eastern shore and then went out over the mountains and the prairies and the deserts and the far Western mountains of the Pacific, building cities and towns and farms and schools and churches.
If wind, water or fire destroyed them, we built them again. And in so doing at the same time we built a new breed of human called an American--a proud, an independent and a most compassionate individual for the most part. Two hundred years ago Tom Pa ine, when the thirteen tiny colonies were trying to become a nation, said we have it in our power to begin the world over again. . . . Together we can begin the world over again. We can meet our destiny and that destiny can build a land here that will be for all mankind a shining city on a hill. I think we ought to get at it.
Ronald Reagan, TV Debate with John Anderson, September 1980
Yes, we ought to get at it, each one of us. Thanks, PhiKapMom!
For example, if the government imposes a tax on barbers, fewer people will become barbers. If the government gives a special subsidy to taxi operators, more people will drive cabs.
What then, will be the result of taxing the rich and giving money to the poor?
As will I, as will I. When I used to watch him walk past our military, standing at attention, my eyes would tear. As I listened to him speak with great solemnity, my whole being felt an inkling of what it was like to be in the presence of one touched by God to lead a people. And when "Hail to the Chief" was played before his entry into a room, I felt my soul sore, as my eyes beheld a Chief who earned the respect he received.
Years later, this Great Man and Leader, this source of much good and feelings of pride for our country, was replaced by an odor most foul, eminating from a man not worthy to even sit at Reagan's feet. This odious man, I have not, do not, and will not ever refer to as my president. He has trashed any resemblance of what any President has stood for or what President Reagan ever did for our country. I am thankful that there are many who will never forget what President Reagan has done . . . And the influence he has had on many leaders in many nations: this shall never fully be known.
God bless President Reagan and his wife Nancy.
One of the truly great speeches of all time. The message is timeless, as is the struggle in which we are all now engaged.
We will then have the poor ruling the rest of the country; Christ has said "blessed are the poor;" but we should not want them to be so. A paradox. Alas, the poor we shall always have among us. Why? Because they lack something more than just money . . . what might this be? I do not know, but the poor remain poor. Stealing from those who have created wealth, not just for themselves, to take away and bestow on those who have not earned it, is unjust and more than dampens the spirit of the man to create and invent and put back into the society from which he benefited. It shall be our ruin.
I dare say, 'tis why the liberals have control over the publik skools...to ensure those ideas and ideals are no longer studied.
Seems fitting to see Reagan as a Pony Soldier. The guy was riding the range on a global scale while the opposition and sometimes his own party members were dogging it back at the fort. Reagan wasn't supposed to win. He wasn't supposed to change everything. He did. He proved that despite Socialisms march, US Citizens still prefer the tenets of Conservatism. Too bad that on too many levels his vision and talents of delivery have for the most part been abandoned.
Nay! Not as long as their are still people like you and me, like most all of us here, and numerous others who still listen to and cherish those ideals. We live and breathe and have become . . . the Great Enemy to the socialist commies of this country because we are the embodiment of the ideals of the Great Man.....we shall never let his vision die, because they are ours as well.
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