“It’s time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers.
This idea? Th
at 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.
Will we continue to believe in our capacity for self-government or will we abandon the American Revolution and confess that intellectual elites in Washington can plan our lives better than we can plan them ourselves?
We are told we must choose between a left or right. I suggest 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 and humanitarian motives, those who sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.
Our liberal friends use terms like the “Green New Deal”. President Obama told us we must accept greater government activity in the affairs of the people.
They say, “Strife will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism.” Another voice says, “The profit motive has become outmoded. It must be replaced by the welfare state.” Or, “Our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 21st century.”
President Obama said the Constitution is outmoded. His supporters thought of him as “our moral teacher and our leader”. He said he was hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document. He needed to “be freed,” he said, so that he “could do for us” what he knew “was best.”
Liberals define liberalism as “meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government.”
“The full power of centralized government” — this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize by overthrowing King George III. They knew that governments don’t control things. A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. They know when a government controls people, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.
We have come to another time for choosing.
Liberals say: “What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.” Outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.
We need to restate clearly 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…. We can not achieve this Dream when our tax policy is engineered by people who view the income tax as a cudgel to achieve changes in our social structure….
Realize that the doctor’s fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can’t socialize doctors without socializing patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business.
If you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he’ll eat you last.
Think about what’s at stake. We are faced with the most evil enemies mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars: forced socialism and fiscal irresponsibility. 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.” 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.”
(Adapted abridged version of Ronald Reagan’s October 27, 1964 nationally televised speech in support of GOP Presidential candidate, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona)