A TIME FOR CHOOSING

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 of 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 dolling 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 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 cannot 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.

We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stairs. 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.  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.

This speech  given by Ronald Reagan at a number of engagements in 1964, while campaigning for Barry Goldwater, is as applicable today as it was then.   A longer version of the same speech can be seen and/or read here.

In the longer version concerning Social Security, he said:  They’ve called it “insurance” to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appear before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program.  They only use the term “insurance” to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax.  There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment in 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble.     Sound familiar?

Some of my favorite quotes from  the longer version of the speech:

  • “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size.  So, governments  programs, once launched, never disappear.  Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”
  • “Well, the trouble with our liberal friend is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
  • “And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man.”
  • They [Founding Fathers] knew that government  don’t control things.  A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.”

 

 

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