75-08-B1
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No Time to Confuse[edit]
Transcript[edit]Is it time to trade in your freedom for government control? I'll be right back. Recently on these broadcasts I talked about a little book issued by the Institute for Contemporary Studies in San Francisco. The book is called "No Time to Confuse" and it takes apart pretty thoroughly some widely held notions about the role the federal government should play in finding, developing, allocating and setting the prices of America's energy resources. It also looks with a jaundiced eye at the inability of many of our so-called energy experts to keep their eye on the need to provide ample energy for American needs at reasonable prices both now and in the future. "No Time to Confuse" really is a critique of a three-year, four million dollar Ford Foundation study called "A Time to Choose America's Energy Future." That study, the ten authors of "No Time to Confuse" conclude is no more than a ringing call for Americans to turn out the lights not only the electric lights but the lights of freedom, freedom of choice, freedom to use personal resources as one sees fit and freedom to keep the fruits of one's labor. They are not quite that blunt, the ten economists and political scientists who wrote "No Time to Confuse," but their message comes through loud and clear and that message is that a lot of America's leaders today have it backward. Instead of being willing to sacrifice in the cause of individual freedom they would have you and me all of us sacrifice our freedom in the name of that great socialist god: government planning. The words government planning of course are no more than a euphemism for government knows best. Government being a little group of self-anointed experts who view themselves as the masters, not the servants, of the people. Government knows best in Russia. It knew best in Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy where the price for making the trains run on time was freedom. For in civilized countries wherever freedom is limited, it is limited by one major tenet: government knows best. As Professor Arman Alcian, one of the authors of "No Time to Confuse" notes, quote, "It is no accident that the strongest appeals for political action-make that read government controls-in the present situation are made by the strongest opponents of free enterprise activity. Those who would prefer to cripple the process of voluntary exchange through market prices." Unquote. Now whether we like it or not a great deal of our freedom as Americans is tied to the free market and our competitive free enterprise system. Every time government adds a control it takes away a little more of our freedom of action, our freedom of choice. Yet as Professor William H. Riker in his look at the ideology of the Ford report points out, that report believes that the federal government should set up an energy policy council that would set mandatory guidelines at the federal level and that Riker notes adds up to imposing a dictatorial policymaker over all Americans and don't say it can't happen here it's already begun. Government controls are fast becoming a way of life in America and can only get worse unless we the people rise up and demand that big government once and for all get off our backs. "No Time to Confuse," incidentally, is something every believer in free enterprise should read. If you'd like a copy, drop me a line care of this station and I'll send your letter along to the Institute for Contemporary Studies. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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