Page History: The Myth of the Great Society
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Page Revision: Tuesday, 10 March 2020 11:26
In 1966, shortly before announcing his candidacy for governor of California, Ronald Reagan gave this speech. It was only recently posted to Youtube by the Reagan Presidential Library, so research into the date of the speech will be needed. The video indicates it took place at Patton Center New York. (A footnote in
What's Fair on the Air? indicates the Patton Center is/was in the Bronx.)
View on YoutubeFull Speech
[Music]
[Applause]
Thank you.
I haven't even announced yet, you make me
think I've been elected. Ladies and
gentlemen, you have given me a welcome
that is so heartwarming it's something I
will remember always. In addition, if I
had no such reasons at all to be happy
about the... the form of the greeting and
the introductions and all here tonight, I
could be grateful because, every once in
a while being introduced I get
self-conscious when they begin to
introduce me and start mentioning the
pictures that I've been in. Now I don't
mean that I'm ashamed of them, but
everyone who's been around Hollywood for
any length of time has been in some
movies that the studio didn't want them
good, it wanted them Thursday. And I've
had my share, but at the ye... in the old
times you usually could count on the
passing years making you forget those
pictures. Now you just stay up late
enough at night in front of the TV set
they all come back to haunt us. Sometimes
I think it's like looking at a son you
never knew you had.
[Laughter]
[Applause]
That takes a second doesn't it.
I have a friend in the business who
stays up late to look at his old movies
just to watch his hairline receed.
But you know I've been protesting the growth
of government for a number of years. I've
had a concern, lest the permanent
structure of government become so big
that it would become beyond the control
of Congress and beyond the will of the
people and I have believed that this is
a problem that crosses party lines. I've
seen an interesting development down
through the years, when I first suggested
the danger of government control
inherent in so many federal handouts
there were people who denied vehemently
that every... any such thing could ever
take place. And yet before too long the
same people were saying, "What's wrong
with government control?" and in the
recent days we've heard representatives
in the higher echelons of government
asked us "Well, are you afraid of your own
government?" Well, to tell you the truth I am
and all of us should be.
[Applause]
And I speak not in a partisan sense of
an administration or individuals. I'm
talking of the institution of government.
Wasn't this the admonition of the
founding fathers? That government tends
to grow, to take on power until freedom
eventually is lost. The fact is and we
can't escape it, only government is
capable of tyranny. Now, I realize this is a
controversial subject, particularly as we
approach an election year, but then if
you didn't take up things that were
controversial you'd never talk at all.
There was a man knocked on a door one
day and a small boy answered and the man
said "Son is your father home?" and the boy
said "No." he said "Is your mother home?" and
the boy said "No." and finally he said, "Well
son, I'm your uncle on your father's side."
and the kid said, "Well I guess you can
come in but I'll tell you right now
you're on the wrong side."
[Laughter]
In 1772 the
Boston Committee of Correspondence
proclaimed the right to life, liberty, and
property. Two years later, in Philadelphia,
the First Continental Congress declared
that Americans were entitled to life,
liberty, and property. In June of 1776, the
Virginia Bill of Rights asserted that
all men were equally free and
independent with a means of possessing
and the right to possess and acquire
property. And three weeks later came the
Declaration of Independence, a bloody war,
victory, and then a new nation which
would be based on a constitution and a
Bill of Rights. "Life, liberty, and
property" had become "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness." And seventy years
would go by before England's Lord Acton
would comment on the task of these men
and what they had accomplished with this
document. He would say they had solved
two problems which had heretofore
baffled the most enlightened nations.
They had prodigiously increased the
power of the national government and had
founded it on the principle of equality
without surrendering the security for
freedom and property. And it's true our
Constitution is a contract guaranteeing
the most limited and equitable
government in the long history of man's
relation to man. Now, however, while the
national power is prodigious, what has
happened to security for freedom and our
right to the ownership of the fruit of
our toil. The French philosopher Alexis
de Tocqueville a hundred years ago said
"The end of freedom comes when the party
in power learns it can perpetuate itself
through taxation." Well, what does happen
to freedom when the executive branch of
government can use the money taken from
the people in order to coerce the people.
A foolish fear? Representative Glenn
Andrews introduced an amendment to the
poverty program on the floor of Congress.
It is almost inconceivable that such an
amendment would be required. It is even
more inconceivable that the amendment
was overwhelmingly repudiated and
defeated. It was a simple amendment that
would prohibit poverty funds from being
used for political purposes. Make no
mistake about it, the party in power has
legislated into existence a 1 billion,
800 million dollar campaign fund for
1966.
[Applause]
Five years ago we reached a new frontier,
and now we're face to face with a Great
Society and along the way we've added 31
billion dollars to our depth, but we've
decreased our gold holdings until
concern is felt for the solvency of our
currency. And very shortly the coins we
jingle in our pocket will no longer have
the ring of silver, but have no fear we
reach something of the height of
absurdity when in a press conference
recently we were told that the
government would stand behind those
artificial coins and was prepared to
exchange them anytime... for paper.
[Applause]
We've discovered that every family of
and with an income of less than three
thousand dollars a year is poverty-stricken.
At the same time we learned that the
cost of government prorates out to
$3,300 per family. We reach an all-time
high in food prices, as every housewife
here knows, but the farmer who produces
that food receives the lowest percentage
of the market basket dollar he's ever
received in history, and his debt in
relation to income is at an all-time
high, higher even than on the eve of the
1929 crash. Four and a half years ago...
five years ago, there were no daily
casualty lists, no wives and mothers
receiving telegrams that began, "We regret
to inform you..." The last campaign found
our opponents presenting themselves as
conservatives, in the sense that they
would make no drastic change in our easy
prosperous and affluent way. They would
maintain the status quo. That's Latin for
the mess we're in.
[Applause]
We, on the other hand, were presented as
radicals who would bring about some
cataclysmic upheaval.
Well, now the wraps are off the Great
Society, and a multitude of messages and
legislation has made it plain we're to
have the welfare state with an
unprecedented federalization of American
Life. June 30th last, Congress raised the
debt limit for the seventh time in five
years but our government spends two
hundred and sixty million dollars a day,
ten million dollars more each day than
we were spending just a year ago. We are
told that we're enjoying an
unprecedented prosperity but forty-two
government agencies, the government has
just informed us, are spending 70 billion
dollars a year on public welfare, and
serious discussion is given by men in
high place in government, to the idea
that there is no longer any necessity to
connect work with income, and that a man
simply by being born should be assured
of an annual income, with no need to work.
The ancient Hebrew book the Talmud tells
us that, for a father to fail to teach
his son to earn a living is the same as
teaching him to steal, for that might be
the inevitable result.
[Applause]
Our limited government, with its
decentralized powers, has given way to
planners and they've laid an
increasingly heavy hand
in every facet of our lives.
To quote de Tocqueville again he warned
that such a government would cover the
face of society with a network of small
complicated rules, minute and uniform, and
thus the will of man is not shattered,
but softened and guided, until the nation
is reduced to a flock of timid and
industrious animals of which government
is the shepherd. Well, the shepherd, the
president, is fond of quoting in these
days from the scriptures.
His favorite seems to be first Isaiah,
the eighteenth verse, "Come let us reason
together." Now that has a sort of a warm
and cozy sound, doesn't it? But let your
eyes stray down a line or two into the
next verses, the lines that are not
quoted aloud, "If ye refuse, ye shall be
devoured with the sword."
[Applause]
Freedom... freedom is very fragile. We've
only known a few moments of it in all
man's history and most of those moments
have taken place here, in this land, under
this constitutional system, and under our
economic system of free enterprise. But
freedom is also indivisible. It isn't
spelled with an S. You can't elect to be
partly free and partly slave. You're free
or you're not free. If we ever decide we
need a new Declaration of Independence, I
hope we'll keep one line from the old, "He
has sent hither swarms of officers to
harass our people and eat out their
substance. Today, for every 10,000 of us
it only takes 12 doctors to keep us well
and healthy. It only takes 40 mechanics
and oil station attendants for every
10,000 of us to keep our automobiles
running. 37 telephone employees to keep
the vast network of telephones running
in this country. But it takes a 130 federal employees for every
10,000 to administer the affairs of
State.
Federal employees outnumber state
employees in 30 of the 50 states. I don't
know about yours, but that's true of
California and in California that isn't
easy. The businessman harassed and eaten
out of our substance. The businessman
spends 35 percent of his time filling
out government forms and regulations. It
has been estimated... [Applause]
It has been estimated that this
government paperwork costs American
industry 20 billion dollars a year which
must be added into the price tag and it
costs another 7 billion dollars a year
just to handle government's end of that
paperwork and to store it and already it
requires 25 million cubic million cubic
feet. Sometime back, to show you how this
can happen, there was a little New
England town that decided to get in on
the surplus food idea. Now this is a good
idea. No one can quarrel with the fact that if
we can raise a surplus rather than
waste it should be distributed to those
people who have need. So this little town
got in on this and got its share of free
federal surplus food. And then they woke
up one day and discovered that they were
being flooded under a great load of
paperwork, demanded in connection with
this handout, and they discovered finally
they put on so many new city employees
just to handle this that it was cheaper
to get out of the program and buy the
groceries retail at the corner market.
Now, we've declared war on poverty. Now, no
one, again, quarrels with the humanitarian
aim I don't think any one of us want to
be like the fella that heard about the
war on poverty went right out and threw
a hand grenade at a beggar. But in
getting the program passed, we heard a
great deal about one state, West Virginia.
Oh this became a household word... this was
the very center of poverty and distress
and unemployment some of us thought that
the whole war would be fought right
there in West Virginia. Now the program
is adopted, West Virginia gets $400,000,
Texas gets 10 million.
[Applause]
We're winning the war though at least on
one front... on their own bureaucratic home
grounds... $19,000 a year is a good salary
and it's a very high rate of pay in
government salaries. As a matter of fact
there's only one employee out of a
thousand in the Department of Defense
gets 19 thousand dollars a year. Only one
out of 500 in the Department of
Agriculture. But in the new poverty
program, there's 1 out of 19 Gum Springs
Virginia was awarded seventy-four
thousand dollars: fifty-four thousand for
administrators salaries 20 thousand for
the poor.
While...[Applause] while one voice in government tells us
that we're enjoying this great
prosperity, another voice tells us that
one out of five in our country is
suffering from poverty and destitution.
Now, if that figure is true it shouldn't
be too hard to find the people who need
the help under this program. Well in my
hometown of Dixon, Illinois a committee
of ten, self-appointed, beholden to no
voters, has established itself and asked
the government for a thirty-eight
thousand dollar grant so they can go on
a search to find out if there's any
poverty there. It breaks down... it breaks
down to ten thousand two hundred dollars
for the chairman and seventy two hundred
dollars each for two assistants and the
balance will go for secretaries, mailing,
office expense, and travel. In another
area more than two thousand college
graduates have been hired as a part of
the program
to study the culture of poverty. Now no
one disagrees with the youth portion of
that program, the idea that we should
salvage, if possible, those young people
who, for whatever reason, have failed to
fit themselves for the responsibilities
of adult life. But we take over a hotel,
and we install their young ladies who
have been lifted from destitute families
and now they're to be trained so they'll
be self-reliant and can go out on their
own and make a living, but while they're
being retrained they're given maid
service so they won't have to make their
own beds. And the program pro-rates out
to seven thousand dollars a year for
each young lady we're going to help.
There are a lot of families in this
country raising fine productive citizens
on less than seven thousand dollars a
year.
[Applause]
I can think of no higher, more noble
purpose than to take young men and to
make sure that they get an equal chance
in the start in life. But we have such a
program now, and we put the young men in
camps for retraining and we pay them a
higher rate of pay than we give the
young man who puts on a uniform and goes
out to defend his country.
[Applause]
I am sure that all of us are agreed,
every responsible citizen is agreed, that
we should provide shelter for those
people who through no fault of their own
lack adequate housing. And for some time
the government has provided public
housing, but now those who administer the
program of expressed concern after
almost three decades of it. Concern
because an entire generation has grown
up raising children and a second and a
third generation now are growing up
taking it for granted that this is an
acceptable way of life and there is no
incentive for them to improve themselves,
because to get a raise
might destroy their eligibility for
continuing to live on a subsidy in the
public housing. And yet never does
government accept that it might be
responsible with some of its programs
for this trend or this tendency. No, now
we're going to have a program
subsidizing rents and under the
technicalities of the program people
with incomes up to 11 or 12 thousand
dollars a year will be eligible to live
in a house or apartment or a
neighborhood beyond their means with
their thrifty new neighbors taxed to help
pay the differential in their rent. A
variety of programs have diluted private
property rights so that public interest
is anything the planners decide it should
be. For generations we've had traditional
laws of eminent domain. We have
recognized the occasional need of
government to take a citizen's property
when there is a clear and present need
for that particular piece of property in
the public interest. But the citizen had
his day in court first to establish that
the government paid a fair price and
second that the government should be
forced to prove that there was a clear
and present need. Now, urban renewal
grants the government the right to force
the sale of private property for resale
by government to other private citizens
who can then use that property to make
profit, and we have average selling urban
renewal properties to private citizens
for 30% of the investment that we the
taxpayers have in that property.
Again I say, the purpose
is noble, the idea of providing decent
homes for every American and eliminating
slums, but 1 million people have been
displaced with a bulldozer and have
wound up in new slums paying a higher
rent. The law says the displaced must be
offered standard housing, at rents they
can afford, in convenient locations. But
if standard housing at rents they could
afford in convenient locations had been
available they wouldn't have needed an
urban renewal program they'd have moved
there on their own.
[Applause]
Robert Weaver, the federal housing
commissioner, has said in the beginning,
he has made this statement public, the
government gave the use of the land to
the people to speed its development.
Now I didn't remember history that way, I
thought we were here and on the land and
we created the government, but he says...[Applause]
but he has announced now it is the
policy of the government to seek to
reclaim complete control of the use of
the land. Planes equipped with surveying
instruments fly over American farms. They
survey from the air accurately to see
whether the farmer has violated his
planting allotment, and if he has, he's
guilty as charged. No day in court and
he's fined and if he can't pay the fine
the regulations prescribed the
government can seize his farm and sell
it at auction to enforce the payment of
that fine.
For 30 years we've had a farm program
we've spent billions to make the farmer
more prosperous and to remove unneeded
surplus land from farm production to
reduce the surplus and during that same
period the national income has tripled,
but the farmers income is smaller than
it was 30 years ago and we've increased
the number of acres in cultivation by 50
million. Every dollar that we spent on
price stabilization in 1948 we are today
spending twenty-five dollars. We've
reduced the number of farms by half and
the government says another two and a
half million farmers are unneeded and
must be retrained and moved to city jobs.
Meanwhile, at the same time, the
Appalachian program provides millions of
dollars to reclaim marginal land so that
the unemployed can be made farmers in
that area and add to the present farm
surplus. And an ominous question remains
unanswered, who will decide which
citizens must leave the land and how
will the decision be made. How also will
we explain that the same government that
says that we need only 1 million large
commercial farms now, that there is no
need for the small family farmer, is
still the government that tells us with
another voice that no farm of over 160
acres can receive water from federal
irrigation projects. Somehow one suspects
that government, in all of its
involvement in the farm program, will
turn out to be something less
and a Jolly Green Giant.
[Laughter]
Meanwhile the
network of rules grows more minute and
more uniform, as de Tocqueville
warned. Down on the Mason-Dixon line, on a
highway that is used by northerners
taking vacations in the south is an oil
station. Very enterprising fella running
it. A little triangular ground, you know,
between the sidewalk and the driveway
that so often is covered with gravel or
paved over. He planted a few cotton
bushes there. Now when a tourist stops in
from the north he gives him... picks a
cotton ball off the bush right there in
front of them and hands it to them as a
souvenir of their trip to the South.
He's just been fined by the federal
government for planting cotton without
an allotment.
The Post Office just
recently... the Post Office was exposed as
been... having, for the last couple of years,
taken mail... letters addressed to citizens
from the mail and turning them over the
Internal Revenue Service if those
citizens were... behind or delinquent
in the paying of their income tax.
And
now we learn that Washington is going to
subsidize art and literature. The plan
calls for two czars with millions of
dollars which way they will apportion on
the basis of what they consider is
meaningful in art and literature. Well
now, if they follow the pattern of some
of the government-sponsored scientific
research programs there is reason for
concern. I'm not a scientist, but I
sometimes have a suspicion that the
government is subsidizing just plain
intellectual curiosity, when I see
thousands of dollars spent on "Research
in phylology and faunal affinities of
fossil Bryozoa in the middle Ordovician
through Silurian." Now the only thing I understand in that
is that phrase "in the middle" there I
know who they're talking about.
[Applause]
But nothing is too small for the
government to overlook. The government in
Washington is now concerned with our
ability to enjoy ourselves in the great
outdoors, recreational facilities. They've
just issued 134 page booklet on the
subject. It's full of profundities I wonder how
we managed to get along without it up
'til now. For example, if you lay out a
campsite, you should provide drinking
fountains at such a height that the
drinking level is convenient for the
persons using the fountain. But wait 'til
you get... wait 'til you get to the
exciting chapter on wildlife. Insects
crawling into the ears of outdoorsmen
sometimes create painful conditions. I
got news for them, it's no fun when it
happens indoors.
[Applause]
That isn't all they have to say about
wildlife. If your recreational area has a
bathhouse intended for the use of both
men and women, it should be divided into
two parts by a tight partition.
Now you know we'd have never thought of
that one by ourselves.
[Applause]
Honestly though, I know that they only
mean to be helpful. I know that it's
really human nature... they're motivated by
the most humanitarian of idealism. It's
just natural for them to see the
problems and see the immediate problem
and to suggest, "Oh if we had a little
more money a little more power of what
we could do for the people."
Now in an
atmosphere of emergency and excessive
zeal for our welfare the federal
government proposes to invade an area
the traditional province of the local
community and state. The finest public
school system in all the world. With no
real determination yet that the federal
government is the best manager of our
educational affairs. A suspicion prevails
that they're not so much interested in
speeding progress as they are in
asserting authority in every conceivable
aspect of the educational system.
An educational system that has worked
very well and has been responsive to
parental opinion but Washington insists
that it only wants to help solve the
financial problems attended on our rapid
growth. Well problems there are
particularly because the federal
government in recent years has dried up
so many sources of revenue... of local
revenue by usurping those sources for
its own tax policies.
[Applause]
But that same government has figures
that reveal that we at the local level
in the last decade have increased school
revenue by a hundred and fifty six
percent. We have built in ten years
thirty billion dollars worth of
classrooms. We have reduced the ratio of
pupil to teacher and pupil to classroom
and we have increased the average
teacher's salary by sixty five percent.
And yet every suggestion that we make
for earmarking tax money and allowing it
to remain at the local level without
running it through those puzzle palaces
on the Potomac first, is met with great
resistance. Already there are a hundred
and thirty five separate federal
agencies and officers doling out money
at the college level.
Some time ago a group of distinguished
college presidents, alarmed at the extent
to which academic freedom has been
compromised by these vast money grants,
went to Washington and they had a
proposal they'd worked out. A proposal
for allowing the individual citizen to
compute his income tax and then deduct a
specified amount and contribute it to the
college of his choice instead of paying
it in income tax. And the government
would... the government would be allowed
to determine the proper amount that
would solve the problem and yet not
disrupted the government's own economy
or need for revenue. And thus they would
get around the question of church and
state the separation of saying that an
individual citizen chose to contribute
his money to a church supported school.
Over and over again in Washington they
kept asking, "But why won't this system
work?" and finally a Freudian slip
occurred. Frances Keppel, United States
Director of Education blurted out, "You
don't understand, under the plan you
proposed, we couldn't achieve our social
objectives." Social objectives. And now we
uncover a memorandum thanks to the press,
actually, a memorandum in the community
relations service of the poverty program
has nothing really to do with education
but the memorandum is very disturbing in
this sentence. "Wwe should conduct a
systematic effort to contact all publishers and school
boards to encourage their publication
and adoption of textbooks conforming to
established standards." Well if the
government is going to build the schools,
and buy the books, issue
scholarships, make judgments and exert
pressure, what if, one day, that pressure
is of a political nature not to our
liking?
Education is the bulwark of freedom but
you remove it too far from the community
and the parents control and education
becomes the tool of tyranny.
[Applause]
Already here and there in our land, there
are too many students that are studying
from textbooks that devote a chapter to
public welfare and not one line to
Patrick Henry.
[Applause]
Sometimes when you look at the problem
you think that governments like a baby.
It's an alimentary canal with an
appetite at one end and no sense of
responsibility at the other. We're taxed
in our food and our drink and our shelter
with the government taking a higher
percentage from the productive free
economy than any government has ever
done in history without ruin. So-called
tax reform when it is suggested whines
up is the old shell game
they just rearranged it shifted around
and apply at someplace else as we
discovered with the so-called tax cut we
thought we had.
[Applause]
Our tax policy today is based in the
idea that we're robbing Peter to pay
Paul. Well we'd better take another look...
we're robbing Paul to pay Paul and we're
all named Paul... Peter went bankrupt a
long time ago.
Inflation planned and deliberate over
the last three decades has reduced the
value of our dollar to thirty five and a
half cents. Well, how did this come about?
Well, mainly because we have perverted
our constitution, perverted it with
regard to a welfare clause that doesn't
exist, perverted it with regard to the
misuse of the taxation system, perverted
with regard to the interpretation of the
clauses on Interstate Commerce, and we've
done it under such high sounding phrases
as the "greatest good for the greatest
number" or "one-man one-vote" forgetting
that majority rule becomes mob rule
unless there is a set of ground rules
protecting the individual.
One's right to life... one's right-to-life to Liberty to the
freedom of worship, to speak, to assemble,
in short, our god-given unalienable
rights, may not be submitted to a vote.
The very purpose of the Bill of Rights
was to forever put them beyond reach of
majority rule. A hundred years ago, the
problem of the nation was a nation
half-slave and half-free and whether
such a nation could survive. And today
it's a world half-slave and half-free
and whether mankind himself can survive.
We call out to the guard in the night and
ask, "Does all go well?" and echoing back
from the shores of the Potomac comes the
word "There's nothing to fear." Nothing to
fear but an evil enemy who since World
War II has increased the enslavement from 8% of the world's
population to near forty percent. Every
lesson of history tells us that as a
nation has grown in culture and
refinement and advanced it has softened
and when confronted by the barbarian, the
less cultured, the barbarians have triumphed.
You and I have come to our moment of
truth.
Does men exist only by permission of and
for the sake of the state, a group
marching toward eternity in a super ant
heap or does he control his own destiny?
This is a question that must be answered
by all of us regardless of party.
To
those who are Democrats, ask yourselves
if the leadership of your party still
follows the precepts of Jefferson,
Jackson, and Cleveland. Take the platform
of 1932 on which Franklin Delano
Roosevelt was elected, with its demand
for a 25% reduction in the cost of the
federal government, for restoration of
constitutional limits on the power of
that government, for a return to the
states and the local communities and the
individuals of the rights that had been
taken from them. Ask which party would be
most at home today with those promises. I
know that the bond of party loyalty is
very strong. I was a Democrat most of my
life. I know it is hard to to make a
change from party loyalty
and the party of your lifelong choice,
without a feeling that you are being
treasonable, or unfair. I say to you have
no feeling of disloyalty if you have
decided you no longer can follow the
leadership of that party tonight because
the leadership of that party has long
since abandoned you.
[Applause]
And now to those of us of another party,
to those who are Republicans. Today, the
Republican Party is the vehicle we must
use as the party of opposition...
opposition to the misguided leadership
at home and opposition to all the evil
abroad that threatens the dignity and
freedom of man in every land. And it's an
awesome responsibility and you and I who
are Republicans cannot meet it with a
splintered party. For too long, we have
been Republicans complete with
descriptive adjectives and hyphens
before the word Republican. Moderate-
Republicans, Liberal-Republicans,
Conservative-Republicans, whatever label
we chose, the truth is we've been Sucker-
Republicans.
[Applause]
Those adjectives and those hyphens were
given to us by our opponents and the
time has come to bundle them up and give
them back.
[Applause]
If you have to hang on to the hyphen just be
a Good or a Republican-Republican. We can
cringe in the shadow of a philosophy we
detest but fear to challenge or we can
rise from a defeat and begin the second
round of our struggle to restore the
Republic. And now there are those among
us, there are Republicans today who
understandably so hungry to get back to
the position that we once held, to
re-establish some equality in this
two-party system, restore the imbalance
we now have, who has suggested, even
somewhat cynically, that maybe we should
start talking to voter blocks and making
promises that perhaps we should even
reshape our party in the image of the
victorious party, on the basis that
perhaps an imitation might get more
votes than we've been attracting. Well
I'd like to suggest there is a block we
can appeal to. It's a voter bloc of
millions and millions of people
it crosses party lines, ethnic lines,
religious and racial lines, economic
lines. It's made up of millions of unsung
heroes; people who get up in the morning
send their kids to school and go to work
they contribute to their church and
their charity and their community. They
believe that they were created in God's
image and that God is the author of
their rights and freedom and their
disturbed because their children can no
longer ask God's blessing in a
schoolroom.
[Applause]
I say to you that bloc... that bloc of
voters can be ours, not if we come to
them with any imitation or air sets
program but only if we're willing to
stand on principle.
Yes, let's be willing to tell them that
we too want to solve and will solve as
to the best of our ability the problems
of poverty and hunger and health and
old-age and unemployment, but we believe
we can do that without resulting to
undue compulsion and fiscal
irresponsibility. That we believe we can
put a floor beneath which no American
will be asked to live in degradation but
at the same time we will not erect a
ceiling above which no citizen can fly
without being penalized for his
initiative in his effort.
[Applause]
And let us tell them that, hard though
the problems may be that face us on the
world scene, we will not buy our
protection from the threat of the bomb
by trading away the freedom of people in
other lands not ours to give.
[Applause]
And let's tell them that if their sons
are going to be asked to fight and die
for their country, at the same time
they'll be allowed to win.
[Applause]
To all Republicans today entrusted with
this responsibility because it is ours,
I say look deep in your own hearts and
ask yourselves if you possibly can have
any difference with any other Republican
but is more important from this
challenge that faces us tonight.
If you have if you're unwilling to meet
this challenge then you'd better start
preparing... deciding what you'll tell your
children it was that you found more
important than freedom... they'll want to
know.
[Applause]