A Time for Choosing.docx

1、A Time for ChoosingA Time for Choosingprogram announcer: ladies and gentlemen, we take pride in presenting a thoughtful address by ronald reagan. mr. reagan:reagan: thank you. thank you very much. thank you and good evening. the sponsor has been identified, but unlike most television programs, the p

2、erformer hasnt been provided with a script. as a matter of fact, i have been permitted to choose my own words and discuss my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks.i have spent most of my life as a democrat. i recently have seen fit to follow another course. i believe that

3、 the issues confronting us cross party lines. now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. the line has been used, weve never had it so good.as for the peace that we would preserve, i wonder who among us would like t

4、o approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in south vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? there can be no real peace while one american is dying some place in t

5、he world for the rest of us. were at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and its been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who

6、 had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. well i think its time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the founding fathers.not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from castro, and i

7、n the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, we dont know how lucky we are. and the cuban stopped and said, how lucky you are? i had someplace to escape to. and in that sentence he told us the entire story. if we lose freedom here, theres no place to escape to. this is th

8、e last stand on earth.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 mans relation to man.this is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our

9、capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the american revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.you and i are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. well id like to

10、 suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. theres only an up or down - up mans old - old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would t

11、rade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.in this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the great society, or as we were told a few days ago by the president, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people. but theyve been a little more explic

12、it in the past and among themselves; and all of the things i now will quote have appeared in print. these are not republican accusations. for example, they have voices that say, the cold war will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism. another voice says, the profit motive has be

13、come outmoded. it must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state. or, our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century. senator fullbright has said at stanford university that the constitution is outmoded. he referred to the presi

14、dent as our moral teacher and our leader, and he says he is hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document. he must be freed, so that he can do for us what he knows is best. and senator clark of pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberali

15、sm as meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government.well, i, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as the masses. this is a term we havent applied to ourselves in america. but b

16、eyond that, the full power of centralized government - this was the very thing the founding fathers sought to minimize. they knew that governments dont control things. a government cant control the economy without controlling people. and they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use f

17、orce and coercion to achieve its purpose. they also knew, those founding fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.senator humphrey last week charged that barry goldwater, as president, would seek to eli

18、minate farmers. he should do his homework a little better, because hell find out that weve had a decline of 5 million in the farm population under these government programs. hell also find that the democratic administration has sought to get from congress an extension of the farm program to include

19、that three-fourths that is now free. hell find that theyve also asked for the right to imprison farmers who wouldnt keep books as prescribed by the federal government. the secretary of agriculture asked for the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell them to other individuals. and conta

20、ined in that same program was a provision that would have allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from the soil.at the same time, theres been an increase in the department of agriculture employees. theres now one for every 30 farms in the united states, and still they cant tell us

21、 how 66 shiploads of grain headed for austria disappeared without a trace and billie sol estes never left shore.every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked the government to free the farm economy, but how - who are farmers to know whats best for them? the wheat farmers voted

22、against a wheat program. the government passed it anyway. now the price of bread goes up; the price of wheat to the farmer goes down.meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries on. private property rights are so diluted that public interest is almost anything a fe

23、w government planners decide it should be. in a program that takes from the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in cleveland, ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a more compati

24、ble use of the land. the president tells us hes now going to start building public housing units in the thousands, where heretofore weve only built them in the hundreds. but fha federal housing authority and the veterans administration tell us they have 120,000 housing units theyve taken back throug

25、h mortgage foreclosure. for three decades, weve sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan. the latest is the area redevelopment agency.theyve just declared rice county, kansas, a depressed area. rice county, kans

26、as, has two hundred oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over 30 million dollars on deposit in personal savings in their banks. and when the government tells you youre depressed, lie down and be depressed.we have so many people who cant see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming

27、to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. so theyre going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer - and theyve had almost 30 years of it - shouldnt we expe

28、ct government to read the score to us once in a while? shouldnt they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? the reduction in the need for public housing?but the reverse is true. each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater. we were told four ye

29、ars ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. well that was probably true. they were all on a diet. but now were told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than 3,000 dollars a year. welfare spending is 10 times greater than in th

30、e dark depths of the depression. were spending 45 billion dollars on welfare. now do a little arithmetic, and youll find that if we divided the 45 billion dollars up equally among those 9 million poor families, wed be able to give each family 4,600 dollars a year. and this added to their present inc

31、ome should eliminate poverty. direct aid to the poor, however, is only running only about 600 dollars per family. it would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.but seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help? not too long ago, a judge called me here in los angeles. he told me of

32、 a young woman whod come before him for a divorce. she had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. under his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer earning 250 dollars a month. she wanted a divorce to get an 80 dollar raise. shes eligible for 330 dollars a month in the aid to dependent children program. she got the idea from two women in her neighborhood whod already done that very thing.yet anytime you and i question the schemes of the do-gooders, were denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. they say were always against thing