Ronald Reagan on Freedom and Government: A Time for Choosing

We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long

climb from the swamp to the stars.

And it's 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 had the

most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.

Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a

businessman who had escaped from Castro.

And in the midst of his story, one of my friends turned to the other

and said, "We

don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said,

"How lucky you

are.

I had some place to escape to."

And in that sentence, he told us the entire story.

If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to.

This is the 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 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 increasingly we have to choose

between

a left or right. Well, I'd like to suggest there

is no such thing as a left or

right. There's only an up or down, 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 trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward

course.

In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the Great Society,

the full power of centralized government.

This was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize.

They knew that governments 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.

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.