quotATimeforChoosingquotakaquotTheSpeechquot
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quotATimeforChoosingquotakaquotTheSpeechquot
Ronald Reagan: "A Time for Choosing" (aka "The
Speech")
Program 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 performer hasn't 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 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, "We've never had
it so good."
But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this
prosperity isn't something on which we can base our hopes
for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a
tax burden that reached a third of its national income.
1
Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this
country is the tax collector's share, and yet our
government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day
more than the government takes in. We haven't balanced
our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We've raised our
debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now
our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all
the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We
have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we don't
own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion
dollars. And we've just had announced that the dollar of
1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.
As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who
among us would like to 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 the world for
the rest of us. 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
2
that those who had the most to lose did the least to
prevent its happening. Well I think it's 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 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 someplace 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 capitol can plan our
lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
3
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quotATimeforChoosingquotakaquotTheSpeechquotRonaldReagan:"ATimeforChoosing"(aka"TheSpeech")ProgramAnnouncer:Ladiesandgentlemen,wetakeprideinpresentingathoughtfuladdressbyRonaldReagan.Mr.Reagan:Reagan:Thankyou.Thankyouverymuch.Thankyouandgoodevening.Thesponsorhasbeenidentified,butunlikemosttelevision...
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