"Rendezvous with Destiny: A Time for Choosing" -- It's amazing how clearly Ronald Reagan's speech from 1964 reflects the challenges that our nation faces today. Not only does it reflect the challenges that we once faced before, but highlights the fact that we have become a nation completely void of true leadership.
"If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of Islamic fascism by committing an immorality so great as saying to millions of Americans now being forced to accommodate in the name of diversity, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have it in the next second--surrender.
Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand--the ultimatum. And what then? When Osama Bin Laden has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating because we lack the courage to fight, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "the Iraq war is lost," And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits--not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Our children and grandchildren will have to muster the courage where we failed. The first step our children will have to take is to do away with the inoffensive politically correct euphemism "War on Terror" that we have foolishly elected to use fearing that we might unintentionally offend someone.
Today America and the West are not winning. They are losing. While it might look at times that the battle is being won, we are in fact losing the greater war. Freedom is being lost on all fronts.
There is not amount of money that is going to ever buy our freedom or appease our enemies. The billions of dollars being thrown at Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are clearly indicative of how desperate and shameful we have become when both of these countries were directly involved in the attack on our nation.
Alexander Hamilton was right when he said "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Maybe America does deserve a master.
Dear America, it is the bottom of the 9th inning. Wake Up!
Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand--the ultimatum. And what then? When Osama Bin Laden has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating because we lack the courage to fight, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "the Iraq war is lost," And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits--not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Our children and grandchildren will have to muster the courage where we failed. The first step our children will have to take is to do away with the inoffensive politically correct euphemism "War on Terror" that we have foolishly elected to use fearing that we might unintentionally offend someone.
Today America and the West are not winning. They are losing. While it might look at times that the battle is being won, we are in fact losing the greater war. Freedom is being lost on all fronts.
There is not amount of money that is going to ever buy our freedom or appease our enemies. The billions of dollars being thrown at Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are clearly indicative of how desperate and shameful we have become when both of these countries were directly involved in the attack on our nation.
Alexander Hamilton was right when he said "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Maybe America does deserve a master.
Dear America, it is the bottom of the 9th inning. Wake Up!
Dear Laotze. Excellent and thanks. I remeber "Rendevous with destiny..."
ReplyDeleteCan we keep it and triumph?
Colonel Robert Neville
colonelrobertneville.blogspot.com