"A Time for Choosing"

Forty-four years ago today, Ronald Reagan gave a speech entitled "A Time For Choosing", a speech that is as pertinent and timely today as it was back then. Listen to the speech and then replace Johnson's "Great Society" with Barack Obama's mindless mantra of "Hope" and Change" and Senator Fullbright's remarks that "the Constitution is outmoded" with Obama's claim that the Constitution of our nation is "fundamentally flawed".

For those of us who love our nation and who value property above fraternity and liberty above equality, there is but one thing we ultimately expect from someone who aspires to lead our nation... and that is that he will solemnly affirm to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States".

Very soon all of us will face our own time of choosing and the the only question we need ask ourselves is how we can expect someone to preserve, protect and defend a document that they believe is "fundamentally flawed"?

"You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down--up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order--or down to the ant heap 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," 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 they have been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves--and all of the things that 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 acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism." Another voice says that the profit motive has become 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 president as our moral teacher and our leader, and he said he is hobbled in his task by the restrictions in 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 liberalism 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 man and woman of this country--as "the masses." This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, "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.