Dear GOP…. Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way!
By Gary P Jackson
Most natural disasters happen suddenly with little or no warning. With ObamaCare, we are seeing a dangerous and deadly man made disaster unfold in slow motion. ObamaCare is a slow motion train-wreck that has been in progress for the last 3 1/2 years!
As a nation, We, the People, are at a crossroads. A country that was founded on the concept “of the people, by the people, and for the people” was long ago usurped by power hungry, corrupt, and absolutely evil politicians. The American experiment in self government, of a government that values local control and determination, a government that considers every man and woman a sovereign, is failing. Now mind you, the experiment is not failing because it doesn’t work. The American way of life worked for over 150 years, and worked well. Then greed, blind ambition, and a lust for power, things that have plagued civilizations since the beginning of time, reared their ugly heads.
No longer a Constitutional Republic, in anything but name only, we have seen the federal government, aided by politicians in BOTH parties destroy the proven concept our founders created, and move us toward the same kind of oppressive, central Command and Control sort of overbearing government, our founders fought a bloody revolution to escape from. In many ways, the conditions today in America, with regard to the relationship between We, the People, and our government, is far worse than what our founders faced.
Our founders understood we must have some sort of government.
James Madison, in the Federalist Papers;Federalist 51 summed up the thinking of our founders:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
What Madison was saying was both obvious, and revolutionary. Madison acknowledges the need for some sort of limited government to maintain order, enforce laws, and so on. But as we all know … as men are no angels, thus needing some governing … these same men who are no angels, will be doing the governing. One can only imagine the great dilemmas our founders faced trying to craft a government that would keep order, but not oppress.
It should be noted that the first attempt at governing was a disaster. With only Articles of Confederation as a guide, chaos, bordering on anarchy was the result. Thus, our Constitution, one of the most important and enduring documents ever written, was created.
The problem Madison and others faced was creating a workable government, that didn’t oppress, and didn’t limit the Liberties and Freedom they all fought so hard to protect. The answer they came up with was elegant. Our Constitution is, itself, a governor, in the literal sense. The Constitution is designed, just like the governor on a piece of equipment, to limit government, to slow it down.
Our Constitution vests most of the power in the people. Next comes the several states. As written, the federal government sets at the bottom of the heap. As written, our Constitution makes the federal government the weakest player in the game.
Our Constitution recognizes we get all of our rights, not from government, but from God. The Constitution is designed to keep the government from interfering with those rights.
Put another way, if men are no angels, and thus must have government, and government is run by these same men, for society to work these men must be severely limited in power. Our Constitution does this. Or is supposed to.
Thanks to what we often refer to as “low information voters” people who are uninformed, or ill-informed, the federal government has grabbed more and more power, usurping the sovereignty of the several states, and We, the People. What we have now is a highly oppressive, central Command-and-Control, tyrannical government.
Government is completely out of control, and politicians are not held accountable in any way whatsoever.
One could fill a library of books describing the many evils Big Government has visited on the American people. An entire wing of that library could be dedicated to the lives destroyed by Big Government.
Big Government is the very embodiment of an institution run by “non-angels“!
There are so many dangers we face, so many evils that threaten the nation’s very existence, it’s difficult to concentrate on just one. There are literally thousands of things that need to be stopped, reformed, eliminated, and so on.
That said, ObamaCare is by far, the most destructive element we face today. Socialized medicine has been the goal of the anti-American, Big Government types for generations. Those who seek to destroy the traditional American way of life, and replace it by the almighty central Command-and-Control government, have been trying to put such a plan as Obamacare in place for generations.
In 1961, as a private citizen [who didn’t need a title to make a difference] Ronald Reagan, as part of Operation Coffee Cup spoke about the evils of socialized medicine, and how liberals would use it to take complete, 100% control of every American’s life. People need to listen to Reagan’s words, and take heed.
Once again, Reagan is being proven right.
The evils of ObamaCare are many. Skyrocketing insurance costs, skyrocketing costs of treatments, rationing of health care, a looming shortage of doctors and other health care professionals, and even the destruction of the traditional 40 hour work week, and possibly permanent full time jobs, period, thanks to provisions that exempt companies who hire part time workers. There are numerous hidden taxes that will impact every American. There are severe penalties on those who are the most productive among us.
There is good news though. Conservatives have a workable plan to effectively stop ObamaCare. We know as long as democrats hold the Senate, and the White House, it will be impossible to repeal the law. However, we can defund it, refuse to spend another dime setting it up.
President Obama has already set this standard. In a purely political move, knowing himself what a disaster his signature legislation is, Obama has proclaimed his regime will delay implementation of the law that mandates employers to provide coverage. [until after the 2014 elections] Of course, no such deferment is forthcoming from the regime, for the individual. The American people will be forced to comply.
Now the democrats and their corrupt media partners are spinning the Conservative plan, as “Republicans wanting to shut government down” which should be met with howls of laughter and ridicule by the GOP, but instead, the spineless GOP “leadership is now cowering in fear. These gutless wonders are already waving the white flag, caring more about what democrats and the media think, than their bosses, We, the People.
Recently liberal Republicans like Karl Rove have come out against trying to stop ObamaCare, saying, in effect, if we try and save America, the people that already hate us will say mean things about us. If Karl Rove and the “leaders” of the GOP were around in 1776 they no doubt would have advised against seeking freedom from England as well! I can almost hear Rove now, loudly screaming : “We mustn’t offend King George!”
Senator Ted Cruz answered Rove, and the other spineless Republicans, this week on the Sean Hannity Show, reminding viewers that you lose 100% of the battles that you surrender before fighting.
The plan that Senator Cruz, Senator Mike Lee, and others have put together is simple. Stand firm, put together a budget plan that funds everything except ObamaCare. The media is already spinning this as wanting to shut government down, but that is a lie. What the media is doing, is trying to give President Obama cover. You see, the only one who would be shutting down the government would be Obama and his democrat party, by refusing to accept reality. The government would only be shut down because Obama and his crew would rather play politics, than do right by the American people.
Instead of getting on board with this common sense, effective plan, “leaders” like Speaker of the House John Boehner, are hiding under their desks, or like Rove, openly trying to sabotage the effort.
ObamaCare has always been unpopular, with most Americans completely against it. As time has passed, it’s only become more unpopular, with that unpopularity now at an all time high. This isn’t rocket science. The American people want this thing stopped!
Though not rocket science, this is a supreme test for the Republican Party. If the GOP can’t band together and stop one of the biggest man made disasters to ever come out of government, if the GOP can’t stop the march toward the end of America as we know it, then the GOP must admit it is no longer a viable political party.
For years, the GOP has done more to facilitate the democrat party’s disastrous agenda, than to stop it. Liberal Republicans make a show of pretending to oppose disasters like ObamaCare, then fold up and lay down, when the time comes for them to really fight. Thanks to these Republicans, America is failing.
We need a party comprised of honest, trustworthy men and women who recognize evil, and have absolutely no problem fighting it, no matter the odds!
I wonder what chance the odds makers would have given a bunch of rag-tag rebels going up against the greatest, best equipped, most well trained army that existed at the time? Probably somewhere between slim and none! And yet, our founders whipped the British, and created the greatest nation the world has ever known!
If a group of farmers can defeat the British army, surely a bunch of politicians in Washington can defeat ObamaCare and the democrats!
If the Republican Party “leadership” can’t get on board, and help stop Obamcare, then the Republican party must simply admit defeat, close it’s doors, and go out of business, because the GOP will no longer be a viable party.
There ARE principled men and women who will gladly form a new party to replace it.
RedState is a “Republican” website that is unfriendly to Conservatives. In fact, in their comment rules they announce that any talk promoting any party but the GOP is ban worthy. [and they follow through] RedState has always been anti-Palin, and I can tell you from first hand experience that any attempt to defend Governor Palin with factual information, against the lies posted there, is always met with seething hatred, ridicule, and even banning. I know, I’ve been banned not once, but TWICE!
Palin went on to say that many Americans, herself included, “are barely hanging on to our enlistment papers in any political party,” denouncing both parties as “dysfunctional political machines.”
Hear! Hear! Attagirl, Sarah! You tell ‘em!
Then, in response to my friend Josh Painter, Governor Palin said she liked his suggestion of joining forces with Mark Levin to create a new “Freedom Party” if the GOP continues its drift toward abandoning a commitment to core American values. This comment was picked up by the Daily Caller’s Jeff Poor (who has always hated Sarah Palin with a blind fury) and was in turn seized on by a Red State diarist who, in order to illustrate his post, used a Photoshopped image to mock Palin.
By a strange chain of events — having missed the build-up of the brewing controversy — I learned of this via Stacy Drake, who slammed the dishonesty of the Red State attack. Quite frankly, a lot of Palin supporters have been bitter toward Red State since 2011, when Erick Erickson went out of his way to mock them. But let us lay aside these ancient quarrels to ask: Is Sarah Palin right?
Not only is she right to oppose this amnesty sellout, but the resentment toward GOP leadership she expresses touches on key aspects of a criticism that the most astute minds in the conservative movement have been making for many, many years. Readers already acquainted with this critique will excuse me for taking time here to explain to new readers the historical and philosophical background.
The perennial problem of the Republican Party is that they are a party of ideas, whereas Democrats are a party of people. That is to say, the GOP since the era of Reagan has been devoted to a philosophy of conservatism — an ideology — while by contrast, the Democrats sit around identifying specific voter groups (labor union members, women, blacks, gays, etc.), telling them that the Republicans are their mortal enemies, and then pitching them with promises: “We’re on your side. We’re your friends. Vote for us and we’ll give you X, Y and Z.”
Republicans succeed when they are led by spokesmen who can clearly articulate a conservative philosophy, and who consistently point out the Democrats’ history of dishonesty and failure: Even if you could trust Democrats to do what they say they’re going to do (which by the way, you can’t) their policies don’t work, have never worked and never will work. People who vote Democrat in the belief that Democrats will fix their problems always end up with worse problems.
Want to see what Democrats do for their “friends”? Go to Detroit.
Republicans fail when they lack confidence in their own beliefs and instead offer voters a “Me, Too” agenda of Democrat Lite. This has been a GOP problem since the era of Herbert Hoover, at least, and was a basic reason why William F. Buckley Jr. and a number of other like-minded people organized what we now know as Movement Conservatism during the 1950s. It is a sad fact that many of those who today claim to be conservatives have never really studied the development of this movement. Too much of this history has either been forgotten or twisted by liberal authors (e.g., Sam Tanenhaus) so as to be unrecognizable to those familiar with the actual facts.
After spending some time talking to and about our libertarian friends, and their sometimes confusion about what actual Conservatism is and means, McCain goes on to say:
Well, “steady licks kill the Devil,” as they say. We have seen in the past half-century that, if properly organized and properly led, the conservative movement can make real changes. But personnel is policy, and too often the ambitions of individuals — careerists seeking to make politics the vehicle of their own personal success — have put the wrong kind of people in key roles, enabling them to prevent success (and then, of course, to scapegoat others for the failure).
Ability and ambition are not always accompanied by virtue and wisdom. Quite commonly in political life, we encounter selfish people who cleverly present themselves as principled idealists, zealous for The Cause, while enriching themselves and enhancing their own influence behind the convenient camouflage of political purity.
Al Regnery once summarized this problem by saying that the success of conservatism had created opportunities for opportunists.
In other words, back when “conservative” was an unpopular label and a misunderstood idea, people could not get rich or build careers for themselves by parading beneath the banner of conservatism. But the success of the conservative movement during the Reagan era and beyond made it a popular thing — both for Republican office-seekers and for various sorts of political functionaries — to identify themselves as “conservatives,” to claim to speak for conservatism, and to assert that their particular ideas were True Conservatism.
This influx of opportunists has not only confused the public as to what “conservative” means, but it has erected an organizational infrastructure of the movement staffed by careerists more interested in their own advancement within this hierarchy — “The Ziggurat of Ambition,” as I’ve called it — than in conservatism itself.
In this, McCain describes hangers-on and phonies like Erick Erickson and Ben Howe of RedState and also big time con-artists like Karl Rove, and lying politicians like Marco Rubio, Kelly Ayotte, and Jeff Flake, who pretend to be Conservative, to get elected, then immediately run to the left once in office.
Whether he meant to or not, Stacy McCain just described everything that is wrong with the Republican Party in general. They will pretend to be “conservative” when they think they must, but screw over the entire base, and the country, once in office. And line their pockets while they are at it!
The GOP’s last presidential candidate is a perfect example of why the GOP is circling the drain.
In his lengthy column, McCain goes on to say:
This certainly summarizes a perception of Palin that many people might agree with, if they haven’t bothered to study Palin’s biography and to assess the fundamental problem: What happens when a successful but relatively obscure Republican with no previous exposure to high-stakes national politics is suddenly thrust into the spotlight — and finds herself surrounded by the sort of vicious backstabbing crapweasels who were running John McCain’s campaign?
Seriously: If Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace are the future of the Republican Party, we are doomed beyond all hope of redemption.
Criticize Palin however you will — say she was “not ready for primetime,” call her a “bomb thrower,” accuse her of greed or excessive vanity, impugn her temperament, whatever — but you must understand this: Sarah Palin is not what’s wrong with the Republican Party.
And while I do not mean to endorse a third-party effort in 2016, Governor Palin has put her finger directly on a key problem for conservatives, namely that such leaders of the Republican Party as have joined The Gang of Eight Liars are betraying the people who elected them with the belief that those voters have no alternative.
Controlling the party apparatus and able to hire plenty of “conservative intellectuals” to endorse their betrayal as essential to the future success of the GOP, these Republicans proceed on the assumption that conservative voters are so lacking in devotion to principle that they will always vote Republican no matter what.
Governor Palin can’t say this, but I can: F–k you, “Republican leaders.”
And while we’re at it, f–k anybody who says we should roll over and accept this kind of phony “conservative” bulls–t as inevitable.
No, by God, I say we fight these bastards with everything we’ve got.
Fight them until Hell freezes over, and then fight them on the ice.
Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, a fine occasion to declare our independence from these vicious backstabbing crapweasels.
If Governor Palin is willing to help lead this fight — inside the GOP so long as there is hope, but outside the GOP if we must — then I say, “Patriots! We must conquer here or die! Rally on the Alaskan!”
The entire article is a seriously great read, and well, an essential one, please go here to do it.
Stacy McCain says what is on the mind of just about ever Conservative activist these days, and is saying it exactly the way it needs to be said! The cold hard fact is, the Republican Party needs Conservatives a hell of a lot more than Conservatives need the Republican Party!
The Geniuses of the GOP™ have caused all but a baker’s dozen, plus one, of Senate Republicans, to commit an act of TREASON against the United States of America, all in order to pander to an insignificant voting block that liberal talkers have convinced them that if they don’t, the GOP will never win another election.
Mitt Romney didn’t lose the election because of Hispanic voters, who only made up 8% of the electorate in 2012. Some pundits throw around the [legit] notion that had Romney gotten 70% of the Hispanic vote in 2012, he would have still lost. I’ll go further and say he could have gotten 100% of their vote and still got skunked!
What the GOP Smart Set™ still hasn’t figured out, but Governor Palin has, and pointed out quite strongly to them, is Romney lost because Reagan democrats and movement Conservatives weren’t impressed enough to care. They either stayed home, or voted for someone else. It’s really that simple.
Think about this: Barack Obama is demonstrably the absolute worst President in our nation’s 237 year history. In fact, he’s one of the worst people to lead any nation, in the history of history itself …. and yet …. Obama won re-election, by a convincing margin! ….. W.T.F.?
Obama is not just corrupt, he’s running a lawless, completely illegitimate government. The Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the Founding Principles that have guided America for two-and-a-quarter centuries, are not only meaningless to the Obama regime, they are openly ridiculed and attacked by it, and the entire democrat party!
Not only could Mitt Romney NOT defeat the worst President in history, one of the worst leaders the world has ever known, he actually got less votes than the McCain/Palin ticket did in 2008! Now to be fair, Barack Obama ALSO got considerable less votes in 2012 than he did in 2008. That, by the way, is the first time in America’s history a sitting President has been re-elected with fewer votes than he got originally!
Now what does that data tell you? Evidently it tells the Geniuses of the GOP™ they need to out-lie and out-pander the democrats. What it tells the rest of us though is neither man inspired the nation enough to care about them and get off their asses and vote!
This didn’t help the down ticket races a bit either.
The 2012 election was nothing more than a test of those who put party over principle, and will pull the lever for ANYONE with an R or a D after their name, depending on which team they support! THAT is not how you win elections. THAT is not how you lead a nation to prosperity. What THAT is …. is an exercise in maintaining mediocrity.
Republicans still haven’t figured out the ONLY way to win elections convincingly, is to capture the hearts and minds of WE the People. That the ONLY way they will ever be the majority party, and be able to actually restore America, is to choose leaders with an actual message. A positive message. It’s not enough to be the “lesser of two evils” or “not” [fill in the name of the offensive candidate]” Nope, you gotta stand for something POSITIVE. You MUST give voters real, compelling reasons to vote FOR YOU and not just AGAINST that other guy!
Governor Sarah Palin had this figured out two decades ago!
Her first political campaign was for a seat on the city council of the tiny village of Wasilla, Alaska. She was part of a new breed of younger, progressive [The GOOD kind of progressive!] forward-thinking Conservative men and women candidates who had a strong vision of where Wasilla needed to go. History tells us that she was not only popular and successful, but always fought for what was right, no matter the situation, or the personal consequences.
In time, Sarah ran for Mayor, and was elected not once, but twice, on a message of real hope, and real change. She didn’t have a ton of high paid political consultants blowing smoke up her ass, she didn’t waste a single dime on attack ads going after her opponents. What Sarah DID do was get out there and meet the people, sell herself, and bring a positive message to the people of Wasilla.
Once in office, Mayor Palin not only lived up to the hype, she made good on her promises. She stayed true to her convictions, and the people of Wasilla. The results are the stuff of legend. She and her team took a mostly dirt road village and turned it into the fastest growing city in Alaska! She built roads and the infrastructure needed to lure in big businesses. Mayor Palin and her team created an vibrant, modern city. This created jobs and grew the city’s tax base so much that during her tenure, she was actually able to LOWER taxes!
Something else Mayor Palin did, that some may think quaint, but I find unique. She kept a jar with the names and numbers of her constituents on her desk. Once a week, she would pull out a random name, and call one of them up, just to ask them if they thought she was doing a good job, and if so, why, and if not, why not, and how things could be better.
As someone who spent 30 years in the high end retail automobile industry, I can tell you customer service, great customer service, not only maters, most times it’s the ONLY thing that matters, if you want to be truly successful. What Mayor Palin did was provide great, personal, customer service. There’s a whole bunch of hacks in government nationwide who could benefit from this one lesson from Sarah Palin alone! Don’t just act like you give a damn, ACTUALLY GIVE A DAMN!
In the end, thanks to Mayor Sarah Palin, Wasilla, Alaska became the trading hub for the entire Mat-Su Valley, an area roughly the size of the state of Delaware! The current Mayor reports tens of thousands of people shop there weekly [Wasilla’s population is around 7800, give or take] and absolutely credits Sarah’s efforts for this economic power.
We all know Mayor Palin was term limited, and after an unsuccessful, but close bid for Lt Governor, was seen as a political superstar in Alaska and appointed by Governor Murkowski as the powerful Chairman of Alaska’s AOGCC, the state’s oil, gas, and environmental regulatory body.
I won’t rehash the whole story here, as entire books have been written about Sarah Palin’s discovery of massive corruption in the Alaska Republican Party, as well as their corrupt relationship with the Big Three major oil companies that operate there. As she later would, more than a few times, as Governor, Sarah stood toe to toe with the Republican Establishment and the CEO of these oil companies, and never backed down!
Of course, when Sarah first discovered the massive corruption, she went through the chain of command, so to speak, and took it to her boss, the Governor. Here she was basically told to “shut up and play ball“! To re-enforce that sentiment the state’s Attorney General, who was wallowing in his own, but separate corrupt dealings, paid Chairman Palin a threatening visit. The message was “Shut the hell up or we will destroy you“!
The rest is history, and well, legendary, among those of us that appreciate honest, motivated reformers. Chairman Sarah Palin, a young mother with four mouths to help feed, and on a career path that could take her anywhere she wanted [if she played ball] did what EVERYONE up there considered political suicide, and resigned from that high paying gig!
But Sarah Palin didn’t stop by resigning, that was just the first step. She would team up with an honest democrat lawmaker, Eric Croft, to file ethics charges against the corrupt Attorney General, Gregg Renkes, who was forced to resign, and then went after the entire Republican Establishment!
The VERY powerful GOP State Party Chairman Randy Ruedrich, who had been a fellow AOGCC commissioner with Palin, was not only forced to resign from the AOGCC [he was spending all of his AOGCC time doing GOP Party business] but also pay the largest individual fine in Alaska’s history! A six figure fine!
As we all know, all of this convinced Sarah Palin that Alaska needed a strong, powerful and ETHICAL leader. She looked around and realized that she was the only one that fit that bill.
It would have been easy for Sarah to have run a negative, scorched earth campaign against Governor Murkowski in the primary, and even against former democrat Governor Tony Knowles, in the general election. Both were part of the good old boys club, and both deserved all of that wrath that could be thrown at them.
Instead of a two-fisted negative battle, Sarah Palin would run on a platform of sudden, and relentless reform, something she’s been preaching to GOP candidates ever since. She told the people she would clean up the rotten government, or as Nancy Pelosi once promised, but never intended to actually do: “drain the swamp“! Sarah Palin promised good, efficient, TRANSPARENT government. One free of corruption.
Again, the results were legendary. She won both the primary and the general by a landslide!
When I first learned of Governor Sarah Palin, only a couple of months after she took office, the FBI was still raiding lawmakers’ offices, and still hauling corrupt Republicans off to jail. In the end, Sarah Palin ran on an aggressive agenda, made some mighty big campaign promises, including doing things others had promised, but failed to deliver on, for decades. And you know what, she delivered on ever single promise, and more!
The haters, the loons, the Geniuses of the GOP™, and their overpaid jackass consultants will never understand why so many millions of regular, every-day Americans support Governor Palin and stand with her. These little elites live in a bubble, for sure, but the also have a real and true disdain for the ordinary, everyman. Those “John Does” our very own Whitney Pitcher so eloquently spoke of here.
As we all know, Governor Palin is absolutely right about the GOP. She may not be ready to start an actual third party, or even run as a third party candidate, even though, from what I see, a hell of a lot of Conservatives are chomping at the bit for that very thing to happen.
What Governor Palin is ACTUALLY telling the GOP”leadership” is they have lost their way. Governor Palin is reminding these clowns that they have forgotten they they work for WE the People, not the other way around! Governor Palin is giving them a PROVEN blueprint for success. One that has worked before. Sadly, I suspect it’s all falling on deaf ears.
Frankly, I’d love a new party, but reality tells me, a new party would be too much work and might take years to be viable. [Not that the GOP is all that viable these days] Common sense tells me that we need to be at a somewhat state of war with the leadership of the Republican Party, a war for the soul of the party, which in turn is a war for the soul of the nation! A war to get the liberal Republicans that lead this disaster, out of power, if not out of office.
Liberalism is the greatest evil man has faced in long climb from the swamp to the stars, and liberalism has infected the leadership of the Republican Party, so much so, the disease may prove to be terminal for the entire party.
Here’s my biggest hope. We know Sarah Palin is a force of nature. Stubborn and damned near unstoppable when she sets her mind to something. We can almost guarantee she will lead strong Conservatives in battle, come 2014. With all of the scandals and outright crimes from the Obama regime, with all of this mismanagement, and outright TREASON from Congress, 2014 could make 2010 look like a picnic, in comparison, to those incumbents in both parties who have betrayed America. It could be a true Conservative blowout!
But while 2014 is almost a forgone conclusion, from what Sarah Palin will do, to how Conservatism will rule the day, [and I say all of that cautiously] my biggest hope is like she did when she ran a successful campaign for Governor of Alaska, Sarah will look around and realize the best man for the job of President come 2016 is indeed, a woman … HER!
After far too many campaigns full of nothing but negative ads and bullshit rhetoric from BOTH sides, I LONG for a campaign run by a competent, PROVEN, successful leader. A reformer who has actually taken a major government that was 100% FUBAR and turned it into one of the finest examples we have of how good government should be run.
A Sarah Palin campaign would be a campaign that talked about sudden, relentless, and never ending reform. That, of course, is why she scares the hell out of the corrupt “good old boys” in both rotten political parties! She would destroy their gravy trains forever!
Sarah Palin would run on REAL HOPE and REAL CHANGE. But unlike President Obama, Sarah Palin wouldn’t look to “fundamentally change” America into something our founders wouldn’t recognize, she would look to fundamentally RESTORE America. Her’s would be a campaign of Restoration, Renewal, and Revitalization.
We all know Sarah Palin is that one leader who never pulls her punches, the one with the balls to say what many think, but are too timid or afraid to say out loud. A Sarah Palin presidential campaign would kick ass and take names. She would eviscerate her opponents, but wouldn’t run a scorched earth, all negative, all the time, schlockfest of mediocrity and failure, that we have all come to expect, and despise.
Sarah Palin would run a positive, inspirational campaign that would remind everyone what is RIGHT about America, what is GOOD and GREAT, while also calling out those who have helped lead us down the path of destruction. Rather than empty platitudes and insulting pandering, Sarah Palin would bring a message that not only reminds us where we are, and how, sadly, we got here, but offer up REAL solutions that will bring America and the American people back to where they should be. She can, and would restore America to her rightful place in the world.
Unlike others who are going to flood both parties’ tickets in a run for the presidency in 2016, only Governor Sarah Palin has the experience needed to turn this EXTREMELY FUBARED government around.
We hear about the need for outsiders, and often names of news makers who inspire, but have no experience, are championed as the next potential President. If these were normal times, that sort of fancy would be considered interesting, even laudable and worth considering. These ain’t normal times my friends!
Sarah Palin is the ONE serious leader in America that not only sees the problems and understands them [there are several GREAT people who do that] she’s the ONLY leader in our great nation that has actually walked into the aftermath of an all but destroyed government, and swiftly turned it around. If you wonder why Governor Palin had a lengthy SUSTAINED job approval rating of over 90% throughout most of her time in office, all you need to do is review her record!
I, for one, would follow Sarah Palin through the fires of hell, carrying a bucket of gasoline in both hands, if that’s what it took, no matter what path she chooses. But as someone who has studied her career extensively, and looked around at the other sad, and disheartening alternatives, I hope Sarah Palin takes up the charge in 2016, hopefully as a serious reformist REPUBLICAN candidate, but if an independent run is the only option, as the GOP has, by then, committed suicide, well an independent run it is!
As far as I [and a whole bunch of others] are concerned, the only REAL question left unanswered is who should be Sarah Palin’s running mate, and who she should choose to fill out her cabinet!
Stand strong. Never give up, never surrender! WE the People, will prevail!
Saran Palin rocked the house at CPAC in 2012. Not only did she fill the room past overflowing capacity, other rooms, set up with monitors, to handle the crowds that wouldn’t fit in the main hall, were overflowing as well. As such, CPAC has invited her back in 2013. Reader favorite, contributor Wayne Mazza, muses about giving Governor Palin the introduction she deserves at the upcoming CPAC convention. [The one the geniuses running Team McCain should have given in 2008]
~ Gary
By Wayne Mazza
I was thinking about CPAC the other day. Of course, the Guv was on my mind. Brought memories back to me about her CPAC 2012 speech as well as her many others that go straight to the heart of our problems. I mean this woman is definitely way ahead of the curve. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest, she ranks about a 20 for me, with the rest falling in the range of 1 to 2 with a few that may hit 3.
Ted Cruz, if he keeps to his principles, will be a 10 in no time, standing alongside Allen West.
It is mind boggling to hear these pundits talk about the Republican Party needing a leader and a voice. People like Bill Reilly, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, Ann Coulter, and Karl “ Tokyo” Rove to name a few. The leader has been there all along, right in front of their face.
The lack of the Republican Party and McCain’s team to effectively show the accomplishments of this woman and use it to better the campaign and win 2008, leads me to see CPAC have a chance to revive the common sense attitude and accomplishment of this truly amazing success story of an “ALL AMERICAN” woman who governs with a true servants heart.
If I was fortunate to be the one on stage at CPAC 2013 to introduce Gov. Palin, here is what I would say, and it takes less than 2 1/2 minutes:
“Ladies and gentlemen, please forgive me, but I must make time to introduce our next speaker properly.
A Governor, that as Mayor of her home town, brought about infrastructure improvements … built roads, installed new water and sewer systems, etc. … [you know, shovel ready jobs] lured in major retailers as well as smaller shops, resulting in increased business that brings in roughly 50,000 shoppers a day.” [according to current mayor]
Thanks to Sarah’s vision and hard work, Wasilla, Alaska is the trading hub for the entire Mat-Su Valley, an area roughly the size of the state of Delaware.
~ Gary
Compare that to President Obama spending almost a trillion dollars in stimulus funds and then laughingly mocking it, saying it all was not as shovel ready as he thought.
This Governor has met and solved the problems of her state that plague our nation today. This Governor has already solved the hard line problems that most politicians only talk about. This Governor knew how to work with her legislature for bipartisan support of all major legislation passed. Legislation passed by majorities in both parties, I might add.
This Governor is so humble, she rarely talks about her own accomplishments, and when she does, credit is always given to her team.
This Governor:
*Reduced debt liabilities of her state by 34%, something Scott Walker is now accomplishing in Wisconsin.
*Cut spending more than 33% in fy10 from fy-09 budget
*Amassed a $12 billion budget surplus for the state
*In 2008 alone vetoed $268 million from budget bills
*Reduced requests for federal earmarks by 80%
*Increased oil production by forcing the oil companies to drill on land they held leases on for over 30 years
*Forward funded education
*Reformed state pension system
*Helped seniors easily acquire much needed health care by ridding them from senseless red tape
*Brought about actual ethical reform to “drain the swamp” in her statehouse, unlike Nancy Pelosi’s big promises of doing this when elected as Speaker of the House.
*Instilled fiscal policies that upgraded her states credit rating from AA to AA+ in 2008 and eventually to AAA in 2010, unlike the Obama’s policies that have downgraded the nation’s credit rating, for the first time in history
*Is a model for a Republican woman that has it all through hard work, a true feminist, … not what the left leaning women want you to see!!
*Even though she put in hard work and long hours as a politician, she still had the time to raise a beautiful family,
*She stands tall with a steel spine and steel resolve!
*Her record of success stands as proof that she possesses the medicine we need to cure this country.
*With no further ado, it is my honor to introduce to you, GOVERNOR SARAH PALIN, from the great state of ALASKA!!!!!!!
….. Well my fellow patriots that is the way I would do it.
Governor Sarah Palin’s speech from CPAC 2012:
For the media, naysayers, and those simply not very familiar with Governor Palin’s incredible executive accomplishments: Check out the extensive listing put together by Whitney Pitcher and Stacy Drake here.
Hello. My name is Whitney, and I used to be a low-information voter. I have been clean of low-information voting habits since the 2008 primary.
I started writing this post about two weeks ago. In light of this post at Legal Insurrection today (which I encourage you to read) about low information voters and how we as conservatives should reach out to them , I thought I should finish it. I’m going to stray from my typical writing style with this post and get a little bit personal by sharing a bit about my life politically prior to 2008. I don’t want this post to be about me, and I apologize if this post ends up being a bit long. I’m just a Midwestern rube with a blog. I just want to use my recent past as a case study of sorts.
I was born into a middle class farming family to conservative parents during Reagan’s first term. My parents were your typical Republican voters. They weren’t super involved in elective politics, aside from my mom serving as an election judge during most elections. Most of my formative years were during the Clinton administration, whom my parents didn’t particularly like. They even named one of our cats Clinton because, as my dad would say, “one more thing and he’s out!”. Clinton also happened to be our first black cat. I was involved in student government in junior high and high school, but I didn’t really pay any attention to politics at any other level, aside from once helping stuff envelopes for a family friend running for county board .
The first election I could vote in was in 2002. I voted primarily because my mom always said growing up, ” if you don’t vote, you can’t complain”. I didn’t necessarily want to complain, but I did feel like I should vote, even if I didn’t really know who I was voting for. I do remember voting for the GOP nominee for governor in 2002 primarily because my parents were Republican. During the 2004 general election, I was a senior in college. My political knowledge was confined to headlines in the school newspaper, brief news segments I would occasionally catch watching TV, and whatever my professors would talk about. Since I was a microbiology major, my professors didn’t talk much about politics, aside from a 20th century American history professor who spent a big chunk of each class bashing Bush about Iraq. In that election, I ended up voting to re-elect President Bush, and I voted for Barack Obama for Senate. The little bits I picked up about John Kerry showed to me he was a flip flopper, and I appreciated how President Bush handled 9/11 which happened during my freshman year in college. When it came to the Senate race, I was aware that the GOP’s original nominee was gone and they had brought in a candidate from out of state to replace him–Alan Keyes. I didn’t really know anything about Keyes, but I didn’t understand why the GOP had to go out of state to find a new candidate, so I voted for Obama. In 2006, I was getting a master’s degree in community health. Most of my professors sympathesized with universal health care policy, and me, being at the time, naive and easily persuadable, agreed. So, in 2006, rather than vote for Blagojevich or the GOP candidate, Judy Baar Topinka, I voted for the Green Party candidate who believed in universal health care as public policy. Plus, his last name was Whitney, and my first name was Whitney. I thought that was cool.
You don’t have to register with any particular party in Illinois, so when the 2008 primaries rolled around, I toyed with the thought of voting for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary because I thought it was cool that a woman was running. Ultimately, I decided to vote in the Republican primary and voted for John McCain, mostly because as a short, grey haired veteran in his seventies, he reminded me of my grandpa. I didn’t pay attention to the election again until Senator McCain picked Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. I thought it was cool that he picked a woman, and I had caught enough of the news to know that she was a runner, former high school point guard, and a flutist (all the things I was too). I decided to catch her VP nomination acceptance speech on TV, and I was impressed. It was the first political speech that I had watched in its entirety. I started to pay attention to politics that election. I’d catch a few interviews or clips of rallies. I kept hearing this phrase, “energy independence”, but I had no idea what it meant. I began to learn more about Governor Palin’s record of taking on corruption and being fiscally responsible. She was the opposite of the Illinois politicians I typically ignored. She spoke in ways that made sense to me.
Following the election, I began to read because politics began to intrigue me. I happened to catch a segment on FoxNews that S.E. Cupp was on, and it highlighted her book Why You’re Wrong about the Right. She put aspects of conservatism into a language and a format that I could understand by weaving in cultural references and quotes from athletes. I don’t always agree with her now, but I’m grateful for that book because it spoke conservatism at a level that met where I was at the time. Now, I feel that I’m a reasonably informed voter who is now a political junkie. It wasn’t because Sarah Palin was well versed in explaining the nuances of the Fed’s interest rates or the geopolitical history of the Middle East; it was because she spoke of conservatism in concepts that were relatable in my everyday life.
In his recent speech at the National Prayer breakfast, Dr. Ben Carson noted that Jesus spoke in parables and how that was an effective teaching mechanism. I’m very hesitant to mix politics and religion, but I do think that if one is trying to reach people on an ideological level, be it with religion or with politics, relating those concepts to their audience’s daily lives and culture is effective. Jesus spoke to those who weren’t of the religious establishment be using parables about farming, fishing, and weddings. Good political communicators– the Reagans and Palins–do the same thing. They use rhetoric that speak to their audience. This seems like a very basic thing, but it is important. Often it’s the most rhetorically wonkish politicians who get the most praise. They may be very smart, but their approach doesn’t resonate with everyday Americans.
It’s not just the language conservatives use that makes a difference. It is the platform that we use. This is what makes Governor Palin prescient with her use of Facebook and Twitter and for and her family’s involvement in TV shows aside of the political commentary. She knows as she noted in her interview with Breitbart following her decision to not renew her contract with Fox, ” we can’t just preach to the choir”. It may be taking the GOP more time to see that she is right 99.9% of the time, but at least hopefully people are truly grasping it. We may mock Buzzfeed for having posts featuring 10 cats who look like Lady Gaga or the top 20 quotes from Full House, but low information voters eat that stuff up. It’s a part of culture now. This is why sites like Twitchy and Breitbart (especially Big Hollywood) are important because they push back against the cultural narratives, but they also engage the culture. There is a great opportunity for us to do even more though, as the Legal Insurrection post suggests, but we first have to fully realize that it is important. This doesn’t mean we abandon our principles. We must continue to embrace them. We don’t try to make a bigger tent by driving the stakes of the tent into swampy, unstable ground. That will only make the tent collapse, no matter how many people are inside. We make the tent bigger by making it attractive to enter, and for low information voters, this means that we meet them where they are politically and culturally. This does not mean all will choose to enter, but we do want to make conservatism attractive to them. Again, not by changing conservatism, but by making our message appealing.
“At its most basic level conservatism is a respect for history and tradition, including traditional moral principles. I do not believer that I am more moral, certainly no better, than anyone else, and conservatives who act “holier than thou” turn my stomach. So do some elite liberals. But I do believe in a few timeless and unchanging truths, among those is that man is fallen. This world is not perfect, and politicians will never make it so. This, above all, is what informs my pragmatic approach to politics.
[…]
We don’t trust utopian promises from politicians. The role of government is not to perfect us, but to protect us–to protect our inalienable rights. The role of government in a civil society is to protect the individual and to establish a social contract so that we can live together in peace.”
–Governor Sarah Palin Going Rogue page 385-386 (emphasis added)
Following the horrific and ineffably saddening shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday, “gun control” advocates have redoubled their calls for stricter “gun control” laws This is a part of a larger liberal pattern–governmental control leading to “perfection” of a fallen citizenry. As obesity rates rise, liberals call for governmental bans on soda, sugary foods, and salt. When there are above average temperatures, liberals call for government imposed carbon taxes and increased regulations to help curb what they see as anthropogenic global warming. When an individual makes a lot of money, liberals assume greed of the wealthy punishable with increased taxation. In other words, liberals believe government’s role is to “perfect” us–to try to mold their constituents into their version of “perfect”.
The idea that government can “perfect” us stems from an ideology that looks at problems from the perspective of fruit, rather than the seed. For liberals, the gun is the problem, not the hatred in someone’s heart, which is the real seed of violence. The unhealthy food itself is the problem, not the seed of an individual’s lack of self-control or poor understanding of healthy living that contributes to obesity. To the liberal, the solution for “global warming” is envirostatism– essentially a punishment for carbon consumption. The liberal solution for the problem of the “greed” of the rich is to confiscate and redistribute what they earn, so the wealthy are punished for greed they may or may not have in their heart. In essence, to the liberal, government is god–capable of casting judgment and punishing “wrongdoing”.
Conservatives look at problems from the perspective of the seed. A seed of hatred can drive someone to murder regardless of whether their weapon of choice is a gun, a knife, or their own two hands. A seed of a lack of personal responsibility can lead to behaviors that contribute to unhealthy weight.A conservative rejects the arrogance that we have the power to affect the climate, but still recognizes the value of being good stewards of the natural resources to which we have access.The conservative believes that the seed of greed is capable of growing in wealthy or poor soil, and it is up to the individual to plant or not to plant it. Conservatives believe that God is God, and government is not. The government is not responsible for creating their own value system so that they can punish those who reject their system.
When government becomes god, the true God gets pushed to the margin and personal responsibility is cast as an archaic idea. I am not an advocate for using the Bible as a political science manual. Rather, the Bible is God’s inspired word intended to tell the story of God’s grace and faithfulness, guide Christians how to live their lives, and show churches how to function. However, our society’s rejection of those guiding words has enabled our electorate and subsequently our elected officials, to turn government into god, serving as both moral arbiter and provider. The Bible advocates sowing the seeds of love not hatred, personal responsibility not blame casting, stewardship not negligence, and generosity not greed. The recent seeds our society has planted has yielded a bad crop of fruit. Only when our society and our government realizes that we are planting the wrong seeds will our crop improve. This only happens when we let God reign, and government takes its proper place as what Thomas Paine called, “but a necessary evil”.
Our readers have been enjoying Isabel Matos’ commentary for some time now, and today I’m very pleased to officially welcome her to our A Time For Choosing family of authors. Isabel joins Contributing Editors Stacy Drake and Whitney Pitcher, and author C. A. Bamford [along with yours truly] as we move forward in our goal to advance Common Sense Conservatism.
Isabel is of Cuban descent and lives in South Florida. She’s been very active politically, recently helping with both the West and Harrington campaigns. She’s a proud supporter of Sarah Palin as well.
She also formed a group called GOP Are You Listening [GOPAYL] and actively works to be a thorn in the feckless GOP “leadership’s” side. And we love her for it!
Now isn’t the time to hold back!
Isabel brings a fresh and different perspective to things. Our readers have already praised her take no prisoners style, and I’m sure will enjoy seeing her work here on a regular basis.
So join our team in officially welcoming Isabel to the party!
“It was a tremendous learning experience. I still think it’s the best idea I ever had, and the worst executed. A lot of times as a leader you think, “They don’t get it; they don’t see my vision.” People were saying we should stop and address some issues along the way, and they were right. It would have been nice if I’d made sure the product tasted good. Once you have a great idea and you blow it, you don’t get a chance to resurrect it.”
Those were the words of Yum Brands CEO, David Novak, . His “great idea” was that of revamping Pepsi as a clear soda called Crystal Pepsi. Crystal Pepsi was introduced to the market in the early 1990s and proved to be a massive flop. Why did it flop? Because they tried to change a winning product. However, Novak and Yum Brands took Crystal Pepsi off the market because it failed. They knew they could not get customer buy-in on a poor imitation of a solid product. Perhaps the Republican party could learn a lesson from those in marketing. When you match a good product with the right messaging, the product sells.
However, the Republican Establishment and Beltway campaign operatives think that the way to improve conservatism is to change it, rather than to do a better job of marketing conservatism. This kind of “Crystal Pepsi conservatism” is pushed by Establishmentarians like Governor Jeb Bush who wrote a piece at the National Review this past summer indicating that Republicans need to become the “Grand Solutions party” and abandon the “black lines of ideology”. However, in Governor Bush’s attempt to make the GOP big tent, he has tried to drive the ideological pegs into the swampy ground of moderation, rather than the solid ground of principle. Following the electoral loss last week, Republicans like John Boehner and conservative pundits like Sean Hannity have called for immigration reform. Bill Kristol is encouraging the GOP to give in to tax increases. All of these men are trying to re-package a failing “Crystal Pepsi conservatism” that betrays principles. Instead, the party ought to follow the advice of Governor Sarah Palin that she shared following the 2010 GOP victories, ” a winning conservative message must be careful crafted” just as Reagan changed his messaging between his 1976 and 1980 campaigns. The message may need to be re-crafted, but the conservatives principles need to remain.
The Republican Establishment would do well to replace their high investment, but low return DC/NYC political strategists and operatives with conservatives who are in the field of marketing. Those in marketing don’t change good products; they only seek to provide the product with the right message in the appropriate media so that it sells. Conservatism is a great product. Individual freedom, free men and free markets are marketable to every demographic. It just needs to be messaged appropriately to our diverse American melting pot. Those in marketing and advertising use market segmentation research to reach our diverse popularity by tailor the message by race, income, education, urbanicity and other factors. Just as Pepsi isn’t sold to baby boomers using the same commercial advertising and advertising platforms as millennials, so conservatism shouldn’t be marketed to white empty nesters in the same manner as it is marketed young Hispanic business owners. Free market conservatism is the product, but the message to empty nesters might be one of reduced capital gains taxes to protect their retirement while the message to young Hispanic business owners might be one of reduced corporate taxes and fewer government regulations that provides a better life for their family. This enables conservative coalition building, and is something that would have served the Romney campaign well. However, Hispanic and black conservatives approached the campaign with coalition building ideas that were turned away. The campaign did not effectively engage the consumers of conservatism. There is no need for pandering, but there is a place for engaging all segments of the electorate a candidate ultimately aims to represent.
Our Republic was founded on “we the people”, and that is what conservatism’s messaging should be founded upon as well. This is a messaging concept that Margaret Thatcher understood an ocean away and nearly 40 years ago, when in 1975, the Tory party suffered considerable political defeats. She wrote (emphasis added):
Politicians should not be either professional efficiency experts or amateur industrial consultants. Their concern is with people, and they must look at every problem from the grassroots, not from the top looking down.
[…]
My kind of Tory party would make no secret of its belief in individual freedom and individual prosperity, in the maintenance of law and order, in the wide distribution of private property, in rewards for energy, skill and thrift, in diversity of choice, in the preservation of local rights in local communities.
Size is not all, any more than economic growth is all. Even efficiency is not enough. People come first—their needs, their hopes, their choice, their values and ideals. We have to understand these first—to be seen to be listening with sympathy and concern. It is important to be able to lead, certainly. But you cannot for long lead people where they do not want to go.
Conservatism must be framed in the context not in the white papers based theory of policy, but in the reality and application of those policies in individual’s lives.People must come first, and as Thatcher said, politicians must look at problems not from the top down, but from the grassroots–the people, not the consultants.The message medium has changed as well, and the Republican Establishment must adapt. Texas conservative grassroots activist Michelle McCormick characterizes the current GOP as ” Blockbuster in the age of Netflix”. Both the brick and mortar Blockbuster and Netflix have the same product of “rentable” movies, but Netflix acts within the framework of the internet while Blockbuster operates in the last century framework of tangible DVDs. Conservatism must operate in a new media, entertainment age. As Andrew Breitbart famously emphasized politics is downstream from culture, and this is something the Republican party must capitalize upon.
William F. Buckley famously noted that he’d rather be governed by the first 400 names in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard. In the same way, conservatism would be well served to employ conservative marketing strategists instead of beltway strategists and blue blood politicians who insist on single minded and poor imitations of the winning product of conservatism.
In 1961 Ronald Reagan gave a speech entitled Encroaching Control. It is thought to be the forerunner of what has come to be known as “The Speech” which is called A Time for Choosing. [And the inspiration for this blog!]
Just as he did in 1964 with “The Speech,” Reagan talks about the topics of the day, and points out the communist menace in the world. Reagan speaks of a government that was growing too big, and too dangerous. Reagan speaks of a government that was destroying Liberty and Freedom. What’s scary is this was 51 years ago. Things have only gotten worse. Far worse.
As you listen you’ll realize that he understood what many in the Republican Party today either do not understand, or do not care to understand.
Reagan speaks of the communist threat. How the communists planned to destroy the United States from within. As you hear this speech, and then read the transcript you’ll understand that everything Reagan warned about has come to pass.
Disguised as “liberalism” the American people have allowed every tenet of communism to be instituted in our nation.
Those who have read some of the works of Obama’s communist Czar Cass Sunstein have heard of his theory of “The Nudge.” Sunstein’s theory is a gradual shift towards communism, rather than an all out assault on Liberty and Freedom. This is the same sort of theory set forth by Marx and Lenin called “Encroaching Control” which Reagan talks about at length.
As Americans, we are seeing our Liberty and Freedom stolen right from under our noses, and the Republican Party “leadership” is doing nothing to stop it. An evil has gripped the land, and those we expect to fight back are doing nothing.
People that know Obama’s family history know that his parents and [white] grandparents were hard core communists. Obama’s grandfather made sure he was mentored by a hard core communist, Frank Marshall Davis. Poor little Barry never had a chance. He was taught from birth to hate America and everything she stands for. To be totally honest, I actually feel sorry for him. Again, he never had a chance.
But Obama is only part of the problem. The entire democrat party is filled with communists, socialists, and assorted 60s radicals. Many are card carrying members of either the Democrat Socialists of America, the Communist Party USA, or both.
Recently Dana Loesch infiltrated the annual Net Roots convention. A yearly gathering of the nations democrats, including leaders in the democrat party. As you see in the photo, Dana is standing in front of a DSA booth. These people don’t even bother to hide anymore.
I hope this speech, like all of Reagan’s speeches, will inspire and motivate. We must save our beloved nation, and we must start NOW.
The evils Reagan warns of in this speech are now with us. The evils have now become law. These are great evils we can no longer tolerate.
A little more about the speech, and the transcript, with references:
Encroaching Control
Standing before the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce on March 30, 1961, Ronald Reagan gave a 45-minute speech covering topics from farming and education to universal medical care and communism.
Elements of ‘Encroaching Control‘ are shared with other speeches he gave at the same time, including A Time For Choosing. No transcripts of the speech are known to exist, even at the Reagan Presidential Library. Only pre-printed press copies which Reagan typically used only as a guide as he gave his own flair.
On the Internet, there is only one source for this speech, an errant MP3 of the speech. This MP3 was found and painstakingly transcribed for its presentation on this Wiki.
Added: The author of this wiki recently took the MP3 and set it to images for presentation on Youtube.
According to the book The Education of Ronald Reagan, Encroaching Control is simply a version of what is ubiquitously called ‘The Speech’. The book also claims that Barry Goldwater may have attended one of Reagan’s speeches in Phoenix during 1961. This may be the same one.
Later Usage
The book Republican Philosophy and Party Activism: oral history transcript/and related material, 1982-1984 available on Archive.org contains within it an article written by Reagan entitled “Losing Freedom by Installments“.
Full Text of Speech
[emphasis mine]
Mr. Chairman, distinguished guests, ladies and gentleman. I could get off to a very bad start here because you’ve all been so kind and I’ve enjoyed such hospitality here, breaking bread with you. I was even allowed a second glass of water. I do think, however, that you went a too little far in welcoming me by starting an anti-smog campaign, I don’t need that to feel at home.
You know with all of the people here that are so much better qualified to speak on any subject than I am, it becomes imperative to me, doubly important, that I should find exactly the right words to say. This perhaps wouldn’t be as important to other people as it would to an actor. I keep thinking of a young fellow in our business who aspired to an operatic career. He studied several years in Milan, Italy, and then was awarded that highest recognition or honor that could come to any opera singer he was invited to sing at La Scala, the very spiritual fountainhead of opera. They were singing Pagliacci and when he finished singing the very beautiful aria, Vesti la Giubba, the applause from the balconies and the galleries and the orchestra seats was so thunderous and so sustained that the opera couldn’t continue until he stepped back center stage and repeated the aria as an encore. And again the same sustained, thunderous applause and again he sang Vesti la Giubba. This went on until finally he motioned for quiet and he tried to tell them how full his heart was he said, “I have sung Vesti la Giubba now nine times. My voice is gone I cannot do it again.” And a voice from the balcony said, “You’ll do it, until you get it right.”
[laughter]
You know, I speak in jest, but it must seem presumptuous to many of you, it would be strange if it didn’t, that a member of my profession and my industry should attempt to speak to you on the serious subjects that face the people of the world today. We are not unaware in Hollywood what most of our fellow citizens thing of us. It is true that our stock in trade is tinsel and colored lights and make-believe. And it’s equally true that some of this same make believe has colored our methods of doing business; colored our private lives.
But a few years ago, a funny thing happened to us on the way to the theater. For the first time, we ran into ugly reality face-to-face. While we were blissfully going along in our make believe world, on direct orders of the International Communist party, hardcore professional party organizers had infiltrated our industry, had worked quietly to create cells in some of our guilds and unions and communist front organizations which had deceived many of our people into supporting their apparently worthwhile causes. The aim of this communist infiltration was to subvert our screens to the dissemination of communist propaganda only after they had gained economic control of our industry.
Now whether you agree with our boy-meets-girl plot in some of our motion pictures, in the finest traditions of private enterprise, in a single generation the motion picture industry of Hollywood has captured 70% of the playing time of all the screens of the world. And all over the world, people have looked beyond our plots and they’ve seen American freedom, they’ve seen the way we dress, the things we do, the streets filled with automobiles, the shop windows with the things we could buy, the food on our tables.
The communists, more than a decade ago, about 12 or 13 years ago, decided to shortcut this gradual encroaching program and they took advantage of a jurisdictional dispute between two unions. And then overnight, we saw violence in our streets, mass pickets outside our studio gates, most of them provided by Harry Bridges’ maritime union. We saw homes bombed, automobiles overturned, threats of acid in the face of our performers. The immediate goal was to close the motion picture industry and get us so discouraged with our own guilds and unions that we would see their dissolution and then fall for the idea of one huge, vertical union of motion picture workers from top-to-bottom and, curiously enough, we would get our charter from that same Harry Bridges. Well, we fought back and we fought well.
And after several months of costly fighting, we won the battle, but it was only an isolated battle. Now, after more than a decade of peace and freedom from the attentions of these people, the order within the last year has come down from the communist party that your memories are short, so are ours, the climate has changed and they are to come out from hiding and once again take up where they left off, re-infiltrate the entertainment industry and again seek to subvert the screens to communist propaganda.
Many people in our midst, misguided, well-meaning, will help them, will believe in the civil rights of a man to believe politically what he wants to believe. Now we in Hollywood don’t pose as having seen the monkey, we can run the circus. But we do believe that perhaps our experience has given us an awareness that is not possessed by many of our fellow citizens. I’m sure that everyone in the world agrees that the number one problem in the world today is the ideological struggle with Russia.
Millions of words each day are uttered concerning the fluctuations of temperature in the Cold War. In spite of this, however, many people in high places in government, many people who mold opinion, through the press and on the airwaves, subscribe to a theory, a belief, that we are at peace and that we must guard our every action so as to make no overt move that would disturb this peace. Men cry peace, but there is no peace. We are at war and it’s a war we are losing simply because we don’t, or won’t, realize we are in it.
It’s an unusual war, fought with strange weapons, but we can’t yell foul. It’s a declared war. Karl Marx laid down the cardinal principle a century ago when he said communism and capitalism cannot exist in the world together. And he then declared the war and said that our way, our freedom, our way of life must be destroyed and on the ruins they will then erect the international communist state.
Lenin, in interpreting Karl Marx, said, “It is inconceivable that the Soviet Republic should continue to exist for a long period side-by-side with imperialistic states. Ultimately, one or the other, must conquer.“
Last November, the communist parties of 81 countries held a convention in Moscow and again they reaffirmed this principle of Marx that it was war to the death. In a 20,000 word manifesto issued as a result of that convention, they called on communists all over the world in countries where there were non-communist governments to work for the destruction of their own governments by treason and subversion. Only in one phase, the one we fear most, are we ahead in this conflict and that is, if the communists should resort to armed force. Thanks to the dedicated patriotism and realistic thinking of our men in uniform, we would win the shooting war. But this isn’t too disturbing to the men in the Kremlin because they actually only counted on armed conflict in one eventuality.
By their own words, they said, if the Americans should stupidly yield to a massive peace offensive and submit to disarmament and we could shortcut our regular program, our strategy, with armed conflict that would be of no risk to ourselves then we would resort to force.
Lenin, in 1923, said, “We will take Eastern Europe, we will organize the hordes of Asia and we won’t have to take the United States. We will surround it and that last bastion of capitalism will fall into our outstretched hand like overripe fruit.” Well, they’ve taken Eastern Europe. They are organizing the hordes of Asia around the red colossus of China and today I’m sure many of us suspect we are being prepared for the bitter cup of capitulation in Laos that will be watered down only slightly by a few face-saving devices.
Cuba is a Russian beach head 90 miles off our Florida coast and more telling that even that, 250,000 communist professional organizers are scattered up and down the length and breadth of Latin America.
Discussing other weapons and their effectiveness against us, Bulganin said “We can’t appeal to the American working man, he’s too well fed. But when, through inflation, America has priced herself out of the world markets, and unemployment follows, then we will settle our debt with the United States.”
Part of the American apathy is probably due to our reluctance to believe there can be any menace in a communist party so few in numbers here in our country. That only if it becomes a mass party with millions of people supporting it does it become something we should pay attention to and should worry about. And yet we ignore the fact that this was exactly the premise upon which Lenin took power within the ranks of the socialist followers.
Lenin, determined the idea that the communist party never would be a large party. That it would be a hard, small, professional cadre. That only those people who had proven themselves would be allowed membership and this small professional cadre would, as he said, manipulate and use the masses when they were needed and he referred to us as the masses, we were the willing idiots.
The communists are supremely confident of victory. They believe that you and I, under the constant pressure of the Cold War, will one by one give up our democratic traditions and principles and customs. Only temporarily, of course, but only temporarily we will turn to totalitarian tactics and methods just for the purpose of opposing the enemy. And then they cynically believe we will one day awake to find that we have, in adopting these tactics, become so much like the enemy that the causes for conflict have disappeared between us.
Three and a half months before his last visit to this country, Nikita Khrushchev said, “We can’t expect the American people to jump from capitalism to communism but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of socialism until one day they will awaken to find they have communism.” Well this isn’t exactly a new thought. As a matter of fact, the struggle we’re in isn’t new at all, no matter our confusion it’s the same age-old struggle of mankind since his climb from the swamps. The struggle of those who believe that a few have the right to rule the many as against those who believe in individual liberty.
James Madison speaking before the Virginia convention in 1788 said, “Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.”
Others, not realizing perhaps, that one day they would be serving the communist cause also subscribe to this belief and decided to use it.
A socialist clergyman, writing in 1927, in The New Leader, the socialist magazine of that day, called for a new strategy of the American socialist party. He said they must infiltrate government and put men in government jobs and then he said we must work for government ownership of power, government control of railroads and banking and key industries.
And he said we’ll call our program, Encroaching Control. A short time ago, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the socialist party ticket, gave a critique on the success of this program when he said the American people will never knowingly vote for socialism, but under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program.
They’ve appealed not to the worst, but to the best in us.
To our sense of fair play, our willingness to compromise, and compromise is a noble thing when it involves two people of diametrically opposed views, willing to meet in some middle ground where they can coexist together. But compromise in the field of legislation has been developed into a technique of foot-in-the-door legislation.
Get any part of a proposed government program enacted into law and then, with the principle of government participation in that field established, work particularly during each election year to expand that to the ultimate aim that one day government must become a big brother to us all.
Traditionally, one of the methods first used in imposing statism on a people has been government paid medical care. It’s the easiest to disguise as a humanitarian project and none of us wants to be in the position of opposing medical aid to the sick.
Today, in our country, the most expensive government medical program in the world is our own Veteran’s Administration hospital program. Now, none of us disagree with the idea that a man wounded in the service of his country is entitled to the finest of medical and hospital care that we can possibly afford and give him. But today three out of four veteran’s administration beds are filled with patients suffering diseases or injuries neither originated by nor aggravated by military service. Indeed there are only 40,000 service connected disabilities in the whole United States, and yet every annual budget contains millions of dollars for veteran’s hospital building the expansion of present facilities.
Counting the twenty-three million of us who are veterans and the recent liberalization of our benefits and those other government programs already enacted, today one out of four American citizens is entitled to some form of government paid medical or hospital care.
Now it is proposed that all people of Social Security age should come under a program of such comprehensive government care. On an emotional basis, we are presented with a picture of our senior citizens, millions of them, needing medical care, unable to finance it. But somehow in this plea, the proponents of this measure fail to, or seem strangely reluctant, to meet the facts face-to-face. In the last decade, 127 million Americans have come under the protection of some form of private medical or hospital insurance. This includes some two-thirds of the people of Social Security age, seventy percent of the total population. And if the same rate continues, by 1970, the coverage will amount to ninety percent of our population.
As nearly as we can determine, the real problem concerns about ten percent of our senior citizens who have medical needs and who do not have the means to finance them. To that end, the last session of Congress adopted a program known as the Kerr-Mills bill. To make funds available through the states to provide medical care for that ten percent.
Now, without even waiting to see if that program will work, we find that the proponents of this other program, the once defeated Forand Bill, are pleading that the only you can meet the problem of these ten percent is an overall compulsory program forcing all people into compulsory government insurance above age 65 whether they need it or not.
We’re justified, I believe, in accepting that this federal aid to medical…to a medical program actually is simply an excuse to bring about socialized medicine. As a matter of fact, ex-Congressman Forand by his own words says, “If we can only break through and get our foot inside the door then we can expand the program after that.”
Walter Reuther has announced that it is no secret that the organization that he represents favors a complete program of national health insurance for all the population. New America, the socialist magazine, has said, “The Forand Bill will not be paid for on insurance principles according to factors of estimated risk. It will be paid for through the tax mechanisms of Social Security. Once the bill is passed, this nation will be provided with a mechanism for socialized medicine.”
Well, he has mentioned the tax mechanism of Social Security. In 1935, Social Security called for a three percent contribution of $3000 of annual income. Today it calls for six percent of $4800 of annual income. And if the expansions now proposed are voted, including this medical program, by 1969 it will call for eleven percent of $5000 of income and again it is no secret that the proponents of this measure are openly advocating that there should be no limit that Social Security taxes and dues should be based on gross income with no ceiling. Social Security was never intended to supplant private savings, insurance or pension plans of unions or industries.
It actually was supposed to form a basis for a savings program so that destitution wouldn’t follow unemployment by reason of death, disability or old age. But the temptation during election years to some politicians was too great. In 1943, the actuarial experts of Social Security estimated that by 1957, the total outgo ib benefit payments would be $1,200,000,000. But by 1957, the total outgo was over $7,000,000,000.
In 1959, we started paying out more than we’re taking in. Today, the people drawing Social Security benefits will collect $65,000,000,000 more than they paid in. And those of us who are participating in the program and paying into it now are unfunded to an amount between 300 and 600 billion dollars.
This program has been presented to us as an insurance program and indeed that term is used over and over again and we are told and led to believe that we and our employers are contributing to a fund and that some day we will call upon that fund on our own money to tide us over our non-earning years. But this isn’t the tone of the testimony uttered by the experts of Social Security recently in a lawsuit before the United States Supreme Court.
In that lawsuit, the experts of Social Security said it is not an insurance program. It does not have to be based on actuarial principles because it has at its beck and call the tax mechanism of the country. It then went on to say that Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government and the payment of this tax does not automatically entitle any citizen to the payment of Social Security benefits. It then goes on to say that these benefits are a welfare program at the behest of Congress and that Congress can curtail or cancel these benefit payments any time it sees fit.
And what of our sons? What of the young men who in these next few years will come into the nation’s workforce? He will pay, in annual Social Security taxes, he and his employer, an amount which if he had at his disposal to invest in private insurance would provide him with a policy that would pay him almost double the benefits he will get from Social Security.
But this isn’t the only cost in personal freedom.
Recently, the press reported the case of a religious group in this country has, as a tenet of its faith, the belief that it cannot participate in any pension or welfare program of government.
The government stepped in, confiscated their property, sold their cattle at auction to enforce their payment of Social Security taxes. The foot in the door of education has been the $900 million National Defense Education Act of 1958.
The excuse, once again, was the Cold War, Russia had put a Sputnik into the heavens, obviously something must be wrong with our education system. And so we are presented with a picture of overcrowded classrooms, of destitute teachers and of bankrupt school districts. But again let’s face the facts.
Ninety-nine and one half percent of the school districts in the United States have not even approached the limit of their bonded indebtedness. An increase of 35% of students in the last ten years has been matched with a 134% increase in spending at the local level.
We have increased, in this decade, 10 million of the number of students educated in our public schools. We have matched this with a building program of classroom space for 15 million students. 500 colleges in America today can take an additional 200,000 students, without even adding a chair or desk, let alone another classroom. We’re told that we must, on a crash program, build 60,000 classrooms a year for the next 10 years. But they forget to tell us we’ve been building for the last 5 years, 68,000 classrooms a year and if we continue at that rate, by 1970 we will have a surplus of classroom space in this country.
Of course we want our teachers adequately paid. We believe they are entitled to the finest that we can afford and we’ve been doing something about it. Perhaps not as much as we should, but in the last few years the average salary of teachers has gone up from $3100 a year to $5300. The truth is there is not one shred of evidence has been presented that there is a necessity for any federal aid to our traditional local and state educational program.
The aim, the aim alone is federal control. They deny this in proposing the legislation, but two and a half billion dollar program now that is advocated by the largest spending lobby in Washington D.C. But what do we hear in other utterances?
The director of public education of the state of Washington spoke out in protest publicly against the problem of his state. For two years, in trying to fit itself to the rigid requirements of the director, the national director of education under the present act and he said this is federal control by indirection. All the more dangerous because it pretends to be a federal handout.
The former president of the National Education Association spoke publicly on the probable need for temporary federal control of the school system in order to bring about integration in the South. The former chairman of the president’s youth fitness committee has said much as we would like to keep our traditional system of local management of the schools we can no longer afford it. We must, in order to meet Russia on equal terms, adopt a same kind of nationalized program they have.
The Health, Education and Welfare Department has quadrupled its staff. It today is working to create a system of national curriculum and a set of national policies for education because they look forward to the day when we will have a federal school system. In short, the proponents of this measure believe that the only way we can properly educate our young, is to take the control of teachers and subjects and curriculum out of the hands of the parents and put it in the hands of a bureau in Washington, D.C.
27 years ago, the American farmer was told that if the government subsidized him in his need, it would not mean government control. Now we have the case of Evetts Haley, Jr. a Texas university professor and rancher who raised wheat on his own land, fed it to his own cattle and was fined $4000 for so doing. And the United States Supreme Court upheld that conviction.
They ruled in a single sentence, yes an agency of the federal government has the right to tell an American citizen what he can grow on his own land for his own use. We adopt a program to curb the production of farm surplus and then make it so financially attractive to produce a surplus that today we own enough wheat to bake 25 loaves of bread for every human being alive in the world.
In the nearby state of New Mexico, citizens have learned that they can lease state-owned land for 25 cents an acre and immediately apply for and receive $9 an acre in Soil Bank payments to not plant that land. And all of the farm mess involves 20%, one fifth of agriculture.
It would seem that the answer to the farm mess is to get that 20% of agriculture as quickly as is practicable out from under government regulation and subsidy and back out with the other 80% of agriculture which is doing just fine on the open market of supply-and-demand. But what is being proposed in Washington, well a farm program is being lobbied which says the only answer to the farm problem is to take the 80% of free agriculture into a program of government regimentation, requiring the licensing of every farm in the United States, requiring the government establishment of production quotas and prices. And then they frankly admit this will mean the employment of thousands and thousands of new employees in the agricultural department, a permanent government subsidy and the raising of food prices between 15 and 25%. And in order to do this, they admit they will also create, artificially, a shortage of foodstuffs to the point that meat alone will be in supply about equal to what we knew under rationing in World War II.
Thomas Jefferson said, “If we let Washington tell us when to sow and when to reap, the nation shall soon want for bread.“
I doubt if the American people would ever out …vote, outright for the nationalization of industry as we saw it take place in England a few years ago, but in spite of this, we find that the federal government owns and operates more than 19,000 businesses covering 47 different lines of activity. It ranges from the distilling of rum to the manufacture of surgical and dental equipment. 700 government corporations have an estimated book value of $260 billion.
They operate tax-free, rent-free, dividend-free, in direct competition with our own citizens and each year lose billions of dollars in this operation. Now next time you’re caught in a traffic jam, take some satisfaction from the fact that one of the government corporations built a six-lane highway in Spain. It runs 15 miles from Madrid to a gambling casino.
All of this has led to the creation of a collection of internal powers and bureaucratic institutions against which we the citizens are virtually helpless. And this power, under whatever name, whatever ideology, is the very essence of totalitarianism. It’s led to a permanent structure of government so complex and so big that Congress can no longer police its activities.
Indeed, it actually does a great deal to determine the policy of our government, this permanent structure. Some time ago, a year ago, a subcommittee of Congress was appointed to look into the area of federal employees. They found there are almost two and a half million. They found that in 1942 there was one top salaried executive for every 89 employees.
Today there’s one for every 17. The committee further said they found little evidence that any agency, bureau or department created in answer to an emergency ever went out of existence even after the emergency had disappeared. Well, an example of this could be the Spruce Products Corporation a government corporation which Congress ordered liquidated in 1920. 30 years later, it was still in existence.
This was the corporation founded in World War I to secure spruce wood for airplane fuselages. Some people, in advocating this government participation in business, tell us, well with its great central power and authority, the government, perhaps can do things more efficiently that we can at the local level. Well an example of this efficiency might be the Veteran’s Insurance department.
The claims department, where three government employees take double the time to perform the task normally assigned to one employee in the average private insurance company. Well, Congress perhaps is tied and can’t do too much about it, but we can. First of all, we can inform ourselves on every piece of legislation that is presented to Congress. We can ask ourselves does it fit the theory of the Founding Fathers that government should only do those things the people can’t do for themselves.
Then we should write, we should look beyond this at what, not just what is the piece of legislation, what is the aim of the people backing it. Write to our Congressmen. Tell them where we stand. Tell them our opposition to federal aid to education, to a federal medical program leading to socialized medicine.
You may think that it is silly to write to a Congressman, that it’s sort of like fan mail, believe me 50 letters from a group of this kind means 50 times as much as a single resolution passed by an organization or a petition. 40,000 letters in Congress is considered evidence of a trend in public thinking.
That’s why the communist party boasts they can put 50,000 letters in Washington in any 72-hour period on any issue they choose. And don’t forget now and then to sit down and just write a letter to your Congressman to pat him on the back if they are on the firing line, he has been fighting the cause you believe in.
But none of these extensions of socialism could be effected without money. The fodder upon which our government is fed and grown beyond the consent of the governed is the tax system which has only one real consistency and that is that any levy once imposed is never removed.
During the Korean War, a excise tax was put on phones. We were told the government didn’t need it for revenue, but it was put on to curtail our use of the telephone because of the war emergency. Now the war is long gone, but the tax lingers on.
We suggest it be removed and government says we can’t, we need the revenue. This tax plus the hundreds and hundreds of hidden and indirect taxes account for a third of your phone bill, one fourth of the cost of your automobile, a hundred of such taxes account for 50% of the price of a loaf of bread, a half of the gas and oil that you put in your car.
We were told in our lifetime that the income tax if adopted would amount to 2%, never more and that it would only be applied to the wealthy. Well today, in this lifetime, we’ve seen that law grow from 31 words to more than 440,000 words beginning at 20% now and rising to 91% of a man’s earned income.
This progressive income tax was spawned by Karl Marx a hundred years ago. The steepest rate of increase in the surtax brackets occurs through the middle income range where to be found the bulk of our small-businessmen, our professional people, our supervisory personnel and many of our farmers. It reaches 50% and incidentally, these are the people that Karl Marx said should be taxed out of existence.
It reaches 50% at 16 or 18 thousand dollars of income. This is considered such a luxury and yet the New York Supreme Court has recently ruled that a man earning $14,000 a year is so poverty-stricken that he should be entitled to live in government-subsidized public housing.
We accept the proportion…that this tax is proportioned again appealing to our sense of fair play but if there is no moral justification for the progressive income tax we find that proportionate tax is best described in our Bible.
Both the old and new testament describe tithing as the economic basis of our Judaic and Christian religions. We are told that we give the Lord a tenth and we are told that if the Lord prospers us ten times as much, we give ten times as much.
But when you start computing Caesar’s share under our present tax system you’ll find that the man of average income, if he has prospered ten times as much, his personal income tax goes up 53 times as much. And does it really help the little man? Those of us that believe that we are willing to pay a proportional amount in order to remove the burden from that man of lesser income.
Take a man with a gross income of $3500 per year and a wife and two children. When he is finished paying the tax collectors, federal, state and local and all those hidden and indirect taxes at the end of the year, he will find the tax collectors share of his gross $3500 is $1059.
Now some people tell us the answer to his problem is to soak those of a higher income even more. But how much leeway is left? If the government, tomorrow, started confiscating all income above $6000, all income, the increased revenue wouldn’t pay the interest on the national debt.
No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that amounted to one-third of its people’s earnings. Today, 31 cents out of every dollar earned in the United States goes to the tax collector. And of that 31 cents, 23 cents goes to the federal government, leaving 8 cents for the federal, county and the local community to divide up between itself.
No wonder we have to turn to government and ask for federal aid in all of our projects. But wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to keep some of that money here in the local community to begin with instead of than routing it through that puzzle palace on the Potomac where its returned to us, minus a sizable carrying charge?
[applause]
Lenin said the way to destroy capitalism is to debauch the currency.
Through a quiet process of planned inflation, a government can quietly and unobservedly confiscate the wealth of its citizens. Henry VIII did it openly. He substituted copper for silver in the coinage of the day.
While our own government has been deliberate and dishonest in its inflationary policies. Your dollar last year lost another two cents in purchasing power. In 20 years, we know, all of use that it’s shrunk to less than half its previous value.
But we’re told that we shouldn’t worry because in this inflated market, our earnings have kept pace and we’re earning two-for-one. But they forget the part played by that progressive income tax which is based not on the value of the dollar but on the number of dollars you earn. And so when you start earning two-for one to maintain your purchasing power, you find that you have to earn additional dollars, the vicious cycle begins. Additional dollars to pay your increased surtax as you have moved up through successive brackets.
The $5000 a year man of 20 years ago today must earn $14,000. The $10,000 a year man must earn $31,000 and 12,000 of that represents his increased income tax. Would any of us care to project 15 years ahead, to 1975? The same gradual rate of inflation, keep the same tax system and pretend that then we shall have a free economy? When the $5000 a year man will have to earn $33,000. The $10,000 a year man, to break even, will have to earn $84,000. And any among us who are fortunate as to be at that lofty $50,000 a year plateau, well that fella’s got earn $835,000 to break even.
Here is the main battleground. Two years ago, I had the experience of going to Washington representing the motion picture industry before the House Ways and Means Committee, to advocate the adoption of a tax reform program. This was an experience similar to going over Niagara Falls in a barrel…the hard way, upstream.
[laughter and applause]
In a month of unprecedented hearings, practically every segment of the American economy appeared before that program and 100% of those appearing demanded some kind of tax reform. But it was obvious there was little sympathy on the part of the majority of that committee with our views so it was a surprise when a few months later they decided to hold additional hearings on tax reform. This time, no volunteers. They would hand pick and invite a few selected witnesses and so a group mainly of campus economists appeared before the committee and they to talked tax reform.
But they talked a tax reform which would see that the government got additional revenue, a greater share of the national income. They said this could be done by closing some of the loop-holes whereby you and I were avoiding our just share of taxation. And some of these loop-holes were the very legitimate deductions without which the whole hodge-podge system would have long since proven unworkable.
They were that you and I should not be allowed to deduct our real estate tax or the interest on our mortgages or loans before computing income tax. We shouldn’t be allowed to deduct charitable and education contributions at 100%. Those of the liberal persuasion today are lobbying for a tax reform measure now before Congress, a tax reform measure which may come to us piecemeal, not all in one piece. But this tax reform measure actually will be presented with a reduction of rates but so many loop-holes would be closed that the advocates openly say the government, if they adopt this program, will get $18 billion more than they are now getting. And then they just as openly say by coincidence we happen to have $18 billion worth of welfare programs we want the government to adopt.
These same people tell us we’re not smart enough to spend our money for the things we should buy, that the function of government should be to take our money from us through taxation and buy for us the welfare programs that our intelligence will not or, our lack of intelligence will not permit us to buy. They say they refute, before a Senate committee one of them as a spokesman said they refute the idea that the least government is the best government.
And when we suggest to them the danger of more deficit spending, when they tell us that only local and state debt is bad, but the federal debt is meaningless, they tell us that we are sacrificing our security on the false altar of a balanced budget. Well, ladies and gentleman, they very source of our strength is our individual liberty and our free economy.
And there is no security anyplace in the free world if there isn’t fiscal stability within the United States. Of course the federal debt is meaningless, it’s incomprehensible.
I’ve taken to drawing a picture for myself. If I had here in my hand a 4-inch stack of $1000 bills, I’d be a millionaire. But if we had in front of us the national debt, piled up in $1000 bills, the pile would be more than 18 miles high. And this is only the part that shows above the surface like an iceberg.
Actually in legislation already enacted into law our government is obligated to more than $750 billion. This added to the local and state debt and the private debt of our citizens’ amounts to a figure more than double the market value of every tangible asset and every foot of real estate in the United States.
Today, with no one using the term socialism to describe encroaching control, we find one out of seven of the workforce on the public payroll. In 15 years, a 50% increase in public employees has been matched by a 170% increase in their payroll.
One-fourth of our people now entitled to government-paid medical care, socialized medicine if you please. One-fifth of our industry owned and operated by government. Senator Byrd has estimated that today 40 million American citizens receive some form of direct cash payment from the federal government.
We have a tax system that in direct contravention to the Constitution is not designed solely to raise revenue, but is openly and admittedly used to regulate and control the economy and the level the earnings of our citizens, aiming again at that mediocrity which is the utopian dream of the socialists.
Here is where we must expend the main effort. Don’t forsake the other issues that I have mentioned but as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Strike for the jugular. Reduce taxes and spending. Keep government poor, and remain free.”
Write to your Congressman and demand a tax reform immediately which will reduce the percentage of the national income the government is taking in taxes. Write to your Congressman and tell him you want an end to deficit spending, that you want the same control of the federal government’s right to borrow that we exert here at the local community and at the state level. Tell him further, with an eye on our children, that you want, as part of the annual budget a regular payment on that national debt.
And if your Congressman is one who writes back and says he, too, is for economy, but we must reduce government spending before we reduce taxes, you write back and tell him this is a dishonest theory. Because no government in history has ever voluntarily reduced itself in size.
Government doesn’t tax to get the money it needs, government will always find a need for the money it gets. There can be only one end to the war we are in. We can’t just out-wait it and hope by not looking, that it will go away. Wars like this one end in victory or defeat. One of the foremost authorities on communism in the world today, a former medical missionary, has said that we have ten years, not ten years in which to make a decision, we have ten years to decide the verdict because within this decade, the world will become either all free or all slave.
Our Founding Fathers, here in this country, brought about the only true revolution that has ever taken place in man’s history. Every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another set of rulers. But only here did that little band of men so advanced beyond their time that the world has never seen their like since, evolve the idea that you and I have within ourselves the God-given right and the ability to determine our own destiny.
But freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it and then hand it to them with the well thought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don’t do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has written a piece for theNational Reviewin which he offers his thoughts for the Republican party. However, his post is long on rhetoric and short on principled conservatism. In his piece, he poses the idea of the GOP being the “Grand Solutions Party”. Sure that sounds reasonable enough, right? Not really. Fashioning the GOP has the party of solutions inherently means that government must be the entity at work to solve America’s problems. In reality, government is too often the inhibiting factor. It’s the American people who solve our problems when government gets out of our way–de-regulates and spends and taxes less. While Governor Bush does touch on the idea of individual freedom, he only does so by prefacing the concept on a squishy idea of governance in which he notes:
The animating force of this governance is diversity and creativity of thinking. And that is how the Republican party should always be. We are broad thinkers and confident believers in America. We are serious about finding solutions for the problems we face in our communities. And we will not limit the ideas we consider in helping America reach for greatness.
If I hadn’t read the byline and the word “Republican” wasn’t in there, this could easily pass as something off of President Obama’s teleprompter. Yes, government indeed has a role to play–providing an environment for Americans to solve our own problems. As Reagan, whom Bush has very little respect for, notes, “government is not the solution; government in the problem”. Yes, we want government officials to be believers in America, but we don’t want them to believe that they are our saviors.
The two paragraphs following the aforementioned paragraph do indeed touch appropriately on the idea of individual liberty and limited government. Bush goes on to note that principles shouldn’t be abandoned and that we should be “guided meaningfully by the first principles of our nation”. This is, of course, true, but the remaining paragraphs negate his claims of the importance of principle by suggesting that we should abandon it:
But to make sure that we do not lose the advantage of that clear difference, we must not layer onto our fundamental beliefs thick black lines of ideology — black lines that we do not allow ourselves to cross. Those black lines can be comforting, I understand. They provide certainty and stability and ideological purity. But they also restrict the way we think about problems, and make more difficult the kind of reform-minded free thinking that has defined the conservative movement for the last 50 years.
Thick black lines of ideology are good at keeping people in, but they are also good at keeping people out. And our party can’t win if we keep people out. Our goal is not to assemble a small army of purists. We need a nation of converts. We have seen the other way of governing. It has had its day. It has made its best case. It has failed.
Ideology is too often seen as a dirty word when in reality, it simply means standing upon the principles of one’s belief system. Of course, Bush is wrong when he discusses the supposed “reform-minded free thinking” of the conservative movement. Perhaps this “pale pastels” he is referring to are the ideas of the Republican “movement” over the past 50 years– Nixon who thought that the EPA was a good idea or perhaps his father who raised taxes after promising not to. He certainly isn’t referring to the Reagans or Palins of the last fifty years.
Bush says we need a nation of converts, but his idea seems to be that conservatives convert to a unprincipled ideology of pale pastels rather than conservatives promote the ideas of individual liberty and our founding principles to those around us. There is nothing more “Big Tent” than the idea of freedom and limited government which provide the solid foundation. Essentially, he wants us to pitch the proverbial “Big Tent” on a swamp. What happens when you drive the stakes of a tent into a swamp? The tent collapses because the stakes weren’t driven into a solid foundation. A “big tent” is a great goal, but it must be driven into solid ground–perhaps into soil as dark as the “black lines of ideology” that Bush bemoans.
For a take on this piece far more eloquent than my ramblings, please listen to this segment of Mark Levin’s show from today:
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A Time For Choosing 
