Election Thoughts

We're getting close.
Ronald Reagan was not always right. Many of the things he did, such as kissing up to the likes of the Moral Majority, stunk. But there were things he did well, some even admirably, such as his speaking skills. Here is a stump speech he gave in support of Barry Goldwater in 1964.

This idea? that government was beholden to the people, that it had noother source of power is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reagan/filmmore/
reference/primary/choose64.html

I don't know who wrote it. I can imagine RR delivering it. I wish I could see any of that in the current Republican party.