Then & Now: A perspective

I just watched this video of Ronald Reagan's 1964 RNC Speech. He highlights some interesting points. It's funny to see some striking similarities between then and now. I am wondering what you all think of it. WARNING! Long video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt1fYSAChxs

For those who didn't want to watch the video here are some quotes from the speech:

"No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income."

"Do they mean peace? Or do they mean we just want to be left in peace."

"Not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a business man who had escaped from Castro. And in the midst of his story, one my friend to the other and said, 'We don't know how lucky we are'. And the Cuban stopped and said, 'How lucky you are? I had some place to to escape to'. And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth."

"And this idea that government is beholden to the People, that is has no other source of power except the sovereign People is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man."

""You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a Left or a Right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a Left or Right. There is only a up or down."

"Senator Fulbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoted. He referred to the President as our moral teacher and our leader, and he says he is hobbled in his tasks by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document. He must be freed so that he can do for us what he knows is best."

"Senator Clark of Pennsylvania another articulate spokesman defines liberalism as meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government."

"But beyond that, the full power of centralized government, this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize."

"We have so many people that can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat one got that way by taking advantage of the thin one."

"Now we are told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty stricken on the basis of earning less than $3,000 a year. Welfare spending 10x greater than it was in the dark depths of the Depression. We are spending 45-billion dollars on welfare. Now do a little arithmatic and you'll find that if we divided the 45-billion dollars up equally among those 9-million poor families we would be able to give each family $4,600 a year, and this added to there present income should eliminate poverty.

Direct aid to the poor however is only running about $600 per family. Would seem that someplace there must some overhead. Now, so now, we declare war on poverty or you too can be a Bobby Baker. Now do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add 1-billion to the 45-billion we are spending, one more program to the 30 odd we have, and remember this new program doesn't replace any, it just duplicates existing programs. Do they believe that poverty is suddenly going disappear by magic?

Well, in all fairness I should explain there is one part of the program that isn't duplicated. This is the youth feature, we are now going to solve the drop-out problem, juvenile delinquency, by re-instituting something like the old CCC camps and we are going to put our young people in these camps. But again we do some arithmatic and we find that we are going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person we help $4,700 a year. We can send them to Harvard for $2,700! Of course, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency"

"The problem with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, it's just they know so much that isn't so"

"A young man, 21-years of age, working at an average salary; his Social Security contribution would in the open market buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee $220 a month at age 65, the government promises guarantees a $127. He could live it up until he is 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can't put this program on a sound basis?"

"No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So government programs once launched never disappear. Actually a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this Earth."

"Because back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, a great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his party was taking the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland, down the road under the banner of Marx, Lennin, and Stalin, and he walked away from his party and he never returned until the day he died."

"Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose Socialism on a People. What does it mean wheather you hold the deed or title to the business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property?"

"Where then is the road to Peace? Well, its a simple answer after all: You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, 'there is a price we will not pay, there is a point beyond which they must not advance!'"

I didn't post all of them. The entire video is excellent in my opinion. He spoke great and made some great points.

"A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger, is prepared for a Master and deserves one"
- Alexander Hamilton

I guess liberals have always been for appeasement. I guess it's a hard pill to swallow.