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1、Ronald Reagan: “A Time for Choosing“ (aka “The Speech“)delivered 27 October 1964, Los Angeles, CAProgram Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, we take pride in presenting a thoughtful address by Ronald Reagan. Mr. Reagan:Reagan: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening. The sponsor has
2、been identified, but unlike most television programs, the performer hasnt been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own words and discuss my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks.I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I rece
3、ntly have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used, “Weve never had it so good.“But I have an
4、uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isnt something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collectors share, and yet ou
5、r government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We havent balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. Weve raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debt
6、s of all the nations of the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we dont own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion dollars. And weve just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.As for the peace that we would preserve, I wo
7、nder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one Ame
8、rican is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. Were at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and its been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greate
9、st astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think its time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who
10、had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We dont know how lucky we are.“ And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.“ And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, theres
11、 no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it 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 mans relation to man. This is the issue of this e
12、lection: 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 capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.You and I are told increasingly we have to choose betwe
13、en a left or right. Well Id like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. Theres only an up or down - up mans old - old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their huma
14、nitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the “Great Society,“ or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people.
15、 But theyve been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves; and all of the things I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say, “The cold war will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism.“ Anoth
16、er voice says, “The profit motive has become outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state.“ Or, “Our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century.“ Senator Fullbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the President as “our moral teacher and our leader,“ and he says he is “hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this
