Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank
you and good evening. The sponsor has been identified, but unlike most
television programs, the performer hasn't 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 recently 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,
"We've never had it so good."
But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn't 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 collector's share,
and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the
government takes in. We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34
years. We've 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
debts of all the nations of the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in
our treasury; we don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion
dollars. And we've 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 wonder who among us would like to
approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in
Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a
businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of
my friends turned 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
someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story.
If we lose freedom here, there's 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 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 capitol can plan
our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as
a left or right. There's only an up or down—[up] man's 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
humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have
embarked on this downward course.
In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the "Great
Society," or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must
accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people. But they've
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." Another 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
Well, I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you
and me, the free men and women of this country, as "the masses." This
is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in
Now, we have no better example of this than government's involvement in the
farm economy over the last 30 years. Since 1955, the cost of this program has
nearly doubled. One-fourth of farming in
Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater, as President, would
seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his homework a little better, because
he'll find out that we've had a decline of 5 million in the farm population
under these government programs. He'll also find that the Democratic
administration has sought to get from Congress [an] extension of the farm
program to include that three-fourths that is now
free. He'll find that they've also asked for the right to imprison farmers who
wouldn't keep books as prescribed by the federal government. The Secretary of
Agriculture asked for the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell
them to other individuals. And contained in that same program was a provision
that would have allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from
the soil.
At the same time, there's been an increase in the Department of Agriculture
employees. There's now one for every 30 farms in the
Every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked the
government to free the farm economy, but how—who are farmers to know what's
best for them? The wheat farmers voted against a wheat program. The government
passed it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up; the price of wheat to the
farmer goes down.
Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries
on. Private property rights [are] so diluted that public interest is almost
anything a few government planners decide it should be. In a program that takes
from the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in
They've just declared
We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one
without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage
of the thin one. So they're going to solve all the problems of human misery
through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning
and welfare had the answer—and they've had almost 30 years of it—shouldn't we
expect government to read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be
telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?
But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater; the program grows
greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry
each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we're
told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the
basis of earning less than 3,000 dollars a year. Welfare spending [is] 10 times
greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We're spending 45 billion
dollars on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you'll find that if we divided
the 45 billion dollars up equally among those 9 million poor families, we'd be
able to give each family 4,600 dollars a year. And this added to their present
income should eliminate poverty. Direct aid to the poor, however, is only
running only about 600 dollars per family. It would seem that someplace there
must be 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 dollars to the 45 billion we're 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 to
disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I should explain there is one part of
the new program that isn't duplicated. This is the youth feature. We're now
going to solve the dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by reinstituting
something like the old CCC camps [Civilian Conservation Corps], and we're going
to put our young people in these camps. But again we do some arithmetic, and we
find that we're going to spend each year just on room and board for each young
person we help 4,700 dollars a year. We can send them to Harvard for 2,700!
Course, don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting Harvard is the answer to
juvenile delinquency.
But seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help? Not too long ago, a
judge called me here in
Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced
as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we're always
"against" things—we're never "for" anything.
Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's
just that they know so much that isn't so.
Now—we're for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by
reason of old age, and to that end we've accepted Social Security as a step
toward meeting the problem.
But we're against those entrusted with this program when they practice
deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any
criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those people who
depend on them for a livelihood. They've called it "insurance" to us
in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the
Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program. They only use the
term "insurance" to sell it to the people. And they said Social
Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the
government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the
actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that
Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he
said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power
to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to
bail them out of trouble. And they're doing just that.
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 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could
live it up until he's 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, so that people who do require
those payments will find they can get them when they're due—that the cupboard
isn't bare?
Barry Goldwater thinks we can.
At the same time, can't we introduce voluntary features that would permit a
citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of
evidence that he had made provision for the non-earning years? Should we not
allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid
for by her deceased husband? Shouldn't you and I be allowed to declare who our
beneficiaries will be under this program, which we cannot do? I think we're for
telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied
medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we're against forcing all
citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially
when we have such examples, as was announced last week, when
In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested that our
government give up its program of deliberate, planned inflation, so that when
you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar's worth,
and not 45 cents worth?
I think we're for an international organization, where the nations of the world
can seek peace. But I think we're against subordinating American interests to
an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can
muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among nations
that represent less than 10 percent of the world's population. I think we're
against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling
to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our
mouths about the millions of people enslaved in the Soviet colonies in the
satellite nations.
I think we're for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with
those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we're against doling
out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all
over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We're helping 107. We've spent
146 billion dollars. With that money, we bought a 2 million dollar yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress
suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So governments'
programs, once launched, never disappear.
Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever
see on this earth.
Federal employees—federal employees number two and a half million; and federal,
state, and local, one out of six of the nation's work force employed by
government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations
have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that
today federal agents can invade a man's property without a warrant? They can
impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury? And they can
seize and sell his property at auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In
Last February 19th at the
But as a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn't the only man who
has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration, because
back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the 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 banners of
Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his Party, and he never
returned til the day he died—because to this day, the
leadership of that Party has been taking that Party, that honorable Party, down
the road in the image of the labor Socialist Party of England.
Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or
business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold
the deed to the—or the title to your business or property if the government
holds the power of life and death over that business or property? And such
machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against
any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of
harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable
rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has
never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this
moment.
Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to
make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men—that we're to
choose just between two personalities.
Well what of this man that they would destroy—and in destroying, they would
destroy that which he represents, the ideas that you and I hold dear? Is he the
brash and shallow and trigger-happy man they say he is? Well I've been
privileged to know him "when." I knew him long before he ever dreamed
of trying for high office, and I can tell you personally I've never known a man
in my life I believed so incapable of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing.
This is a man who, in his own business before he entered politics, instituted a
profit-sharing plan before unions had ever thought of it. He put in health and
medical insurance for all his employees. He took 50 percent of the profits
before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan for all his
employees. He sent monthly checks for life to an employee who was ill and
couldn't work. He provides nursing care for the children of mothers who work in
the stores. When
An ex-GI told me how he met him. It was the week before Christmas during the
Korean War, and he was at the
During the hectic split-second timing of a campaign, this is a man who took
time out to sit beside an old friend who was dying of cancer. His campaign
managers were understandably impatient, but he said, "There aren't many
left who care what happens to her. I'd like her to know I care." This is a
man who said to his 19-year-old son, "There is no foundation like the rock
of honesty and fairness, and when you begin to build your life on that rock,
with the cement of the faith in God that you have, then
you have a real start." This is not a man who could carelessly send other
people's sons to war. And that is the issue of this campaign that makes all the
other problems I've discussed academic, unless we realize we're in a war that
must be won.
Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state
have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call
their policy "accommodation." And they say if we'll only avoid any
direct confrontation with the enemy, he'll forget his evil ways and learn to
love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer
simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer—not
an easy answer—but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected
officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts
is morally right.
We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by
committing an immorality so great as saying to a
billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your
dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal
with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which
can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one."
Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between
peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace—and you
can have it in the next second—surrender.
Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every
lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this
is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their
policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace
and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate,
continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand—the
ultimatum. And what then—when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows
what our answer will be? He has told them that we're retreating under the
pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final
ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have
been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes
this because from our side he's heard voices pleading for "peace at any
price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it,
he'd rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for
the rest of us.
You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to
be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth
dying for, when did this begin—just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses
have told the children of
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." And this—this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's
"peace through strength." Winston Churchill said, "The destiny
of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the
move in the world, we learn we're spirits—not animals." And he said,
"There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space,
which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.
We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or
we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.
We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has
faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our
own decisions and determine our own destiny.
Thank you very much.